Spelling "Home Schooling". (Making A Difference).

Due primarily to an impressive record of achievement in contrast to the government school system, home schooling is having an increasing influence on, and within, American education. Understandably, some advocates of public schools, unable to compete with the academic achievements of home schoolers, are opting instead to tear down home schooling. As the late Professor Medford Evans once observed, "you cannot make a pine tree out of a juniper bush, but you can make stumps out of both of them."

In response to domination of national spelling bee competitions by home schoolers in recent years, for instance, Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, asserted in May of this year: "If I was in the home-schooling movement, I'd say, is that the way you want kids to spend their time, sitting around all day and memorizing lists of spelling words or facts." After all, he told the Chicago Tribune, "education is not 'The Weakest Link' or 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.' You're not an educated person because you can memorize pages of esoteric words. That's why you have spell check on your computer."

On the Internet, a prominent manufacturer and supplier of T-shirts is selling a "Home Skool" item featuring the imprint of a cheap mobile-home trailer accompanied by the inscription "Home Skooled." The obvious message, as noted by syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, is that home schoolers are "ill-informed trailer park trash flies." The company's fare also includes "tees" glamorizing Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Marilyn Manson, and Harry Potter; one imprinted "Satan Inside"; and two that proclaim "MasterPimp" (a vulgar parody of MasterCard) and "Pimpology."

Earlier this year, the Texas-based J.C. Penney Company opted to have its stores carry the "Home Skooled" shirts. The retailer's customer service centers were immediately besieged with e-mail, snail-mail, and telephone complaints that it was aiding and abetting the drive to demean home schooling. As columnist Malkin asked in a recent column, "what if the T-shirt had the phrase 'Publik skooled' printed on it, with a silhouette of a ghetto public-housing complex emblazoned underneath? No doubt J.C. Penney would have balked at such a blatantly contemptuous image," while the "National Education Association and minority civil rights brigade would have made a federal discrimination case out of it."

In early August, J.C. Penney announced that it was reversing its position and will be pulling the noxious T-shirts from their shelves. Company spokesman Tim Lyons told reporters that "it wasn't our intent to sell an item that is offensive."