The Right to Be Raptured

By Bill Maher

The Texas Supreme Court heard an interesting case this week:  a family that is homeschooling their children has been accused of failing to teach educational basics because they’re waiting for the rapture. (I guess there’s no reading in Heaven?)

The issue is what happens when parental rights/beliefs conflict with the right of a child to be educated?
 
According to The Washington Post, 300,000 children are homeschooled in Texas, and those children neither have to register with the state, nor take any test to show that they’re actually learning anything. (At least Texas suggests a curriculum; fourteen states don’t have any requirements for what’s taught).
 
This particular family was exposed when the uncle and grandparents of the kids complained that they never saw them doing any schoolwork. The eldest daughter actually ran away from home so she could go to an actual school.
 
I’m sure homeschooling works for some families. But for the majority, where it’s all bound up in religious nuttery and hatred of the government, it’s simply a form of child abuse.