Homeschooled Spelling Champ!

The good news? A 13 year old homeschooler from California won the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week! I'm always curious about the parents. My first thought is usually, "so does the kid have genius parents?" But the answer is frequently, "no". This boy's dad is a subway train operator and his mom is a SAHM like me.

What bothers me, or "the bad news", is that I looked for the story on Fox news, my preferred news source, and they didn't mention that he was a homeschooler. So I checked out ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN just to see if everyone was ignoring that little fact. It seems they all practically copy and pasted the Associated Press (AP) story, but only CNN and CBS managed to leave in the part about him being a homeschooler. The other sites just removed that fact and left the rest of the story!

Here's a clip from CBS: "The home-schooled eighth-grader easily aced “serrefine” — a noun describing small forceps — to become the last youngster standing at the 80th annual bee."

Here's Fox news: "The 13-year-old boy from Danville, Calif., aced "serrefine" Thursday night to become the last youngster standing"

Here's CNN: "The home-schooled eighth-grader easily aced "serrefine" -- a noun describing small forceps -- to become the last youngster standing at the 80th annual bee."

Here's ABC: "The 13-year-old from Danville, Calif., aced "serrefine" a noun describing small forceps Thursday night to become the last youngster standing."

Here's NBC: "The 13-year-old from Danville, Calif., aced “serrefine” Thursday night to become the last youngster standing at the 80th annual bee."

Do they think that celebrating a homeschooled kid's educational success automatically means that they are some how hurting public schools? It's just ridiculous. ( and yes, I had to double check my spelling of "ridiculous", lol.)