On 25/09/06, David Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
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Mark Wagner wrote:
Define "school". Under Michigan law, I was educated in a private school: the Vernon-Dunlap School. I can even cite sources that prove the existence of this school and that I went there; however, this particular "school" existed only because that's how the state of Michigan defined homeschooling: as a private school with a religious or philosophical objection to teacher certification. Should we have an article on it?
Yes. The unusualness (is that a word?) of this arrangement means that it would be inherently notable.
Ah, no. The *arrangement* is highly notable - an individual incidence of the arrangement isn't. We can and should write about the legal loophole Michigan uses to handle homeschooling; this doesn't mean that a single specific homeschool is notable, unless it's the only one that loophole applies to.
To use a different, and hopefully clearer, example... you know "John Doe"? The name comes from an archaic English law proceeding, which involved having to make up fictional plaintiffs and defendants in order to permit a court to hear land-possession cases.
The proceeding (a mixed action of ejectment) is very notable - not only did it give the English-speaking world a commonly used general-purpose name, but it made all sorts of interesting leaps forward in jurisprudence. But any individual case of it - this or that particular occurence of John Doe in a land register in 1342 - is not itself notable.