Home-schooling standoff (MA Liberals try to get state custody for 'abused' home-schooled kids)

"We have legal custody of the children and we will do with them as we see fit," DSS worker Susan Etscovitz told the Bryants in their Gale Street home. "They are minors and they do what we tell them to do!"

WALTHAM, MA -- A legal battle over two home-schooled children exploded into a seven-hour standoff yesterday, when they refused to take a standardized test ordered by the Department of Social Services.

George Nicholas Bryant, 15, and Nyssa Bryant, 13, stood behind their parents, Kim and George, as police and DSS workers attempted to collect the children at 7:45 a.m. DSS demanded that the two complete a test to determine their educational level.

After a court order was issued by Framingham Juvenile Court around 1 p.m., the children were driven by their parents to a Waltham hotel.

"The court order said that the children must be here. It said nothing about taking the test," said George Bryant.

The second refusal came after an emotion-filled morning for the family, when DSS workers sternly demanded the Bryants comply with their orders.

Four police officers were also at the scene and attempted to coax the Bryants to listen to the DSS worker.

"We are simply here to prevent a breach of the peace," said Waltham Youth Officer Detective James Auld. "We will will not physically remove the children."

Yesterday's events are the continuation of a six-year legal battle between the family and Waltham Public Schools and the state.

The Bryants contend that the city and state do not have the legal right to force their children to take standardized tests, even though DSS workers have threatened to take their children from them.

"There have been threats all along. Most families fall to that bullying by the state and the legal system," said George Bryant.

"But this has been a six-year battle between the Waltham Public Schools and our family over who is in control of the education of our children," Bryant continued. "In the end the law of this state will protect us."

Both sides agree that the children are in no way abused mentally, physically, sexually or emotionally, but legal custody of the children was taken from Kim and George Bryant in December 2001. The children will remain under the legal custody of DSS until their 16th birthdays.

The parents have been ruled as unfit because they did not file educational plans or determine a grading system for the children, two criteria of Waltham Public School's home schooling policy.

"We do not believe in assessing our children based on a number or letter. Their education process is their personal intellectual property," said Bryant.

George Bryant said he was arrested six years ago, after not attending a meeting that the city contends he was summoned to. The meeting was called by the Waltham School Department for his failure to send his children to school.

"We want these issues aired in the open, in public. The school system and DSS have fought to keep this behind closed doors," said Bryant.

Superintendent of Schools Susan Parrella said she was unaware of yesterday's incident and that, currently the school department approves of the education plan filed by DSS for the Bryant children.

"An acceptable home school plan is in place right now," said Parrella. "I was not aware of any testing occurring today."

"We don't want to take the test. We have taken them before and I don't think they are a fair assessment of what we know," said Nyssa Bryant. "And no one from DSS has ever asked us what we think."

Kenneth Pontes, area director of DSS, denied that workers have never talked to the children privately, but admitted that this type of case isn't often seen by his office.

"This is an unusual case. Different school systems require different regulations for home-schooled children. Waltham requires testing," said Pontes.

Pontes said that a possibility exists that the children will be removed from their home, but that was a last course of action.

"No one wants these children to be put in foster homes. The best course of action would for (the Bryants) to instruct the children to take the test," said Etscovitz.

The Bryant family is due in Framingham District Court this morning, to go before a juvenile court judge. According to DSS, this session will determine what their next course of action will be and if the children will be removed from the Bryants' home.

"These are our children and they have and always will be willing participants in their education," said Kim Bryant.

Adolph Hitler said it on November 6, 1933 speaking about the schools and their indoctrination of the Hilterjugend (Hitler Youth Corps).

It was Adolph Hitler who said, "Let me control the textbooks, and I will control the state."

Norman Thomas, Socialist and member of the Civil Liberties Union, boldly told the world, "The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."

"Give me your four year olds," said Lenin "and in a generation I will build a Socialist state."

Lesbian author Patricia Warren, boldly told the gay and lesbian community, "It is the FIRST fact of civilization that-- whoever captures the kids - owns the future."

In his book ‘The Science Of Power’, Benjamin Kidd wrote, ". Give us the young. -- Give us the young and We will create a new mind and a new Earth in a SINGLE generation."

Ross L. Finny, a socialist PhD in one of his books tells us this; "Everything depends on passing out the expert opinions of the social scientists to the masses of the people; the schools are the only adequate agency for this function."

Lastly, the American Humanist Association understands the importance of capturing the children – for they have written: "In order to capture this nation, one has to totally remove moral and spiritual values and absolutes from the thinking of the child. The child has to think that there is no standard of right and wrong, that truth is relative, and that diversity is the only absolute to be gained."

Look at #17

Author, historian, law enforcement officer, and Patriot, Dr. W. Cleon Skousen was the number 3 man in the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, and later was Chief of Police of Salt Lake City.

In 1958, Cleon Skoussen, former FBI agent, revealed in his book, THE NAKED COMMUNIST, the longterm goals of the communist agenda. This information is recorded not only in the US Congressional Record, but also in the Communist Manifesto itself.

The 45 Current Communist Goals listed below were recorded in the Congressional Record on Thursday, January 10, 1963, on Appendix pages A34 & A35. They were taken from THE NAKED COMMUNIST by W. Clean Skousen, who began his extensive study of Communism during his 16 year term of service with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These goals were compiled from the reports of Congressional hearings together with available books by ex-Communists.

1. U.S. acceptance of co-existence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist afflation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet Satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the UN.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Krushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the UN.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the U.S. has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the UN.

11. Promote the UN as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the UN as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing In the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain Control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protest programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments. editorial writing, policy-making positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion Picture

22. Continual discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.

23. Control art critics and director of art museums. Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, and meaningless art.

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.

26. Present homosexually, degeneracy and promiscuity as normal, natural, healthy.

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with social religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a religious crutch.

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and state.

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it Inadequate. old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.

30. Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man.

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the big picture. Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture-education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to Social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally Reservation so the U.S. cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

Look around you, especially in the public school system, and see how many of these goals are in place now.

Sounds like a nutcase to me. Why wouldn't a homeschooling parent test their kids? Something fishy going on here. Just what is it that these kids KNOW that can't be measured by a test?

I don't think there is anything wrong with being an exception to a rule, especially if it's a bad rule. However, I tend to agree that something doesn't smell right.

If the parents are preparing their kids for the world, the need to have some way to assess their progress. I can't imagine a caring parent who would teach their homeschooled child to be afraid of measuring their academic progress.

It seems there are so many tactics that could have been taken by these people if they didn't like the laws. They could have lobbied, protested, or sued.

At worst, they could have submitted to the testing, and then moved to a state with reasonable requirements. Instead, they have freaked out their kids, and lost custody of them to the state.

I don't know what they believe they can accomplish by letting social services take their children away. I would have to find another way. It's not worth it to die on that hill.

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