Posted on 08/26/2003 3:12:14 PM PDT by Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS
Homeschoolers have been vigilant in protecting their rights, rising to the occasion when they discover threats to clamp down on their activities.
Isabel Lyman is the author of The Homeschooling Revolution (2000).
Theres no place like home" has become the mantra of successful homeschoolers. By most measures scholastic, social, economic the modern homeschooling movement is a triumph. The actual undertaking requires initiative, patience, and, in many cases, financial sacrifice. But this grand educational adventure continues to work because resourceful homeschoolers have largely been left alone.
Unfortunately, it is the "home alone" aspect that scares opponents, who waste precious human resources criticizing this successful private-sector, parent-managed endeavor. Meanwhile, thousands of ill-supervised children have languished, decade after decade, in public schools.
Rob Reich, a Stanford University assistant professor of political science, is one such critic. In a paper entitled "Testing the Boundaries of Parental Authority over Education: The Case of Homeschooling," Reich states, " I argue that at a bare minimum one function of any school environment must be to expose children to and engage students with values and beliefs other than those they are likely to encounter within their homes. Because homeschooling is structurally and in practice the least likely to meet this end, I argue that while the state should not ban homeschooling it must nevertheless regulate its practice with vigilance."
This attitude is seen in the resolution passed by the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association (NEA). Last July, at their annual summer convention, the NEA passed Resolution B-69, which states that "home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience."
But the NEA cannot begin to inflict the same kind of damage on homeschoolers as can zealous state officials. Phonics specialist and homeschooling advocate Samuel Blumenfeld has observed: "Today the law is not being used to force delinquents and truants into the schools, but to harass and regulate home schoolers...." In Blumenfelds home state of Massachusetts, Kim and George Bryant, homeschooling parents, endured a seven-hour standoff with police officers and social service employees merely because the Bryant children teenagers Nicholas and Nyssa declined to take a standardized test ordered by the Department of Social Services. Revolt in the Constitution State
Like minutemen of old, homeschooling families must also be ready to fight unexpected assaults on their rights. For example, last year in Connecticut, home educators challenged the Act Concerning Independent Instruction, which contained a tedious list of new mandates, including ones requiring homeschooling parents to possess a high school diploma, as well as have their individual curriculum plans scrutinized by school superintendents.
The Hartford Courant reported that state Rep. Cameron Staples (D-New Haven), the acts sponsor, championed this proposal because in Connecticut "the only law on home schooling requires parents to let local school districts know that they plan to teach their children at home." Apparently, this approach was too laissez faire for the lawmaker, and one wonders what Staples would do if he were in Oklahoma, where there is no requirement for parents to initiate contact with the state if they choose to homeschool their children.
Staples and his ilk, however, were probably not expecting scores of parents to challenge his clumsy attempt to increase homeschool regulations. Diane Connors, president of the Connecticut Homeschool Network, sent an e-mail to parents and other concerned citizens, alerting them to the public hearing regarding the bill. Her dispatch was wildly successful. On March 4, 2002, over 1,000 people many coming from the Legislative Office building in Hartford attended the hearing to voice their opposition to the House version of the act (H.B. 5535). According to Connors, only one Connecticut superintendent showed up to support the legislation.
Summarizing the prevailing sentiment against the bill, homeschooling parent John Paradis was quoted in the Courant as explaining, "We have removed our kids from the public schools because we think the public schools are not educating our students properly. This [the bill] puts their education back in the hands of the public schools."
Legislators didnt ignore the outcry. On March 22, 2002, H.B. 5535 died, missing the deadline for receiving a favorable vote. Big Sky Showdown
Even though no evidence exists indicating that state regulation improves homeschoolers performance, legislators continue their campaigns to control and restrict home education. This year, another showdown like the one in Connecticut occurred in Montana.
State Senator Don Ryan (D-Great Falls) sponsored Senate Bill No. 276. If the legislation passed, it would have required homeschoolers to take state assessment tests to measure academic competency. Even though Montana is a state with an undemanding existing homeschooling law and where homeschoolers had outperformed public school students on national standardized tests, the responsible were to be penalized. Ryan, employing the emotional language of left-wing childrens rights advocates, said he was concerned about protecting at-risk children from "inadequate" or "abusive" parents.
On February 12, 2003, hundreds of Montana homeschoolers, alerted by phone and e-mail chains by another attentive parent (Steve White, the legislative liaison for the Montana Coalition of Home Educators), converged on the capitol in Helena to lobby against the bill. The arguments the Senate Education Committee heard ranged from the unfairness of testing homeschoolers on material they had not studied, to being held to higher standards than their lower-performing public school counterparts, to concerns about state infringement on teaching religious beliefs.
The hearing lasted a record four hours, and nearly 500 Montana citizens signed the hearing registry as opponents of the bill. Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) lawyer Dewitt T. Black wrote in an e-mail alert that "over 50 people testified against it." Only one person Senator Don Ryan spoke in favor. The education committee voted 9-1 to "postpone indefinitely," insuring that S.B. 276 was dead on arrival. Never-Ending Battles
J. Michael Smith, president of HSLDA, notes that his organization lobbied against a cache of bad bills during the 2002-03 school year. "We had nine states where there were specific threats to home school freedom that we lobbied: Montana state assessment test required for home schools; North Dakota state assessment test; Nevada state assessment test; Wyoming state assessment test; California habitual truants would be treated as educational neglect; Texas would have required registration of home schoolers; Colorado habitual truants would be treated as educational neglect; Louisiana attempted to do away with private school exemption for homeschoolers; and Virginia wanted home schoolers to pass the standards of learning tests given to public school students. None of these bills were successfully passed."
Clearly, some state legislators are trying to regulate a nonexistent problem. These lawmakers are trying to hinder, not help, the vast majority of homeschoolers. They are also unprepared to deal with the fierce opposition and almost zero public support that their meddling produces.
The only assistance state lawmakers can offer home educators is to deregulate homeschooling eliminate cumbersome laws and not introduce new, costly legislation. Some states are catching on. The opening of a story from the Oakland Tribune was pleasantly surprising: "Just nine months after declaring homeschooling largely illegal, the California Department of Education recently reversed its position, pronouncing the practice as essentially none of the states business." The California Department of Education, in fact, has begun referring interested parties to statewide homeschooling organizations to receive their information.
Frederic Bastiat, the 19th-century French economist, could have been writing about deregulating homeschooling when he opined, "It [the law] can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without use of force...." Perhaps more American legislators will get the message: Homeschooling works best when it is left alone.
When people mention socialization, I laugh. My complaint is that the kids might be getting too much! ;^)
Cut the malarkey. If you know nothing of homeschooling, either say so or stay quiet on the subject. Parroting the NEA line about socialization only reveals your ignorance.
My kids are the most well-informed children on the PLANET for their age (in fact, my 15 year-old freeper son will give any college student a run for their money on analysis of current events).
It is ALL what the parents DO with the time. We simply found that children LOVE to learn if provided a loving, caring environment.
They don't stop socializing just because they are homeschooled! We just have more time with them to ease them into the world. While most parents see their children (awake) for 3-4 hours per day on average, I get to see mine for at least 12!
Can you calculate how many more of life's lessons can be passed on by someone that truly loves the child and has the TIME to do it?
My kids will be better prepared for the world than those that do NOT homeschool -- that I can assure you of.
Actually that goal is not incompatible with homeschooling. Do you honestly think that homeschoolers lock their kids at home? Our kids are involved in several youth groups, including a boy choir that provides interaction with many kids of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.
I can only assume that you don't know any homeschooling families because that socialization argument has been debunked many times. If anything, homeschool kids are exposed to a WIDER range of opinion. They're exposed to the "real world" all of the time, but how many kids in the public school are exposed to my kid's world?
Yet they sure support the Freedom of Gayligion, where schools have a Day of Silence, to represent how gays must keep quiet about their sexuality or face persecution.
They don't show the social pathologies that I see in the public school educated children. They can actually hold intelligent, respectful conversations with adults and others their age.
The future of this country, if it is to have one, rests with the homeschooled.
The legislative focus of humanist educators has been to make education compulsory. Once children are required by law to attend school, the educrats work for conrol of children at younger and younger ages. This has been the focus in Illinois for I don't know how many years. Doing away with ALL compulsory education laws altogether will stop the humanist education monopoly in short order. This will be the next great battleground in education.
This article form Stanford Magazine tells why they are interested in homeschoolers. The term they use is: intellectual vitality
It is obvious that you have no idea about how much socialization home schoolers get. You would think by now people would question any idea that comes out of the NEA or the national press (hint they are selling you something).
The real problem with home schooling is knowing when to stop the outside activities. We did not. We spent for every night for the last 3 years doing outside activities, including traverling 6 hours to Chicago so that one of the kids could take violin lessons with 2 of the top teachers in the US, so he would be prepared for a life as a violinist.
My first child started just graduated highschool this year and started at a University 2 hours away. He is having no trouble dealing. BTW he was admited as a junior, not something he would have been able to accomplish had he gone to schoool.
I too was struck by this remark. This is to let the cat out of the bag, that the school establishment sees it as their mission to indoctrinate your kids. Since these are people who hold us in contempt, it mystifies me that anyone would let these people near their kids.
The list of resolutions passed by the NEA are perfectly fine for a political party to espouse. I don't agree, but we could debate them on the field of ideas at election time. I would never put them in charge of indoctrinating my kids. And yet we do. They are in charge of our kids, and we stand by, dumbstruck at the mess that they make of our kids, thinking its just one of those unavoidable things that happen to kids in their adolescence.
We have all seen it. The kids emerge at the end of their time in school completely emersed in a leftist world view and breathtakingly ignorant of the things we take for granted. We accept the trade-off of thoroughly messed up kids expecting that they will at least be educated, but in fact the NEA has done all it can to strip actual knowledge from the curriculum. Into these heads devoid of facts they pour their political and social agenda. The fact that the kids can hardly write or cipher is hardly noticed. Who needs kids who can do math, when you can always recruit H-1Bs from India?
We worry about the barbarians at the gate trying to sneak into the country, when the bigger problem is the horde of barbarians the NEA graduates each year, completely ignorant of technical facts, completely ignorant of their historical place in the world, and completely ignorant of what it takes to live free.
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