Hello, , from NHERI.

Advocates of private-school education and educational freedom, do you care?

Homeschool advocates have been vigorously fighting philosophical, political, legislative, and legal battles for about 30 years. It is my experience that proponents of private education, such as religious, independent, and denominational schools, have cared very little about this.

Ask the principal of a Roman Catholic elementary or high school, a classroom teacher in an evangelical day school, a headmaster at a "non-sectarian" independent school, How important is homeschool freedom to you? Now randomly select 10 of these kinds of folks and rate their level of excitement.

At its most fundamental level, who cares about the freedom of belief and expression and religion as it pertains to the teaching, training, and indoctrination of children? One must wonder since about 87% of all parents of school-age children in the "land of the free and home of the brave" send their children away five days per week, nine months per year to allow the state to teach, train, and indoctrinate them. But what if parents choose to have someone other than the state and its agents do this? How much freedom, from the control of the state, exists today? And to where are some of the winds of opinion driving society?

For many years, I have explained to college and university students, readers of scholarly journals, professional research organizations, private-school associations, the homeschool community, and legislators that if advocates of statism think that the government should control any form of private education, such as home-based education, then they should logically favor government control of all forms of private education, such as private institutional schooling. For example, see this testimony before the Senate Education Committee of the State of Montana:

 

SB 291 treats private homeschoolers as if they were funded by taxpayers, but they are not, and as if this single class of private education should be accountable to the state. If the sponsor of this bill wishes to hold private home educators accountable to the state, then to be equitable he should insert provisions to this bill or introduce a new bill with the same levels of intrusion and control on all private Catholic, atheist, homeschool, Jewish, evangelical, Lutheran, Mormon, Muslim, and New Age schools, teachers, and students. If a law like SB 291 were applied to these private institutional schools, perhaps 30% of their students would need additional intervention and assessment and control by the government. (Ray, 2005).

Some have thought this kind of thinking and warning was frivolous, silly. Not so. Why is it not? Read the following by a professor Robert Kunzman (2009):

Any efforts to establish testing or add other requirements [to homeschooling], therefore, would need to apply to the broader realm of on-public, nonaccredited schools of which homeschooling is a part - raising the degree of complexity and expense significantly. (p. 211)

Kunzman is simply properly acknowledging and admitting what I have been trying to convey to many groups for many years. Kunzman promotes statism as he implicitly believes the state has prior and higher authority than parents in deciding what are the "vital interests of children or society" and that state control over children's lives should be based on "general [state, societal] consensus" and government control or force (p. 219). This academic, who studied six "conservative Christian homeschooling" families (p. 2, 7), appears to ineluctably come to the conclusion that private-school students (i.e., homeschool students and, by implication, all children attending private institutional schools) should be forced by the state to undergo "basic skills testing" that is under the authority of the state and, implicitly, that all private-school students should be registered with the state (p. 219).

This statement should send a clear signal - perhaps signifying the energetic waving of a red flag - to all those who advocate freedom in education, freedom of expression, free exercise of religion (or, philosophy), and no state control over private educational choices or arrangements. One must ask, If parents do not volitionally hand their children over to the state (i.e., public schools) for teaching, training, and indoctrination five days per week, why should the state have control over these children?

Roman Catholic schools and their advocates, Lutheran schools and their advocates, Christian day schools and their advocates, classical schools and their advocates, "non-sectarian" independent schools and their advocates, Jewish schools and their advocates, pagan schools and their advocates - and all advocates of educational freedom - do you care? If you do, you might want to contact, real soon, your state's homeschool organization, ParentalRights.org, or the Home School Legal Defense Association [endnote 1].

If you are interested in tangibly supporting our work doing research, collecting research, disseminating research, and helping homeschool families around the world, please see "Two ways to help" below.

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.

Endnotes:

1.     The Teaching Home, state and national homeschool organizations, http://teachinghome.com/states/index.cfm; ParentalRights.org, www.parentalrights.org; Home School Legal Defense Association , www.hslda.org.

References:

Kunzman, Robert. (2009). Write these laws on your children: Inside the world of conservative Christian homeschooling. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Ray, Brian D. (2005, February 14). Testimony of Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. before the Montana Senate Education Committee regarding Senate Bill 291. Presented and submitted February 14, 2005 to the Senate Education Committee of the State of Montana, Helena, Montana.

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