Family planning is the mother of abortion. A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion could become popular. We Christians raise an outcry against abortion today, and rightly so. But the reason we have to fight those battles today is because we lost them thirty years ago. Once couples began to look upon children as creatures of their own making, who they could plan into their lives as they chose or not, all reverence for human life was lost...
...Abortion is first of all a heart attitude. "Me first." "My career first." "My reputation first." "My convenience first." "My financial plans first." And these exact same choices are what family planning, which the churches have endorsed for three decades, is all about."Trust me when I say that I am not writing this to any one person in particular. In a way, though, perhaps I am. Maybe there is one person reading this whose heart God has been preparing. Maybe. It is my hope.
"[According to the world] Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time doing."
"Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for."
"Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another--and laying down your life for another represents the gospel."
1. Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it? 2. Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts. 3. Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if, as a homeschooler, she ever gets to socialize. 4. Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. Please go away. 5. We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling. 6. We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions. 7. Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and- 8. If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind. 9. Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool, 10. Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator. 11. Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else. 12. Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then. 13. Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more. 14. If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one. 15. Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else. 16. Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood. 17. Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school. 18. Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice.... The Bitter Homeschooler'
by Deborah Markus
January 5, 2010
While few people in academia are openly critical of homeschooling, every now and again an article will be published in a university periodical which attacks homeschooling.
The critics in academia come from the far left of the political spectrum. One such critic, Robin L. West of the Georgetown University Law Center, recently published an article titled “The Harms of Homeschooling,” which appeared in the Summer/Fall 2009 issue of the University of Maryland’s Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly.
Before we answer the specific charges Ms. West makes against homeschooling we’d just like to give you a flavor of her perspective.
In the article she says, “Education, after all, is typically described as a core, and possibly the core, state responsibility.” We hope you’d agree that anyone who can entertain the idea that education is the core responsibility of the state (even though education is not mentioned as a state responsibility in the U.S. Constitution) and neglect to recognize that defense/national security is the core responsibility of the state is clearly out of the mainstream.
Later in the article Ms. West says, “Homeschooling is now such an entrenched practice, recriminalization is not a viable option in any event.” It appears that Ms. West is suggesting that she would not oppose regarding homeschoolers as criminals?
While Ms. West’s views are far from the mainstream, it is still important to challenge the erroneous statements made in her article.
One of her points is that U.S. courts do not recognize the fundamental right of parents to raise their own children, and by extension the right to homeschool. She adds, however, “Federal courts may someday acknowledge the existence of this right.”
Thankfully, Ms. West is wrong. The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged the fundamental right of parents to raise and educate their own children.
In 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court declared: “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right and high duty to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” Pierce v. Society of Sisters [268 U.S. 510 (1925)].
In 1972, in Wisconsin v. Yoder (406 U.S. 205), the Court described parental rights as fundamental, saying: “This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established as an enduring American tradition.”
In 2000, the Court declared that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children. Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000).
Of course, the views of judges and their interpretation of the Constitution could change, but to say that the current jurisprudence does not uphold parental rights is simply wrong.
Further in the article Ms. West lays out her reasons for strictly regulating homeschoolers. Her first charge is that homeschoolers could be abusing their children. It is simply not true that homeschooling is used as a cover for child abuse. Ms. West cites no evidence to support her claim. In our experience parents who claim to be homeschooling but are later revealed to be child abusers are already well known to the authorities.
The latest example is from the Detroit News, which also took the view that homeschoolers should be regulated due to the potential for hiding child abuse. While the examples used by the Detroit News were tragic, they were of children who were being abused while in the public school system and then later removed by their parents. The children were well known to authorities, and there was nothing preventing the authorities in Michigan from following up on these children.
Regrettably, tragedies do occur, and no amount of regulation can ensure that all children will be safe all the time. Unfortunately, even in the most heavily regulated area of education—the public school—children suffer serious injury and death. It is a sad fact that some parents mistreat their children, and society rightly devotes time and resources to protecting children from abusive parents. But Ms. West is suggesting that states should spend tens of millions of dollars investigating all homeschooling families in an attempt to uncover child abuse. This would be unwise in light of the fact that there is no assurance that increasing the regulation of homeschoolers would prevent child abuse.
Ms. West also wants to force immunizations on homeschooled children. Some parents object to vaccines because of safety concerns, religious objections, or because of their medical history. It should also be noted that there have been no public health repercussions from a relatively few people opting out of vaccination programs.
West also makes the unusual claim that homeschooled children will not properly understand citizenship unless they are in a public school classroom. Being active and engaged citizens is a distinction of homeschooling. Simply reading the studies on homeschoolers participation in society should convince any fair-minded person of whether homeschooled graduates are active, engaged citizens. For example, in the 2004 study Homeschooling Grows Up, which surveyed over 7,300 homeschooled graduates, it was discovered that 71.1% of homeschool graduates participated in a community service activity (volunteering, coaching, neighborhood association etc.) compared with 37% of the general population.
Ms. West is also very concerned about the participation in civic and political campaigns by homeschooled fundamentalist Protestants, which would seem to contradict her earlier point about homeschoolers and citizenship. In any event, it appears that Ms. West simply does not like a Christian point of view being presented in the public square.
Perhaps the most condescending statement made by Ms. West is her assertion that the typical fundamentalist, Protestant homeschooling family lives, “in trailer parks, 1,000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base.”
It is truly sad when someone in a position of authority can make such a statement. While we do not doubt that some homeschoolers find themselves in less advantageous socio-economic circumstances, who is to say that a 1,000-square-foot house is inadequate to raise a family. Also, perhaps Ms. West is unaware, but some homeschool families travel between campsites and trailer parks because they are “homeschooling on the road.”
Ms. West also seems to be unaware that all the studies of homeschool graduates have shown homeschoolers to be outperforming their peers not only in community activity but also in employment income. The latest study from the Canadian Centre for Home Education, titled Fifteen Years Later: Home Educated Canadian Adults, showed that the average homeschooler aged 15–34 earned $27,534 Canadian dollars as opposed to the average in the general population for 15–34 year olds of $22,117. Ninety-five percent of the respondents in this study considered themselves to be religious with 74% attending religious services at least once per week.
After making her case for regulating homeschooling Ms. West concludes that, “The sanction for failure to comply with minimal curriculum, content, visitation, and testing requirements would simply be enrollment in a certified private or public school.”
In other words, if a homeschool family does not re-create the public school in the home, subject itself to the authority of the state by allowing home visits, and allow the state to control the curriculum via testing, then the sanction would “simply” be enrollment in a private or public school.
Sadly, Ms. West does not appear to have any understanding of why parents homeschool and must realize that if her policies were ever implemented, it would end homeschooling as we know it today.
It is unfortunate that homeschooling still has persistent critics who seem unable to grasp what makes homeschooling such a successful method of education.
Hundreds of thousands of parents, and over 2 million homeschooled children, are experiencing the benefits and blessings of a home education. As Michael Farris, chairman of HSLDA and president of ParentalRights.org points out, a restrictive approach to home education is at odds with the fundamental notions of freedom and liberty on which Western nations are built. “Any nation that severely restricts the ability of parents to choose alternative forms of education, including home education, cannot call itself a free nation. Freedom necessarily requires the individual to have the liberty to think differently and believe differently than programs instituted by the current rulers of any nation. Educational freedom is the cornerstone for all freedom of thought and conscience.”
We are thankful that we still live in a free nation, but of course, without eternal vigilance our freedoms can be lost.
By joining together in an organization like HSLDA we can continue to effectively defend the right to homeschool.
