Homeschooling Under Fire

Homeschooling Under Fire  The Iowa Homeschooling Crisis of 1989-90  A history of the plot to depict homeschoolers as truants and child abusers   By Lynn and Sarah Leslie

---

 

Faithful under fire

This
meeting at Easton Baptist took place in early June 1989. The meeting had
been called by Iowa homeschool leaders in response to two new threats
against the fledgling homeschooling community. The State of Iowa had
just launched a two-barreled assault against home education: 

 

1)     
The
Supreme Court in Iowa had just rendered an opinion that significantly
changed the interpretation of the truancy laws in the case of Barry
Bear, a child from Tama, Iowa. No longer would parents simply be charged
with truancy under the criminal code. From now on they could be charged
as child abusers under the juvenile code.

2)     
And,
perfectly coinciding with the issuance of this landmark ruling, was a
dangerous new bill in the legislature that would codify this change into
law, Senate File 149, which was precariously close to passage.

 

These
two events raised the specter that homeschooled children could be
declared truants, and being thus classified, could be thrust into the
juvenile justice system where they would be treated as juvenile
delinquents, and their parents regarded as child abusers.

Iowa’s
early history of intolerance

Throughout its history, Iowa has had a dark seam of intolerance of
religious diversity in matters of private education. This is due, in
part, to the particularly pervasive influence of John Dewey’s
educational philosophies during the 1930s and 1940s, especially in the
rural areas of Iowa where he experimented upon a generation of school
children with his new teaching methodologies. Dewey emphasized
socialization with one’s peers as an essential attribute of modern
education in order to create a more socialist society. It was thought
that children would be irreparably harmed without a State education.
…

 

 

The federal encroachment on the family

There
was a national push to reform child welfare during the decade of the
1980s. At the top of the agenda was more State intervention in the lives
of children and their families. The erosion of the traditional family
structure was given as the reason for deeper intrusion into the lives of
America’s youngest citizens. An army of social workers, psychologists,
social scientists, behaviorists, and political reformers
coalesced—churning out documents, holding press conferences, proposing
legislation, and writing media stories. A crisis in preschool, child
care, health care, and all sorts of family social services was
pronounced.

 

Concurrently, there was a move to reform education by expanding the role
of the government school into family lives, developing uniform curricula
and testing mechanisms, and adopting federal standards for performance.
The school day was tweaked by increasing the number of hours per day,
adding days to the school year, and expanding the ages of compulsory
attendance.

 

Education began to be portrayed as just one facet of a vast array of
family psycho-social services sponsored by the State—services that were
no longer designed simply to protect the neediest children, but also
began to intrude into the lives of mainstream families. Homeschooling,
and private schools which operated outside of this emerging government
“system,” were viewed with animosity and suspicion. Homeschooling was
most often depicted in the media in disparaging terms at this time.
There was an inference that children were being deprived of adequate
peer socialization, isolated, socially inept, and lagging behind their
peers.

 

A
prominent leader in the movement to federalize the reform of public
education was William Bennett, who headed up the U.S. Department of
Education under the Reagan administration during the mid-1980s. Despite
his conservative credentials, Bennett proceeded to lay all of the
bureaucratic groundwork for the education reform movement that
mushroomed across America during the 1990s. Bennett was the first
federal official (that we have on record) to make use of the phrase
“educational abuse” when referring to private and home education.

 

---

This
view, which likens homeschooling to the criminal act of child abuse, was
to become the pillar upon which Iowa’s homeschool crisis was founded. A
corollary view holds that homeschooling parents are potential “closet
child abusers,” and that the State must conduct routine surveillance of
this atypical, “abnormal” family. Many social reformers held the cynical
notion that it was implausible that parents would desire to stay home
and educate children out of genuine affection, devotion, and sincere
conviction. The nasty inference was made that there must be some
sinister ulterior motive for wanting to keep the children at home…

 

Our personal story

 

In
February 1989, I attended the subsequent JJAC meeting where Dr.
Montgomery was permitted to make a presentation about his handout. He
claimed that Iowa had a truancy “crisis.” Most of his examples, however,
were notably homeschoolers! In fact, Dr. Montgomery asserted that
homeschoolers in his district were “closet child-abusers,” and he
claimed they were keeping their children home to “babysit” and for other
negligible reasons.

 

Most
significantly, Dr. Montgomery reported that there was a bill in the Iowa
legislature that would once and for all “solve” the truancy “crisis.” He
claimed that he had helped to author this bill, and intimated that there
were a number of state and national experts who worked on this bill with
him. At the time I thought he was simply bragging, but later we came to
realize that this was a much larger plan. If homeschooling in Iowa fell,
the rest of the fledgling homeschooling movement in America was supposed
to fall like dominoes—eradicating all private home education once and
for all. …

 

The bill was every
bit as bad as I had imagined. It would have required a homeschool family
to hire a certified teacher to teach their children 180 days in order to
be legal. Other provisions of the bill would bring homeschool families
within the provisions of the “child in need of assistance” (CHINA)
provisions of the Juvenile Court. The proposed law stated that a truant
child “shall” be reported to the county attorney and that the county
attorney “shall investigate” the report and “may file” a petition in
Juvenile Court. Ultimately, this meant that a child could be removed
from his/her parents simply because they teach the child at home.
Characteristic of Dr. Montgomery’s remarks at the JJAC, the bill lumped
hardened, dysfunctional truant families together with solid, stable
homeschool families. If a family, for whatever reason, wasn’t in full
compliance with the law, their children could be deemed “truant.”
“Truant” was loosely defined as any child not attending a public school
or receiving 180 days of instruction elsewhere by a certified teacher—in
other words, the overwhelming majority of homeschoolers! …

 

The multi-pronged threat

In April
1989, I received a phone call one day from a man named Paul Zylstra. He…
told me that there was a bad bill in the legislature that would further
erode parental rights. Intrigued, I asked him what that might be. I was
shocked when he said S.F. 149. That was the bad homeschool bill! …

  

Legislators had
been told that the bill had nothing to do with homeschoolers. The
official “spin” about the bill was that it would simply solve the
perceived “truancy crisis” in Iowa.

 

That
bill was bad enough, but there was more trouble lurking. Paul had
noticed a little blurb that had appeared in the January 12, 1989, “State
and Capitol Report” section of the Des Moines Register under the
caption “Statehouse Briefing: In the House”:

 

Iowa
prosecutors are seeking more power to intervene in truancy cases and
have suggested law changes that could give county attorneys more tools
to use against fundamentalist Christians who want to teach their
children at home.

 

Recommendations from the Iowa County Attorney’s Association include a
change in the state’s juvenile code to add truancy to the list of
reasons officials can start proceedings that can lead to removing the
child from the home or to terminating the parents’ rights to their
child.

 

Here
were our worst fears in print. The County Attorney’s Association
(probably working at the instigation of Kathy Collins) was recommending
“removing the child from the home” and “terminating the parents’
rights.”

 

As if
that weren’t bad enough, there was another unsettling bill in the Iowa
legislature at this same time. House File 690 would create a new
category of “mental injury caused by the acts of the child’s parent,
guardian, or custodian.” We quickly realized that “mental injury” could
be easily connected with the idea of homeschooling as “educational
abuse.”

 

A
similar threat loomed in the form of a report which was issued just
prior to the 1989 legislative session by the Kempe National Center at
the University of Colorado. It recommended that Iowa juvenile laws be
revised to make it “easier to remove abused children from their homes
and improve procedures for terminating parental custody.” A concurrent
report was issued by a state committee of the Department of Human
Services. (Des Moines Register articles by William Petroski,
“Deficiencies seen in state abuse laws,” 1-7-89, and “Guidelines given
for examining children for abuse, 1-5-89.)

 

…Iowa Department of Education Director William Lepley… was promoting House File 794, which would create an “autonomous”
Board of Educational Examiners and Professional Practices Commission, a
move which would consolidate power into the hands of an education elite
and pave the way for national teacher certification. Would some homeschoolers, who thought they were “safe” because they possessed
teaching certificates, find that their credentials would no longer be
renewed? The bill contained ominous provisions that required classroom
experience. …

 

The grim implications

 

The
meeting at Easton Baptist was punctuated by four testimonies by parents
who had previously been jailed or harassed by the state of Iowa for
homeschooling. Each family spoke of their family’s extreme vulnerability
to future prosecution because of unique circumstances and/or previous
prosecutions. …  

 

Then John Harvey stood up and spoke. He headed the Iowa
chapter of Victims of Child Abuse Laws (VOCAL), an advocacy organization
that assisted families falsely accused of child abuse. He explained the
ramifications of the national child welfare reform agenda, and explained
that there was a plan underway to extradite children in the juvenile
system from one state to another if they fled. In other words, the time
might come when there could be no escape. At this point there was an
audible gasp from the audience. A young teen girl, visibly shaken,
exclaimed, “Where could we flee then? To another country? This is
America!”

 

In
summarizing the meeting at Easton Baptist, I wrote:

 

Despite
of the serious nature of these times, it was remarkable how many new
families attended the meeting because of a strong conviction that they
must begin homeschooling their children, regardless of the consequences.
Some parents wistfully stated that the costs were too great for them to
bear at this time, and they had no choice but to put their children back
in accredited schools. It was estimated that there are hundreds of
Christian families across the state who will be vulnerable to
prosecution this next year, and there are hundreds more who are home
educating and utilizing a State-certified teacher in a limited capacity
to try to avoid prosecution. …

 

War starts

On Monday, September 4, 1989, the worst case
scenario happened. A headline in a Des Moines Register story
read, “School opens in showdown over Iowa education laws.” Henry County
Attorney Mike Riepe publicly announced that he would “for the first
time, ask a judge to take children away from parents who refuse to
comply” with Iowa’s education law. …

 

…we organized an underground railway for homeschoolers. We were
provided with a secret list of names of families in other states who
would be willing to receive our children, and if necessary, raise them
as their own. Several older gentlemen (among them a close family friend,
David Elrod) stepped forward and offered to risk their own future lives
to transport homeschooled children to the borders of Iowa or beyond.
They said they would be willing to go to jail for the crime of
kidnapping if it came to that. We were also instructed to have our
children memorize key phone numbers. We were told to teach our children
how to secretly evacuate the house and flee to the nearest telephone or
friendly neighbor while the parent detained a social worker or truancy
officer at the door.

 

(How
does one teach their child these things? How does one tell a young child
that someday, perhaps soon, a bad knock will come to the door and they
must flee— they must flee for their life or end up in a stranger’s home,
or a group home, or an institution? How can one take away a child’s
innocence? The security of a family’s loving arms? How can one possibly
describe the horrors of a future life, controlled by the
State, possibly in an institution, away from mom and dad, brothers and sisters, church and friends? How can one explain to
children that it is very important, that this is more than just a game,
to memorize phone numbers, plan an escape route and do practice drills?)

 

…

That
day (in the mid-1980s), at the meeting in our home, we all had to face a horrific new
reality for the coming school year— any family non-compliant with the
law for any reason could be deemed truant under the juvenile code. The
moratorium had expired. Few families in Iowa could be compliant with the
existing law.

 …. An investigation could be initiated by an anonymous tip, a
complaint from a school official, a tip from a mandatory reporter, or
many others. The investigation stage could be intrusive and exploratory.
Asking about forms of discipline, checking to make sure the house is
safe, inspecting to see if the dishes in the sink are clean, inquiring
with neighbors and friends, and other subjective investigative
procedures could be utilized.

 

… John
warned that the State “system” does not tolerate religious diversity. He
noted that homeschool families, who often possess divergent cultural and
religious beliefs and practices, would not easily accommodate to some of
the requirements that could be imposed by the State. Furthermore, he
explained that children removed to a foster home or State institution
could be exposed to activities, practices and philosophies that run
contrary to what they had been taught in their family. Once again, the
room grew silent as parents realized the seriousness of the situation.

 

Foiled attempts

 

The West
family contacted me shortly after the school year began. … Mrs. West
told me that they had fully complied with their school district for
years and had experienced no previous problems. They were even using a
State-certified teacher. Nevertheless, someone tipped them off that
there was a Juvenile Court officer “looking into” their homeschooling.
She asked me what that meant. I was able to explain the full
ramifications of this situation and warn her of the imminent danger to
her family. The family fled the state immediately.

 

More bad bills

Shortly
before the 1990 legislative session, more bad legislation surfaced. The
State Board of Education submitted a proposal to the General Assembly
for amending Iowa’s compulsory attendance law to include an “alternative
for private instruction.” The proposal would create a new chapter in the
Iowa Code permitting parents to provide a child’s education in a setting
other than a public or accredited nonpublic school by “retaining a state
licensed teacher subject to certain limitations.” A child under
instruction by a non-licensed instructor would be tested annually and
would be required to make “adequate progress or be subject to
remediation or removal from private instruction to an accredited school
setting.”

 

Many
homeschoolers supported the State Board of Education bill because they
felt it would once and for all serve to make homeschooling “legal” in
the state of Iowa. They naively assumed that being “legal” would solve
all problems and that they would then be “safe.” In all fairness to
them, the climate was so fearful in Iowa at the time that some families
simply desired to grasp onto any solution that might relieve them of
anxiety. …

 

In other
words, it was very precarious and dangerous time to pass a homeschool
bill because of how the courts might define “truancy,” and how the legal
remedies for “truancy” might be applied; i.e., child abuse charges. And,
if S.F. 149 also passed, it would guarantee that “truancy” would
be defined legally as a form of child abuse and subject to the worst
punishments imaginable—loss of one’s children.

 

A
division began to arise within the homeschool community. Many held to
the position that “anything is better than nothing; take what they give
you and run.” …

 

The meeting in the Governor’s office

Unity
among homeschool leaders began to deteriorate rapidly. By November of
1989, homeschool leaders from various segments of the widening divide
were called to a meeting in Governor Branstad’s office. Our group was
told that the purpose of the meeting was to forge a consensus on some of
the critical issues facing homeschoolers in the upcoming legislative
session. Given the growing disunity, we were excited to be a part of
this effort. It seemed like a positive development. We looked forward to
the opportunity to speak to the Governor one-on-one about our grave
concerns.

 

We were
to be sadly disappointed. As the meeting unfolded it became apparent
that this was an orchestrated meeting. A legislator, whom we thought was
friendly to our cause, presented a prepared homeschool bill which he
asked everyone in the room to support. We read the first paragraph. It
read the State had a “compelling interest” in the education of our
children. Our hearts sank. We understand the legal nuances of that
particular legal language and knew we would be signing away our parental
rights and freedoms to homeschool. The rest of the bill was basically a
re-hash of the State Board of Education’s proposed legislation….

 

…one
group of homeschoolers would be actively lobbying against another. Our group was characterized as “the handful of
radical few” by one of the Governor’s top aides. Other homeschool
leaders quickly latched onto that term in a pejorative fashion. That
term stuck and it was nearly impossible to overcome the negative stigma.
We were ostracized and alienated.

 

….We were
a small remnant of people, hopelessly divided, with no monetary assets,
no political clout, no friends in high places, and by all natural
appearances, no hope.

 

Two bright spots during the darkest hours

Preparing for the 1990 legislative session

Shortly
before the legislative session starting in January 1990, Paul Zylstra
called another meeting at our house. During that meeting we
realistically assessed the potential worst-case scenarios that could
arise. We fully expected that S.F. 149 would quickly pass in the House
in the opening days. It would then be swept off to a conference
committee, where if it passed (and we fully expected that it would
pass), it would then be sent to both Houses. If things were greased,
this could go quickly. We had every reason to suspect that the
machinations behind the scenes were already being worked upon, to see to
it that this bill’s quick processing would be fully orchestrated. After
passage, we estimated that it could land on Governor Branstad’s desk
within 20 minutes. There was nothing to stop the Governor from signing
this bill. It would be all over for us once he signed.

 

We also
considered the sobering fact that all of the bad bills, previously
mentioned, that arose during the 1989 legislative session were still
alive and viable in 1990. And now there were at least two new homeschool
bills to worry about. It was a multi-pronged threat. …

 

John
Harvey informed us that bad legislation could pop up literally anywhere
in the legislative arena, and that we would need somebody to scrutinize
other bills emanating from other committees. He volunteered to look
under every rock to see if any bad language appeared in other bills that
didn’t seem germane on the surface. Indeed, over the years, John was
often able to locate “truancy/child abuse” language when it popped up
in many strange places. …

 

The legislative session of 1990

Our
worst-case predictions proved to be correct. In the first days of the
legislative session, S.F. 149 quickly and easily passed the House. It
was then supposed to be sent to conference committee so that the
wrinkles could be ironed out. For some reason it never made it to the
conference committee that day. Then a week went by. Then two weeks. We
soon began to realize that it was stalled. But why? Were the legislators
simply playing games with us? By this time we had a steady corps of
volunteers covering the Capitol every minute of the day.
…

 

Believe
it or not, the “spin” machine was still working overtime to persuade
legislators that S.F. 149 did not pertain to homeschoolers. Legislators
still scolded us that S.F. 149 was just a “truancy” bill. To counter
this disinformation campaign, we amassed a stack of legal opinions and
handed them to the legislators. …

 

The
legislators were urged to accommodate those homeschoolers who had
convictions. Nevertheless, more than one legislator reprimanded
homeschoolers with this statement: “You have the right to believe
anything you want, but you don’t have the right to practice those
beliefs.” We were learning quite about the sad state of religious
freedom and tolerance in America in the late 20^th century.

 

The final hours

In the
waning hours of the 1990 legislative session, one day the call came
forth from Rep. Daggett. The Senate File 149 Conference Committee was
going to meet immediately. Within a matter of fifteen minutes, several
dozen homeschoolers packed the tiny room where the conference committee
was meeting. Some of the committee members were already discussing the
bill. …

 

As
expected the conference committee easily worked out their differences
and passed S.F. 149. It quickly and easily passed the
Democrat-controlled House of Representatives a few moments later in its
new form. Moments later it went to the Republican-controlled Senate. Our
only hope was to completely stop the bill in the Senate. But, most
Senators were not known to be favorable to homeschooling. Because of the
stance of the Governor throughout the legislative session, and the
ambitious activities of his legislative aide in promoting this bill, we
thought there would be few Republican Senators who would have the
courage to vote against it. And because the teacher’s union so heavily
controlled Democrat politics in Iowa, we held out even less hope for
Senate Democrat votes against the bill. Things looked very grim.

 

Homeschoolers packed the upper balcony to watch the proceedings. The
floor debate started. All of the typical pros and cons were stated by
the legislators we had come to know, both for and against this bill. But
then, suddenly, something unexpected happened. Senator Jim Riordan, a
well-known liberal Democrat from Dallas County (Dallas County!),
stood up and proclaimed his opposition to the bill. He said that he had
watched his constituents come in day after day during the legislative
session. He said he now recognized that they should have the freedom,
based on the Constitution, to practice their beliefs and their faith. He
pronounced that he would vote against S.F. 149.

 

Then
something even more dramatic happened. Senator Tom Mann, the only
African-American in the Senate, also a Democrat, rose to speak. He
defended the right to homeschool from a Constitutional perspective. His
stand was very courageous and revealed his deep commitment to human and
civil rights. … 

 

The vote
was taken. A miracle happened! S.F. 149 was defeated by one vote! One vote!

 

….
“If the language in S.F.
149 appears in a last-minute appropriations bill, we know that the
Governor will not line-item-veto that language out of the bill,”
I cautioned….

 

When the
bedraggled group of homeschoolers walked into the small room at the back
of the Senate chamber where Lieutenant Governor Joy Corning was just
about to add the language of S.F. 149 to an appropriations bill, she
looked up and her face sank. It wasn’t going to work. She dropped this
last ditch attempt.

 

The meeting with Kathy Collins

On
September 6, 1990 I had to face the “Great Nemesis” of homeschooling in
person! Kathy Collins had been invited to speak to the Juvenile Justice
Advisory Council. …

 

Then I
was asked to speak. Shaking inside and out, I began by stating that I
had been homeschooled as a child and it had been a positive experience.
This fact surprised many on the Council. I explained that there are two
vastly different family structures, calling upon my background as a
family counselor. I drew an illustration. I pointed to one end of the
continuum where the most seriously dysfunctional families are—the type
where the mother is drunk and passed out on the couch and the children
are roaming the streets unsupervised. I noted that these families
eventually enter the child welfare system, and that truancy is a symptom
of greater problems that were frequently addressed through the many
options available to the juvenile court. I then pointed to the other end
of the family continuum. I said that these families often represented
the most rock solid, dedicated families left in America. These were
parents who loved their children, devoted their time and energy to
educate them, sacrificed careers, and were exemplary law-abiding
citizens in every way. These were the homeschoolers.

 

I then
carefully explained how the various bills proposed so far in the
legislature had lumped the seriously dysfunctional families together
with the profoundly functional families. I stated that by refusing to
clearly define truancy and homeschooling as separate and distinct legal
issues, these two ends of the continuum would continue to be linked
together, and would end up clogging the juvenile court system with kids
who weren’t truly truant.

 

When I
finished talking, there was a slight pause in the room. Then a man on
the Council who had spent years in the trenches of the juvenile justice
system leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. He
quietly stated, “Well, I have never seen a homeschool kid in the
system.” Several others quickly agreed with him. There was another
slight pause. And then someone made the recommendation to drop the issue
of truancy altogether. The official position of the Council that day
forward was that truancy was not a juvenile justice issue.

 

We won
that small battle. Miraculously, once again God had given me the courage
and strength to stand before our enemy, face to face, and state the
truth with boldness and conviction.

 

 The fruit of our efforts

It was
Iowa homeschoolers who first stumbled onto David Hornbeck’s education
reform plan which would to massively transform education for the 21^st
century. It was Iowa homeschoolers who first discovered a
state-developed global education curriculum that openly promulgated the
religious doctrine of “Gaia” worship. It was Iowa homeschoolers who
first began publishing national articles warning other homeschoolers
about the multi-pronged threats created by the encroachment of federal
education reform. …

 

 Our
family moved away from Iowa in 1998. Our oldest son was permitted to
participate in the NICHE graduation with his peers in June 1999. We were
blessed to see the fruits of our labors. I cried when children I
recognized—some of them seriously threatened in 1989—walked across the
podium that day. These children were now grown. They were now “safe.”
…

 

In May
of 1990, after the legislative session was over and S.F. 149 was finally
defeated, we prepared a paper for posterity. Below, it is copied in its
entirety. May you be blessed by reading it. An epilogue follows.

 

TO GOD
BE THE GLORY!

For the miraculous defeat of
Senate File 149, a scourge on the homeschoolers in the State of Iowa for
the past two years, we, the following represented groups that formed a
coalition for the purpose of defeating said bill, hereby go on record to
give God the Glory, Honor and Praise. Great is the Lord, and worthy to
be praised. We thank Him for miracles, both big and small, many of which
we will never know of until eternity. We mention some so that other
Christians will know and also give God the Glory He so richly deserves
for this victory.

 

o       
For alerting
homeschoolers about the dangers of S.F. 149 in the first place and
providing legal opinions at timely moments throughout the two-year
period.

o       
For alerting
three families that they were in danger of CINA and providing a way for
them to flee the State of Iowa before their children were in danger.

o       
For providing
monies, cars that worked, food, weather, people, resources, volunteers,
babysitters, and timely words.

o       
For giving
people the vision to pray, for giving some the burden to fast, for
causing them to do so with joy, expectancy and faith, and with no
recognition save the Lord.

o       
For giving
people the vision to get active, for holy boldness, for courage in the
face of mocking and persecution, for words of wisdom in the face of
intimidation and fear, and for equipping simple people of faith with a
message of the truth that in the end defied all lies of the enemy.

o       
For shining
testimonies that were consistent in children, teens and adults over time
and tribulation.

o       
For unity
despite diversity and the ability to speak forth the truth in one voice.

o       
For friends in
high and low places when extra voices were needed.

o       
For little
miracles each day.

o       
For accidents,
fires, delays, screw-ups, falls, sicknesses and other difficulties,
because God’s time and ways are perfect.

o       
For
faithfulness, perseverance, and consistency in believers to follow
through to the final hours of the battle without wavering or fleeing.

o       
For the ability
to endure a hopeless situation with hope and a clear mind centered on
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

o       
For allowing us
to soften hearts with a message of God’s love in an atmosphere of
constant evil, and giving us the ability to shine as lights in the great
halls of darkness that is the Iowa Legislature.

o       
For forewarning
us before every significant event in miraculous ways, and for giving us
the vision of the battle ahead so that we were incredibly prepared every
step of the way.

o       
For loving us
despite our human frailties, weaknesses, imperfections, sins, impatience
and human errors.

o       
For giving us
compassionate friends, supportive groups, and committed organizations to
fight along side us.

 

To GOD we give thanks. He
alone deserves all Praise, Honor and Glory. Amen.

 

---

 

Epilogue

No
homeschooler ever lost a child in Iowa during those turbulent years. We did
not compromise away the rights of other homeschool parents during this
volatile era.

 

I wish I
could say that this is the end of the story. I wish I could say that the
crisis we all experienced fifteen years ago has gone away. It would be
wonderful to report that homeschooling is completely free and no longer
under this threat.

 

But this
isn’t the case. The very same agenda, which attempted to equate homeschooling with child abuse, still exists across America today. One need
only do a simple Internet search on Google to discover that “homeschooling”
and “truancy,” or “homeschooling” and “child abuse,” appear together
frequently in unfavorable or badly misinformed newspaper articles and media
stories.

 

The
threatening agenda still lurks in darkness. The multi-pronged threats,
coming at all truly private education from every conceivable direction,
still exist. There are still people in positions of power, both political
Right and Left, who have sinister plans to link homeschooling with child
abuse. It is not a time for homeschool leaders to become complacent. It is
not time to let down your guard, nor to be soothed into a false sense of
peace and safety.

 

The plans to
reform education contain elements of luring and enticing homeschoolers into
the net of public or quasi-public  (“choice”) programs. Some reformers drew
diagrams depicting children educated in the home linked to the government
“system” by computer technologies. The reformers promised that “no child”
would be left behind. They eagerly anticipated the final extinction of truly
private education—by a state-controlled psycho-social assessment
testing mechanism that would require that all children be
enrolled, monitored and databanked in the “system.” They proposed severe
penalties for non-compliance.

 

Days of
trial and testing for homeschoolers—and all truly private schools—will
quickly set upon us once again. Will we be able to stand and withstand?
May
God have mercy on us all!

 

©Homeschooling
Under Fire, Lynn and Sarah Leslie. This document may not be re-published
in any form, all or in part, without the written permission of Lynn and
Sarah Leslie,  conscien@nacs.net.

 

---