What right does the government, state or federal, have to legislate how we teach our children?
Public schools are meant as one option for educating children, but in recent decades, greedy school districts, hungry for larger enrollment and indignant that an increasing number of families are choosing homeschool, have set out on witch hunts for "bad" homeschoolers who can be made examples for the rest through the justice system.
A young homeschooled boy riding his bicycle to his grandmother's house during public school hours on his own spring break was ticketed for truancy, despite his mother confirming that he was on spring break and on the way to his grandmother's house.
This is just one example of how stricter truancy laws are being used to catch NOT delinquents, but homeschoolers! Sneaky, huh? Didn't see it coming, did you?
The truth is that there are those working in the public school system, entrenched in the establishment, who would do anything to keep their way of life intact amid a changing educational scene. While standardized test scores plummet and school shootings continue to rise, private schools rise up across the nation, some merely umbrella schools for homeschoolers with curricula for sale that parents can teach in their own homes. It's enough to make any self-respecting school board member incited to anger. How dare they pull their kids out of the public school system when we're paid per student in enrollment. They're depriving poor kids of excellent art and sports programs, new computers, etc. How can they even afford private schooling when we're taxing them for schools using the property tax?!
The truth is that everything the system is doing is underhanded and over the heads of the citizens they are supposed to serve. "The ends justify the means" is their motto. Taxing people through the property tax whether their kids attend public schools or not is just one example.
Why are they so underhanded? Because the truth is that the work they are so busy doing involves taking away basic American rights, and to do it blatantly would stir an uprising. So they do it carefully and slowly, over decades. They declare an education crisis and ask for an increased budget, more (quantity, not quality) standardized tests, and better laws to ensure kids GO to school.
All the while, increased bureaucracy cumbers the educational process so that instead of learning, the kids are busy taking tests for a week at a time. Instead of learning academia, the kids are pulled into auditoriums and gymnasiums to be taught "sex education," "physical education," now "parenting education." Odds are that anything with the word "education" attached to it is something the government shouldn't be teaching your child.
(see http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/)
Then they lament that math and science are not being taught well enough. Where is the time to teach math, science, history, and reading, when children are being taught how to use condoms, run laps around the gym, and what the government thinks makes good parents, not to mention the time siphoned away for standardized testing. Ask any teacher and they will tell you that they wish they had more time to teach their subject.
The fact is that the public school system is becoming so socialist in nature that it is losing its focus on children at all. 'Sacrifice the single child for the good of the whole class' is becoming the accepted creed. Without individual attention and tutoring, children are graduating from public high schools with huge gaps in their knowledge of history, science, and even the basics of English grammar. No wonder communication is a problem in families and workplaces.
As a result of this failure to teach, concerned parents are pulling their children en masse from the established system either to reinsert them into private schools with better teacher-to-student ratios or to teach them at home on their own.
This trend is a natural response to a deteriorating system, especially in a democratic and capitalistic society such as ours. Competition is good, remember? So why are some people's panties in a twist over something so natural and good?
Well, that's easy to answer. Remember the words to "Three Blind Mice?" It's a popular folk song here in America and here are the lyrics that I learned as a child:
"Three blind mice
Three blind mice
See how they run
See how they run
They all run after the farmer's wife
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife
Have you ever seen such a sight in your life
As three blind mice?!"
The other day, a toddler songs cd that I bought for my son was playing in the living room while my sister was over with her baby. When "Three Blind Mice" came on, she was appalled that they had changed the words to:
"They all ran after the farmer's wife/Who never had been so smitten with strife"
Why should she care that a few words had been changed from this inconsequential folk song? She cares because it challenges her memory of the status quo; it changes things from the way she is used to them being. It changes things. People, as a rule, do not like change, even if it's a single line in an old child's song.
Multiply that by a thousand and you get public school workers' feelings about education in America changing as dramatically as it has been in recent years. In their minds, something must be done to get things back to the way they were.
The problem is this: In order to regain the status quo, the government must intervene in the private lives of ALL of its citizens. They must declare once and for all that parents are NOT in charge of the children God gave them to raise and to care for. They must assert that the government, in fact, owns every child and has a say in what those children are taught, by whom they are taught, and when they are taught it. They must ridiculously say, as that justice from California did, that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children.
But watch out to those of you unconcerned with this issue because you are not a homeschooler, or because you have no children of your own. Each right taken from us is a stepping stone to a socialist society... one where what YOU read is censored and monitored, one where children (yours and mine) are taught only the propoganda of the time and not schooled in the classic academia of math, science, history, and reading, except to the level that they can read government propoganda.
Our government is structured well with many checks and balances. We enjoy many freedoms that God has given us which our government has wisely left in our hands to this point.
But what happens when those handling both the checks and the balances become corrupted and self-interested? What happens when they decide that maintenance of government authority in education is more important than personal choice and learning?
I am not an alarmist, but a realist. And I see the socialist trends in a once free land. I have to point them out to others before the freedom to blog is taken as well.
Why does homeschooling matter? It's a type and a shadow of things to come. When our children are left to bureaucrats to raise, it's time to speak up. Please, write your congressmen and congresswomen, not a form letter, but a genuine letter of concern from an informed constituent. One voice can be ignored, but thousands cannot.
