Home schooling is one of those things that scares the living daylights out of the Educational Establishment and the Deep State. Home schooling, and Christian education in general tend to be areas where the participants do not always (usually) accept the Establishment version of history and/or politics.
From time to time, as they feel they can get away with it, the “change agents” in the educational bureaucracy seek to remedy this situation by trying to find reasons to enforce new controls that will give them more power and control over home schooling, its curriculums, and its participants.
During the 1980s Rev. Paul Lindstrom, of the Church of Christian Liberty in Illinois, traveled around the country testifying in various court cases that helped and enabled parents to regain their right to home school their children which had been usurped by the Educational Establishment. By the late 1980s, home schooling was legal, in one form or another, in all the 50 united States. That fact did not, and does not, however, prevent the Establishment Education Czars from looking for any chance they can to reverse that trend–and if they can’t reverse it they can at least try to again regulate home schooling almost out of any real existence.
So it was no surprise to me when I came across an article by Matt Agorist. State to Force Homeschoolers to Submit to Warrantless Home Inspections, Trampling Rights that dealt with the latest attempted Establishment Educational usurpation in Maryland.
Mr. Agorist wrote: “Under the guise of preventing child abuse, lawmakers in Maryland have introduced a bill that will allow the state to intrude in the lives of innocent families, keeping tabs on them, and destroying their right to privacy. The bill, HB 1798–County Boards of Education–Home Instruction Program–Observation of Instruction and Reporting of Abuse and Neglect, lays out some fairly ominous requirement that will persecute otherwise entirely innocent families for doing nothing other than teaching their children at home…The bill also lays out the framework for involuntary home inspections in which state agents will enter a family’s home multiple times a year–likely unannounced–and observe and inspect the homeschooling process.”
It seems as though there was a family in California that was guilty of massive child abuse and they were registered as home schoolers. So now the Education Czars in that “Sanctuary State” have automatically assumed that all home schools are probably guilty of those same abuses and need to be constantly regulated so they aren’t beating and starving their kids. It’s the same old bureaucratic “You’re guilty until you prove yourself innocent” routine that is practiced by so many government types in their efforts to gain control over other people’s lives. This is one thing politicians and bureaucrats always seek to do to justify their existence. They have to try to run everyone’s life, down to the minutest detail because, somehow, that seems to give them some sort of power trip. Being control freaks is what they live for. And it would seem that the “change agent” Educational Czars in Maryland have taken note of this instance in California and seen a real possibility in their state to assume more control over the lives of a group of people they only tolerate because the present state law forces them to.
It’s somewhat the same situation you see with all these school shootings. Some Leftist nut, usually on some exotic type of medication, kills a batch of kids and teachers in a school “gun free” zone and the bureaucratic conclusion is that all gun owners must be potential terrorists and need to be regulated (and their weapons hopefully confiscated) as soon as possible, if not sooner!
Mr. Agorist accurately notes that: “Instead of realizing that the problem of child abuse has nothing at all to do with homeschooling, lawmakers across the country are using this moment to demonize parents who wish to teach their children outside of the state…The audacity of the state to require that your children be inspected by them to prove that you are not guilty of child abuse is stunning and speaks to the nature of the cradle to grave mentality of the almighty controllers.”
If this trend is allowed to continue it could, again, reduce the fundamental right of parents to home school their children back to the status of yet another state-regulated entity. I am sure that possibility has not been lost on the Educational Elite who seek to indoctrinate your children rather than letting you educate them.
Let’s don’t kid ourselves. This, in spite of the Establishment’s pious pleading, is not about the welfare of children–it is about who will control how they are educated and what they are taught. To educate your children is a parental right, and the Educational Elite (a major part of the Deep State Swamp) is not about to allow parents to assume this God-given responsibility without a struggle to deprive those parents of that right.
March 13, 2018
~ The Author ~
Al Benson Jr. is the editor and publisher of “The Copperhead Chronicle“, a quarterly newsletter that presents history from a pro-Southern and Christian perspective. He has written for several publications over the years. His articles have appeared in “The National Educator,” “The Free Magnolia,” and the “Southern Patriot.” I addition to that he was the editor of, and wrote for, “The Christian Educator” for several years. In addition to The Copperhead Chronicles, Al also maintains Revised History.
He is currently a member of the Confederate Society of America and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and has, in the past, been a member of the John Birch Society. He is the co-author, along with Walter D. Kennedy, of the book “Lincoln’s Marxists” and he has written for several Internet sites as well as authoring a series of booklets, with tests, dealing with the War of Northern Aggression, for home school students.
He and his wife now live in northern Louisiana.
Mr. Benson is a highly respected scholar and writer and has graciously allowed Metropolis Café to publish his works. We are proud to have his involvement with this project.