Truth be told, fear is probably the most powerful emotion we have, and has been exploited countless times in history to hamstring the rights of the people. From the War on Drugs to the War on Terror and everything in between, every movement that tries to take away any given right, is driven by fear.
Which brings me to the next ideological tug of war that is sure to be fought in the years ahead. For now, homeschooling isn’t really a hot topic in America, in part because only a small percentage of parents teach their own kids. But make no mistake, no right is safe in our society today, and it won’t be long before the media and the government decide to set their sights on families that want to teach their own children (especially considering the fact that it is a rapidly growing movement). If you don’t believe me, take a look at this AP article that was published last week. This is the rhetoric you can expect to hear from the nanny state and its minions in the years ahead.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A Detroit brother and sister vanished more than two years before they were found dead in a freezer in their home, and an 11-year-old Florida girl disappeared more than a year before she, too, turned up in a family freezer. And a 7-year-old Kansas boy hadn’t been seen for more than a month before authorities found the gruesome remains of a child in a pigsty inside his family’s barn.
All of them were home-schooled, but despite their disappearances going unnoticed for so long, opposition from the government-wary home-schooling community means it’s unlikely these states will start keeping closer tabs on home-schooled children.
“It’s largely a conservative thing, but even progressive home-schoolers tend to resist oversight,” said Rachel Coleman, co-founder of the nonprofit Coalition for Responsible Home Education. “Part of it is because there is an assumption that parents always know what’s best for their children.”
Yes. I suppose parents only think they know what’s best for their children. The state knows better right? Obviously there are crappy parents out there, but does that give the government the right to regulate everybody for the mistakes and malice of the few? In any case, can we even trust to state to attend to the individual needs of our children? If our public school system is any indication, then no they cannot. They treat education like an assembly line, where otherwise gifted kids often fail to succeed. The article goes on to say:
Such cases are horrific but they don’t typically lead to new restrictions on home-schooling, which many parents see as their deeply personal right, said Rob Kunzman, director of the International Center for Home Education Research at Indiana University.
How dare they guard their parental rights? How could they refuse to give up their natural rights when a few lunatics kill their own children?
For home-schoolers, the emotionally charged argument against additional oversight is that parents, not the government, know what’s best for their children.
“As many as two-thirds are home-schooling in part for religious reasons,” Coleman said. “Part of that for conservative Christians is that God has given that child to the parents, not the state. The state doesn’t own my child, God has entrusted my child to me.”
The horror! Some parents don’t want their kids to be indoctrinated by state sponsored schools.
Finally, the article goes for the jugular by trying to push the reader’s fear button. A study conducted by pediatricians with a ridiculous small sample size of 28 abused children, found that about half of them were homeschooled.
“For over half, few individuals outside the abuser(s) knew of the child’s existence,” researchers wrote. “This social isolation typically involved preventing the child from attending school or daycare.”
Knox said she would like to see uniform home-schooling laws across the country that at least keep tabs on children with open or previous Child Protective Services cases who are removed from school to be home-schooled.
For the 47 percent of children in her study who were removed from their schools to be home-schooled, it “appears to have been designed to further isolate the child and typically occurred after closure of a previously opened CPS case,” the researchers wrote.
That’s not a bad idea. Just check up on families that have a history with CPS. The only problem is that as time goes on, our society is defining child abuse in increasingly broad terms. Now you can expect to have your kids snatched by the state for playing outside alone, living off the grid, or if parents merely question the advice of a doctor. You don’t have to be a bad parent to have your kids taken away.
And considering how the state runs our public schools, somehow I doubt they should be able to determine if our children are safe at home. Many of our schools have become extremely dangerous places over the years, and as a result, are being turned into kid prisons, with no shortage of security cameras, locked gates, metal detectors, and armed guards. If that’s their model of a safe learning environment, then their agents shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near your children.
And in any case, when has our government ever applied minimal regulations, that weren’t reinforced by draconian measures later on? They never stop once they get their foot in the door with a few simple laws. They’re always trying a cook up new regulations, until they have complete control over any given part of our lives. It never ends.
And that’s where fear comes in. You can see the nanny state stratagem on full display in this article. It all boils down to fear. Fear that our fellow citizens can’t take care of their children, and fear that we can’t take care of our own. That kind of fear always ends in more and more control. What will start with a few reasonable laws, will end in total control.
Every instance of a parent abusing a child will paraded in front of our eyes by the media, and the millions of parents who do a good job will be ignored. They will paint a picture that suggests homeschooling is inherently unsafe and irresponsible. And every homeschool horror story you hear about, like the ones in this article, will be used as an excuse to pass new laws. They’ll do it over and over again until homeschooling is regulated out of existence, and no alternative to our increasingly dumbed-down public schools will be available.
Don’t fall for it. The next time an authoritative figure suggests making something safer, ask yourself, is it really about safety? Or is just about having more control over society?
States must remember the 10th Amendment and throw the federal ” education ” folks out the front doors of the school-house, covered in nasty food from one of Miguel Obama’s Lunch program trays………
The states are addicted to federal money. They’ll do what the fedgov tells them to do.
A government that openly supports Monsanto GMO is concerned about home-schooling? Yeah, right.
Taking over the education of children is very important to the Communists./ See these. Communist Goals
[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [“]united force[“] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
Our public schools have become a complete fraud. What they are is government indoctrination centers. We could use that same fear as an argument against public schools. How many teachers, both men & women, have had sex with their students. Since there are some bad teachers, we should shut down all public schools to protect our children.
The schools no longer teach the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, or that Jury Duty was put into the Constitution to give citizens authority over the government. They are now teaching that we no longer have the right to own guns, kids are no longer boys & girls, they can decide what sex they want to be. We no longer have freedom of speech, we need to get permission to say what we think. Parents need to be very concerned and find out exactly what their kids are being taught. Our current government has taken authority that we didn’t give to them and should not let them have.
Funny how the same people who can’t be trusted to teach their own children, suddenly can supervise, educate and protect other people’s children once they get a government job. Like the federal parole agents who failed to notice Jaycee Dugard and her two rape-produced daughters living in tents in the backyard of a sex offender. Like the thousands of teachers who routinely fail to teach millions of children to read or do math at grade level. Yeah. Like we can really trust them more than homeschooling parents.
Glad we never raised kids, knowing about globalism for forty years from my elders, now I’m an elder. I encourage younger couples to remain child free. America is without hope big time.
I have a 7 yr old grand daughter whom I homeschool with a permit. Her mother and I have showed her videos of children in other countries and told her about UN plans. She agreed that it would a great idea to stay childless or adopt if the urge to reproduce is unbearable.
My neighbor left her newborn alone all the time. We begged her to surrender him to us or the police or any hospital. He died. No arrests. The illiterate 8 yr old very disturbed girl living in the home was left there. Then when I asked the county when I needed to renew my homeschool permit, I got a condescending, scathing letter, in which I felt like I was some kind of criminal, although I have independent scores for every lesson my 7 yr old has ever done.