Here We Go Again!
Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"; and every day, our leaders give us something to be vigilant about.
Homeschooling may be increasingly popular, increasingly mainstream, but that doesn't mean its enemies have given up their dream of abolishing it.
The Home School Legal Defense Assn. (www.hslda.org/) has called our attention to perhaps the most ambitious anti-homeschooling scheme of them all--a proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to establish a "right" to public schooling (for full details, see http://www.hslda.org/Legislation/National/HJR29/default.asp).
The HSLDA is tracking this legislation closely. Due to the cumbersome nature of the amendment process, there's no danger of this one sneaking up on us. It would have to pass both houses of Congress by wide margins, and then submitted to the states and the people for a vote.
But it does remind us to be cautious about whom we elect to Congress this fall. In a worst-case scenario, liberals could sweep into power and vote this through. We would then have to fight it on the state and local levels, with the possibility that media spin and the political muscle of the teachers' unions might bamboozle enough voters to win the day.
That would mean that the state would have the power to override parents' educational decisions, and snatch children out of homeschooling to force them into public schools--all in defense of children's new Constitutional "right" to public schooling.
It's all rather unlikely, but it is not impossible. If nothing else, it reminds us that there's still plenty of opposition to homeschooling. Teachers' unions and statist politicians are still avidly looking for ways to kill off Christian education--and we must not allow our votes to provide them with the ways and means of doing so.
Public education and statism go hand-in-hand. Homeschooling, or any kind of Christian schooling, is both a reproach and a perpetual threat to them.
Stay vigilant.
Homeschooling may be increasingly popular, increasingly mainstream, but that doesn't mean its enemies have given up their dream of abolishing it.
The Home School Legal Defense Assn. (www.hslda.org/) has called our attention to perhaps the most ambitious anti-homeschooling scheme of them all--a proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to establish a "right" to public schooling (for full details, see http://www.hslda.org/Legislation/National/HJR29/default.asp).
The HSLDA is tracking this legislation closely. Due to the cumbersome nature of the amendment process, there's no danger of this one sneaking up on us. It would have to pass both houses of Congress by wide margins, and then submitted to the states and the people for a vote.
But it does remind us to be cautious about whom we elect to Congress this fall. In a worst-case scenario, liberals could sweep into power and vote this through. We would then have to fight it on the state and local levels, with the possibility that media spin and the political muscle of the teachers' unions might bamboozle enough voters to win the day.
That would mean that the state would have the power to override parents' educational decisions, and snatch children out of homeschooling to force them into public schools--all in defense of children's new Constitutional "right" to public schooling.
It's all rather unlikely, but it is not impossible. If nothing else, it reminds us that there's still plenty of opposition to homeschooling. Teachers' unions and statist politicians are still avidly looking for ways to kill off Christian education--and we must not allow our votes to provide them with the ways and means of doing so.
Public education and statism go hand-in-hand. Homeschooling, or any kind of Christian schooling, is both a reproach and a perpetual threat to them.
Stay vigilant.
