I am certain that most—if not all—home educators failed to read the article which appeared in volume 62:1 of the Arizona Law Review in 2020, “Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection.” After all, why would any mother scour through this particular law journal, or any law journal for that matter? As everyone within the homeschool community understands, time is valuable. However, if you are curious, you can download a copy of the article here.
The author Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard University shows her anti-family bias in the title and in the very first sentence of the article: “This Article describes the rapidly growing homeschooling phenomenon and the threat it poses to children and society.” A few well-written articles counter the absurdity of Bartholet’s article. Most noteworthy are by Peter Gray in Psychology Today and by homeschool graduate Jeremiah Poff. The points in these two pieces are good, and therefore it will be unnecessary for me to rehash everything that these two gentlemen have already stated.
However, I am prompted to discuss one aspect of Bartholet’s thesis; that is, she believes homeschooling deprives children of an education. On July 17, 2023, an opinion piece by Sarah J. Reynolds appeared in USA Today, titled “What the parents’ rights debate misses: the kids’ right to learn to be free thinkers.” The article suggests that governmental oversight in education is necessary to ensure children in the public schools should be allowed to think for themselves without parental interference. In her ALR piece, Bartholet expands this oversight by the government to ensure that children in home schools do not receive a lopsided religious worldview from their parents, and the children are on par with those in the public schools. What?!! I trust I am not insulting your intelligence by stating the obvious. Since when did any civil government desire to produce “free thinkers”? A citizenry of thinkers is the last thing an overreaching government wants!
Home education is working and has indeed become a “threat” to the establishment as Bartholet believes. Otherwise, if home educators were not doing a good job, then the legacy media and Woke mafia would not waste anytime on the subject. Of course, at the top of the list of unacceptable educational outcomes is building faith in the God of the Bible, who differentiates between good and evil, right and wrong, holiness and sin. For those who insist that good is evil, and evil is good, a Bible definitely gets in the way of “progress.” Everyone knows by now that the stated goal of the central planners is to secularize all children, describing any exercise of biblical morality as bad and hateful, while a “neutral” course of instruction as good and enlightened.
But herein lies the fallacy of this premise. There is no such thing as a purely secular worldview. It is an imaginary construct. Actually all human beings do not have a choice between the sacred or the secular. The choice is either you will worship the true and living God, or you will worship false idols of your own making. Everyone lives by faith, and everyone worships something or someone regardless how religious or devoutly irreligious one believes himself to be. More importantly, if you worship God, you will educate your children to love God and to love their neighbors as themselves. On the other hand, if you worship idols, then you will instruct and indoctrinate—not educate—children to be self-seeking, materialistic, and mechanistic, pursuing only money, fame, and power.
Make no mistake about it, the public educational system of the United States is totally religious, devoting itself to instructing young people to worship the gods of debauchery, narcissism, and greed. Anyone who dares to disagree with the priests of this religion will be targeted with hysterical cries of heresy. Recently we have been witnesses to this display of hysteria which is nothing short of an inquisition.
In its most essential form, to educate means “to lead out.” To lead out of what? According to the Lord Jesus Christ, his followers are to lead others out of darkness. The war being conducted all around us is therefore a spiritual one, a war between light and darkness. This war may seem to be cultural, social, or political in its manifestation, but the root of it all is whether God Almighty or whether idols will rule the hearts and minds of all, young and old. Of course, the wicked understand well that children are an easy target to defile and corrupt.
For this reason, evil people want to have more control over the children through the schools and in the homes. Clearly the religious agenda of all idol worshipers has become a clear case of child abuse. In fact, another case can be made that parents who continue to send their children to the public schools are sacrificing them to the idol Moloch. If parents really cared about the well-being of their children, they would stop providing these young souls to the priests of unrighteousness. The wicked need to be reminded often that whosoever would harm just one child, his damnation is just and eternal.
So, what can you do about this religious war taking place around you? If you have not done so already, take your children out of the public school system and educate them at home. Are you leading your children out of darkness? Or are you permitting your children to be sacrificed to the idols of money, fame, and power? Only the home is the proper and natural institution to educate anyone.
THE DUNCE'S CORNER 