Homeschool News
& Views
From
Homeschool Helpers
Associated with Pass It On
Ministries
Feb. 16, 2007
Greetings. This is Dan
White with Homeschool News & Views from Homeschool Helpers.
A PBS segment on
homeschooling ended with this:
“As of now,
churches seem reluctant to tell their congregations to put their kids in
private or home schools. But even without that endorsement, the U.S. Department
of Education acknowledges that home schoolers are
growing ten times as fast as the general school age population.”
Even though
churches aren’t really supporting it, homeschooling is growing ten times faster
than the general population. That has to
mean that public school enrollment is growing less than the growth rate of the
general population. More and more
parents are choosing to avoid the public schools, for homeschooling and for
private Christian schools, even at increased cost to themselves.
I quote from the Evansville Courier & Press,
“Home schooling is a growing phenomenon in
the
Borderline
xenophobia. Xenophobia is a fear of strangers or fear of
anything that is different.
We have discussed before,
in Issue 8 of Homeschool News & Views, how the German educational
authorities are some of the most oppressive in the western world. The Home School Legal Defense Association
recently sent out this communication.
“In the summer of 2005, when Melissa
was 15, she was told she would
have to repeat the seventh grade at the government school
because she
was failing math and Latin. She had good grades in the
rest of her
classes, so her parents tutored her at home for those two
subjects.
When the school officials found out they were angry and
then expelled
Melissa, so the family began to homeschool full time.
However, the Youth Welfare office then took the family to
court
because they were homeschooling. Then, on Tuesday, January
30, 2007,
social workers and police officers came to the Busekros home and
forcibly took Melissa to the child psychiatric unit where
she was
questioned for four hours before she was returned home.
Then two days
later, 15 police officers and social workers came to the Busekros home
and took Melissa away from her parents by force and placed
her in the
child psychiatric unit.
According to Melissa's father, Hubert Busekros,
this treatment was
justified by the psychiatrist's finding two days
previously that
Melissa was supposedly developmentally delayed by one year
and that
she suffered from school phobia.”
How about that?
The 15 year old girl needed help in a couple
of subjects, which was going to hold the girl back a year, so her parents
helped her with those subjects. They did not want her to be one year behind.
These parents must be pretty
sharp. Who can tutor in Latin, without
getting some type of course? Et tu, Brute? If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then
you know what I mean. Of course, a
homeschool parent would evaluate whether or not studying Latin is the best use
of learning time.
The German educational bureaucrats were
not able to successfully teach the girl math and Latin, yet when they found out
that her parents were helping her with those subjects, they were incensed,
infuriated, and possibly inebriated with their own positions. They kicked the girl out of school
altogether.
I am going to read between the lines
here, and surmise that when the parents began to teach the girl, she began to
do better. Perhaps she actually began to
learn math and Latin. That’s what
usually happens when parents really begin to teach their children. They do way better than they do in the
schools.
The school authorities were enraged
that someone would step on their turf, and dare to teach a child a subject,
even when they had shown that they had failed to teach it. I bet they were really enraged when Melissa
actually began to learn the subjects, with her lowly, miserable parents
teaching her.
So the educrats
cut her off from the glorious government education that everyone obviously
holds so dear. They gave Melissa and her
parents the ultimate educational punishment.
They cast her into educational outer darkness.,
the abyss of unending ignorance, where no certified teachers would ever shed
their light of learning. They expelled
her from the government schools.
After the school authorities had
expelled her –
Repeat – After the school authorities
had expelled her – the parents began to teach the girl all the regular school
subjects at home. Math,
Latin, and everything else.
They became full time homeschoolers.
So what were they supposed to do? The girl couldn’t go to the government
schools, so were her parents just supposed to raise her in total ignorance,
without any education at all?
Of course not. That’s absurd. Since the parents had already discovered that
they could teach her, once she was expelled they did teach her – because she had been expelled.
Once they were homeschooling her, because she had been expelled,
the authorities took the family to court, and charged them with the crime of homeschooling. Then the authorities
forcibly abducted the girl and subjected her to a four hour psychiatric
examination, without permission of or benefit of her parents. Next they took custody of the girl, and put
her in a psychiatric ward, because the psychiatrist found that the girl was
delayed by one year and had school phobia.
Wait a minute – The girl was already
delayed by one year. She was going to
fail her grade, and that’s what started the whole circus to begin with.
They say she has school phobia. Can anybody imagine why?
With that girl in the psychiatric ward,
how do you think she will do in her classes now? Are those educrats
concerned about her education, or their domination?
Xenophobia – the fear of something
different. The school officials are
xenophobic, desperately afraid that anyone else might dare to teach, dare to
tread on their turf, dare to slightly undermine their divine right to rule as
educational autocrats over every student in the country. They are maniacally afraid of anything that
is different. Xenophobic can be rendered
in German as fremdenfeindlich. Sie haben fremdenfeindlichkeit.
Christians are accused of being
homophobic. We can accuse educrats of being homeschoolophobic.
Also I wonder – how do you say “nuts!”
in German or auf Deutsch? Nuutz? OK.
Those German educrats are “nuutz.”
As we discuss some of these obstacles
that homeschoolers face we must not forget that the trend is still up. In the
Let me read again an
excerpt from an article in the
“Home schooling is a growing phenomenon in
the
We could go into great detail about how
Christian homeschool students receive superior socialization skills. They don’t get into cliques and gangs, they
don’t run in a closed pack, and they’re less afraid of being made fun of. They’re closer to their families, which gives
them more stability and confidence.
They’re not segregated by age, so they’re more comfortable with
different age groups. We could go into
detail about what public school socialization actually means: filthy language, sex, drugs, violence, gangs,
bullying and such qualities of the pop culture.
And at some point we will go into those details, because that’s what the
government schools are.
But for right now, for homeschool
socialization I will just mention one thing.
The PBS program said that homeschool
numbers are growing ten times as fast as the general population.
Why?
The modern homeschool
movement started in the 1970’s and is now estimated to number two million
students. Why did that happen? How has homeschooling spread so fast, at a
growth rate that seems to have been about 20% a year?
Millions of dollars are
spent every year promoting the public schools, yet their enrollment numbers
keep dropping as a percentage of the total population. Every night our local TV stations run baloney
blurbs about how great the public schools are.
Every night they don’t have enough news to fill the time, so they run
stories on the marvelous local schools.
On the other hand, when
homeschooling started almost everybody opposed it. The governments opposed it. The churches opposed it. Even the extended families opposed it. Yet for some reason homeschooling grew like
kudzu in
Why?
Has anybody put millions
of dollars into publicizing homeschooling?
No. Nobody has ever really publicized
homeschooling. We try to do that with
Homeschool Helpers, and about the most we can do is put out emails, because
they don’t cost anything. Other
homeschool support organizations operate pretty much the same way.
Has the
No. The Education Department, a cabinet level
division of the government, deals with the public schools. It has never promoted homeschooling, to be
sure.
Have the churches joined
together and started a Homeschool to Heaven movement?
No. The churches are just now getting around to
really accepting homeschooling.
In reality, nobody has put
any money into promoting homeschooling at all, while the public schools are
constantly attacking and trying to eliminate homeschooling. The NEA passes a resolution against
homeschooling every year. The state
governments opposed homeschooling, so that in fact it was often illegal. A few people went to jail for the crime of
homeschooling. And
as for the churches – Not only did they not have a Homeschool to Heaven
campaign, they overwhelmingly tried to discourage their members from doing
it. They actually had more of a
Homeschool to Hell campaign.
With no institutions
supporting it, and all of them opposing it, why in the world did homeschooling
grow by perhaps 20% a year?
Why?
Because
people saw the fruits.
Mat
7:16-20, World English Bible
(16) By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather
grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?
(17) Even so, every good tree produces good fruit;
but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit.
(18) A good tree can't
produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit.
(19) Every tree that doesn't grow good fruit is
cut down, and thrown into the fire.
(20) Therefore, by their fruits you will know
them.
Over and over people heard
very negative things about homeschooling.
But then, somewhere along the way, they actually met some Christian homeschool
kids. And when they really got to know
them, when they spoke person to person with these respectful, friendly
xenophobes, when they saw how these socially misfit young people treated their
parents, when they heard these educationally deprived young students discuss
their lessons, they said – “That’s the
way I want my kids to be.”
That’s how homeschooling
grew. That’s it. That’s the only thing it had going for
it. It had no propaganda. It had no media. It had no money. It only had fruits.
From
almost nobody to two million in thirty years.
People met some Christian
homeschool kids. And they said – “That’s
the way I want my kids to be.”
In other words, they were
very well socialized.
This is Dan White with
Homeschool Helpers. God bless the
Christian homeschoolers, and please forward this email to a friend.