Written by Cora Weber

Home education freedoms are at a crossroads in the United States. The choice before us is whether homeschool families will retain the mandate for education or whether, God forbid, we cede it to the State.

We have gotten to this point for two reasons:

First, we have allowed complacency and the status quo to keep us from going on the offensive to capture greater homeschool freedoms for our posterity.

Second, we have allowed a thesis-antithesis-synthesis, a sort of dialectic drift to carry us away from the moorings for which our home education forebears were willing to face jail-time. Without a solid grasp of certain fundamental, universal truths that undergird our freedoms – and if we don’t create some next level security for them– we will lose them one right after another.

A registration form here, a portfolio evaluation there, until one day we look up and find we must effectively acquire a permit to parent.

We must realize that certain powers that ought not to be are playing the long game for control over the hearts, minds and lives of our children. In the case of HB 2827, for example, the bill attempted to completely undermine parents’ rights because it would ultimately allow the state to define what home education is and therefore regulate it.

When you define something, you take dominion over it. Wherever there is an attempt to usurp the jurisdiction for a God-given mandate, there will be a generous helping of shape shifting narratives and false accusations to justify it. HB 2827 was such an attempt. This past spring, surely, we were all neglectful abusers, next time, who knows?

And, it really doesn’t matter, because whatever form the lies take, these projections are just accoutrements for a legislative word salad intent on garnering our compromise. And compromise or synthesis, if you will, is their long game.

In the case of HB 2827, “It was just a registration form,” they said.

But it was a registration form that represented waiving your and your children’s First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections, if you should comply. While we were exhausting ourselves trying to prove we were not neglectful abusers, the battle was on a different line entirely.

The reality is, that so many self-evident truths undergird our position as home educators, it would be actual abuse and neglect not to appeal to them to preserve the freedom to homeschool on our children’s behalf. Here are just a few to consider:

• Children are made in the image of God and to be stewarded by their parents, not the state.

• The right to define, design, determine, direct and delegate education is fundamental and a priori to the family to which children belong, and not to the state.

• There are three jurisdictions of government: Family, Church and State. The Family government deserves just as much protection from State encroachment as the Church does. The Bill of Rights affirms this.

• As Christians, bringing our children to Christ through home learning is one of the highest expressions of worship we can give our Creator.

• All education is religious and associative in nature. This is because there is always an ideological basis through which information is conveyed and there is always a medium of communication in conveying it. In the United States, home education is therefore protected by the First Amendment.

While the dialectic approach leaves us hoping for breadcrumbs of freedom, it uses fear, lies and confusion to bring about compromise and control.

Standing firm in truth buoys us along with a moral authority where we are not only willing to obey God rather than man, but where we reject complacency and use our power to create good laws and our own education systems.

After all, our mandate comes from God.

Home education is the fastest  growing form of education in the world with a year over year growth rate of 8 percent. Presently, there are upwards of 4 million of us in the United States alone.

International Alliance for Freedom in Home Education was born out of asking, “What if?” What if within the 3,144 Counties in the United States, homeschoolers organized to preserve their own freedoms by making use of  the instruments of local, limited, self-government?

At 4 million that is a ratio of over 1,272 homeschoolers per county. What if we created our own systems where the spheres of Church, Local and Family governments worked together to create a lawful firewall against state overreach? What if churches opened their doors throughout the week as community learning resource centers with libraries, science labs, classrooms, free to public schooled and homeschooled kids alike?

What if we went down to our council meetings, looked our local, elected officials in the eye and asked them to give us a pledge of protection for our home education freedoms?

In Illinois, when homeschool families around the state came together to fight HB 2827, a lot of those questions were answered.

In only a little over 2 months, the homeschool community organized and was able to get 12 counties, (over 10 percent of Illinois counties) to pass County Resolutions not only opposing HB 2827, but also affirming parents’ rights in home education.

Several counties went so far as to become “Homeschool-Private School Sanctuary Counties.” International Alliance for Freedom in Home Education was privileged to play a significant role in equipping homeschoolers to do this.

Presently, we are looking to recruit homeschool families from every county in the nation. We provide coaching and a customized county strategies for organizing, getting resolutions passed, getting local churches on board, etc.

We are developing our website, IAFHE.org, as a platform to facilitate this. It provides for each county to have its own page and closed communication network.

Please reach out if you are ready to advance home education freedoms in your county. Go to IAFHE.org or email us at info@iafhe.org.

Let’s preserve and protect home education freedoms one county at a time!

Cora Weber is a second generation, home educator, and mother to 7 children. She and her family were missionaries in post-Soviet, Central and Eastern Europe where a vision to help families and churches understand Biblical principles for nation building was born. She presently serves as Executive Director for International Alliance for Freedom in Home Education.