This past week, I’ve been dealing with a lot of media being interviewed by publications like The Washington Post, The Detroit Free Press, a CBS TV affiliate, an ABC radio affiliate, etc.
All of them are discussing the same controversial narrative: Should parents (especially those who take full responsibility for the education of their children and homeschool them) be accountable to the government for their oversight and guidance?
This kind of thinking is a massive paradigm shift from a couple of centuries ago in America. The Founding Fathers of this country were pretty outspoken about the need to be suspicious of the power of government, and the need for citizens to watch over it and keep it in check.
The Founding Fathers Didn’t Trust the Government
James Madison said in a Speech at a Virginia Convention, 5 June 1788:
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
Patrick Henry said,
“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“When all government …in little as in great things… shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
John Hancock said,
“Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.”
Citizens are Supposed to Keep Government Accountable
Citizens of our country were expected by our founders to help keep the government in check. They knew it would tend to grow out of proportion and become tyrannical. Government was supposed to be a servant to the people, but slowly it has become a master. The roles have become reversed.
Education was Presumed to Be a Responsibility of Parents
Thomas Risley was a Puritan preacher (1630 – 1716) who wrote this (edited for modern readers):
“We presuppose, as reason dictates, the ruling of households according to a moral order. That is, to govern in a deliberate way by imparting an intellectual and virtuous education. That children be taught to read, to be just, modest, diligent, and temperate. To govern families in a Christian manner is most excellent, even as reason is greater than sense, and faith is greater than both. Christian family discipline must instruct, correct and govern itself, namely to promote and persevere in all Christian duties towards God and Man, wholly devoting themselves to Christ, to be His faithful servants forever. And this will cast out two great enemies to all social order, as well as domestic peace (i.e. Anarchy and Tyranny). O that it might be considered that God will judge all governors of families (parents) for both not using, or abusing, their talents of authority.” (from The Evil of Neglecting Family Prayer, published in 1700).
Risley referred to education and instruction of children to be a function of family “government.” He believed a lack of parents governing their children, would lead to tyranny and anarchy in society. So, families had a major role in helping provide for moral restraint in society and even civil government.
In 1828, Noah Webster wrote in his original dictionary, under the word, “Education”:
“To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.” (Emphasis added.)
Because the monstrosity of government schooling created by Horace Mann didn’t begin to emerge until twenty-four years later, it was universally presumed that all education was the responsibility of parents and legal guardians, not big government.
Under the word “Government” Webster describes family as responsible for governing children:
“The exercise of authority by a parent or householder. Children are often ruined by a neglect of government in parents. ‘Let family government be like that of our heavenly Father, mild, gentle and affectionate.’”
People Today are Conditioned to Trust the Government and Suspect Parents
Harvard professor, Elizabeth Bartholet, once proposed a “presumptive ban” on all homeschooling. She believes only those parents who are approved by the government are worthy to teach their own children.
Bartholet said this, reflecting her suspicion of parents:
“(P)arents can now keep their children at home in the name of homeschooling free from any real scrutiny as to whether or how they are educating their children. Many homeschool because they want to isolate their children from ideas and values central to our democracy, determined to keep their children from exposure to views that might enable autonomous choice about their future lives.”
“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous,” Bartholet says. “I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
Can you see the irony here?! She doesn’t want “powerful” people to be in charge of children…so she advocates for authority to be taken from parents and given to the government!
Robert Reich, a professor at Standford University wrote in 2002:
“My point is that many homeschooling parents view the education of their children as a matter properly under their control and no one else’s. They feel entitled to ‘purchase’ the education environment of their children from the marketplace of learning materials, with no intermediary between them and their child.”
It is appalling to Reich that parents could purchase curriculum and reading materials for their own children without the government telling them what to think and how to act!
In 2011 Reich said,
“The upshot is that in many states it is permissible to home school without any oversight whatsoever: no testing of the child for minimal proficiency, no review of curricular materials, no requirements that certain subjects be taught, not even in some states a requirement to notify public officials that parents intend to home school.”
The thought that parents could simply teach their children, without oversight and parentage from the civil government is shocking to the New Left.
Kimberly A. Yuracko, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law said,
“Legal academics have also remained silent in the face of homeschooling’s dramatic rise…Very few have provided any critical evaluation or assessment of current homeschooling laws more generally. None have addressed the significant constitutional questions raised by state abdication of control over homeschooling.”
Wait? Constitutional questions? About state abdications? How is a professor at a respected law school clueless about the fact that the U.S. Constitution does not speak to the issue of education in any way, and it gives zero jurisdiction for education to the government?
She then goes on to say:
“(S)tates must—not may or should—regulate homeschooling to ensure that parents provide their children with a basic constitutionally mandated minimum education. Second, it argues that states must check rampant forms of sexism in homeschooling so as to prevent the severe under-education of girls by homeschooling parents who believe in female subordination.” (Emphasis added.)
Catherine J. Ross, professor of law at George Washington University, said,
“…the state can and should limit the ability of intolerant homeschoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their children-at least during the portion of the day they claim to devote to satisfying the compulsory schooling requirement.”
Do you see how these people see the government as our master and supreme parent?
They even want the government to dictate what we think and believe. Rather than the Founders’ idea of allowing people to experience maximum liberty under the law (and only prosecuting those are guilty of a crime), these thought-leaders want us to seek permission from the state to even teach our own children our own values!
How Did We Get Here and Where Should We Go?
Space restricts me in this article to link all the dots of regression that have marked us as a people who lived by the principles of liberty to those who cry for milk from the breast of the State. But these quotes have hopefully demonstrated that something seismic has happened to shift the worldview of most Americans in the past 200 years.
When parents are found guilty of child abuse and neglect by the courts, the civil government absolutely has a valid duty to prosecute those parents the fullest extent of the law.
But this new presumption that we should view all parents with suspicion, and even call for mandatory Child Protective Service visits for all parents (or at least all homeschoolers) just in case they are doing something nefarious is a dangerous new political mindset that truly undermines all the principles of freedom and liberty our founding fathers fought and died for.
If we don’t want the next generation to embrace these attitudes of subservience to big government, and embrace a mindset of slavery to social elites, we need to, ironically, get our children out of the indoctrination centers (public schools) where their minds are being saturated in this kind of thinking.
We need to get them on the educational path that teaches liberty and freedom. This will require parents taking back authority and responsibility for the education of their own children, instead of abdicating it to the State.
A citizen initiative that will put parents’ rights on the ballot in 2024.
