President Trump’s new Secretary of Education, Ms. Betsy DeVos is proposing school choice and vouchers and is not opposed to homeschooling. She has helped keep school choice in the news.

About 35 years ago Sharon and I began to entertain the idea of teaching our children at home.   I was listening to Paul Harvey one day and he said, “The federal government estimates that there are about 100,000 families in the United States that teach their children at home rather than sending them to a public or private school.”  I thought, “WOW; I could get interested in that very quickly.”  And thus began our journey.

I asked everyone I saw about this idea of homeschooling and kept coming up with blanks until one lady said: “I don’t do that, but my dentist’s wife does.”  I talked to the dentist’s wife and got a list of books to start on for information.

The books did not talk about homeschooling specifically, but they did address many of the current problems in public or government schools.

Beside Ms. DeVos keeping schooling in the news, the state of West Virginia just proposed legislation that would ban homeschooling, calling it child abuse.  It has since been pulled by the senator who authored it.  http://www.newstarget.com/2017-03-26-bill-in-west-virginia-would-ban-homeschooling-treat-it-as-child-abuse.html

Here is a piece from the article:

An increasing number of parents have decided to homeschool their kids or place them in homeschool communities for various reasons, including health concerns for the child, bullying,         religion, and objections to the common core curriculum taught in public schools. For the schools, the real concerns over the child boil down to dollar signs. As reported by One News Now, in 2014 it was estimated that West Virginia public schools were losing nearly $12,000 of funding per student. Not willing to take such a substantial loss, that same year Ritchie County Superintendent of Schools Ed Toman forced his staff to contact the residences and places of employment of homeschool parents in an attempt to bully them into putting their children back in public schools. During the calls, parents were questioned about their ability to teach their children and asked a series of questions including, “What can we do to get your kids back in school?”  Some families were also guilt-tripped when they decided to meet with school counselors at the beginning of the school year and told that their choice to homeschool could result in teachers losing their job

Many times in life, if you look deep enough you will see that the root problem is MONEY.  Because this topic of schooling keeps coming up and because it is something I have been highly involved in for many years, I decided to write about it here.

Now back to the books the dentist’s wife recommended to me.  The first one was NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education  by Samuel L. Blumenfeld.

He points out that public education is a very recent development when it comes to history. For thousands of years people took care of educating their children themselves, paid tutors, parents, grandparents, or local schools.  In the 1800’s a German Kaiser lost a battle because his soldiers either refused his orders or disobeyed them. So when he came home he founded “public schools” in Germany – a place where people “would learn to obey orders and not ask questions.” Interesting.

About that time the socialists in America were looking for a way to change our capitalistic society into a socialist society.  The most well known of these progressives was John Dewy, the father of public education in the United States. Yes, John Dewey and his cohorts were socialists.

But public education by itself was not enough. They needed to get control of what the teachers were taught to complete the transformation.  So they set out to get their (socialist) people in positions of influence in the teacher’s colleges.  Obviously, they were very successful.

This is why now over 90% of all professors are left wing Democrats (Socialists).  It is also why in the 1950’s a book was published called Why Johnny Can’t Read:…  The author found that even though we had no national education policy in the United States, the NEA (National Education Association) dictated to the publishers what the content was to be in the books if their union members were to buy from the publishers. For instance, they wanted spelling to be taught by the “Look – Say Method” (memorization) rather than phonics. People that can’t read are easily led.  Ideal for a strategy to lead us into socialism.

The book NEA, The Trojan Horse…  also lays out many of the quotes from their annual meetings that are disgusting such as “We have the right of eminent domain over a child’s mind.”  Read it for yourself.

The next book she recommended was Who Owns the Children by Blair Adams and Joel Stein.  The picture on the cover about says it all.  Two small girls were being escorted from their home by the State because their parents were abusing them as children.  The abuse? Homeschooling!  These girls tested well above their grade level, but it was considered abuse by the state of Ohio because homeschooling was not sanctioned by the state.

The book uses court cases to show that in the United States parents can only parent at the pleasure of the state.  If you violate the state’s requirements as a parent, your children are forfeited.  In other words, parenting is a privilege granted by the state, not a right because you birthed them.  It was first published in 1983. This is very interesting to read also in light of mandatory vaccinations.

The last of the three books is called Child Abuse in the Classroom written by the late Phyllis Schlafly.  On Amazon here is the first review of the book.

 It was very hard to believe that the kinds of things written about were actually going on in the public   schools until my children started telling me that many of these things were going on in their school. Mrs. Schlafly correctly characterized these things as child abuse, & she couldn’t have chosen a better title for this book. I pulled my kids out of school & finished their schooling at home as a result of what I read in this book & what went on in their school. Although the book came out in June of 1984, the public school     system has changed very little in the interim because the system has found a way to circumvent the Hatch  Amendment. My granddaughter is a 3rd grader and her mother & I aren’t at all happy with many of the things being done in her school in the guise of education. She will most likely be schooled at home before all is said & done. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about their children’s education.

The book is edited testimony given in a few major cities in the United States about the psychological abuse of students, which at the time was against the law.  The Hatch Amendment said it was illegal to use federal funds for the psychological manipulation of children.

The book is the record of representatives of large groups of people telling the federal government Department of Education (mostly stocked with union members) of the psychological abuse in the classroom by their teachers.

When I read some of these records to my wife as she cooked supper, she just stood there and cried.  I doubt it has gotten better since 1984.

These three books were instrumental in us beginning our journey of homeschooling.

The Bible says some about teaching your children also.

Deuteronomy11:18-21a  Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.  And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.  And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:  That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, …

 We decided it was best for our lives to teach our children ourselves.  I understand this is not an option for everyone, but if you want to know more, in the next couple of blogs we will talk about what motivates parents to homeshcool and the resources available to homeschool teachers.

Please give us some feedback as in questions or comments in the email box below, and we will put them up here.

Homeschooling is part of what we considered a Prosperous Life.