I think it’s always wisest in principle not to give bureaucratic institutions one jot more of anything, funds, information, or paperwork, than the minimum required by law, and I rarely miss the opportunity to say so.=)
Before you welcome the government into your home consider that you’ve already decided, by choosing to homeschool, that the government could not provide you and your child(ren) what you expected or required. Regardless of how we want to perceive public school, public schools are government owned, regulated, managed and led.
Where I live homeschoolers do not have any legal responsibilities to register their homeschool, report attendance, request permission or in any way submit any information to the state about our homeschool- with one insignificant exception that I don’t think ever happens, so I’ll not bother to go into it.
However, every year hundreds, maybe even thousands, of homeschoolers go right ahead and submit paperwork, attempt to ‘register’ their homeschools, send in copies of childrens’ birth certificate, homeschool plans, and more- all for a slip of paper that says they are homeschoolers so they can get teachers discounts at book-stores (you can get these without registering). This fills me with dismay.
In my state there are NO such legal requirements. None. I believe that behaving as though there _were_ such a requirement carries with it risks that I do not wish to take, and it puts others at risk as well. It does not send what I, as a libertarian, consider a responsible message to government officials. So we haven’t registered, like hundred if not thousands of other homeschoolers, because it isn’t required, and therefore, we don’t have any official pieces of paper from the state acknowledging our homeschools- and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In this state, we are private schools, and as such, there is nothing dishonest about creating our own letterhead and student body I.D. cards and so forth, proving that we are a private school and meriting the same discounts and so forth that other private schools get.=)
When people begin giving politicians *more* than the law requires, those politicians then look suspiciously at those who cherish their legal freedoms and are protective of them, and who expect politicians and educators to respect the laws as well. They will begin to reason that family a, b, and c have freely given up the right to privacy, the right to homeschool without government notification, and so if family d, e, and f won’t, it must be that they are obnoxious or have something to hide…. People who give away their freedoms are far more dangerous to homeschooling than those who protect them.
Think of it this way- we in this country have a right to keep our homes free of illegal search and seizure- the police may not enter without due cause and legal authority (search warrants)- and if we stand on that right and refuse to permit police entry without search warrants, then we are NOT doing anything wrong or suspicious. If my neighbor wishes to permit police officers to come in without a warrant on the grounds that ‘he has nothing to hide,’ and expecting the police to obey the law is going to make them suspicious, then that neighbor does not value his constitutional freedoms enough.
There’s a problem with this analogy in our culture, however. Fifty years ago, almost everybody would have understood it. Today, far too many people can’t understand it at all. It even seems a little subversive (and not in a good way). “But if you don’t have anything to hide, who cares?” is the prevailing attitude towards government. Rather than viewing government as our founding fathers did, an institution which must be tightly held to its proper place or it becomes tyranny, they think government is supposed to hold citizens in our proper place. Constitutional freedoms are hardly cherished, and those who value them are seen as some sort of cranks or troublemakers.
I value my constitutional freedoms. I value my right to homeschool without interference. I do not need the government do to *anything* except leave me alone. I do not think it is helping homeschooling to go beyond the law and give up freedoms to keep bureaucrats being suspicious. It will only make them more suspicious, and more prone to assume powers they ought not to have over ordinary citizens.
It’s not unreasonable to expect politicians to respect the law.
4 Comments
LOVE this post, sharing it on my FB page, etc! I’ve been posting the Constitution verbatim, sentence by sentence, for a few months, in hopes of helping those around me understand a bit better what it says. My dh and I aren’t always in agreement about how to handle these sort of issues. We are currently in a state that requires more than your state does but when we move, which will be within roughly a year, we’re looking at states like NJ & DE that require very little. (I think they only want to be sure that children should not be considered truant, that they *are* enrolled in school in some form.)
Our state has a bunch of laws. We have to write a declaration of intent every year, we have to submit attendance laws regularly, we have to write a yearly progress report, and we have to do standardized testing every three years. But even here, the same scenario plays out. For example, we have to write the progress report and do the testing, but we aren’t required to share that information with anyone… but there are homeschoolers who will send that information in with their declaration of intent, or who will provide it to social services if they come knocking. And we don’t have to write a declaration of intent until the child is six, and yet every year countless homeschoolers declare their 5 year old.
Shared, and liked, and I’ll probably link it later in the week, too, just for good measure. It drives me nuts when people do this! Our state is middling, liberty-wise. We’re required to do a few not-too-bad things like take standardized tests that are then shown to nobody. The Department of Non-Public Education asks for us to “update” our information with them every year, even though we are only required to update them when we close our homeschool. For some reason, most people will do so, and SMILE about it. See? I’m proving to Daddy government that I really do care what he thinks of me! Aren’t a nice little citizen? Um, no. What you are, is naive and silly. You’re proving to the government that this one little encroachment is no big deal, so eventually we may ALL have to do it. After all, all the reasonable people already have. Liberty is lost by inches in this way.
I completely agree. I am thankful to be in a state where we are only required to declare our intent to homeschool each year and list the name and age of each child so being schooled (though I’d love to live in a state where even less was required – like yours!) Our government was designed to protect our freedoms, but today it is seen by so many as the entity that gets to decide which freedoms we may or may not have, and to what extent we are allowed to practice them. People who want to try to retain the freedoms we still have need to put government in its proper place, and this is a good area in which to do so. Our government-run schools are so shockingly bad at giving their own students a decent education (in any sense of the word), why in the world would anyone think they should be in the least bit in charge of how concerned parents educate their own children? I’m glad that our state’s homeschool association frequently reminds homeschooling parents not to provide any more information to the authorities than required. I hope every homeschooling parent will heed this wise advice.