Latest / Homeschool Insights - Biblical Home Education Inspiration in Under 10 Minutes! / Homeschool Freedom Was Hard-Fought. Are We Giving It Away? Israel Wayne
Transcript
- speaker-0: For us it was an absolute conviction, it was a call of God that this is something that we we had to do because we had to give our children ⁓ a biblical education. speaker-1: Israel, I really want to bring us up to the present now. And we've been talking a little bit about just this you know, the money, the money grab. I'm just gonna say it straight, the money grab that's out there. Cause and even as you and I were talking during the break in California, we have this big movement of charter schools, which are a public school organization. Like charter schools fall under the public schools. So like the parents are supposed to be doing. Public at you know, doing using the curriculum that they're given by the public schools and what has been approved by this, you know, California government to be taught in schools. However, because all the charter schools get paid for people who are signed up with them, they're offering money like so many states do to have kids come and be a part of their school. And what they're doing to the Christian community specifically is that they're really trying to they they kind of blur the line as to like you were just saying about, you know. They're they're making it difficult because they're gonna find out. It's a definitely some Wild West stuff happening here in California. Go figure. But, you know, they're blurring the line and they're telling these Christian families, you can do your homeschooling. So they're calling it homeschooling. You know, come be a part of our thing. We'll, you know, you can do our school, you can do other schools, there's enrichment programs. But a lot of these families are trying to teach Christian curriculum. in their public school, and that's not allowed by California legislation. And so that's one of my big hangups is that they're they're putting me at risk. They're putting our homeschooling at risk. And if we go to the heart of homeschooling, which really is discipling our children, then, you know, that's that's the most important thing. And so I don't want my rights taken away because that is the beautiful thing is in all 50 states, we have the right to homeschool our children. We have the right to educate our children. So kind of To move forward from that, ⁓ what are you seeing as being probably one of the bigger risks that we're facing right now? And that from, you know, where the roots were back, you know, so many eons ago when your family first started in 1978, I love that, to fast forward now. ⁓ what do you see as being in the biggest risk that we're we need to be aware of? speaker-0: Those laws that protect homeschooling in all 50 states didn't just happen. There were long court battles. I mean, Michigan, there was a family called the DeYoung family. That one family was in court for nine years, the whole time at risk of having their children forcibly taken away from them by the state, them doing jail time, them having their parental rights terminated and their children put into foster care. And potentially not seeing their children again. That was the kind of stakes that they were up against simply because they wanted to teach their children at home and give their children a Christian education. And so groups like Homeschool Legal Defense Association and Christian state home homeschool organizations all across the US fought long hard legal battles to give parents the right to be able to teach their children their own faith and values. The homeschoolers who are new to this don't know the history. They don't know the stories. My own family was in court multiple times over home education. And so to them, it's just easy come, easy go. And like I say, it's just another platter on an educational smorgasbord. But for us, it wasn't that. I mean, for us, it was an absolute conviction. It was a call of God that this is something that we we had to do because we had to give our children ⁓ a biblical education ⁓ that That we didn't believe that any education was religiously neutral, that it's either going to be taught from a humanistic framework or from a biblical framework. And we had to be intentional in order to give a biblical education to our children. And these newer homeschoolers, and I'm not trying to ⁓ be down on them because you don't know what you don't know. Absolutely. But those of us who are veteran homeschoolers, we need to pass on ⁓ the the biblical philosophy of education. speaker-1: Right. ⁓ absolutely. speaker-0: ⁓ and I don't see that happening so much now. I see us talking about options and choices and curriculum and, you know, tutors and online tutors and this, you know, this program and that, you know, co-op group and whatever. But what I don't really hear people doing is passing on a biblical philosophy of education. These newer families, just because of the background from which they come from, they're actually very desirous of co-parenting with the government. They they actually want more government oversight. They want government control over home education. ⁓ we had a Facebook group here in Michigan where one of the leaders of the homeschool Facebook group, one of the administrators, one of the leaders, right, ⁓ said when we had legislation introduced, ⁓ I don't care if a bill passes that says we have to have once a month child protective service home visits. I have nothing to hide. I would be fine with that. In fact, I would welcome. I'd feel more comfortable because then that way I would know that I'm not doing anything wrong and I'm not doing anything that I shouldn't be. Right? That's the kind of mentality and mindset that so many of these families have, of this sense in which the government is in control and they should be in control. And we as parents don't know anything and we don't know what we're doing. And we really need the government to tell us how to do this and what to do and to oversee. what we're doing and help us with our curriculum choice and and ⁓ by the way we want all the government money as well. And so they just don't have a problem with that. And if you even if you tell them, well, by taking government money, you're also inviting government oversight. They don't have a problem with that. They think that the government oversight sounds like a wonderful thing. Because they'll say, well, I I could use more accountability. And so this is where I just feel like there's such a disconnect between, you know, those And and here again we could probably use a different metaphor, right? In that pay Facebook post I was talking about the the Jesus movement and the homeschool movement, how there's some similarities to that, how it kind of became big business and all that. But you look at the American revolution and the fact that people died and shed blood for liberty, and now we have people clamoring for Marxism and socialism. speaker-1: ⁓ my goodness, right? Right. speaker-0: And our founding fathers speaker-1: Truly being taught in our schools. speaker-0: Absolutely. And and our and we have politicians who are, you know, outspoken socialists and Marxists who are getting elected into office. And the founding fathers of our country, if they were here to speak up, they would be saying, Have you lost your mind? This is exactly the kind of thing that we were fighting to try to push back against. And so it's it's similar. And I just think this is what tends to happen with things that start off. really good and that sometimes, you know, our genuine move of God or a spiritual awakening is that eventually things become kind of institutionalized and then we just lose the whole focus. We lose the heart of it. We lose the mission. And once that happens, it just gets co-opted and it really can become something actually detrimental in the long run. And so ⁓ my concern is that as we you know push Jesus aside in this homeschool movement for all of the the side things, you know, the homeschool sports and the homeschool prom and the homeschool, you know, basically replicating everything that the government school does, ⁓ and we lose Jesus, I think what's gonna end up happening is we're just gonna end up seeing that we've lost what makes homeschooling special and that we're gonna end up having all the same results that we tried to get away from. i in leaving the government schools. We're just bringing all that here and we're gonna end up replicating the system. speaker-2: This episode of Homeschool Insights is brought to you by BJU Press Homeschool, CTC Math, and the Explorer Bible for Kids. Visit the show notes to learn more about these excellent resources. And for more encouragement, listen to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast at Schoolhouse Rocked dot com.