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U.S. Homeschooling Parents May be Forced to Teach Against Their Moral Principles

It drives elite crazy that they can't get at homeschooled children.

VALLECITO, CA October 6, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the the October 1 Chalcedon Report Lee Duigon writes on the disturbing proposals of Rob Reich, political science and education professor at Stanford University, which were made at the 2001 convention of the American Political Science Association. Reich's proposals were read from a paper entitled, "Testing the Boundaries of Parental Authority over Education, the Case of Home Schooling".

"In his writings", says Duigan, "Reich proposes that homeschooling should be monitored by the state to ensure that parents teach their children beliefs and lifestyles that they may oppose - that parents may even believe to be evil".

Reich is quoted, "Children are owed as a matter of justice the capacity to lead lives - adopt values and beliefs, pursue an occupation, endorse new [sic] traditions - that are different from those of their parents. Because the child cannot … ensure the acquisition of such capacities and the parents may be opposed … the state must ensure it for them" (emphasis added).

"It is at this point that we can begin to see the implications, indeed danger, of Reich's ideas for home education," says Thomas Washburne, J.D., of the Home School Legal Defense Fund.

Reich also wrote, "Neither parents nor the state can justly attempt to imprint indelibly upon a child a set of values and beliefs."

Washburne tells Duigan "The education elite sees homeschoolers as traditional
moralists, raising their children to be traditional moralists. They teach their children truth - truth that the elite doesn't believe in, doesn't recognize. It drives them crazy that they can't get at these homeschooled children."

"For many parents, the whole point of homeschooling is to get their children out of the public schools, says Duigan, and away from corrupt ideas and values. Now Reich proposes that these corrupt ideas be brought into the home by the parents themselves - or else."

For more information, contact the Home School Legal Defense Fund, (540) 338-5600

See the complete article at;
http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/0310/031001duigon.shtml

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