Testing Home Education – Part 5: Back to the Basics (Part 24)
Categories: Léo’s Insights 2023-2024, Back to the Basics
Eventually, one does get past the opposition to your initial decision to home educate. Those who are really obsessed with you daring to do things differently start slowly backing off as they witness your resolve and, more importantly, see the results of your home education program. Most children are not even aware of the profound impact their freedom from school constraints has on those who believed the only way a child can learn is at school. We can therefore say home education eventually goes into a sort of cruise control once the first few years are completed.
Later on, however, a new wave of opposition may start to occur, as persecution from within the camp begins to take the form of manipulating home educators to do what is in the best interest of the home education provider. This is done through normalizing and/or Christianizing the school-based approach to home education which has the overall effect of diluting or polluting parental authority. Misleading parents by making them believe the only avenue to post-secondary involves government programs may temporarily assure parents of the merits of public programs, but it also assures greater levels of funding for the home education provider. It is difficult to understand how agencies advancing themselves as friends of home education can do this, but not if you “follow the money”.
To be sure, not all agencies which advance school-based approaches to home education do so for self-serving reasons. Many simply do not understand that home education empowers parents to make alternate decisions regarding their children’s education; as such, the agencies simply advance what they know, which is limited to some kind of school program, even if it is delivered at home.
We have heard parents’ pleas for freedom many times over the years – freedom from familial persecution, freedom from unwanted incursions into their familial and academic lives, and freedom from the school-based ideology that was brought home in ignorance. All these forms of bondage undermine the authority of parents. We love hearing “We want to unschool” because at this point, persecution usually stops. By then others recognize that you have the authority to do the right thing. You’re the boss!
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