~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]

Letter From a Homeschooling Mom
by Laura Haire

Dear Mr. Rockwell,

My children started school last week at the kitchen
table. With the beginning of a new school year come
the same questions that I have had every year for the
past eleven years of homeschooling. Why is there such
strong opposition to the growing homeschool movement?
Why do parents who homeschool their children need to
seek legal support and constantly defend their rights?
Why do parents who home school their children have a
fear that Social Services might storm in one day, on
an unsubstantiated accusation from a nosey neighbor,
and take their children away?

Homeschooling has proven to be an excellent method of
educating children. Standardized tests, college-entrance
exams, national spelling and geography bees, all show
that parents can not only teach their children at home,
but also gain results exceeding the national average.

Not only are homeschooled children excelling academically,
but they are doing it at the expense of their own
families. Homeschooling parents still pay taxes to
support the public education system, as well as providing
the means to educate their own children at home. They
often do this with the income of only one parent. This,
however, is a sacrifice that they are willing to make.
This is a devotion that you will not find in the
government school system.

In his essay, The Law, Fredrick Bastiet wrote,

"You say: 'There are persons who lack education,'
and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in
itself, a torch of learning which shines its light
abroad. The law extends over a society where some
persons have knowledge and others do not; where
some citizens need to learn, and others can teach.
In this matter of education, the law has only two
alternatives: It can permit this transaction
of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and
without the use of force, or it can force human
wills in this matter by taking from some of them
enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by
government to instruct others, without charge.
But in this second case, the law commits legal
plunder by violating liberty and property."

Shouldn't the government, instead, have to defend itself
for forcing the American public to hand over their
hard-earned money to support a failed school system?
Is this why there is such opposition? Or, could it be
that the opponents of homeschooling realize that they
are losing the battle in brainwashing homeschoolers
and their parents into believing the lies about the
glories of the government found in government-approved
textbooks touted by government-approved instructors?

I have searched the Constitution and have not found
in it anywhere, the right of government to intrude
in the educating of children. I did, however, find
the concept of "Free education for all children in
public schools," in The Communist Manifesto.

Sincerely,
Laura (a stay-at-home mom)