The Price of Liberty

Recently several dozen articles defending homeschooling have crossed our desktop here at The Price of Liberty. Unfortunately, they are vastly outnumbered by articles and comments attacking homeschooling. And at the same time, we are seeing more and more State governments and local school districts and boards working very hard (for the bureaucrats and politicians, at least) to come up with more ways to regulate and restrict homeschooling and “ensure” that parents and their families and friends are “properly educating” their children.

One of the better defenders of homeschooling against these threats is featured in an article on The Blaze. Palmer Luckey, the billionaire IT entrepreneur who invented Oculus Rift (the first really realistic virtual reality headset), jumped down the throat of a commenter who claimed that homeschooling parents should not object to government management and monitoring of the education they are providing to their children.

She wrote, ““If homeschooling is actually super high quality, then homeschooling families should not object to being evaluated, tested, and checked-in-on to make sure their kids are actually learning,”

To us, this smells very much like the idea that, “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t care if government and anyone else watches what you are doing.” After all, only criminals should be upset if Big Brother is watching them and making it more likely that they will be caught committing a crime.

That, of course, is a hoary old argument that long predates the writing of Brave New World and 1984. And one long rejected. But for those who fear and/or hate homeschooling and loss of government control and the way “public” schools pad the pockets of massive unions, their members, and various industries? It is an excuse and an argument that they think will cause fear and get people to once more commit the futures of their children to never-ending government control.

Many practices and outcomes in public schools are more than detrimental to children. Their exposure to hazards (especially manmade ones) should be unacceptable in a civilized society. Luckey identified some of them, but it is a very long list. And the so-called fears of poor learning by homeschoolers? Demonstrated time and time again to be phantasms. However, the pushers of government monitoring and a “command education” point to 1 or 2 abusive or neglectful parents out of a hundred families, and claim governments can prevent that. This again smells, this time like the hoplophobes and hoploclasts claims about disarming peaceful and honest people.

Even worse, too many private schools follow the “established science” and “proven educational techniques.” And therefore do nearly as poor a job of really teaching the students. It is all too easy for all of us to be brainwashed.

Educating parents who depend on public schools is essential. They far outnumber homeschooling voters, and are constantly bombarded with claims that homeschooled children will grow up ignorantly and unable to support themselves, therefore joining the permanent welfare class. And that homeschoolers “dropping out” of public schools are starving the public schools of funds, since those are often based on average daily attendance numbers. And of course the claim (which has worked for years) that public education problems all have a single solution: throwing more money at it.

They will not learn this from the school districts or other government agencies: they will only find the truth regarding these things when lovers of liberty, homeschooling parents, and homeschooled adults tell them so.