Crime Against the State: Why “Progressives” Hate Homeschooling
Thomas E. Woods, Jr. reports in First Principles, the ISI web journal (2.14.2008:
The homeschooling movement in the United States has reached a level of institutional maturity that few could have predicted only a decade or two ago. A massive infrastructure is in place, from curriculum companies to social groups, catering to the millions of people who engage in homeschooling. The movement remains as unpopular as ever in fashionable circles, to be sure, but by now the standard arguments against homeschooling are so trite and predictable that families who practice it are able to parry them with little effort.
Once in a while, though, we get a glimpse of the real reason homeschooling is so despised.
[In reference to removal of a homeschooled girl from her parents by German authorities] . . . things turned rather sinister when . . . [a German government official] went on to warn that “the public has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole. If we are to achieve integration, not only must the majority of the population prevent the ostracization of religious minorities or minorities with different world views, but minorities must also remain open and engage in dialogue with those who think differently or share different beliefs.”
He neglected to add: or we’ll take their children . . .
But homeschooling is the ultimate repudiation of every grandiose scheme to pull children away from their families and train them in the values of social democracy.