Secular Humanism – Excluding God from Schools & Society
Secular Humanism is an attempt to function as a civilized society with the exclusion of God and His moral principles. During the last several decades, Humanists have been very successful in propagating their beliefs. Their primary approach is to target the youth through the public school system. Humanist Charles F. Potter writes, “Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?” (Charles F. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion,” 1930)

John J. Dunphy, in his award winning essay, The Humanist (1983), illustrates this strategic focus, “The battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: A religion of humanity — utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to carry humanist values into wherever they teach. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new — the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.”

Is this what’s happening? John Dewey, remembered for his efforts in establishing America’s current educational systems, was one of the chief signers of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto. It seems the Humanists have been interested in America’s education system for nearly a century. They have been absolutely successful in teaching children that God is imaginary and contrary to “science.”

Secular Humanism – Main Tool is Evolutionary Thought
Secular Humanism is manifested in Evolutionary Theory. To satisfy the fundamental question of “Where did we come from?” children are taught the doctrine of Evolution. The first plank of the Humanist Manifesto states: “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.” The second plank states: “Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process.” Certainly, the public school system propagates the Humanist doctrine (clearly an atheistic “religion”), and thus, condemns the concept of God. This is an amazing irony. Creation Science has been successfully kept out of the public schools by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.) on the grounds that Creation is religious, and the government should not support religion in any fashion. “In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it, and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit with it.” (H. S. Lipson, FRS, Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution”, Physics Bulletin, vol. 31, May 1980, pg. 138).

Yet Evolution has not been proved. Sir Arthur Keith, a famous British evolutionary anthropologist and anatomist, confesses, “Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.” In fact, it seems that the Theory of Evolution is contrary to established science. George Wald, another prominent Evolutionist (a Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Laureate), wrote, “When it comes to the Origin of Life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!” (“The Origin of Life,” Scientific American, 191:48, May 1954).

By Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Back in 1849, when the organized Protestants of Massachusetts debated whether or not to support the public school movement, which was then being strongly promoted by the Unitarians, they decided in favor of support, but with some very thoughtful reservations.

“The benefits of this system, in offering instruction to all, are so many and so great that its religious deficiencies — especially since they can be otherwise supplied — do not seem to be a sufficient reason for abandoning it, and adopting in place of it a system of denominational parochial schools,” they wrote.

“If after a full and faithful experiment, it should at last be seen that fidelity to the religious interests of our children forbids a further patronage of the system, we can unite with the Evangelical Christians in the establishment of private schools, in which more full doctrinal religious instruction may be possible.”

No one can doubt that for the last 150 years the public schools have had that full and faithful experiment, and that the spiritual effect on Christian children has been disastrous. In several schools around the country, Christian children have even been murdered by fellow students possessed by satanic beliefs. How much worse can it get?

In fact, during the last 20 years, thousands of Christian parents, without knowledge of the debates that took place in 1849, have removed their children from the public schools and have either placed them in private Christian schools or are home-schooling them. They have done this despite the fact that many well-known Christian leaders have not yet sounded the alarm and, in many instances, have urged Christians to stay in the public schools and work to reform them.

But the simple fact is that the present government education system has as its foundation an anti-Christian philosophy known as Secular Humanism. All one has to do to confirm this is read the two Humanist Manifestos. The first, written in 1933 by young Unitarian ministers, asserted that the spiritual power of orthodox religion was in decline and that it should be replaced by a rational, man-centered, non-theistic religion.

“Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values,” they wrote. “Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. …

“Religious humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and institutions with a view to the enhancement of human life is the purpose and program of humanism. Certainly religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, ecclesiastical methods, and communal activities must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows, in order to function effectively in the modern world.”

In other words, humanism is the only religion in America that has as its purpose and program the reconstitution of the institutions, rituals, and ecclesiastical methods of other religions. This is an overt declaration of war against biblical religion.

Forty years later, Humanist Manifesto II stated, “As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity. We can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. … No deity will save us, we must save ourselves.”

In the January/February 1983 issue of The Humanist magazine, a young scholar by the name of John J. Dunphy expressed the aim of humanists in education with these very blunt words:

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects that spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of educational level — preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new — the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of “love thy neighbor” will finally be achieved.”

Mr. Dunphy did Christian parents a great service by telling them exactly what humanists want to accomplish in the public schools. Humanists are forever paying lip service in asserting the separation of church and state when it comes to keeping Christianity out of the schools. But when it comes to humanism, they are strangely silent. As a result, humanism has become the establishment religion in our schools, and no one in the federal government or the Congress has seen fit to do anything about it.

Obviously, from a Christian point of view, the experiment of government education has been a colossal failure. In place of God, the public schools offer evolution, multiculturalism, transcendental meditation, situational ethics, drug education, death education, sex education, sensitivity training, gay studies, condoms, whole language, behaviorism, magic circles, and other humanist teachings.

These programs are creating the new nihilists, the amoral barbarians and the followers of Satan that are devastating the lives of thousands of families. There is hardly a Christian family that has not had to cope with a child lost to drugs, promiscuity, abortion, venereal disease, and pure unadulterated devil worship.

What will it take for the majority of Christian parents to realize that the public schools have become a spiritual danger for their children? Those Christian children who are strong in their faith still have to contend with the Satanists among the student body who may wish to harm them. The parents at Columbine could not conceive of the notion that perfectly normal American kids could become murderers, killing for the sake of pleasing Satan. That sort of stuff is supposed to belong in horror movies, not in middleclass, suburban families.

This is something that has never happened before in America, and it is the result of a spiritual disease called moral relativism which teaches that everyone is entitled to their beliefs, no matter how weird or anti-social, and that no one can judge anyone or anything else. That is why no one at Columbine High felt morally obligated to stop the future killers from expressing their views as wildly and openly as they wished. No one at Columbine took them seriously, because no one there believed that the pure power of evil could take hold of the lives of normal kids.

The lesson is painfully simple: When a nation abandons moral absolutes, it opens the door to unbridled evil.

The position of the husband in the home and his related responsibilities are quite clearly defined in principle in Ephesians 5:22, 28-31. “Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church; and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wife as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it . . . So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church . . . For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shal.1 be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh”.

It is impossible to completely deal with the responsibilities of the husband in such a short article. I am going to ask you to make some notations of scriptures and then read them at a later time. Let us start with some scriptures that deal with the husband as head of the house. Genesis 3:16, says in part “her desire shall be to man”. Then Eph. 5:23, “husband is head of the wife”; then I Tim. 2:11-12, “She shall have no dominion over a man”. Now don’t stop at these verses and think that the only responsibility of the husband is to be HEAD of the house. By the way, head does not mean master as in a master-slave relationship, nor does it mean a relationship like a general to a private in the army. It is more like a partnership where one is the leader, guide, director. Now consider this. Can you think of any decision that a husband should make WITHOUT consulting or considering his wife and her wishes? I cannot!

Now let us consider some other responsibilities. The husband is to love his wife above all other human beings. Consider Eph. 5:25 and 28; and Col. 3:19. These passages teach that the husband is to be considerate and tender. The verses in Ephesians 5 teach that the husband is to cherish his wife. This means that she is to be treated with tenderness and affection. This would mean that since love must be fed, there is to be a warm demonstrative love relationship. The husband has the responsibility of not only demonstrating his love and concern, but telling her. He should not sit in such self-absorption that he does not talk with her and communicate with her socially, mentally, verbally and physically. The husband will demonstrate his love for his wife in other ways, rather than just at the time of sexual relationship. If this is the only time that affection and consideration is shown, then a wife will get the idea that all a husband is interested in is her body and that she is merely a sex object.

I Peter 3:7, teaches that the husband is to honor his wife. She gave up her name to take yours. Honor means that you should show her respect and this involves courtesy, consideration and emotional support. Be sure that as her husband that you do not hold her up to ridicule in public by the cutting remarks that you make. She wears YOUR name and is to viewed as part of your body. She is not perfect and you are aware of this. Do not expect perfection, but as Ephesians 4:32 teaches, “forbear one another”. This means to be gentle toward her. Control of temper, abstaining from physical violence and restraining a sharp tongue that makes one feel so inferior – are ways by which you can exhibit forbearance.

Paul presents another responsibility of husbands in I Timothy 5:8 – “But if any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel”. Marriage is a financial venture and the husband has a responsibility to finance or support or provide for his family. This is talking about money. As a husband, your earnings are not your own but belong to your wife as well and your children.

Another responsibility of the husband is to be active in the area of the discipline and rearing of the children. When the Apostle Paul was giving the qualifications for elders and deacons, he included this statement that is certainly applicable to all men: I Timothy 3:3-5, and he speaks of ruling your own house. Now this discipline should be with love. Many times discipline is administered without love. The Book says in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers provoke not your children to wrath”, and again in Colossians 3:21, “Fathers provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged”. The husband therefore does not leave all the discipline up to his wife, but shares in the molding and direction of your children. It is not a proper division of responsibility to say that as the husband I will provide the living and the wife is to take care of the house and children. The husband has duties even after his days work is done by which lie is earning a living to support his family.

The Christian father should set an example for his family as he earns a living, directs the household with concern for each member, and as he fulfills his role as head of the house. He should see to their spiritual development by the life he lives and the direction in which he leads his family.

Your wife is a part of your body – you are a part of each other. For this reason Paul said, “Love your wife”. He didn’t say, if you want to. As you love her, you love yourself and are fulfilling the role that the Lord wanted you to have.

by Kelly on August 15, 2011 in Inspiration in Child Rearing

www.raisinghomemakers.com

By Kristin Kloberdanz/Modesto

Parents of the approximately 200,000 home-schooled children in California are reeling from the possibility that they may have to shutter their classrooms — and go back to school themselves — if they want to continue teaching their own kids. On Feb. 28, Judge H. Walter Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles ruled that children ages six to 18 may be taught only by credentialed teachers in public or private schools — or at home by Mom and Dad, but only if they have a teaching degree. Citing state law that goes back to the early 1950s, Croskey declared that “California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.” Furthermore, the judge wrote, if instructors teach without credentials they will be subject to criminal action.

This news raised a furor among home schooling advocates, including government officials. “Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what’s best for their children,” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement today. “Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights then, as elected officials, we will.” “It’s kind of scary,” says Julie Beth Lamb, an Oakdale, California, parent who, with no teaching credentials, has taught her four children for 15 years. “If that ruling is held up, this would make us one of the most restrictive states in the nation.”

The debacle originated with a suit over child abuse. One of the eight children of Philip and Mary Long, a Los Angeles couple, had filed a complaint of abuse and neglect with the L.A. Department of Children and Family Services. The agency determined that the Long children were being home schooled, taught by their uncredentialed mother while officially enrolled in independent study at Sunland Christian School. The DCFS then turned to the courts to mandate that the children attend public school so that teachers might spot evidence of abuse (a charge the parents deny). A juvenile court, however, determined that the Longs had a constitutional right to home school their children. The DCFS appealed and the case landed in Croskey’s appellate court.

For years, the state of California has allowed parents to home school as long as they file papers to create a private school and hire a tutor with credentials or if their child participates in an independent study program through a credentialed school. In evaluating the Long case, however, Judge Croskey found that state law forbade any home schooling that was not taught by a credentialed teacher and that what California had been allowing was, in his judicial opinion, illegal. In 1953, another appellate court ruled against home-schooling parents who didn’t want to adhere to California’s compulsory education laws, which require kids between six and 18 to attend a credentialed school. The current case is most likely to be appealed to California’s Supreme Court.

“We weren’t trying to change the law on home schooling,” says Leslie Heimov of the Children’s Law Center, which represents the Long children involved in the case. “The law is accurate — it hasn’t changed since the 1950s.” She says the Center does not even have an opinion on home schooling. They just wanted to do what was best for the children represented in the case.

The fact that this sweeping ruling has sprung from such an individualized case is what has most outraged home schooling advocates. “Public schools are not a solution to the problem of child abuse,” says Leslie Buchanan, president of the HomeSchool Association of California. Jack O’Connell, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction — the equivalent of a department of education — now faces the potential crisis of dealing with tens of thousands of truants. Does he know what will happen next? “I honestly don’t know,” O’Connell says, adding that his department is reviewing the case. “There is some angst in the field.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1720697,00.html#ixzz1UyaWIix9

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; 11:45 AM

Four years ago, Alicia Knight would have been the last person you could ever imagine home-schooling her kids.

She was a very active parent in the Stafford County, Va., public schools, where her son Roger was a fifth grader. She was a legislative aide to then Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) for education issues. She was a card-carrying liberal who considered the conservative leaders of the Home School Legal Defense Association in nearby Loudoun County to be religious extremists with whom she could never see herself agreeing about anything.

Whenever her son struggled with his homework, which was often, she said: “You’ve just got to get this school work done because, with God as my witness, I’m NOT home-schooling you!”

And yet for the past three years Knight has been doing exactly that, one of the many surprising stories overflowing my e-mail basket since my June 29 column confessing my deep ignorance about the home-schooling movement. This is the follow-up column I promised, but there is no way I can do justice to the breadth and depth of these responses in just this one space. I plan to do a few stories in The Washington Post about what I learned, starting with this:

Much of what I thought about home schooling was wrong. The conventional wisdom about this rapidly growing dimension of American education is too simple, too stereotyped and too stale.

For instance, the Home School Legal Defense Association, despite its energetic lawyers and many admirers, is not the leader of home schooling in this country. There is no leader, and no reigning ideology. There are instead at least a million American children — the real figure is probably twice that number — whose families want them to learn at home for many reasons, often having little to do with religion or politics.

The common image of home-schoolers as lockstep religious conservatives falls apart when you discover that some of these parents have been shunned by their fundamentalist churches for teaching their kids at home rather than sending them to the church’s school. Some home-schoolers love the new for-profit online teaching programs like K12. Some think they are a corporate plot. Some parents are home-schooling because their kids were learning more quickly than their teachers could keep up with. Some are home-schooling because their kids were learning more slowly than their public school teachers had patience for. Some home-school because their children were unhappy at school. Some home-school because they could not meet their needs any other way.

Once the parents finished politely explaining all the things I had wrong in my column, they got to the heart of the matter. In a hundred different ways they expressed their joy in being able to spend every day, all day, with their children and join them, as a family, in discovering the world and themselves. I also received several interesting messages from what I think are the best judges of the results, young adults who were home-schooled, but let’s start with the parents.

Michelle Shaver of Springfield, Ill., has home-schooled her son Alex, 16, and her daughter Abigail, 6, for three years. “Home education was a great deal of work, but there was something more I hadn’t considered,” she said. “It was rewarding. I could get to know my children, especially my son, as a person, an individual, not as a member of that mysterious group called teenagers. My husband and I could impart our own values as part of our children’s education. . . . A new world opened up to me.”

Adele Schneider of Des Moines, Iowa, said her husband Paul had to work many weekends and evenings. When their children were in school, they rarely saw him. But “home-schooling allowed us to take Tuesday off if that was Dad’s day off and do school on Saturday,” she said. “If he went in later and worked late, they could hang out with him in the morning and start school later. What a gift!”

Angela Kriel of Escondido, Calif., said, “If people were able to spend more time with their kids they would find they like them more, they are more tolerant with them and patience is acquired through practice.”

Public school educators often worry that the children of such people will not learn necessary social skills. But home-schooling parents said their children learned how to deal with other people just fine, particularly with the many adults they encountered when they visited the library or went to church or did chores around the neighborhood. With their parents so often at their side, they were able to see what good manners and self-confidence looked like, rather than be forced to adopt the jungle code of the average high school corridor. In many families one parent stays at home to supervise the home schooling, although they often do some work there to pay the bills, or trade off with other home-schooling parents when they have to be away.

I was wrong to dismiss what some home-schoolers call “unschooling,” a unstructured approach inspired by the writings of home-schooling guru John Holt. Parents who use the term say it does not mean just sending your kids out to play all day, but letting them choose what to study. My concern about poll data showing young adults not reading newspapers much after being home-schooled ignored the fact that they are of the generation that is more likely to get stay in touch with the world through Web sites like this one, a choice I naturally applaud.

Some who wrote me think home schooling can do real harm. Liz Sommers of Vienna, Va., said she is raising a 17-year-old who was unschooled by her mother until she was 13. “She still can’t multiply or divide,” Sommers said of the girl. “Her mother never taught her how at the age when her brain would have taken to it. She is a GOOD mathematician, in honors calculus, . . . but one with no arithmetic skills at all. Her writing is improving. She is a slow reader, and because of the unschooling and emotional problems, it is hard to get her to read assigned work.”

Elizabeth Bennet of St. Louis said she thinks about home-schooling her children full time, and feels parents can do at least as good a job as a regular teacher, given that they have so much more time. But, she said, “I worry that my children will miss out on a common national experience, and thus feel removed from our national society. . . . I believe that our country needs to have certain shared experiences so that we can debate public policy issues and communicate with each other.”

But most of the home-schooling parents who wrote me said their only communication problem was the frequent assumption by non-home-schooling parents that they were off their rockers. Kelly Donovan Middleton, who home-schools her son and daughter in Anacortes, Wash., wished those parents could get a taste of her new life, such as what happened when Colin, her 9-year-old, became interested in a local pond. “We explored the shore, took a canoe out into it, and explored the floating islands in the middle,” she said. These turned out to be old logs covered with soil, moss and, to Colin’s delight, colonies of carnivorous plants. He read everything he could find in the local libraries and nurseries about this species and made friends with a nursery owner who specialized in them. He has been living, breathing, analyzing, discussing and raising Drosera rotundifolia ever since.

Alicia Knight, the die-hard anti-home-schooler, changed her mind gradually. The first person to work on her was her own son, who heard her say she was never going to home-school him and took that to mean that home schooling was a viable alternative to the torture he was suffering at school and with homework.

She resisted. She tried testing, child study meetings, educational consultants and high-priced tutors. But “by the time my son was in the fifth grade and thoroughly miserable, I was willing to do anything — even if it meant having to bite my tongue and join up with the wing-nuts who I thought dominated the home-schooling scene,” she said.

She met some home-schoolers who were not Republicans. She took her entire family, even her mother, to a home-schooling conference organized by the Virginia Home Education Association. And on the first day of her uncertain new life as a home-schooling mom, her son walked into her home office with a stack of books under his arm. “Hey Mom,” he said. “These are all the books that I’ve been wanting to read but never had a chance. Can I read them now?” He read for 11 hours that day and 10 hours the next. She decided this might not be so bad after all.

Knight’s younger son Lee is also home-schooling now. They play computer games, visit museums, hike in parks, find community places to enjoy art, music, fencing and swimming and read a lot of books. The boys have friends who home-school and friends you go to public and private schools. “In this presidential election cycle,” Knight said, “they gained first-hand knowledge of retail politics and the electoral process by working precincts for Howard Dean during the Iowa Caucuses, where they also got an important lesson in character development in the face of a huge loss.”

Friendswood, Tex., home-schooler psam ordener, who does not use capital letters in her name, said she, like Knight, was a super-involved public school parent, until she found her third grader getting a string of 100s on his tests and the teacher saying “no” whenever she suggested a way of accelerating him. The principal refused to let him skip a grade, and said out loud that he thought she should try private or home schooling instead. Her adopted first grader, of African-American heritage, had one good teacher and one he grew to fear because, ordener said, she “saw him as ‘black’ and expected him to be slow, dishonest and a discipline problem.”

As home-schoolers, her sons made good progress. The older one returned to high school in ninth grade, but after a few weeks asked if he could home-school in pre-AP English, speech and world geography, since he already knew what those classes were teaching, and just go to school for geometry, biology and Latin. The school refused, so he enrolled in community college at age 14 and now, three semesters later, has just transferred to the University of Houston.

The formerly home-schooled students who wrote me were often similarly enthusiastic, but they had no qualms about discussing the downside of their experience. Justin Morton, who home-schooled in Portland, Ore., from second to eighth grade, said the worst part was the boredom: “When you’re home-schooled, you are stuck in your house with your parents and siblings all day every day, and it gets incredibly dull. My best friend was the mailman.”

Ben Beliles, having just finished his first year at the University of Virginia Law School at age 21, said home schooling was good for him, but he thought some home-schooling parents were too strict. After spending so many years under daylong parental discipline, he said, “you will find that many of these home-schoolers rebel against their parents’ hopes and dreams for their lives, negating the best aspects of home schooling.”

Marya DeGrow said she liked the free-form nature of the unschooling movement, and did not have the kind of experience Liz Simmons complained of. Because of the flexibility of her lessons, DeGrow said, “I was able to pursue something I was really interested in: politics. I was able to begin an internship at a state think tank at the age of 14. This ultimately led to the institute hiring me on staff at the age of 18. I still work there as an education policy research associate. I also went to Hillsdale College in Michigan and graduated in 2002 with a B.A. in political economy.”

And then there were the e-mails from Sean E. Noonan, 29, of Ashburn, Va., who was home-schooled from the beginning of the second grade when he lived in Ventura County, Calif. Home-schooled children, he said, do have trouble relating to public school students, but it seemed a temporary problem to him because the fashions and cliques of the playground evaporate for most people in adulthood.

Parents can be pretty weak teachers, he said. “I was not taught so much as I taught myself,” he said. His parents “had no idea what they were doing. They, like many others, sought out help and advice, but it was mostly from people who really didn’t know what they were doing either.”

He said he has mixed feelings about the Home School Legal Defense Association. They do fine legal work, but the social, religious and political beliefs of some of the leaders are too much for him. He supports the idea of mild state oversight, such as occasional required testing of home-schoolers, just to make sure parents are doing their jobs. But, he added, “home-school children should not be held to higher standards than their public school peers.”

Noonan and his wife have not made up their minds about home-schooling their children. They think they will do it at the beginning, but there is a good chance they will send them to public or private schools later on.

There was one thing, however, he said he wanted to emphasize, that took me back to what I had heard from nearly every parent who had risked this sharp change in their daily routine.

“I don’t think home schooling is for everyone,” Noonan said. “Not every parent can, or should, teach their children at home.”

“I will say, however, that every parent should be involved in their children’s education, and I think one big reason public school fails our children is because parents simply aren’t involved in their children’s lives.”

By Janice Lloyd, USA TODAY

The ranks of America’s home-schooled children have continued a steady climb over the past five years, and new research suggests broader reasons for the appeal.

The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007. “There’s no reason to believe it would not keep going up,” says Gail Mulligan, a statistician at the center.

Traditionally, the biggest motivations for parents to teach their children at home have been moral or religious reasons, and that remains a top pick when parents are asked to explain their choice.

The 2003 survey gave parents six reasons to pick as their motivation. (They could choose more than one.) The 2007 survey added a seventh: an interest in a “non-traditional approach,” a reference to parents dubbed “unschoolers,” who regard standard curriculum methods and standardized testing as counterproductive to a quality education.

“We wanted to identify the parents who are part of the ‘unschooling’ movement,” Mulligan says. The “unschooling” group is viewed by educators as a subset of home-schoolers, who generally follow standard curriculum and grading systems. “Unschoolers” create their own systems.

The category of “other reasons” rose to 32% in 2007 from 20% in 2003 and included family time and finances. That suggests the demographics are expanding beyond conservative Christian groups, says Robert Kunzman, an associate professor at Indiana University’s School of Education. Anecdotal evidence indicates many parents want their kids to learn at their own pace, he says.

Fewer home-schoolers were enrolled part time in traditional schools to study subjects their parents lack knowledge to teach. Eighteen percent were enrolled part time in 1999 and 2003, compared with 16% in 2007. Kunzman says this might be because of the availability of online instruction.

The 2007 estimates are based on data from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the National Household Education Surveys. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, says the estimates are low because home-schooling parents “are significantly less likely to answer government-sponsored surveys.”

“Thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy throne to all generations.”
Psalm 89:4

With a heavier focus on mentorship and discipleschip, we are somewhat unique in our mission as a support group.  To learn more about how we differ from other homeschool support groups, please visit our “Is CEDE Right For You?” page.  To learn more about our mission and what we believe, please read over:

• Our Mission
• Our Statement of Faith

An aspect of our mentoring/discipleship focus includes educating families on important and foundational issues surrounding home education (including homeschooling laws/freedoms, parental rights, etc), Biblical family foundations, and applying Scripture to all of life.  We desire to utilize our Blog and email list to provide encouragement and share valuable information and helpful resources pertaining to these areas.  We pray these will strengthen and challenge us as we sharpen and spur one another on in the faith.  “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” (Proverbs 27:17)

 We look forward to seeing how the LORD will move and work in the hearts and lives of homeschooling families through CEDE.  Thank you for visiting!