legal

Thomas Morrison, state representative 54th District, talks about his ties to homeschooling.

The Proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

SECTION 1

The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

SECTION 2

Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

SECTION 3

No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

See the Parental Rights website for more information.

J. Michael Smith is the President of Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization which he cofounded with Michael Farris in 1983 to protect the right of parents who choose home education as their way to satisfy the compulsory attendance law in the various states and Canada. Home School Legal Defense Association now represents over 80,000 member families.

Mike and his wife Elizabeth began homeschooling their four children in 1981. Their oldest daughter, Kari, is a paralegal in San Francisco. Their next daughter, Chrissy, was their first homeschool graduate and is a graduate of UCLA. Their two youngest children, Andrew and Erin, were also homeschooled and graduated from George Mason University.

His columns on home education appear regularly in the Washington Times, and he has been a guest on numerous television and radio programs, including Focus on the Family with Jim Dobson and Hannity and Colmes on Fox News. He believes that there is a revival taking place in America through the homeschool movement and that, through the second and third generation of homeschoolers, there is great potential to return America to its moral and religious foundation.

Mike will give four workshops, including one keynote address.

Here is just one of those workshops -- don't miss this one:

The Power of Praise with Our Children

Life and death is in the power of tongue. Deep scars can occur as a result of negative, condemning words and withholding of praise and affirmation. The goal of this talk is to ensure that our children do not grow up feeling rejection from us as parents because of bad communication. This talk uses James 3:1–10 as a model for how we use words to edify and build up rather than to tear down. The talk will explore some ways that we use our tongue to injure our children and how we can use our tongue as an instrument of blessing. The talk’s goal is to develop a relationship with our child that lasts forever.

Home School Legal Defense Association lawyer Scott Woodruff discusses the most significant issue facing homeschoolers today. See the Parental Rights and HSLDA websites for more information on this topic.

Springfield, IL - Illinois lawmakers held a hearing February 15, 2011 to review Senate Bill 136, the Homeschool Registration Bill. If passed, the bill would require that all homeschooled children register with the Illinois State Board of Education. Proponents claim it will help them better offer services to homeschooled children and also keep tabs on evaluations of their education progress. Opponents claim another government bureaucracy will not help the children at all and will only act to bog parents down with more paper work. Homeschool parents and representatives also believe SB 136 would take away their freedom to educate their children.

The bill was eventually tabled. Illinois homechooling remains free.

Filmed and edited by Greg Bishop

On February 15, 2011 there occurred an event of monumental importance which will forever be remembered by Illinois homeschooling families. The whole story is detailed here and here and here, but I'll give you the short version.

There we were, just minding our own business -- in the cornfield catching mice for the science fair project, sitting on the couch working out that horrible quadratic equation, trying to write a haiku about a house finch, and finishing up memorizing the last line of Jabberwocky -- you know, like, just minding our own business, when along comes a few powerful lawmakers who must have had some time on their hands after making sure the state schools were all fine and ducky. They now turned their attention to homeschooling families -- thinking we needed to be "fixed."

Well, these lawmakers didn't know Illinois homeschoolers. Illinois is the free-est (as in, most free) state for homeschooling. There is no state more free. There is no registration in Illinois. No testing. No signing on a dotted line. Nothing. We have freedom.

End result -- with only a few days notice, 4000 homeschoolers gathered in Springfield on February 15 to ask lawmakers to leave us alone, please. Lawmakers saw the crowd, heard our testimony, felt our power and agreed. We all went home and lived happily ever after. Until next year, anyway.

"No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session."