Anyone who has previously been home-schooled or is currently home-schooling has heard of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Founded in 1983, HSLDA worked together with local school officials to aid the home-school community in protecting a home-schooler’s rights. Then came the new leader of HSLDA, Michael Farris. By the mid-1990s, Michael Farris came into control and started a political movement that focused on networking systems and a positive public image (Coleman, 2013). HSLDA states that their mission is “to preserve and advance the fundamental, God-given, constitutional rights of parents and other legally responsible for their children and to direct their education” (hslda.org). The HSLDA has changed from a non-profit that is there to help families, to a massive political power with an underlying motive to reaching a goal of “radical social and religious vision centered on a patriarchal family structure where stay at home mothers raise large numbers of children with the explicit purpose of launching their offspring into the government, education, and entertainment industries with the intent on making the United States a nation based in Christian beliefs” (Coleman, 2013). Now, no longer is this political power helping the children, they are instead harming them in many, many ways.
“Children belong to God, but the responsibility and authority to raise and education them is delegated to their parents”
Chris Klicka, a former HSLDA’s senior counsel, had an opinion on children. He was quoted as saying, “Children belong to God, but the responsibility and authority to raise and education them is delegated to their parents” (Stollar, 2014). In other words, the man that Michael Farris supported and the man on the counsel of HSLDA is saying that 1) Children belong to God, not themselves and 2) God gave the responsibility and authority of the parents to education and raise their children as they see fit. This is still the philosophy of HSLDA today (Stollar, 2014). From a legal standpoint, HSLDA views children as their parent’s property and the parent can do whatever they deem fit. In a later article published by homeschoolers anonymous, Stollar recounts the many abuses HSLDA have stood by in order to support their harmful philosophy: “[they] have repeatedly gone on record opposing any rights for children. They refused to launch a public awareness campaign about child abuse for their members. They have made light of educationally neglected children. They have gone to bat for parents who put their children in cages. They have defended convicted child abusers…” and the list continues on and on (Stollar, 2015).
After reading this particular article, I decided to look into all of these offenses that Stollar claims HSLDA committed to see for myself if that was true. Sad to say, Stollar was not lying. What concerns me most is the regulations that HSLDA opposes for the sake of the parent’s right. An article written by Libby Anne unearths the dirty side to HSLDA’s politics. Anne states that on several occasions, HSLDA has stepped in to defend child abusers because the state had determined that the children were unsafe at home and needed to attend a public school instead of continuing to home-school in the abusive home (Anne, 2013).
Child abusers, called a “hero”
One of these people is a man that HSLDA had called “a Hero”. Michael and Sharon Gravelle were accused of child abuse and their eleven adopted children were removed from their home. The accounts the children gave stated that they were kept in cages made of wood and chicken wire with alarms on the doors. The parents stated that it was to keep the children safe… (Anne, 2013). There’s your first clue. If you have to lock your children up to keep them safe, then you must be doing something wrong. There were also accounts that the children had punishments that included “spankings with a board, being held underwater, and having the child’s face shoved against the wall until his nose bleed” (Anne, 2013). Hearing this, how could HSLDA defend the couple who did these horrible unthinkable acts to their children? HSLDA’s attorney Scott Somerville declared that Gravelle was “a hero”. Why? Presumably, it was because he had adopted special needs children (Anne, 2013).
It’s not only the blatantly obvious harm HSLDA is doing. They are also very powerful in Washington and having home-schoolers get on their political band wagon. No matter how small, if the law or mandate is related to home-schooling, you can guarantee that HSLDA has an opinion and it is most likely against the regulatory law or mandate. Take for instance, HSLDA’s article on the Arkansas Department of Education’s new law mandating that home-schoolers electronically file their notice of intent [to homeschool their children]. While HSLDA admits that most home-schoolers in Arkansas will have no objection to the new mandate, “any effort by the department of education to act without legal authority in eliminate paper filings poses a threat to freedom and must be addressed” (hslda.org). I might be biased, but I think that filing paperwork electronically is a good thing. Electronic filing will help save paper, can save time and money by not having to print the paper and either mail it in or drive to the school, and will also help the school district organize and digitize files for ease of access.
HSLDA is simply scared of anything new that may later encroach on the parent’s freedom to home-school their children. They accomplish creating fear in home-school families by publishing newsletters of all the “wrongs” the government has done to families and how children are being unfairly taken away from their families. Even if the family did abuse their children, how dare the government take away that parent’s right! On the bottom of every page on HSLDA’s online website, there is also a message, “Protect Your Family… Your support for our work enables us to defend individual families threatened by the government officials and protect homeschooling freedom for all.” Sounds like fear mongering to me.
Sources:
Anne, L. 2013. HSLDA: Man Who Kept Children in Cages “a Hero”. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2013/05/hslda-man-who-kept-children-in-cages-a-her.html
Coleman, R. 2013. A Brief History of Homeschooling. http://politicsofchildhood.org/tag/hslda/
Stollar, R. 2014. Children as Divine Rental Property: An Exposition on HSLDA’s Philosophy of Parental Rights. Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out. https://homeschoolersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/childrenasproperty.pdf
Stollar, R. 2015. Homeschooled Kids Matter: A Response to Will Estrada. https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/homeschooled-kids-matter-a-response-to-will-estrada/
For More Information:
Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO)
Homeschoolers Anonymous
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