In California and across the nation, we are alarmed by the growing number of Christian home schoolers who are enrolling in charter school programs. Below is a summary of most of the reasons why we are concerned. This is based upon my full-time research and advocacy work in behalf of private home educators in California for the last 15 years.The battle over home schooling in America for the last 20 years has been shifting from eradication of home education to growing attempts to control home educators and recapture them for public school programs (such as charter schools) where they are under the authority and supervision of public school officials. Nothing less than the future of home schooling and the freedom of parents to train their own children in God’s ways are at stake.Can education in a charter school be Christian?A true Christian education means that all goals, rules and policies, staffing, student and adult relationships, structures of authority, methodologies, sources of funding and resources, activities, materials, and content of all subject areas must be consistent with a biblical worldview. In every aspect, the entire education system must openly glorify and please God through our Lord Jesus Christ. A thoroughly Christian education is expressed in an open, non-apologetic way–in writing, verbally, and in all actions–on the part of every participant.Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven. (Matt. 5:16)
Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Cor. 10:31)
There are inescapable problems in this regard inherent in all charter school programs and all other public school programs.Most states have either a state constitution or a statutory provision which prohibits any sectarian instruction in any public school program. In addition, federal law is very clear in prohibiting religious instruction in public schools that receive federal funding. Title 20, United States Code, & sect; 8066(1)(E) states,The term “charter school” means a public school that. . . is nonsectarian in its programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations, and is not affiliated with a sectarian school or religious institution.
About the author
Roy Hanson is the director of Family Protection Ministries, which he established in 1986 to monitor the California state legislature for bills affecting home schooling families and their freedoms. God has used FPM (working closely with Home School Legal Defense Association and Christian Home Educators of California) to win dozens of legislative battles against a full-time, predominately non-home school friendly state legislature. Roy and his wife, Debra, home schooled their children from first grade through high school.Some charter school administrators have claimed that since parents are not employees of the charter school, parents can provide and use their own Christian curriculum. These administrators usually suggest that the parent not report any religious books being used, and not have their children make any references to religious doctrine, or Scripture, or Christ in any assignments being turned in.What does this teach children? It teaches them to lie. (Luke 17:1-2) It teaches them a utilitarian mindset–that the ends justify the means. It teaches them to keep quiet about their belief in God and His Word and their hope of salvation in Jesus Christ when it suits their financial interests and convenience. On the other hand, using materials based on a worldview that isn’t biblical teaches children to compartmentalize their life and to be dualistic in their worldview–to believe that God’s Word does not speak to every area of life.Excerpts from a letter by a California home schooling mother illustrate this issue:We were promised funding and the freedom to establish our own goals and methods, as long as they were not doctrinal. We could teach doctrine “on our own time” or use non-funded godly materials, only documenting the outcome not the method.
I was choosing to pull out of the private sector and place over our schooling efforts an authority that required me to separate God within our home. I would have been teaching our children a double standard: God is O.K. for home but not for our school. Since our school is in our home that standard would not have stood for God at all!
Strings attached—Increasing regulationsMany charter schools began with few regulations or with a lack of clarity or agreement on what the regulations are. Regulations are inherent and inevitable for several reasons, including stewardship accountability for expenditure of public tax funds and for the prevention and detection of fraud. Experience has shown that the direction is always from less regulation to more.Some of the increases in regulation include:prohibiting Christian content;
detailed written reporting of lesson content and work completed;
placing the parent under the control of a certified teacher;
specifying what subjects are covered and how;requiring standardized testing; and
required regular contact with certified teachers to evaluate not only educational goals but more subjective things like physical, mental, and emotional health and signs of child abuse or neglect, possibly involving a home visit.New legislation and changes in regulations continue to be proposed and enacted in charter school states.Testing indirectly controls curriculumIn most states, charter school students are required to take the same tests that are required in all public schools. A few states may allow parents to opt their child out of the test, but, at some point, a charter school must prove to the chartering agency that its students are meeting academic expectations.Politically correct thinking influences the content of standardized tests. This leads to a bias against objective truth and against a Christian worldview.Teachers and program directors protect their jobs by “teaching to the test,” that is–teaching the skills and content to be tested so their school or program will continue to receive federal and state funding. The tests heavily influence academic content–tests indirectly determine the curriculum!Sends message: Parents unqualifiedEvery parent who turns to the government’s charter school to help them provide their children’s education sends the erroneous and dangerous message to legislators and educrats that children cannot be successfully raised without the help of a government certified expert, and without the help of the state to pay for the resources they need. The louder this message gets, the harder it will be to keep the government from inserting itself in every aspect of families’ lives.Most public policy makers, public educators, and other professional groups see the parents as just one member of a team to prepare all children to be good citizens–”It takes a village” to raise a child. Charter schools fit in well with this government-as-parent / government-as-partner statist agenda for America.Family Protection Ministries
Family Protection Ministries depends upon the gifts of its supporters. It is essential to the continued freedom of home schoolers in the Golden State that we all support FPM. They spot and work very effectively with legislation at a level that no one else in California does.
Contributions may be sent to:Family Protection MinistriesP.O. Box 730
Lincoln, CA 95648-0730
Those who give $40 or more per calendar year will receive FPM’s Legal-Legislative Update newsletter.Not within civil government’s God-given jurisdictionGod has established three basic social governmental institutions, each with its own mutually exclusive jurisdictions of responsibility and authority. They are family government, church government, and civil government.God has assigned the responsibility and authority to raise and train up children exclusively to the family (Deut. 6:7, Eph. 5:22-6:4, I Tim. 5:8, et al.). On the other hand, God’s ordained purpose of civil government is to restrain evil (Romans 13:4; I Peter 2:14, et al.). God also ordained that the family should get support for its needs in three ways: primarily through labor of the family, and secondarily through voluntary charity and inheritance. God did not ordain any separate institution for education or socialization of children. Nor did He ordain that families should receive financial support for these from civil government.From God’s perspective, what we call Christian “education” must be derived from the concept of discipleship, which incorporates training, instruction, and correction in accordance with God’s Word. The care and discipleship (education) of minor children belong exclusively to the parents. God has not given us the permission to relinquish any part of our authority and responsibility to provide this for our children.When we choose not to look to the government, but rather to take full personal responsibility for our children’s education, we acknowledge the authority of God and His Word in our lives. We teach our children to honor God, His Word, and his ordained jurisdictions of authority and responsibility. We also teach them to be content with what God provides our family through our faith and diligent, obedient labors.Let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
Higher taxes and bigger governmentThere is big money involved in charter school programs designed for home schoolers. Major political battles are being fought over geographical turf rights for charter schools as they are lucrative moneymakers.Two-thirds of the voters in the United States think that lower taxes would have the most immediate positive impact on them and their families.1 Paradoxically, large numbers of people who claim to want smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom continue to clamor for their “fair share” in a plethora of government-subsidized programs. Each individual who chooses to participate in a government-funded program, like a charter school, creates a threefold demand on the government:a need for more money to pay for the goods or services they want;
a need for more bureaucrats to administer the programs to provide those goods and services; and
a need for financial accountability and laws to regulate the use of that money.But I’m only getting my tax money back. Wrong!Many parents argue that their taxes support public education and that they are justified in having that money pay for their own children’s education. In reality, parents who choose charter schools increase the tax burden on their neighbors.Most parents only pay enough taxes designated for education funding to cover about one-half of the public education costs for just one of their children.2Threat to private home schoolingIn my opinion, at this time, charter schools are the greatest threat to our home school freedoms and the heart and soul of the Christian home school movement.First, compromise of freedoms and complacent dependency are inherent in receiving government funding. Charter school families have become just one more special interest group fighting for their piece of the government pie.Private home schoolers are not a special interest group, in the sense that we do not go to the government asking for a handout. We are rarely asking for legislation. We are most often fighting to prevent the passage of laws that would infringe on the God-given inalienable rights of families. The perception of home schoolers in general by the public and state legislatures and Congress is being damaged by charter school “home schoolers” looking to preserve and expand their handouts.Second, the vigorous recruitment of home schoolers into the growing number of charter schools in our state is having a disastrous effect on the private Christian home school movement and the organizations that support it. Several private home school groups have either gone under or have been taken over by charter school parents and leaders. Others have lost significant numbers and are having a tough time just surviving.In June of 1997, Alaska enacted one of the best home school laws in the nation for private home schooling. However, at the same time, Alaska also enacted a charter school law. In just three short years, their statewide Christian support organization lost over two-thirds of its membership and attendance at their conferences dropped drastically. Their organization is a shell of what it once was. The influence of the private home schoolers in their Capitol has also been negatively affected since this group is now seen as a shrinking minority compared to the now larger charter school home school community.Third, as the number of private home schoolers becomes smaller than those enrolled in public school programs, we will see a new attack upon the precious freedoms so many pioneering private home schoolers and organizations worked so hard to establish and defend. There is a growing attempt to marginalize private home schoolers as a radical and unreasonable element of a larger “reasonable” group that understands the need for government help and supervision by certified experts. Conclusion Every Christian parent being lured to a charter school by “free” services and money must seriously consider and understand the long-term consequences of his or her decision.If we ask the government to provide what God has not ordained government to provide, we tell our children and the world around us that we do not believe our God is sufficient to meet all of our needs.© 2001 Roy Hanson, Jr. Permission to reprint is granted if article is reproduced in a complete and unedited manner and the proper attribution given.

Parents are people, too, and at times are living under a variety of pressures. When they are physically tired and emotionally ratepayer, adults do find it hard sometimes to except and to understand the emotional outbursts of a child. Frequently they share the feeling of the mother, who was playing cowboys and Indians with her three active children. As one of the boys aimed his gun at his mother and yelled I got you. She collapse in a heap and did not get up. And it site his bystander rushed over to us, to her to see whether she was all right, opening one I & the mother replied. Sure, I always do this is the only chance I ever get to rest!

When we understand that it is sometimes our own frayed nerves that prompt us to dam up the flow of a children’s feelings, we are able to deal with their emotions for objectively.

The result of a child’s been taught to conceal his emotions may strike us so deeply that he not only hide his feelings from others. But, to decree loses touch with himself. This had happened, for example, when we heard a youngster he made the other day that he wasn’t sure whether he was hungry, afraid, jealous or envious. I don’t know how I feel he said. In this case being unable to identify his emotions intensify this frustration and left him unable to control the feelings he could not recognize and the underlying causes of which he could not understand. It’s things we don’t face that we cannot handle. If one has not been taught to recognize and accept his emotions for what they are, he is not in a position to control them.

As a consequence of having been taught to hide his feelings, by the time the child reaches adolescence but natural quality and flow of his emotions frequently have been overlaid with many pretenses and distortions. We cannot understand or recognize the source source of his emotions. This prevents him from becoming a mature person, for the mature person can look reality in the face. He can accept his own inner cravings and impulses and deal with them appropriately. One cannot do this if he has been taught to feel so ashamed of guilty because of his emotions that he is repressed them.

People for frayed to assert themselves or who avoid all kinds of competition may have become that way because they were severely reprimanded in childhood for showing signs of jealousy, anger or some other negative impulse. Children were praised only for controlling their emotions may feel this is the one way in which they can excel. The result may be that they become retiring and sees a certain themselves.

This important than one not carry into adulthood feelings that belong to child simply because he never was taught to recognize, except and understand those childhood feelings and thereby learn to master them. Without once being aware of it, the extreme anger he feels towards a friend who failed to show up for a lunch engagement can occur because it subconsciously reminds him of his unexpressed attitudes towards his father who deserted him in childhood. The pressure a woman feels always to please her woman friends may be traceable to unacknowledged childhood feeling that her mother didn’t want her. The adults may always be silent at a party because as a child he had unexpressed feeling that other people were not interested in what he had to say. There is a vast difference between concealing emotions and coming to terms with them. In the first instance, they come to rule the individual without his knowing it in the latter case, the person rules them and uses them wisely through facing his emotions for what they are.

Parents are people, too, and at times are living under a variety of pressures. When they are physically tired and emotionally ratepayer, adults do find it hard sometimes to except and to understand the emotional outbursts of a child. Frequently they share the feeling of the mother, who was playing cowboys and Indians with her three active children. As one of the boys aimed his gun at his mother and yelled I got you. She collapse in a heap and did not get up. And it site his bystander rushed over to us, to her to see whether she was all right, opening one I & the mother replied. Sure, I always do this is the only chance I ever get to rest!

When we understand that it is sometimes our own frayed nerves that prompt us to dam up the flow of a children’s feelings, we are able to deal with their emotions for objectively.

The result of a child’s been taught to conceal his emotions may strike us so deeply that he not only hide his feelings from others. But, to decree loses touch with himself. This had happened, for example, when we heard a youngster he made the other day that he wasn’t sure whether he was hungry, afraid, jealous or envious. I don’t know how I feel he said. In this case being unable to identify his emotions intensify this frustration and left him unable to control the feelings he could not recognize and the underlying causes of which he could not understand. It’s things we don’t face that we cannot handle. If one has not been taught to recognize and accept his emotions for what they are, he is not in a position to control them.

As a consequence of having been taught to hide his feelings, by the time the child reaches adolescence but natural quality and flow of his emotions frequently have been overlaid with many pretenses and distortions. We cannot understand or recognize the source source of his emotions. This prevents him from becoming a mature person, for the mature person can look reality in the face. He can accept his own inner cravings and impulses and deal with them appropriately. One cannot do this if he has been taught to feel so ashamed of guilty because of his emotions that he is repressed them.

People for frayed to assert themselves or who avoid all kinds of competition may have become that way because they were severely reprimanded in childhood for showing signs of jealousy, anger or some other negative impulse. Children were praised only for controlling their emotions may feel this is the one way in which they can excel. The result may be that they become retiring and sees a certain themselves.

This important than one not carry into adulthood feelings that belong to child simply because he never was taught to recognize, except and understand those childhood feelings and thereby learn to master them. Without once being aware of it, the extreme anger he feels towards a friend who failed to show up for a lunch engagement can occur because it subconsciously reminds him of his unexpressed attitudes towards his father who deserted him in childhood. The pressure a woman feels always to please her woman friends may be traceable to unacknowledged childhood feeling that her mother didn’t want her. The adults may always be silent at a party because as a child he had unexpressed feeling that other people were not interested in what he had to say. There is a vast difference between concealing emotions and coming to terms with them. In the first instance, they come to rule the individual without his knowing it in the latter case, the person rules them and uses them wisely through facing his emotions for what they are.

Look for the Flowers

We are so beset these days by storing the children engaging in vandalism, so deluged by reports of children guilty of law violations, so overcome with the evidence of their acts of cruelty and violence that we are forced to the conclusion that the extension range of juvenile depredations today were unheard of in previous generations. Communities all over the country have justifiably become aroused to the extent that noble efforts are being exerted on many fronts. In an attempt to stem the rising tide of juvenile delinquency. One member of the homeschooling co-op closed a timely and sobering question recently when she said, I have been thinking about in the about how I go about cultivating my flower bed. Leads to spring up among the flowers, but I don’t vote all my gardening hours to getting rid of the leads. I know the flowers are still there in the flower bed, in fact, regardless of how many feet I pull, I am still not going to have any clues. When blooming season calms unless I devote some attention to the flowers to. The growth of the leads must be curbed, but the flowers must be cultivated, marriage, and watered. Have we become so consumed with the task of eradicating the leads in a game the lives of our children that we have overlooked the fact there are some flowers growing day or two, and that these flowers need our attention? I wish that we could hear more about the art of cultivating the flowers.

When we observe children carefully, wiki node is abundant evidence of the fact that there is the noble intention, a high impulse, the sympathetic inclination, the human response in them. It is hard sometimes for us to describe these traits we see in our children, because we have not considered them often and seriously enough to have developed a vocabulary suitable for depicting this admirable behavior. But, oh, what a adjectives had at our disposal for describing the little tirade across the street.

Many parents and teachers are so accustomed to looking for the objectional behavior in children, even accepting it with understanding and patience when it expresses itself, that they overlook the child’s concern for an effort to help the crippled dog on the sidewalk, little Janey’s concern for the lonely old lady who lives alone in the next block and Taylor is pleased with his family provide shoes for his schoolmates who has no shoes to wear to school. Perhaps parents sometimes ignore these humanitarian tendencies in their children because they have been led to believe that the child ought to feel his love for himself and not because the type of behavior exhibits. Of course, the child was loved and excepted only by behavior or only when his behavior is acceptable does have a problem: but so does the child, whose expression of kindness and tenderness is brushed aside or ignored by grown-ups.

The British psychologist, see. W. Valentine, in the normal child and his abnormalities, related some of the experiences which children meet in having their noble impulses washed by unthinking adults. He tells the story of a child of 16 months who always wept when he was told about Tommy Greene. Putting a kitty cat in the well. He reported that Robert Southey the public was so distraught with grief at the end and the death of Billy Pringles paid that he begged his mother not to go on with the reading of the story. When we observe children closely we see a spontaneous and sympathetic response to the needs of others helping a friend in trouble, comforting the plane included several laws, wanting to relieve the suffering of an injured animal. These expressions of the child’s nobler in this are as worthy of careful and sensitive handling, as are his outbursts of anger and hate.

Encourage the child and his desire to be helpful, approve of and share his feelings of love and concern for the unfortunate. Communicate to him. The fact that these attitudes are really important ones, and that they constitute the basis for meaningful living. These are responses that adults can make in helping the flowers. He never flower beds to grow, even while remembering that there is also work to be done in curbing the lead.

em>Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online K-12 Christian homeschooling programs and homeschool Christian curriculum. For more information about how online homeschooling is revolutionizing homeschooling, please go to www.LearningByGrace.org today.

Permission is granted for the duplication of this article if it is reproduced in its entirety including this sentence.

An important aspect of learning to get along with others is learning to be considerate of others. Courtesy is not in born: he just talked courtesy does not well up from the depths of the child loving desire to see other people happy at the cost of his own convenience inconvenience. He does not just naturally like to take his turn, to wait for an older person to go ahead of him, to take the smaller cookie so that Johnny can have a larger one. This is not the way human beings are made up: they have to be taught this kind of conduct.

As the child grows older, he’s going to find himself in social situations, which will be cumbersome for him, unless through parental teaching, he has the tools with which to cope with these exigencies. The more tools with which the youngster has been provided through his early training, the better prepared. He is to handle these new social situations, which he will be things. I surrounding the boy or girl with an atmosphere of politeness in the home, I teaching him or her to say, pardon me, please, thank you, I’m sorry, parents are teaching the child valuable social skills which he will need later.

Some object that the small child should not be taught these niceties of behavior until he is old enough to understand the meaning of what he is saying. Teaching the child what to say and when to say it may not have much meaning for him in his very early years, but the child who has been taught these courtesies gradually comes to feel the meaning behind them. This is especially true if the child is exposed to the climate of politeness in the home. Having cultivated these niceties of conduct, the child is more comfortable with himself and with others.

This learning of good manners is closely related to the child’s development of social skills. When he expresses the discourtesy his consideration of others, other people warm-up to the child were madly: they like him more sincerely. This in turn causes the child to like these people more than he otherwise would. We are, as we’ve seen, concerned that the child develop self-confidence and inner emotional security. In doing that is, let’s not forget that external security is equally important. We work against the child’s developing external security. When we fail to cultivate in Hindi habits and attitudes of courtesy.

One of the most important traits of an employee is his ability to get along with others. This is what at least one employment interviewer looks for first in a potential employee. He states that the most frequent reason for discharging of workers is that they become troublemakers because they have never learned how to get along with fellow employees or their supervisors.

As we increasingly live and work in closer proximity with more and more people in our Hively specialized society, it becomes increasingly important that our children develop qualities of personality which enabled them to sustain happy and harmonious relationships with others. This is a significant aspect of maturity. In fact, it can truthfully be said that the degree of maturity, which one has achieved is measured in proportion to the extent to which he is progressed from the utter selfishness and self-centeredness of childhood toward the responsibilities of social living.

Because they always exist in relation to other individuals personality problems which interfere with the establishing of harmonious human relationships cannot be corrected in isolation from other people. The fact is fact may be illustrated by comparing the individual and society to the keyboard of a piano. The value of a single key lies not in the fact that it is 156, of all blood notes, but in its infinite relation to other nodes.

The primary group is the family: therefore, satisfactory personal relationship ships here will prepare the child for harmonious relations elsewhere. It is necessary, however, the growing child to further develop social skills through contacts outside the home, particularly with those of his own age group. When a member of his peer group shouts at the child I don’t like your attitude. The child begins to understand that he is going to be accepted by his playmate. He’d better ease up on being such a brat. Personality is modified to such first-hand experiences in social interaction. In these direct relationships, aggressive and hostile tribes that are integral part of the child’s personality, must be changed: he learns how to control them because of the necessities imposed by the group. And because of the conditions under which he is accepted by others in it.

Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online K-12 Christian homeschooling programs and homeschool Christian curriculum. For more information about how online homeschooling is revolutionizing homeschooling, please go to www.LearningByGrace.org today.

Permission is granted for the duplication of this article if it is reproduced in its entirety including this sentence.