Readers Anonymous

When I was homeschooling my kids people referred to my method as “unschooling.”  I thought the term was inaccurate.  Since my kids hadn’t been schooled how could they be unschooled?  Now I need to start unschooling.  I have to unschool myself and I’ve been way overschooled.

I understand that most blogs are not highly polished, many are in draft form.  I’ve just had the hardest time trying to get myself to post drafts.  I want to write about freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, and compulsory attendance.  It’s just such an enormous, interconnected subject and waiting until I can put it together in a presentable paper means nothing gets done.

So, with apologies for my inadequacies, here goes.

In 1642, the Colony of Massachusetts Bay enacted the first compulsory education law.  Compulsory education is distinctly different from compulsory attendance.  The compulsory education law required all parents to provide education in a trade and reading the principles of religion and the laws of the country.  Parents, or their substitutes (children were often apprenticed to a Master who became responsible for their education), were required to provide the education, there was no legislation establishing schools.  The law was amended in 1648 to provide payment from the town treasury to local masters.

These laws appear to be the first incursion of the state into a parents’ right to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

Thanks for visiting my page. I’ll use it to explore the legal and educational foundations and the ensuing consequences of the compulsory attendance statutes. I hope to establish a basic premise.

It is none of the government’s business what anyone thinks or reads.

Our First Amendment Freedom of Speech depends upon an individual’s freedom to think as he pleases and to speak and he thinks. At least Justice Brandeis thought so.

We’ve had education by the church and education by the state but they both had the same aim; to train the way we think and what we learn so they can control our very thoughts.

My own experience in elementary school convinced me that most of the time we are at school is time wasted. That is a lesson in itself.

The state filed criminal charges against me because I did not compel one of my children to attend school. (I didn’t compel any of them to attend school but the criminal charges concerned only one.) The state failed to prove that they followed established procedure and I was found not guilty. Then I went to law school.

Now I’d like to use this space and your feedback to organize my argument against the compulsory attendance laws.