The best way “we” can protect “our” children is not to give them to the government. Or, put another way, avoid crowds; schools are crowds. But for those who can’t or won’t, this information may be valuable.

What does it mean to protect our children at school? For the past decade, I’ve been following a program that protects school children from celebrity-seeking mass-murderers. This program teaches school staff to be first responders who provide both armed defense and medical first aid. We’ve learned a lot over the past decade, but there are still unanswered questions.

Protecting our children at school actually covers a lot of ground. Being “at school” is really a shorthand way of saying we want to protect the children when they are out of their parents care. That includes when they are off campus and on the school bus before school starts. It includes the school events after the last class period ends. We want to protect our children from the ball field to the classroom and into the parking lot.

Once you see the scope of the problem, you realize why a single uniformed School Resource Officer is only the beginning of a safety plan. One defender, no matter how well-trained or effective, can’t be everywhere all the time.

First responders must be near the children because we don’t want to give a murderer time to kill. That means an armed defender has to be within a few hundred feet of every child. The number of defenders that we want depends on the size of the campus and the layout of the buildings. A one-room school house takes fewer defenders than a sprawling K-12 campus.

More at the link.

In response to the headline: perhaps not, but homeschooling sure enough is.

Photo from the article: attributed, artfulblogger/Flickr/cropped/ CC BY 2.0

From the article:

The only thing more predictable than boys being fascinated with weapons is them eventually sketching one in class. But that’s not allowed anymore. What is it that makes a little boy — practically straight out of the womb — take an interest in weapons and emulate gun-toting, swash-buckling heroes? Even doctors aren’t sure. As one pediatrician told me about my then 16-month-old son who turned every stick into a sword, “We don’t know why. They just do it.”

Doctors don’t know why because they are almost exclusively Godless servants of money, turned agents of the State for profit. But “we” do know. In a post here at TCJ, Ignorance, Feigned or Real, we show that inherent sin is provable, both in nature and from Scripture.

Now, weapons are not evil, sinful, or a sign of sin, but necessary for living in a world overtaken by the results of the fall of man into sin. Sin entered into the world through Adam’s disobedience to God, and all men inherited this sinful nature from him (Romans 5:12). Seemingly, the Holy Bible being its own authority and believing what the Bible says about inherent sin upset some lurkers. Oh well. Jesus loves me; this I know because the Bible tells me so. If the Bible is good enough for God, it’s good enough for me. Where were we?

All men are sinners. As one does not have to teach a child to strike another child and steal his toy, so too, the very need for self-defense is evident, even inherited knowledge in an infant. If the child will commit assault and theft quite without any training in the matter, why should he not, evidently in his nature from Adam, recognize the need, yay, the divine right of self-defense to preserve life and immediately, even as an infant, undertake to train himself in this requirement? We see no discontinuity in the idea.

Even a heathen doctor could have told this mother; we do this because we are men, and we must keep you from harm. It is our duty. Seems simple enough even to somebody who’s never read the word of God. Now, as we know, this duty of men comes from God and is evident in nature. Woe to them who makes the State or women rulers of households and keepers of men as chattel.

You can read the rest of the sad tale of child abuse at the hands of government communists indoctrinating children in the ways of sinful effeminacy if you desire. Get your children out of government-run schools!

Source:

U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading, according to an authoritative national exam released on Monday, offering the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic’s impact on millions of schoolchildren.

In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s.

In the test’s first results since the pandemic began, math scores for eighth graders fell in nearly every state. A meager 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient, down from 34 percent in 2019.

Fourth graders fared only slightly better, with declines in 41 states. Just 36 percent of fourth graders were proficient in math, down from 41 percent.

Homeschool really is a matter of prepping. Are you preparing your family to support each other and be a team? Educating your children in the Law-word of God and demanding they behave according to right and wrong as defined by God in the Holy Bible is paramount. This is critical not only to you and them but to civilization. Exodus 20:12, Proverbs 22:6.

At the Rutherford Institute:

Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, the schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.

You’re never in more danger than when the police are around. Why are folks still putting their children in these gulags? Ah, yes, the American religion is convenience, comfort, and ease.

Smart ass collectivist who hates home schooling.

I know that math stuff is hard for “JournoLists.”  If you can’t solve a differential equation, you might want to begin by adding and subtracting numbers.

See this report, and then watch this video.

Horace Mann was very effective at educating a new generation of communists, yes?  The funny thing is that I agree that our children are not our own, but not in the way they do.

They believe in the dictum “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”  I’ll leave it to the reader to ascertain the origin of this quote.

No, neither my children nor my grandchildren belong to me.  Neither do they belong to the state.  I am not an anarchist/libertarian, and I am not a statist.

I am a Christian.  That means when I baptized my children, they were marked into the covenant.  They belong to God, and God will do with them as He wishes.  They are accountable to Him, as I am for teaching, raising and training them up in a world and life view that honors Him.  I am God’s custodian and servant, I am in responsible charge of His living creation.  That’s an awesome responsibility.  It cannot be turned over to the state.

For once, I agree with a collectivist, but I still find myself on opposite sides.  The state wants to be God.  I will always war against that notion.

John Lovell and his wife are home schoolers.  For a period of time all four of my children went to private Christian schools, but of course that becomes expensive, as much at the time as sending a child to college locally.  It becomes cost-prohibitive.

Home schooling is a great option, especially since public schools are centers for communist indoctrination now.  When time permits (it’s tight right now), I’ll give you a complete run-down of an experience I had in our brief time in public school with one of my children, and the utter stupidity and ignorance of one of the science teachers.

It wasn’t long after that we decided to home school for the final years.  Not only are public schools centers of communist indoctrination, they’re homes for idiots.

Oh, John, take a brush to that hair at least once a day like I do. You have a lot, I have little left. Care for it while you can.

Via Pat Hines, Think Progress:

The group and its origins sound innocuous enough. But the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) — a right-wing group founded 36 years ago — has deepened connections between America’s religious right and Russians even as the latter have been sanctioned by the United States, according to a ThinkProgress investigation.

By networking with Russians, the HSLDA — now America’s largest right-wing homeschooling association — has provided the Kremlin with a new avenue of influence over some of the most conservative organizations in the United States.

[ … ]

But at the same time that details — and criticism — of these links between Russia and American right-wing groups were emerging, the HSLDA co-sponsored a formal homeschooling conference in Moscow and St. Petersburg, ThinkProgress found. One of the conference’s other sponsors was a foundation run by sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. The event featured some of the most outspoken anti-LGBTQ officials in Russia, and included a Russian official who’s currently sanctioned by the U.S. for her role in stoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It’s almost impossible to know where to begin, but I’ll attempt to offer up a few points.

Home schooling has been around for as long as America has been around, and even when the head master of a local school taught children, or supervised those who did, the teacher was always functioning in loco parentis.  This is so basic, so fundamental, so axiomatic, that is makes no sense to debate with someone who doesn’t know or understand that.

In the wake of Horace Mann and John Dewey, even if parents didn’t understand what they were doing, the state assumed ownership of children and what they are taught.  Communism is founded in and based on the assumption of state ownership of mankind.  The writer has it exactly backwards.  Horace Mann brought communism to American education, not Russia, or home schooling, or anything else.

The father of the modern American home schooling movement is Rousas J. Rushdoony.  Period.  End of discussion.  There is no debate about that.  It is axiomatic, and if someone doesn’t understand that, he is too stolid and ignorant to debate.  Debating someone over American history who knows nothing about American history is a waste of time.  For a discussion of the Christian basis for Rushdoony’s advocacy for home schooling, read his many works, all of them scholarly.

I know absolutely nothing about connections between anyone who was born in Russia, or calls themselves by a Russian surname, and any American home schooling association.  I find such a connection dubious to say the least.  At any rate, suffice it to say that the fundamentals behind what is being taught in American home schools and communism is diametrically opposed at every step.  Every one.

The only divide I currently find in the American home schooling movement is between the classic home schoolers – who still appear to hold sway, albeit waning – and the much more libertarian.  The former want to see state acceptance of the curricula, attendance, activities, etc., and are willing to allow state representatives to visit unannounced to verify records.  The later aren’t so willing and see neither need nor right to do that.

The American home schooling movement isn’t the monolith that this writer seems to imagine.  It is basically bifurcated between states, with each state having multiple home schooling associations, and with some home schoolers not a member of any particular association at all.

As for Russia, inasmuch as they are still communists, I opposed them at every turn.  Regardless of who catalyzed the war in the Ukraine, the Ukrainians don’t appear to want to be part of Russia, and I believe they have as much right not to be a part of that country as the American South does not to be a part of the U.S.  To the extent that they oppose gun rights, and they still appear to strongly oppose them, I consider them to be of the same ilk as the horrible controllers in America.

Not coincidentally, the author of this idiotic article is likely a controller and opposes God-given rights, which makes him more a supporter of communism and Russia that I could ever be.  Communists are the same the world over.  There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.

But something strange happens later in the article that I quoted above.  The author says, “The event featured some of the most outspoken anti-LGBTQ officials in Russia.”  So is that what this is all about?  The author is finding a connection between something bad in Russia and something he considers to be bad in America, namely “anti-LGBTQ?”

Because one of the core fundamentals of the home schooling movement is that the state doesn’t have the right to deliver moral absolutes to children.  Only parents have that sole domain.  And I’m willing to bet that we’ve put our finger on the root of the issue with the author.

This isn’t about Russia, or American home schooling, or any ridiculous connection between them.  This is about who has the domain of moral instruction for children.

Read it again and tell me I’m wrong.

Prior: Home Schooling Fight In Massachusetts

Zerohedge:

A school system in Massachusetts is proving to be malicious, incompetent, or maybe both.

Of course, we suspected that already. But the latest example comes from a lawsuit from a woman who pulled her 8-year-old son from Worcester Public Schools to homeschool him last January.

Josilyn Goodall is suing the Worcester School Committee, Superintendent Maureen Binienda, and the state Department of Children and Families after police entered her home, handcuffed her, and arrested her over what amounted to a paperwork dispute.

According to the lawsuit, Goodall is seeking unspecified compensatory damages for the violation of her Constitutional rights and for the “mental pain and suffering” inflicted upon her and her son.

The lawsuit details Goodall’s multiple attempts to contact the Superintendent after filing paperwork in January saying she was going to homeschool her son. She said she never got a response to any of her phone calls or emails.

In Massachusetts, parents who wish to homeschool their children must submit an education plan to the superintendent of the local school system for approval. However, according to Care and Protection of Charles (1987), the court case upon which homeschool legal precedent was established, the burden of proof is on the school to show that the homeschool program is insufficient.

The lawsuit further alleges that the Worcester School Committee’s homeschool policy is unlawful, in that it requires students to continue attending public school until the education plan is approved. Charles allows for homeschooling to begin as soon as the plan has been submitted.

To most rational people, Charles makes sense. If parents are to have any right to educate their children at home, they must be able to begin homeschooling before receiving approval from the schools. Otherwise, a school could conveniently hold hostage the education plan and never approve it, essentially forcing the child to stay in the public school.

But instead of following the state law or even their own policy, Worcester school administrators ignored Goodall’s education plan and her attempts to contact them, continued marking her son absent, and never reached out to Goodall to discuss their concerns.

It would be hard to tell if the school was being passive-aggressive or just plain incompetent, unable to send or receive emails and phone calls. Except that they had no problem contacting the Department of Children and Families to report Goodall for “educational neglect.”

DCF officials apparently took the school’s word for it, never asking for attendance records for Goodall’s son before showing up at her door on March 30. In addition, a DCF investigator believed the superintendent’s secretary, who told her there was a new law that required homeschooled students to continue attending school until their education plan was approved.

Yes, a state department took legal advice from a superintendent’s secretary.

Then, police escalated the situation, to the surprise of absolutely no one. The lawsuit states that officers pounded on Goodall’s door and threatened to forcibly open it. When Goodall was intimidated into letting them in, an officer laid hands on Goodall, handcuffed her, ordered her into a chair and yelled in her face — while her son watched and cried.

Additional officers arrived and started searching the home, while the DCF investigator questioned the son. Goodall was arrested and brought to the police station and was booked, though no charges were filed. She paid bail and finally made it back home after a 7-hour ordeal.

The legal battle continued with DCF filing a complaint of educational neglect that was eventually dropped by the court. Goodall submitted another education plan to the Superintendent on April 10.

You would think school officials would jump right on it this time around, but they dragged their feet yet again. Goodall left another voicemail and sent an email before finally hearing from the secretary on April 25. Her plan was not officially approved until May 9, after Goodall’s legal counsel wrote a letter essentially asking the Superintendent’s Office to piss or get off the pot.

Goodall’s ordeal is just the most extreme of many examples of harassment and intimidation the Worcester School District is doling out to homeschoolers.

According to the Worcester Telegram, many homeschooling families were waiting on District approval of their education plans months after submitting them. To add to the stress, many were receiving letters that said they could face truancy charges if their children were not in school and they had not received approval.

The hypocrisy of the District is astounding. Rather than sending approval letters—or even rejection letters— in a timely fashion, they sent letters threatening parents, as though it was the parents’ fault that their plan might not be approved “in time.”

While it is bad news that school administrators seem intent on harassing homeschoolers and escalating disputes, there is a silver lining to this whole issue.

We’re not going to take it.

Homeschoolers routinely show up in large numbers to protect their right to homeschool their children. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association hosted an informational forum on Aug. 15 in Worcester to discuss the concerns of local homeschooling families and to clarify the state’s laws.

As a Massachusetts homeschooler myself, I attended the meeting. There were upwards of 100 people in attendance from Worcester and surrounding towns. The group shared advice, made plans to turn out en masse to School Committee meetings, and made sure they were educated on what is and is not legally required in state homeschool law.

This one comes via WiscoDave.

No, to rational people, the Charles law doesn’t have to make sense.  In fact, I can discern where you stand by asking you two questions: [1] Who owns children, and [2] To whom have they been given for governance and training?

My answers are simple: [1] God, and [2] Parents.  If you believe that parents own children, you believe in slavery and you deny God’s ownership of all of His creatures.  You own your dog, not your children.  If you believe that anyone but the parents have been given responsibility for governance and oversight, teaching, training, love, discipline, correction and rebuke, you are a communist.

The reason the government of Massachusetts declares they have a right to decide what is appropriate education for children is because they are communists.  God does not recognize their authority in any of this, and His wrath will come down upon them, more than likely in time and space, and certainly and without fail, in eternity.

Public schools are centers of communist indoctrination and socialization.  And just to make clear that I know my facts, my wife and I were once part of a small group church fellowship based on home schooling.  One former home schooler now flies F-35s, another graduated from the Naval Academy, the Navy nuclear school, and commanded aboard a submarine.

Still others from that group went into the military, and my daughter is a Nurse Practitioner with a Master’s degree, ER experience and cardiology experience, and today is a “first-assist” for surgery.

There are hundreds of thousands of such examples in America and in fact all over the world.  Don’t tell me that children need the state to educate them.  I know that to be a lie.

The educational system and cops in Massachusetts aren’t liars -they’re just communists.  They know they aren’t needed, they just want the control.  The desire to control others is the first sign, incorrigible pathology and premier sin of the wicked.