The Basis for Home School Rights
We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident?
It is not uncommon for parents contemplating home education to ask, “Is home education legal in my state?” or perhaps, “How can I be sure that the state will grant me the freedom to educate my own children?” In light of these familiar questions, one more question needs to be asked: “How many parents in America today still believe that they have been endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”
The sad reality is that a significant number of parents in the United States have lost the meaning of liberty as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Nowhere is this more plain than in the area of parental rights in education.
The U.S. Supreme Court, as far back as 1925, confirmed the fact that parents, not the state, have the right to choose by what means children will be educated. In the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court affirmed that:
“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general powers of the state to standardize children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Too many parents living in the twenty-first century assume that they do not have the inherent or natural right to educate their children because they have never been taught the true source and scope of their inalienable rights. Only one or two generations ago, most U.S. citizens understood that they had the right as sovereign citizens to do virtually any activity unless it endangered the safety of another citizen or violated the public peace. In modern American society, just the opposite is true. Thanks in large measure to the mis-education that most Americans received in the government schools, they now commonly believe that the only activities that can be legitimately pursued are those that are specifically enumerated in state or federal law. In other words, the mindset of parents and most people is “ the state giveth, the state taketh away, blessed be the name of the state.”
People today, including many Christian parents, unconsciously believe that it is illegal to exercise any belief (no matter how basic or natural) unless government officials first enact a law which specifically sanctions a particular activity, i.e. home education. It is literally frightening to think about how many Americans fail to recognize that they do not need to request special permission from the state before they exercise a fundamental right already granted by God and secured under the U.S. Constitution.
It is easy for citizens of the United States to forget that their founding fathers fought and died to give them a government whose primary purpose was to defend and secure the rights of the people — not the rights of government bureaucrats. The original intent of the framers of the Constitution was to limit the size, scope, and jurisdiction of the state and federal government. For this reason, the only just powers that government officials were supposed to possess were those that the people themselves decided to grant them. The American system succeeded in empowering its citizens with an unprecedented degree of liberty precisely because it was built on the premise that government was to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.
In order to prevent anarchy, the constitutional/republican form of American government provided through the legislative process a means whereby laws could be enacted at the state and federal levels limiting certain specific privileges of American citizens. Even in the case of the legislative process, however, it was never the framers’ intention to grant legislators unbridled powers over the rights of the people. Legislators are, after all, nothing more than representatives of the people, elected to protect and uphold the constitutional rights of the citizens they serve. Perhaps President Ronald Reagan stated it best when he reminded the American people during his first inaugural address that, “We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around.”
Indeed, as one reads the Declaration of Independence, it is plain to see that the founding fathers believed that if any form of government in America became destructive to the cause of individual liberty by engaging in consistent long-term efforts to undermine the rights of the people, it was “the right and the duty of the people to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” The right of U.S. citizens to rebel against tyrants informs and precedes all of the rights enumerated in the Constitution. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
The right of parents to teach their own children does not come from men but from God. That is why it is rightly classified as an inalienable right for it was not established by man’s law, but God’s, from the beginning of human history. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence genuinely believed that men were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. To them, fundamental rights were not to be subject to the whims and fancy of fickle politicians, so the framers placed these rights above and beyond the reach of civil government officials.
If the right to home school is to remain secure for future generations, parents living in the early part of the twenty-first century must be willing to boldly stand up for the sacred liberties that God has ordained and carved out for man. Parents who are unwilling to stand up for their God-given liberties do not deserve them. As the faithful minister Rev. Levi Whisner once stated, “He who will not use his freedom to preserve his freedom, does not deserve his freedom”. May Almighty God, the only wise Lawgiver, grant his people the courage to stand fast as those who have been set free to serve King Jesus.
Copyright 2010 Michael J. McHugh
Themocracy
Hello Mr. McHugh. I’ve enjoyed some of your work having used much of CLP books in our childrens education. I too am a patriot. I know and understand the liberties we enjoy here in the USA, and how that freedom came to exist. I have nothing but respect for the men and women who labored and fought for the freedom we enjoy. Having said that, I must question the very premise upon which your assertions are made.
We must be careful not to put words in God’s mouth. Men have stated that God granted to men the “rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But I simply don’t know how true that is. Now I’m not suggesting that the liberties and rights we have and exercise are not real, but that they are not necessarily granted by God himself. Nor would I suggest that we should not vigorously protect those rights and freedoms. “…stand up for the sacred liberties that God has ordained and carved out for man. Parents who are unwilling to stand up for their God-given liberties do not deserve them.”
I personally question the validity of statements like these. It may be closer to the truth to replace the word “liberties”, with the word “responsibilities”.
God has established one theocracy in history and it is not the USA.
Thank you for your efforts and service to His Majesty.
KMPrice
Righteousness trumps freedom.
Thanks for joining in the discussion KM, and welcome. Your kind words, though directed to Mike, are a blessing to me. I won’t presume to speak for Mike, but I wanted to throw out some thoughts.
We must be careful not to put words in God’s mouth. Men have stated that God granted to men the “rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Yes, the Declaration and Supreme Court pronouncements are men stating something about rights, just as you and Mike are also both men stating something about rights. But the working assumption is that we understand these statements have their foundation in biblical thought. Why did these people believe what they believed about liberty? What is the belief system behind the encroachments to liberty we see more and more? Why is it that you and I pay more taxes and find ourselves more and more encumbered by an ever encroaching civil magistrate? Is it possible that the less biblically grounded we become as a nation, the less liberty we experience? Freedom, whether from sin or from man’s tyranny (a result of sin), is a gift from God.
Can Mike point to a verse in scripture that repeats the wording of the Declaration of Independence? No, but this gets the question backwards. It is the Declaration of Independence that is repeating concepts of scripture. Where does the right to life come from if not from God who says, “Thou shalt not kill?” Where does the right to property, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come from if not from God? It is He who says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”
Sin works its way outward. Men seek to control other men. Men make themselves gods who create their own growing lists of “Thou shalt nots.” So we get greater and greater government control and coercion. When deliverance from sin and death occur shouldn’t we expect to see liberty and freedom working its way outward?
Scripture speaks much of liberty. Sometimes it is liberty from sin with which it is concerned, sometimes the earthy reality of slavery and oppression. But in working through what scripture says in this regard I think we see that spiritual and physical liberty are very closely related. The God who is concerned about liberty from sin is also concerned about liberty from oppression.
Romans 13 shows us that the legitimate role of the government is to be a terror to evil. Think of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that God promises us if we would submit to His wisdom in this regard and elect only those who understood these boundaries.
Note God’s warning in 1 Samuel 8. The civil government taking just 10% from the people was considered a burden and curse. We should understand that moving toward burdensome government is something we should hate, and something God warns us against.
And of course, more specifically to Mike’s point on education, Proverbs instructs the parents to train up their children. Deuteronomy 6 shows us a fairly comprehensive training schedule comprised of all segments of the day, leaving little room for the state to enter. Where is it that we find a scriptural injunction to the state to educate, abrogating this liberty of ours?
Righteousness trumps freedom.
Indeed. But doesn’t freedom follow righteousness?