AHA Citizen Journal

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Updated September, 2009

In our opinion, the best way we can protect our homeschool freedoms is to be fully informed concerning our rights and responsibilities.

A good book that helps us understand that our choice to homeschool is a political act is Taking Charge Through Homeschooling: Personal and Political Empowerment by Larry and Susan Kaseman. Chapter Nine, p. 87 offers a wonderful statement:

Because education is so bound by the political system, home schoolers need to become politically active in order to be able to reclaim and maintain their right to home school without harmful government regulation that will force home schools to become like conventional schools.

The book is a goldmine and shares the tools for personal and political empowerment if one chooses to utilize them. Reading this book helps to solidify the importance of knowing our rights and understanding that it is our responsibility to maintain and protect our rights and freedoms. The Kasemans also point out the importance of NOT linking partisan politics to homeschooling in ”Let’s Not Link Homescholing to Partisan Politics” which was published in their Taking Charge column in the November- December 2004 Issue of Home Education Magazine. It is available online for free.

California Homeschool Network offers the following information on Getting Involved; including how to locate legislators and advice on legislator visits. There is an opportunity to volunteer to monitor legislation:

Volunteer to Monitor Legislation
Hundreds of bills are introduced each year. CHN is always looking for more volunteers to help identify and track legislation that would impact independent homeschooling. If you are interested in helping, please contact the Legislation Monitoring Chair. Everyone is welcome regardless of your level of expertise. CHN happily provides training.

A Political Action Handbook is provided along with advice on How to Write Letters to the Editor.  CHN’s says that their Legislative Action Guide [pdf] is a mini-course in civics.

Adding to that was a recommendation from Dana Hanley in her Hearts of the Matter article: Homeschooling as a matter of public discussion.  If you have never written one, this is a good description of the structure and goals of an editorial.

Many of us began our homeschool activism education by reading books such as Taking Charge, reading articles in Home Education Magazine, and reading our state and country’s political policies and procedures. We also got to know other homeschool advocates who kindly took us under their wing and taught us the ropes. We learned that we could follow the politics of education in this country, how to get to know political officials so they know and understand that there is indeed a diverse group of home educators in our state and district.
If any of you don’t know who your local, state and federal officials are here are a a couple of resources for finding them. Congress.org allows you to look up your congressman by zipcode and Goveng.com helps you to locate your federal, state and local officials.

By learning more about our rights and responsibilities, we discovered that we could become our own best expert concerning our children. We learned that we, as parents, could solve most problems that arise with parental intervention or in just leaving it be for maturity to conquer. Most of this family oversight occurrs without expert opinion, except our own as their loving guardians. Following that parallel, we could also get to know legal and legislatives issues and follow bills and not be intimidated by the legaleze. In doing that, we’ve learned that very often, we know the laws best. We have to in our alternative lifestyle against the norm.

Here are a few sites that we found helpful and would like to share with you:

Home Education Magazine’s Homeschool Information Library
Homeschooling Is Legal
Learning is for Everyone
National Home Education Legal Defense

The VaHomeschoolers site, offers many resources for grassroots lobbyists, including:

How to Talk to a Politician[pdf]
In Like a Lamb, Out Like a Lion [pdf]
How and Why Homeschoolers Should Be Involved in Local and State Politics [pdf]
Strategies for Building Effective Relationships With Politicians [pdf]
Play an Active Role from the Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers

Again, we are not experts. We are not paid lobbyists, nor politicians. We are homeschool activists who learned just as the Kasemans wrote.  We can Take Charge Through Homeschooling. While doing so, we become personally and politically empowered.

Humbly ~ Mary Nix and Susan Ryan