A growing number of families are choosing to separate school and state on their own ? through homeschooling. Motives and methods vary widely, but it's clear that homeschooling is entering the third phase of an idea's acceptance, where it's considered wholesome and self-evident (see this issue's article on the "Practicalities of Separation" for details on the three phases of a new idea).

This is good news for the Separation Movement. And its significance wasn't lost on participants at SepCon'95. Almost every speaker mentioned the success of the homeschooling movement as a positive sign for separating school and state. Here are a few quotes from SepCon'95 speakers:

Homeschools are out here on the cutting edge of education. The freedom to choose methodology and goals has produced results that have the government school bureaucrats fuming with frustration because we make them look bad.... Homeschoolers want greater control over their children's education than the government will allow them.

Cathy Duffy

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There are homeschooling parents out there that the education establishment is getting scared about.

Candace Allen

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The statist ideology is still very much with us even though it's being fought diligently by the homeschooling movement.

Robert Woodson

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We can turn to the homeschooling movement to see what parents will have to deal with when they are again given responsibility for their children's education ? whether they purchase that education in the marketplace or provide it themselves.

Jackie Orsi

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Homeschooling provides a glimpse of the potential for a free market in education.... Homeschooling is the reentry movement for parents to reassert control and responsibility for their children's education.

Marshall Fritz

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Homeschooling has not only expanded exponentially in the last two decades, it is in the process of going mainstream. A race is going on between families who are trying to reclaim their independence and bureaucrats at the local, state, national, and increasingly international levels who are racing ahead with a therapeutic agenda and abusing the term "human rights" in order to do that.

David Wagner

Homeschoolers were well represented at SepCon'95 amongst attendees and speakers (e.g., Sheldon Richman, author of Separating School and State: How to Liberate America's Families, Cathy Duffy, author of Government Nannies: The Cradle to Grave Agenda of Goals 2000 and OBE, and Jackie Orsi, former publisher of The Independent Family). In this issue, you'll find two more articles related to homeschooling ? an idea whose time has come.

Chris Cardiff
Editor

This article is copyrighted by the Alliance for the Separation of School & State. Permission is granted to freely distribute this article as long as this copyright notice is included in its entirety.

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