Utterly Meaningless

I’ve been saying we need to “Beware Positive Stereotypes” for this very reason. My article about this issue is at vahome...es.pdf .

I don’t know about Darryl, but here’s my response from New Jersey:

1. Your home school has never been legally challenged and you believe it never will be. Since you see no risk in your life, you think membership fees are pointless for all, because there is no risk for anyone.

My right to educate my own children as I see fit (I do not “operate a homeschool” as HSLDA falsely claims I am required to do) has been challenged several times. I have stood my ground and refuted their claims that I am doing something illegal. I have won. ABout half the homeschoolers I’ve known in this state have been challenged likewise, and all have won in the same way — we simply assert our rights.

2. My (more likely) theory is that you feel competent that if you’re ever challenged you can defend your own rights in court, again making membership fees fruitless since you’d never use HSLDA anyway.

HSLDA couldn’t defend me in court anyway, since they have no attorneys who are qualified to practice law in New Jersey.

You left out a large reason why some of us distrust HSLDA — they’ve tried to split NJ homeschoolers along religious lines (telling some that their rights may be threatened if they allow their children to mix with kids of other beliefs; suggesting new regulations to make homeschooling legal on religious grounds — when in reality it’s already legal for everyone), they’ve put out dangerously stupid ideas (bringing text books in to school superintendents for review, when in fact NJ districts have no say at all over what text books we use… if any), written up affidavits that NJ lawyers have said were “irresponsible”, and so on, and so on…

1. Your home school has never been legally challenged and you believe it never will be. Since you see no risk in your life, you think membership fees are pointless for all, because there is no risk for anyone.

2. My (more likely) theory is that you feel competent that if you’re ever challenged you can defend your own rights in court, again making membership fees fruitless since you’d never use HSLDA anyway.

None of the above. HSLDA was founded on the explicit promise that, when homeschooling was legal in all 50 states, it would fold up shop. Obviously Farris found other uses for his “army.”

Allison, you’re missing an important point here — HSLDA’s presence in New Jersey served made home education more difficult for many people. That doesn’t square with their ostensible aims. But then, neither does the draconian laws they helped to craft for Pennsylvania’s home educating families, either. And then there was that bit in (was it) South Carolina, when you had to join a dues-paying HSLDA affiliated “support” group in order to legally homeschool…

Right now, in NJ, we’re seeing them back down from many of the destructive stances they held in earlier times. But once bitten…

We managed just fine without them for decades…