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The difference is that verga wants to draft kids from families hostile to most public schools into the public schools and thereby force anti-public school parents to waste their time in never-ending and utterly fruitless ideological wrestling matches with leftist teachers' unions, administrators and school board members who deal from a stacked deck.

This is an out right lie.

I have no preference as to where children go to school. I want them to have the best education possible, whether it is public school, Home school, charter school, or what have you.

What I am sick of is the out right lies and distortions by the extreme members of the home schooling crowd.

You all have sat on these threads whining that public schools can't be fixed and that is why you are walking away.

Great your choice, but do you oppose abortion? Do you participate in or support the "March for life" movement? If so why? Legalized abortion is the law, for 40 years now it has been legal. Yet there are thousands of people that got off their butts to make a difference.

How about the second amendment, do you support the people right to bear arms? Why Obozo, Feinstien, Biden etc, are in the midst of tearing that down? They are halfway there, yet thousands of people have joined the NRA.

There is no difference just the name of the movement. As I said the left was able to change the system to their advantage, and sitting out of the game allows them to keep that advantage.

As a matter of fact, I am a pro-lifer and, before retiring, I was an attorney. I represented 1100 arrested pro-lifers who went into the killing rooms of the abortion mills, often breaking raw eggs into the suction machines which put the machines and the mills out of business for as much as two weeks for engineers to break the contaminated machines down and remove and replace the contaminated parts. All but a few of the pro-lifers were charged with felonies (usually burglary or resisting arrest) and none were convicted of any felonies.

A grand total of 30 or thereabouts were convicted of ANYTHING and all but a handful were convicted of the legal equivalent of a parking ticket. Of those convicted, about 8 at most were convicted of misdemeanor trespass and some of those served no more than ten days in a country club jail without locks on the gates or anywhere else that would interfere with their freedom---essentially they were sentenced to ten days receiving room and board and recreation on a decent vacation in a nice place at taxpayer expense. One guy pleaded guilty to a minor charge so he could pay the fine and frame the receipt for his living room wall to prove to his many grandchildren that he had been arrested saving babies. Generally, they refused to sign probation papers, pay "conviction fees," or pay any fines imposed. The statutory alternative was to work off fines at $10 per day in jail but the state found them to be very troublesome prisoners when incarcerated pre-trial for refusing to identify themselves or to cooperate with photographing and fingerprinting.

I charged no fees for the legal work and cost the state an absolute fortune. As a result of that and the absolute militancy of the pro-lifers, most charges were dumped altogether by the prosecutors and some were dismissed "in the interest of justice" by some usually tough judges.

As to guns, I never belonged to the NRA but I did volunteer for sharply reduced legal fee legal work for several NRA members, obtaining permits to carry for state residents and representing out of state members arrested in my state.

By analogy, what have YOU done to abolish gummint skewels??? They are a waste of time generally for a conscientious parent who cares about curriculum, morality, content, etc., and understands that his/her own children are his/her primary responsibility. School board meetings, public hearings, phony "experts", people often devoid of any grasp of substantive subject matter in their "educations," but having attained that most useless of academic credentials---a "teaching" degree, bachelor's, master's or doctorate in "Education." The nuns I had in a parochial grammar school (with one exception) had nothing beyond a high school diploma and we were two years ahead of the public school kids when that city was still civilized and its school superintendent was a woman of genuine academic talent, dedication and attainment unlike each and every successor since her retirement in 1960.

As to the "whys of my involvement," Roe vs. Wade will be overturned just as were Plessy vs. Ferguson and Dred Scott vs. Sandford, the 2nd Amendment will survive and be enforced and the gummint skewels will be generally abolished.

One more: Brick and mortar higher edumakashun has priced itself out of future existence. Kids are graduating with degrees in political correctness, political anthropology, world geography, sociology and, yes, "education" virtually devoid of useful skills, often unemployable and with $200,000 or more in non-bankruptable college loans just to get to what has increasingly become a useless bachelor's degree. It cost me in the late 1960s, $1,000 per year to attend a private college that you have herd of, and $600 per year to attend the state law school (the only public school I ever attended for credit rather than recreation (astronomy and typing when I was too young for my factory-worker parents to leave unsupervised and too old for summer camp. My youngest is attending a rival private college (because it is very good at her very practical major) at a cost of $40,000+ per year.

My public school educated wife (who then graduated Yale with a liberal arts degree) and I decided before the birth of our very first child that she would not be put in public schools. She was an inmate at the local and very rural public high school because she insisted and had burned a number of alternatives. When she wanted to attend the public high school with "her friends," we told her that it was her call BUT it would be for BOTH of the remaining years of high school and there would be no more transferring. She did not have a happy experience. We went to every parent-teacher conference, oversaw her homework, attended school functions and and, except for one English teacher, one guidance counselor and one sports coach, we found that school a waste of time and her talent. Fortunately she had developed the habit of being a voracious reader long before getting to that school. If the school had not existed, we would have kept her on a shorter leash as to burning the alternatives. The other kids never darkened the door of the public schools anywhere.

The simple and preferable cause in most jurisdictions is defund them and abolish them in favor of various alternatives in the private sector not infected by the schemes of Horace Mann and John Dewey or controlled by the financially and ideologically rapacious National Education Association and/or American Federation of Teachers.

I have no idea of whether you belong to one of those unions. If you do, then go as a visitor to a national convention of your union. I have done that with each of them in the mid-1970s. Wander through the exhibit hall where vendors are pushing their "educational" wares to the delegates. See the radicalism that pervades each and every table: Curriculum units on the fate of Chilean gay communists who "disappeared" during the Pinochet restoration of Chilean civilization; racism, sexism, "homophobia," and every perverted left-wing cause known to man or beast. If your shop steward is not jamming your mailbox with this crud, it is such "curricula" that are being offered to your national delegates.

AND since you asked what I do as to pro-life and guns, and since you equate those issues with gummint skeweling, I would also ask whether you have taken advantage of the Beck decision of the SCOTUS that guarantees your right to refuse to pay your union so much of your union dues as goes to politics. If not, why not??? You know the evil they do with the political portion of the dues.

Just wanted to throw my two cents in here...(sorry for intruding)

I am a public school teacher who homeschools his own children. I would never, NEVER send my kids to a public school. They are not institutions of learning, but indoctrination centers. They strip away God from the public discourse and exalt the profane.

That being said...I am a born-again, bible-believing Christian and I have been gifted by God with the gift of teaching. I have seen God’s hand on my life calling me to the “challenge” of being a public school teacher (once, even trying, like Jonah, to flee from His call upon my life.) And, so, I teach. I teach in a public school. I do not teach the doctrines of Baal. I do not foster a climate of non-thinking, or of indoctrination in my classroom. Whenever possible (and I make it a point for this to be so), I present Godly examples, use God-honoring texts, challenge godless thought, enable those students who are Christian to feel well within their right (and duty) to speak their beliefs openly, without fear of reprisal.

I have a biblical text (Prov. 3:13) posted in big letters in the front of my classroom. I have copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on display in my room and regularly point these out to my students (as we have many occasions to discuss contemporary issues touching upon the Constitution. I ALWAYS remind my students that their rights do not come from their government, but from their God.) I have given my testimony to my students on numerous occasions (after being prompted by my students—all within my right AND DUTY as a teacher to do so.) I have counselled numerous students suffering from broken hearts, broken lives, broken homes. I have prayed with students on occasion.

All of this has been challenged here at FR by those who would have everyone simply abandon the public schools. How easy to say, “Withdraw. Come out from among them (an actual biblical principle, though, here, misapplied.) How easy to abandon these “rat holes” and all the corruption that goes on within their walls. In truth, I HAVE abandoned the public schools...but I have not abandoned its students. I am serving my Savior by being there for them, to offer a bit of salt and light, to show them “a better way,” to counter the culture of declension that has propped itself up all around these kids. I have spoken about this here at FR, and have heard those who would say I am as much a problem as the public school itself. That my presence there offers “a form of godliness, but denies the power thereof.” That I must be somehow acting against the wishes of those in authority and therefore serving as a bad testimony.

I have, for the most part, resorted to becoming a lurker on these education threads. I don’t need, nor do I desire the approval of men for my Christian walk and testimony. I seek only to serve the Lord. But, for the life of me, I cannot begin to understand the voices of those here who would look at the issue of our public schools and conclude the answer is to abandon them altogether, given that is why we are where we currently are. We’ve ceded ground time and time again. What we have in public schools today is THE DIRECT RESULT OF ABANDONING our responsibly to ensure that America continues to produce a Godly heritage.

Dear Christian, consider the Commission your Lord and Savior gave to you to go out and preach the gospel. He added, “beginning at Jerusalem.” That meant, begin in your own hometown. You homeschool? That’s great. But, one day your children will be living alongside those lost souls you completely abandoned to the godless system of public education. What kind of neighborhoods will they (and your grandchildren) be growing up in? Not your worry? Not your job? I think you need to go into your prayer closet and ask your Savior, “Who is my neighbor?” But be ready for the answer that stings.