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info@etcnwa.com P.O. Box 1174 Lowell, AR 72745
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etcnwa.com |
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Early American Homeschool Laws Some of the earliest laws of colonial America required local officials to ensure that parents educated their own children. Massachusetts selectmen were mandated in 1642 to "take account from time to time of all parents and masters, and of their children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country." A Pennsylvanian ordinance declared that all parents and guardians "shall cause such to be instructed in reading and writing, so that they may be able to read the Scriptures and to write by the time they attain to twelve years of age; and that then they be taught some useful trade or skill." Virginians were levied a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco if clergy found the parents to be "delinquent in the catechizing the youth." Massachusetts "tithingmen" of the seventeenth century were ordered to monitor parental instruction and bolster good household government by reporting unruly children and adults. Recent American Homeschool Laws By 1990, all fifty states legalized homeschooling directly. At this time state law shifted from preventing homeschooling to regulating it. Currently, only six U.S. states maintain rigorous homeschooling regulations. Nine U.S. states leave homeschooling largely unregulated. The rest of the states fall somewhere in the middle having significant, but manageable, requirements. Ironically, it has been the states themselves, in their own tyrannical efforts to outlaw homeschooling, that have kept homeschooling alive and, now, thriving. By passing overzealous laws and prosecuting well-meaning parents, states forced a showdown between the interests of universal public schooling and the fundamental rights of parents to decide what is best for their children. |
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Spring Consortium March 28 - May 16, 2012
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