Attorney Michael Farris' homeschooling alarms in states from Coast to Coast, and federally over the last four years, and particularly his national alarm on the HR-6 amendment, constitute a serious tactical error if homeschooling is to be known for its serious contribution to American education instead of simply another passing educational fancy, and if it is to be truly respected by legislators instead of pressuring them.

 

Homeschools have come of age as America's most thriving education movement as measured by state studies of achievement from Alaska to Florida and of sociability in both state and national studies, and honored by leading university scholarships. After 1972 reports in Harper's and Reader's Digest of school-entrance-age studies which we began in 1969, a medley of parents -- missionaries, world travelers, movie stars, sports heroes, farmers, wilderness people -- surfaced as home teachers. Schoolmen were first interested more in later school ages than homeschools. Yet with troubled American schools and help from radio and TV like Dobson, Maddoux, Moody, Donahue, Winfrey and wide press, the idea flowered into a movement. Now informed church and public schools profit from it. It isn't all perfect; one model may be better than others, but this old idea now scores very high!

 

Mike Farris is an engaging, energetic, strong-willed young lawyer with a fine family, ever on the lookout for brighter prospects. His HSLDA, like Rutherford, NALSAS and other defenders, has helped many families. But his service is offset by unilateral initiatives, creating alarm after alarm that spell catastrophe to the home education movement (Movement) and arrogance to those who were on the Movement's battle line helping each other get started, often at great sacrifice, while he was still in high school. He reminds me, an ex-Army officer, of a draft-evading president who runs wars without reference to the Senate, maybe worried that it might disapprove and unaware that the Golden Rule is still 24 karat.

 

Yet as a senior professional, key researcher and founder of the Movement, I must write not only for thousands of hurting families, but also for key Coalition members who helped shape this paper. I accept personal accountability for it, fully aware of the probable diversity of its readers and of likely repercussions. We hope Mike, his board, staff and all Protestant exclusivists (PE's) who split other faiths, including Roman Catholic, Jew, LDS, Muslim, etc., even a Lutheran the other day, from state or federal home education bodies see their Bible's point that the greater danger isn't non-Protestants, but mixing with greedy, slandering brothers:

 

"I have written you...not to associate with sexually immoral people -- not at all meaning the people of this world...In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat."

Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:9-11, NIV.

 

In other words, I deeply wish that they could truly understand their Christ. Their divisiveness did not come from His Bible.

 

If any PE's deny anything of substance that we say here, they can tell me or take me to court. That would be a great opportunity to get all out in the open. To write the worst here would seem so ungodly as to be unbelievable and make this letter appear absurd. Yet the evidence is prodigious.

 

PURPOSES OF THIS PAPER

 

Our main concerns are four: (1) To reunite state coalitions, (2) to protect vulnerable families, (3) to propose a representative national homeschool coalition or council, and (4) to build a strong sense of accountability among homeschools as family laboratories to help improve our conventional schools. We are not so personally offended by any of the persons mentioned here, as at the havoc they are wreaking. For the first 15 years (about 1969-84), most of us worked without pay until we had decent laws in most states, and still do. PE has already created havoc. Indifference to unity is more alarming than the HR-6 vote. Friendliness and concern for other schools, and setting sound examples, are homeschooling's best defense.

 

Outline of this paper. Maybe I am senile as Mike says, but I still hold out a hope that he will yet make a selfless contribution to the Movement. I wish him well also on his ambitions to be a fine governor, senator or judge if he remembers that to be truly strong is not to be willful, and if he gets his ethics, money and political ambitions in order and his temper, tongue, and religious judgmentalism under control. This means that he must stop his projection of hostility in legislatures, courts and newsletters. This is crucial to underpin the strong moral example he wants to project. We are pained at him and his colleagues, one of whom brags as home education's "Four Pillars", for trying to control the Movement at the expense of others' religious freedoms instead of winning laurels ethically. We here include accounts of Mike's...

 

1. Losing crucial homeschool friends by pushing state and federal alarm buttons, alienating state and federal legislators and officials by treating them as pressure-vulnerable political hacks instead of befriending them, informing them, and reasoning with them as statesmen, as we have done for years. (See civil rights lawyer below.)

 

2. Rising addiction in recent years to use of alarms in states and nation which, while it attracts heroic attention to him and brings in more HSLDA money and members, actually destroys home education by turning a positive professional movement into a defensive one, generating fear that feeds personal political goals.

 

3. Cooperation with, and active participation in a PE campaign making homeschool state leadership and membership a test of faith, splitting state coalitions through outlawing Roman Catholics, Jews, LDS, Muslims, etc. by demanding the signing of Protestant vows.

 

4. Inadvertently or deliberately, yet unilaterally posing as state and national homeschool voice, offensive to selfless veterans who believe this should be the province of a representative national body. The HR-6 alarm is only one symptom of the PE attack, systematically destroying homeschool unity built against great odds for 15 years before Mike jumped in.

 

5. Inclination to use influential people to build his hero's stage until he needs them no more or until they question his wisdom.

 

6. Prejudice agenda much like the Massachusetts Bay Colony ministers' against Roger Williams.

 

7. Onion-thin-skin intolerance to any questioning of his or HSLDA's wisdom, and temper of almost insane fury, yet reserving the right to judge others without checking his facts.

 

8. HSLDA has become well-to-do and prominent, yet largely rejects the generally most trying, dismal situations ù the custody cases.

 

9. The doubtful "Four-Pillar" ethics anger homeschoolers by religious prejudice to divide and destroy state coalitions.

 

10. Negative impact on the security of parents in general who during the Movement's first 15 years or so were delighted to see any and all who came fully into the Movement.

 

In the remainder of this paper we first elaborate on its purposes, and include reactions of professionals and laymen to the issues. Then we flesh out the outline above and close with vignettes of the other three "Pillars" to provide a context - some idea of the characters and methods of his colleagues and, to some extent, reasons for Mike's agenda.

 

CONCERNED LEADERS SPEAK OUT ON HR-6

 

Like aftershocks from an 8.0 Richter, we still receive visits, calls, faxes, letters, and cards on HR-6. Some made it clear that state officials prefer a single state organization or at least cooperating state groups to whom they can go. Legislators agree. A Washington, D.C. federal civil rights attorney, known for her reserve and femininity, called and gave me a precise summation of the HR-6 alarm with uncharacteristic boldness:

 

" I was outraged! This presuming on Dr. Dobson, Gary Bauer, Marlin Maddoux, and others who are normally well informed, but simply don't have full information and are led like lambs to the slaughter! If they only knew! There is a place for alarms. But when we overreact, we lose credibility, and there is a snow-balling effect I'm afraid we're reaching the place where people will no longer honor homeschooling. I'm not a friend of Senator Mitchell's, but he was right: "An unnecessary solution to a non-existent problem." It's time for some common sense and sound group judgment which would better come from a representative national coalition than a unilateral effort by an obviously ambitious individual.

 

When I asked if there could be a reason for the hurry, she added, "There was plenty of time. And the [Senate/House] Conference Report specified that HR-6 applied only to public schools." When I asked her idea on a representative American national homeschool council, she cheered, "Great! I look forward to that!" I should explain that anyone who knows Dobson, Bauer, Maddoux, Moody, Limbaugh and others may be surprised. These are good men. They research their programs with great care, but don't know Mike. I was surprised, too. I was warned, but I didn't know Mike either until he was through using me.

 

Years ago, before I knew his disposition - one that few of his friends (or family?) ever see - an American leader well known to all these men warned me to "Be careful what you give to Mike Farris, if you don't want your movement destroyed," and told me of his bold bent to take charge. Not fully understanding, I unwisely set the remark aside. Like most people, I didn't really know Mike. Dorothy says I'm much too trusting. A veteran Christian leader labeled his agenda "an ad hominem attack ('What's good for HSLDA is good for the Movement') by an ambitious young lawyer who doesn't know that much credit for early growth of the Movement is deserved by secular leaders. He's done a masterful job of getting himself in the headlines as a base for an aspiring political future. He is a masterful user."

 

Another call came out of the blue from a perceptive, articulate Southern mother as I was finishing this paper: "As Christians," she said, "they (Pillars') don't seem rational or intelligent about Christ, for He wouldn't ever cut others off!...He (Farris) is inflammatory, always manipulating us, playing on our imaginations. I had just miscarried when our (state Christian organization) called in panic on HR-6. It almost did me in (sound of tears and an apology). Not only is he giving a bad name for homeschooling, but also a bad name for my Lord. The way he is going - the hostility he is creating - I'm afraid our good laws will crumble."

 

A homeschooling father, a Roman Catholic, who is a city editor of a major daily newspaper called us, asking, "What can I do to help get this truth out?" Then added,

 

"Every American should be aware. Public schools should care. Homeschools, properly done, provide a shining example of how it should be done." Institutions as we see them now, are not geared to rear kids. We shouldn't turn all our children over to them. There is need for national debate. And all should know the cynical, self-serving, disgusting, arrogant, un-American, unchristian hypocrisy of those who divide productive, unified state coalitions. Conservatives need to know the havoc that some of their own misguided people can do to their agenda.

 

Jill Boone's Home Education Magazine letter quoted her friend, a senior Congressional manager who phoned on HR-6: "Unfortunately the callers left the impression of an uneducated...alarmed group who had been told to kill the Bill. They did not demonstrate any understanding of the Bill's content nor the reasoning behind it." With his scare tactics coast to coast, and without truth and selfless, unprejudiced unity, the Movement faces a dark age. We prefer to teach facts and positive attitudes to families and to develop permanent friends among officials and lawmakers - who are not as unreasonable as the alarm suggests.

 

After watching the development of the 'exclusivism movement' now spilling over into Canada, the abuse of secular families by "so-called Christian homeschoolers" and the need for unity which is now crucial, one Canadian leader asks "how much, if any of the (Canadian) crisis has been fabricated for that organization's (HSLDA's) financial gain, and how much of it is real? I find it unfortunate that instead of working together to solve problems at the community level, homeschoolers must first decide which of their (homeschool leaders and) neighbors they can trust."

 

Farris the man. Some of us helped Mike start HSLDA after his first two tries went awry. He promised that when the last few states had good laws, HSLDA would work itself "out of a job." We helped him whenever possible, even getting into trouble and out of his graces in Syracuse for doing him a distinct favor (more later on him and Sharon Grimes). I have often referred cases to HSLDA, and it has often used me as expert witness, acclaiming me its best.

 

But Coalition leaders try to mold their programs to a larger view. We were more concerned over HR-6, itself, than in amending it. Its defeat would place us in proper perspective as a positive, selfless movement, which it largely is. A leading U.S. Senate source, a homeschool dad whose counsel has been extremely helpful over the years, said, "You caught the gnat (amendment), but let an elephant (HR-6) through." A conservative foundation official added, "You won a battle, but lost the war." As accountable citizens, HR-6 should have been our prime target.

 

ALIENATING OFFICIALS AND LEGISLATORS

 

Permanent or transient good? Those who tell officials how bad the public schools are instead of documenting the excellence of home education are missing the boat. The HR-6 hysteria did seem to have an instant positive effect of making the Nation aware that homeschools must be reckoned with. Yet the nation was already on notice from our victories in 50 states. HR-6's transient "good" was offset many times by its residual effect of resentment, anger, and unfriendliness on legislators it targeted who were forced to operate by pressure instead of Golden Rule information and reason, as we have successfully done until PE's began their divisive wasting. There is no real freedom outside that rule!

 

Some insane (without reason) history. Since l964 when I was with the U.S. Office of Education (OE), HR-6 ancestors have composed our most costly school legislation in both money and children. If we were selfless, well-informed people with all the money we spent on the alarm, we may have defeated HR-6. Instead, it distracted lawmakers from debate on this very bad bill, and it slipped by for annual costs of over $l0,000,000,000 and inestimable damage to America's children. Institutional Head Start is an example. There is not a single replicable study that supports it. The only really successful program of this general type is the Home Start version that goes into the home instead of an institution, and helps parents make a better home to help not only the target child, but all the family. And this often spills over into the community.

 

In 1965, after many years of administering public and parochial school systems, colleges and universities, I watched from my OE desk as President Johnson's political valets laid their coats down before HR-6's 1965 grandma, then a debutante in the "Great Society," so she could tip-toe down a slippery educational-political path to become, with Head Start, a Great Society dowager. There wasn't, isn't, nor likely ever will be replicable research to lift her if she fell. Now she is so made up by Great Society cosmetics and face lifts that vested interests fall for her, more in lust than for beauty. Later, on a university inspection trip west, I also represented the OE at public school meetings when a grim Fairfield, California curriculum director told me, "Titles I and II (of old HR-6) are ruining our kids." When I asked why they took the money, he said, "If we don't, we'll lose our jobs. The fed intrudes in our neighborhoods at our expense both in cash and damaged kids." As a former CA school superintendent, I understood.

 

Not all legislators were fooled. In 1973, House Education Sub-Committee Chair Edith Green (D-OR) joined Senator James Buckley's (R-NY) initiative to find money to continue our research that fathered the homeschool movement. They had read our reports in Harper's and Reader's Digest. When I told her of my Fairfield experience, she moaned, "Yes, Dr. Moore, I know. I did my best to help the President (Johnson) create his 'Great Society,' but now I'm using every bone in my body to dismantle it." California Congressman Don Clausen was there, and I believe Minnesota's Al Quie. I talked with her again after she quit Congress to be president of Reed College where she held those convictions even more freely.

 

The real home educators. To the anguish of Movement veterans, the HR-6 alarm left some media and lawmakers with a feeling that home teachers variously are antsy, impetuous, tasteless, defensive, inferiority-complexed: a clan awash in mediocrity who prefer to deal in shock and react to fear. This is uncommonly scary when it happens within an honest and worthy conservative movement, where the great majority are inspired, courageous, wise American examples on how to deal with powers-that-be. True homeschool parents rarely rear delinquents, pretenders, or reckless offspring. Most are highly reputable, thoughtful, courageous parents, including attorneys, businessmen and women, carpenters, judges, homemakers, engineers, linemen, IRS/FBI agents, farmers, nurses, legislators, builders, publishers, professors, psychologists, and social workers, among many others. Its largest professional group consists of public school staffers!

 

The great majority are thinking people who maintain close touch with local officials, legislators and informed agencies in D.C., and act in warm collegiality with experienced colleagues in the certainty that in old-fashioned home education the shining examples are they that offer balanced programs of study, creative work and altruistic service (as Harvard and others appreciate) with strong learning tools, but creatively centering on the interests of their students instead of being forced through an extrusion process of canned curricula where all come out about the same-size sausage. Their offspring excel in achievement, behavior, and sociability. They develop entrepreneurial skills and enjoy home and community service. Americans need not be guilty of our presuming on their children as I have personally seen in the NEA. For 25 years we've worked to build a homeschool constituency that doesn't feel it has to be looking over its shoulder for fear its children may be swallowed by the state. So it's disheartening for opportunistic interests (some say "greedy") to intrude and divide a Movement which shares without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin.

 

ALARMS: ALIENATING THE MEDIA

 

Whether or not we agreed with Mike's tactics to pressure a vote against the HR-6 amendment demanding teacher certification, we did cooperate, concerned, as media men may also have been, that there may be hidden legislative agendas. So we were trapped. Yet to the extent that I co-opted Mike's alarm, I hurt homeschooling. I wasn't happy either way! Tongue in cheek, I accepted Jim Warren's invitation to take two segments on Moody Network's Prime Time America rather than risk his being left in the dust.

 

Therein again lies the danger in Mike's impulsive tactics devoid of perspective. Congressmen and media persons who are skeptical about the need for an alarm face the risk of doubtful homefolk if they don't vote for a law or promote it on radios/TV, knowing that uninformed tactics eventually make enemies. Yet dare they ignore even non-issues lest they be left in the dust? One of the media folk mentioned by the civil rights attorney above said he felt the alarm was needed. We doubt that, but don't argue it. Our case centers on building unity and professionalism. Another she mentioned said they knew Farris well. These people are dear to me, and I know their honesty well enough that if they knew him as well as I, they would be very sad.

 

THE PROTESTANT EXCLUSIVIST QUEST

 

To those caught up in the Pillar's "Christian" PE march, we ask if you can possibly see exclusivism as an inexorable a form of bigotry as when God three times admonished Peter not to judge any one "unclean" (Acts 10) or at least as intolerant and greedy as the ancient Pharisees whom Christ angrily condemned. Can you arrange your Christian ideals so that you justify such conduct, judging as you do, often without an iota of understanding of their beliefs? Are you without prejudice? Do you see that you will go down and take our Movement with you? If you as Protestants do believe the Bible, you know the consequences may be eternal.

 

We will describe more later under "Gregg Harris" and "Sue Welch" how PE operates, but it is important at this point to summarize Mike's involvement: He (1) is the big Pillar to PE leaders; (2) works very closely with Sue Welch (and helper Sharon Grimes), the PE cutting edge, chairing her national meetings, writing regular columns and is so trusted an advisor that sometimes she will talk only when he is on the phone; (3) is generally closely identified with PE agencies and uses PE state people on his National Center for Home Education (NCHE) Advisory Committee instead of those from original state coalitions; and (4) his staff directly contributes to the PE dividing of state coalitions.

 

FARRIS, THE VOICE OF HOME EDUCATION?

 

The Coalition views Mike as a relative latecomer who, as head of one of several legal defense agencies, perhaps unwittingly, is not satisfied to try for excellence in his profession, but seeks to be a generic voice, now that HSLDA is in the money. He co-opts, generates or supports state as well as federal scares. He may see his efforts as good public relations for homeschooling, but the Coalition, along with key American thinkers, much of the media, and lawmakers are badly disappointed, even angered. They know, as Mike should know, that defense agencies receive only a small proportion of the legal inquiries. Pressure votes from legislators offer no assurance of friendship toward homeschooling.

 

One homeschool leader says, Mike "acts as if only attorneys understand legal and legislative modes, and recruits HSLDA members at a time prosecutions have sharply decreased, in an arrogant pursuit of money and power while rebuffing the Movement's desperate need for unity." Also, with all their money, he and HSLDA reject many of the most needy cases which then have to be picked up, often gratis, by altruistic defenders. We are glad there have been some exceptions, but, if you have any doubts, ask for the record. This month I suggested HSLDA for a non-member, non-custody case in Atlanta, and Attorney Joseph Kenyon offered free services, but he advised me he did it on his own, not as HSLDA policy. Others not of HSLDA, including Steve Graber, John Whitehead and Rutherford (including Shelby Sharpe), Dan Grimm, Bill Graves, Bill O'Mara, et al are taking these cases with little or no money, but with distinguished success.

 

Coalition folk see Farris' NCHE as "on the record ill-equipped by experience and research to provide the quality of professional leadership to deal with ofttimes hostile agencies." They report his "obtaining exclusive homeschool rights to certain standardized tests, thus depriving mothers who were doing a great job of testing as a home industry." Mike then handed it over to a university, which was likely unaware of the grief incurred to home industries.

 

Many ask why he doesn't settle down to do a better and more complete job of legal defense instead of intruding into professional areas in which he and his staff are less than the best. For example Mike writes, "...the only real defense against burnout for the Christian homeschooling family is God's mighty power. Academic strategies deserve only a passing reference in building a defense against burnout" (sounds like Gregg Harris). I daily trust God's mighty power. Yet to use an analogy from Mike's profession as he presumes on mine, I wonder if he would say, "The only real defense against court action for the Christian homeschooling family is God's mighty power. Lawyer strategies deserve only a passing reference in building a defense against an unconstitutional charge." Mike seems to have little respect for the Movement's basic research and top homeschool programs as measured by scholarships, behavior, creativity and character. He knows a lot about homeschool law, but it should not be below him to grant acknowledgment to professionals in education.

 

Just as there are occasional homeschool cases that badly need a lawyer, there are burnout cases badly in need of academic help, lest they and/or their children lose their mental, physical or emotional health, i.e. burn out. I learned not to witness for parents needing a lawyer, but who decided they didn't need one. Mike here demonstrates his provincial orientation to homeschooling and quality of "national" center. As with Colfax's and many Moore Formula families (one with seven current scholarship students), a disproportionately large number of scholarships go to parents who give more than casual notice to academics by (1) refusing to rush their kids into formal studies, (2) combining sound tools like grammar and math with a focus on the child's worthwhile interests, and (3) balancing student-centered study with work and service. Many parents were burned out by some of the biggest, most expensive curricula in home education. Now Mike sets himself up as judge of their experience with God.

 

Another is his colleague Brian Ray's "national" research institute, which has used HSLDA's Paeonian Springs address and which at best is a "national" pretense when measured with dozens of mature research programs, but who gives Mike the satisfaction, however dubious, of considering HSLDA samplings generic to all U.S. homeschooling, and some of whose "research" is so far off track as to be obvious to an elementary school child. (More later.)

 

In dealing with certain PE leaders - one for well over l0 years - various of us have tried, perhaps not always wisely, to counter their damage to the Movement. Some counseled us to "Let God take care of them" (that could be good or terrible). Christians believe in the golden rule that we don't share Christ's grace if we don't claim it for our "enemies." Yet Ezekiel (33:6-9) balances this with a warning that if we as watchmen don't warn those who may be hurt, their blood will be on our heads. Farris knows well that PE dividing of state coalitions was conceived in proven deceit, but not by him (more below). Yet he is now a key player. He co-opts as PE speaker, chairman, and through staff and financial ties is central among those who ignore others' freedoms and splinter state coalitions in the name of Christ and religion. If he is blind on this, we will give him or an appropriate panel, chapter and verse. (More later.)

 

Crucial numbers. Mike acts and speaks as though he leads the homeschool majority, yet HSLDA members loyal to his agenda likely include less than ten percent of all homeschoolers. Coalition members and their inclusivist colleagues have a heavy plurality. Mike isn't alone in this context. PE's, often explicitly led by "Pillars," are with him hand-in-glove. If he said, "Stop," they would surely slow down and likely stop. By going into state after state with alarms and ungodly and un-American PE doctrines, they systematically splinter veteran coalitions and destroy the Movement's vital unity which won our good state laws. HSLDA has enjoyed exclusivist support increasingly in its recruitment over the last five to ten years. Yet not all HSLDA members like Mike's agenda. Some of them volunteered documentation for this paper.

 

He stated repeatedly as Sue Welch's national meeting chairman that he rejects a representative national organization as proposed by Coalitioners. Instead of concentrating on a defense operation in which he has some expertise, he prefers to expand his horizons. His unilaterally established NCHE is a non-defense operation for which there is time and money now that there are few court cases, and affords broader exposure and more generous avenues for political ambitions than unpopular homeschools provide, as he plans to run for U.S. Senate in 1996.

 

Figures and facts: Mike's numbers game. Note his figures and words on NCHE or HSLDA, and then the facts. He is right in writing a Missouri mother, "Please check your facts and sources and if you want serious answers please get back to me with actual statements I am alleged to have made." Here are a few of them:

 

1. "I do not have either the time nor inclination to defend myself against random charges which are not based on specific statements. Suffice it to say for now, I do not consider myself the 'unelected spokesman for all homeschoolers.' I am the president of an organization of over 40,000 families who have voluntarily joined. When I speak in Congress, I speak for them. As to the 14 organizations in the Ad-Hoc Coalition, the question is not why HSLDA did not join with them, the question is why they refused to join the over 2,000 home school organizations that stood with us in our coalition against the Miller provision in H.R. 6?"

 

Those familiar both with the Congress and with homeschooling, ask four questions here, apart from addressing her assumption that he acts as if he were homeschooling's voice: (1) Are all HSLDA members in the highest sense 'voluntary?' (2) Do many or most of them join under some kind of stress, some, false alarms? (3) Is Mike fantasizing or does he really speak in Congress? (4) In comparing 14 Coalition members and "2,000 homeschool organizations," is he equating apples with apples or pumpkins with peanuts? Most or all of the 14 are national agencies, some of them larger and/or certainly far more experienced and geographically extensive than HSLDA. Mike's "2,000" are likely local support groups, including, as we have said, many who don't agree with him. Some Coalition members like Moore Foundation and Holt Associates number their support clientele in hundreds or thousands of support groups. In the U.S. and Canada, there are estimated to be well over 10,000 support groups of two or three to several hundred families.

 

2. Again, to answer with specific statements, as he demands: On an interview on Maddoux's Point Of View, Mike vowed (1) "we have never had a family where the parents were forced involuntarily to stop homeschooling their kids." (2) He added that parents should not wait to write about HR-6, but call or use overnight mail to the Congress. The truth: (1) The same lady who sent me the tape, enclosed the front page of the West Virginia Homeschool Banner reporting that "...Judge Haden denied HSLDA's request....As a result Brent Null is back in a public school." (2) Nor was a fax or phone or expensive overnight letter imperative on the Miller Amendment; the final vote was not due for at least four months. There were other solutions besides alarms, such as insisting on using in the amendment the word "public" before "school" or visiting lawmakers personally, as some of us have been doing.

 

We don't say there should be no alarms. One possible example: a recent federal proposal on lobbying. We do say there should be very few in home education, and they should be done with counsel by a wide range of veterans with much more experience than Mike, for he is toying with all of homeschooling in his state and federal scares.