My trip this weekend to Wisconsin CHEA was my third or fourth opportunity to keynote that state’s home school conference in ten years. Each time I have been impressed by the stalwart commitment of the Wisconsin state leaders to using the conference as a vehicle for casting vision and speaking fundamental biblical truth to home educators. It is a fair saying that the philosophical commitment which the state leaders bring to their conferences determines and defines the spirit of the home school movement in that state for the next year. Because of the ever changing face of the home school movement, and the growth of secularism in certain circles, it is all the more important that we always go back to basics, cast a biblical vision, and speak the fundamental truths. Future generations will remember these conferences as crucial for the great revival of parents, whose hearts have been enlarged toward their children. Remember to support those home school leaders on the front lines of truth communication in your state.
From Doug’s Bookshelf: The best book on the history of education in America is R.J. Rushdoony’s The Messianic Character of American Education, published by Ross House Books. I argue that this book and The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris (published by Puritan and Reformed) are the two books most responsible for the launch in the 1960s of the movement toward presuppositionally biblical education, of which home schooling was the culmination. The latter launched the Creationist movement and forced the antithesis on the issue of evolution in the schools, and the former proved, beyond a doubt, the evangelistic mission of the modern state to advance the cause of humanism through education. These books changed my life. Also wonderful is Sam Blumenfeld’s Is Public Education Necessary?, published by the Paradigm Company.