EXODUS MANDATE-WV

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Is This Really Practical? Can It Work?

We're not starting from scratch here.

The revolution has begun. It's only a matter of time. The utopian dream of controlled public schools is dying, as all utopian dreams do. People wish to live their own dreams, make their own paths, achieve their own success.

It is really remarkable that Americans have tolerated the control and authoritarianism of public schools for as long as they have. They are an independent, self-reliant people, and more and more of them are getting fed up with the government and its minions (or in many cases, the minions using the government) trying to control their every thought and move, crying in the marketplace that the people cannot know what's best for them.

From the earliest settlers in the 1500's to the creators of this great nation in the 1700's to the builders of the 1800s, people managed their education without the aid of government and without force. Further, they created something that could never have been created by Horace Mann and his cohorts — true liberty, a liberty that relied on convincing people of its merits, not forcing an ideology down their throats. It hasn't been a perfect ride, to be sure, because that is an impossibility. But it has been an amazing ride, and we're on the edge of a renewal.

Consider this:

• 6.3 million students (11.4% of all school-age children) attend 27,000 private schools across the country.
• Another 1.5 to 2 million children are home schooled.
• Tens of thousands of parents pay hundreds of learning centers and thousands of tutors $25-$80 an hour to supplement or compensate for their children's public school experience.
• Home school parents run thousands of co-ops and classes for their children. They also operate organizations that sponsor field trips, sports teams, curriculum fairs, conferences and more.
• Jewish parents send their kids for special religious training after school hours. Chinese parents send their kids for native language training on weekends. African American parents send their kids to cultural classes and activities.
• Parents run neighborhood tutoring services.
• Special schools allow students to learn completely through on-line courses.
• Full educational resources are available via correspondence, video, and the internet. They cover kindergarten through college.
• Many colleges offer joint-enrollment for high schoolers (and many home schoolers take advantage of it).
• The educational options available to young people and their families today is mind-boggling and they increase each year.

The key to a real revolution in education is independence.

Parents must want independence from the state . They must want to take back their children, even if it means more effort and more responsibility. Even if it means spending their own money to educate them.

Parents must decide what is most important to them:

• Are they willing to overlook the truth about state schooling, ignore the damage it does, ignore the independence it robs from them and their children, ignore the fact that the state is determining their children's worldview and limiting their future?

• Or are they ready to take control again, to act in the independent spirit that led to the freest citizens on earth, citizens who didn't need the state to play the part of Big Daddy, who felt completely competent to educate themselves, to see to the needs of their children, to make their own future?

The change has begun. The options grow daily. It won't happen overnight — it will happen one independent family at a time.

The first step is the hardest. You may need to set aside a few days to read and think, to talk it over with your spouse or someone you trust, to make the mental jump to independence.

Set aside the time now. Think about it. The future of your children depends on it. The future of our country depends on it. And with all the resources and help now available, that future looks bright.

http://www.schoolandstate.org/Case/case10.htm