Child Protective Services often targets homeschoolers as HuffPo blogger Lee Stranahan discovers

Homeschoolers socializing at picnic. Copyright & Credit whgrad Wikimedia Commons

When Child Protective Services intruded into my family's life, we were homeschooling our daughter. While homeschooling was not the reason why CPS got involved in our lives, it clearly played a role. In many of the documents that I obtained during the time Child Protective services was waterboarding our family, I found numerous references to homeschooling, none of them in a positive light. I have reason to believe that CPS would have bowed out of our lives earlier if our child had been attending public schools.

In other cases, however, it is clear that CPS is targeting homeschoolers.

The most recent case I have come across, comes from an unusual source. Lee Stranahan blogs on the Huffington Post, a site not known for posting anti-CPS articles. Stranahan is also an artist, filmmaker and award winning photographer. Stranahan and his wife also homeschool their children. A few days ago, Child Protective Services visited the Stranahans. You can read about it here, but more importantly listen to Lee as he describes the situation on this audio file.

Stranahan's case is reminiscent of the experience that writer and editor, William N. Grigg, also a homeschooler, had with CPS. Both men give valuable tips for dealing with Child Protective Services, although Stranahan's advice to go over the head of the investigator to his or her boss did not work for me. The supervisor was as bad if not worse than the investigator.

In early September a judge in New Hampshire ordered that a girl, who had been homeschooled since first grade, go to public school. According to a report from New Hampshire Public Radio,

“The court has stepped in and said that this child and the mother are too religious and the child needs to be taken out of that environment and exposed to other worldviews, and that is a constitutional problem for all of us,” says John Anthony Simmons, Voydatch’s attorney."

The idea that homeschoolers are indoctrinated but public school students aren't is ludicrous. When I attended public school and public university, I only heard one point of view--generally a liberal, big government, statist point of view.

In other Western nations, which are farther along in creating their own versions of the Hitler Jugend, homeschoolers have a tough time also. In Sweden Christer and Annie Johannson were fined for everyday that their son did not go to public school and eventually their son was snatched from an airplane and taken into the state's custody.

Thousands of homeschooling families have found themselves investigated by Child Protective Services. In some cases, neighbors ignorant of the long history and legalities of homeschooling, have called CPS because they don't see their neighbor's children getting on the bus to go to school. Counselors and psychologists, who think that homeschooling is child abuse because they believe that homeschooled children will not be properly socialized, often call the authorities. Socialization in school, of course, often involves learning how to bully and be bullied, how to smoke, how to do drugs, how to put on a condom properly and so on. That's a form of socialization that many people prefer to go without.

In any event, if you are a homeschooler and have had a bad experience with CPS, please feel free to share it with others in the comments section below. You do not have to use your real name.

If you are a homeschooling family and are currently under investigation by Child Protective Services, you might want to contact the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. And if you are a homeschooler who has not been bothered by CPS, you might still want to consider joining the Homeschool Legal Defense Association in order to help your fellow homeschoolers out.

New York State homeschoolers might also consider joining LEAH (Loving Education At Home).
 

For more info: Read more article by Dan Weaver on Child Protective Services and related topics.