Who Owns the Children? Public Compulsion, Private Responsibility & the Dilemma of Ultimate Authority: Public Compulsion, Private Responsibility, & the

Many parents, thanks to historians of schooling, are figuring out that state schooling is a recent phenomenon in mankind's history that was invented by elites to control the rate of learning among the population - to slow it down. It is not unusual to find homeschooled students scoring several years ahead of their state-schooled counterparts on national examinations such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Blair Adams is a Protestant Christian who has written, along with Joel Stein and Howard Wheeler, a well-researched account of the American struggle for educational freedom between parents, especially homeschoolers - and the State. Their book is written from a spiritual perspective and was first published in 1983 by Truth Forum in Waco, Texas - the town where the federal government's FBI later violated the first amendment rights of the Branch Davidians and massacred them. This revised and expanded edition is the authors' fifth. Their book begins with a 14-paged Preface: "The authors of this book underwent the complete educational socialization (colonization?) . . . we served our time under compulsory education laws that sentenced us to twelve years in governmental schools . . . by the Empire as it colonized our minds"(pxxiv). The fifteen subsequent chapters and conclusion are grouped into three parts: 1) The Dilemma Stated, 2)Drawing the Line: God-given Parental Authority versus the Authority of the State, and 3) The Total Conflict. This is followed by seven appendices, notes, bibliography, and an index that ends on page 692. Including the preface, there are over 700 pages in this tome. Part One addresses the issue of "Who owns the children?". Chapter One makes the case that a value-neutral education is a myth and demontrates that all education is inescapably spiritual in character. The authors show, too, how the key motive behind compulsory education is simply the power to culturally program the minds of children. Chapter Two examines then refutes the justifications in favor of compulsory education, while also accounting for U.S. court decisions concerning parental right in education. Chapter Three looks at the issue of ultimate control over the education of our children. In Part Two, which covers chapters four through ten, the authors seek to provide legal ammunition for parents willing to risk fines, incarcerations, and the State's confiscation of their children in the confrontation between Liberty versus Power. This section can be weighty reading, but affected parents will find the information valuable. Part Three covers chapters eleven through fourteen, where the authors unveil the tyrannical assumptions and implications that stand behind compulsory education laws. These statist attitudes toward parental authority are examined in other areas such as complusory medicine, child birth, and child abuse laws. Chapter fifteen and the Conclusion consider the consequences of tearing down the wall between Church/School and the Stat