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Whether you voted for Obama or not, he is now our president elect, which means he will have a huge affect on our lives as citizens and as parents.  However, we do not know how his administrationn will affect us as homeschoolers.  I went scouring through the internet and posted querries to the twitterverse to see if I could find something that could give us a firm grasp at where our next President stands on Homeschooling.

Unfortunately there is little to no actual information about where he stands on this issue.  There are lots of conjectures, opinions, and speculations about how his views on education and his ties with the Teachers Union will influence his stance, but there is no actual facts backing any of these assumptions up.  So instead of reposting these opinions, I’ll post the website addresses, and you can decide for yourself if they are correct or not.  In the meantime, I will be trying to contact President Obama’s staff and see if I can get a definitive answer from them and will let you know how that goes.  And if you, dear reader, find anything that might give us all a better glimpse into our new Presidents view on homeschooling, please let us know with a comment!

Onto the research that I have for your attention.

This first site I found on my own through a google search for Obama and Homeschooling.  Then several twitter friends sent me the link to the same site after asking if anyone had some good sources.  This is a very good article on the various possible sources that tell a little about how Obama feels about education.  However, none of these sources show a direct link between his views on education and his views on homeschooling.  You can make an educated guess on the possibilities of where his views on education will take him when considering homeschooling, but still nothing definite.  To see this article go to Obama States of America, there are also some good comments on the article itself and on Obama.

Spirittibee’s Blog has a very good post on why she feels that Obama does not support homeschooling or parental rights.  She makes the argument that Obama’s support of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which basically says that the government knows best for your child, but also talks about wanting to strike out poverty, and child abuse.  Which of course all bad policies/bills have some good things thrown in to make sure they are passed and make it hard for people to be against them.  To be honest, I haven’t read the entire article of the CRC because it’s in politicianese and extremely long.  I skimmed it though and found nothing in particular about homeschooling, but I don’t like any government thinking they can just decide what’s best for my child.

At A Woman On Purpose – Forestdale Home Education Services her focus is on the tax money and where Obama stands on the No Child Left Behind act that was brought into place by the Bush Administration.  She has some very valid points on where the tax money is being spent and what that could mean to the Homeschooling community.

Now, for the Pro-Obama & Homeschooling side, I was sent one blog post that quoted one part of Obama’s Book “Audacity of Hope” to show that he was for homeschooling.  The blog post was atually on the Obama campaign website, and although the quote from the book does mention homeschooling, it does not actually show any support from Obama for homeschooling.  On the page where this post is, you can click on the link that says “Homeschoolers for Obama“.  You’ll find lots of homeschoolers that are supporting Obama, but still nothing saying Obama supports homeschoolers.

Thanks to Spunky Homeschool I also found that the Suburban Journal asked Obama specific questions that were listed on their site and got answers from his staff.  You can see all of the questions on their site, but if you scroll down about half way you can also see his response to the Homeschooling question.  Of course it was a very vague response, that you can read whatever you want to in it.  I certainly wasn’t satisfied with the answer.

Of course at Maggie’s Notebook you’ll find an extremely indepth article on Obama’s education plan and who advises him on education.  I think this article pretty clearly lays it all out for you exactly where Obama really stands on education.  It doesn’t say where he stands on homeschooling, but I think you can decide for yourself where homeschooling will fall in his educational plans.

The one thing to remember about all of this, is that right now, homeschooling is determined by the states, not the federal government!  So although Obama may not support homeschooling, there is only so much that he can do right now to stop it.  However, what he can do is make it easier for the states to enforce more regulations.  The possibilities of what else he can do are various, but not likely.  I think, that the homeschooling community is strong enough to be able to come together and keep any president from taking away our rights, just like we did when California tried to do it.  We must stay ever vigilante and warry, no matter how much you liked or disliked Obama, we still do not know where he stands, so we must always watch him and our very liberal congress to make sure our rights as parents don’t get usurped.

This entry was posted by admin on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 10:02 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized and has these tags: Actual Facts, Assumptions, Citizens, Conjectures, Definitive Answer, Educated Guess, Glimpse, Google, Google Search, Grasp, Possibilities, President Elect, Presidents, Speculations, Spi, States Of America, Teachers Union, Ties, Twitter, Website Addresses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.