Swope’s Swoop: An Oklahoma Legislator’s Attempt to Make Homeschoolers into Children of the State
Guest Post By Ann Kerr
swoo͞p: v. 1. To make a rush or an attack with a sudden sweeping movement. 2. To seize or snatch in a sudden sweeping movement.
So long homeschooling parents! We don’t need you anymore. You do not know what is best for your kids, and we are going to tell you what is best. Until further notice, all of your children’s future will rest with the State. If you still want to try to direct their education and act as their parent – EVEN though the State knows best – then you can put in a request. We promise not to send it to File 13. We will look it over, look you over, look all of your children’s various teachers over and then we might look a little more deeply. We really want to get to know you before we would allow you to teach your own kids.
We want a file on you.
If this seems a little onerous…well…you know, you don’t really have to go through this. We have some other options already in place, and we will even pay you to use them. We have those old-fashioned brick and mortar learning centers (or the more recent version – [sheet metal and bolts), we have those more modern public (charter) schools that are not bound by local school boards, which many people believe are actually for homeschoolers, (eh, eh) and now we even have private schools under our wings. Our money is flooding their pockets – and you know what that means. (Or, at least you should.)
We want total control of your children. If you won’t give it to us, we will take it.
This is the power that is hoisted by House Bill 4130, filed by Representative Amanda Swope, Democrat, District 71.
Here are some of the tidbits in the Swoop.
- Rep. Swope is classifying all homeschooling children as deprived or potentially deprived children, simply by injecting her proposal into a bill filed to amend the law regarding “Children and the Juvenile Code.” More specifically, right in the middle of a lot of definitions regarding child neglect and abuse, Rep. Swope plops in some terms to define pod schools and microschool, which completely ignore Oklahoma Constitutional law and contradict the definition of students learning “by other means.”
- To make this clear, Rep. Swope takes Oklahoma’s Constitutional Right to educate “by other means,” changes it name and puts it in a child abuse and neglect law. This is a sudden and significant departure from the rule of law and from parental rights in Oklahoma.
- Even more staggering is Rep. Swope’s next move to re-write the Juvenile Code section regarding records for deprived children. In an added section, Rep. Swope, evidently hopes to pass the following and make it the law of the land in Oklahoma:
- Require parents to submit a letter of intent to the Department of Human Services in Oklahoma in order to homeschool, pod school or micro school per the new, added definitions.
- Require parents to give not only names, but also Social Security numbers, children’s names, addresses, everyone else who lives in the home, everyone who might teach the children, and a statement regarding homeschooling.
- Require parents to submit subsequent letters of intent with any change of schooling.
- Require parents to submit to criminal background checks.
- Require others in the home to submit to criminal background checks.
- Require anyone else associated with the child’s schooling to submit to background checks and, guess where all of the information from this gross invasion of your privacy and your family goes? Rep. Swope has it covered. It will not go missing.
Rep. Swope proposes that the government be required to compile a Database of individuals, facilities and organizations that perform or assist with homeschooling, pod schooling, or microschooling.
That’s you, homeschool parents.
Rep. Swope wants all of the information on you. Meanwhile, it will just sit in an encased, secure database preserved for posterity with your beautiful signature on it, or will it? If you learned your history, you will remember that more than one country has decided that its Uncle Sam or variation thereof is better enabled to raise children than the parents.
And, what has happened, as a result?
Children were cut off from families. Children were cut off from religious training. Parents were denied any rights to raise their children according to their values.
These results are hallmarks of a communist society.
As Karl Marx and Engel’s said in the Communist Manifesto –
Communists: “Abolition of the family! …
Citizens: But, …[communists] destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social [education].
Communists: “The…clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, … [is] all…disgusting…”
And, so is Rep. Swope’s swoop.
