05.30.06

HSLDA, take 3

Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 1:21 pm by Meg

Okay, For what it’s worth, here’s my reasons.

  • It bothers me to no end that whenever some newbie comes along and asks for advice, some well-meaning soul will send them willy-nilly to HSLDA with scary stories that they ‘need’ it’s protection. I realize that there may be localized areas that are still having troubles, but most referrals that I’ve seen (in a state with no heavy regulations) have been in the scary story category.
  • I do realize that a majority of homeschoolers fall at the conservative christian end of the spectrum, but HSLDA is suppose to be about supporting our rights to homeschool our children. Instead, we are seeing them going off and using the money to promote a social agenda that has no connection to homeschooling. One that I have a pretty strong difference of opinion about, okay, but nonetheless, these are issues that have no connection to homeschooling and they are using their members’ dues to pay to promote them!
  • HSLDA has a track record of coming into a state with ‘lead feet’. In my own state of Indiana in just this past year we had a state bill calling for a daytime curfew. HSLDA came in full blast at the bill’s sponsor.  Yeah the bill got changed (though there was already local work going on to fix it), but the sponsor went from neutral to negative about homeschoolers.  Why? Because all the HSLDA members just flooded his office with the form that HSLDA had sent out in it’s ‘call for action’.  A form that had the wrong bill number on it for one thing, so it was easy to trace.

I could go on in this vane, but my problem all adds up to the fact that HSLDA tries to position itself as ‘THE’ final definition of what a homeschooler was/is/should be and I’m sorry, they aren’t.

Booboo, I’m sorry that you felt attacked on your own blog and I do appreciate that you don’t want to go following links into the unknown.  As I said originally, I realize that we are coming from 2 very different backgrounds.  I had hoped by sending you to Spunky’s blog you might see an argument laid out by someone that being closer to your background might do a better job of explaining the issue for you.

For you, and anyone else, that might be interested in HSLDA and it’s history, I’d recommend that you check out the Home Education Magazine’s website (it’s HEM in the sidebar.) They have some very informed people that have been monitoring HSLDA for a long time. They are very good at putting HSLDA activities into prospective.

5 Comments

  1. Scrappitydoodah said,

    May 30, 2006 at 7:55 pm

    Thank you for sharing this information. I’ve never been a big fan of HSLDA, but I haven’t really investigated them. I was just turned off by their ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT ANOTHER CRISIS OH NO! mailings that continually turn up all over the place.

  2. Dumb Ox Academy said,

    May 31, 2006 at 5:31 am

    For what it’s worth, I don’t like HSLDA either and would probably fall into your category of conservative Christian (though I think of myself as more of an independent). But I don’t like HSLDA for many of the reasons you state. What I don’t like is that they advertise that they will protect you but then they pick and choose whether they actually will. They will only protect you if they decide it behooves them.

    Plenty of people I know are members, in fact, people in my homeschool support group assume I am until I tell them differently. I have never felt the need to join.

    Faith

  3. Andrea said,

    May 31, 2006 at 6:24 am

    We’ve never felt the urge to join, either, for at least all the reasons listed above.

  4. Steph said,

    May 31, 2006 at 3:35 pm

    I agree with all the points in this post, and they are very well articulated.

  5. Ron said,

    May 31, 2006 at 4:28 pm

    Thanks for posting this. Well articulated :)

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