Opinion> Joseph Farah> Home Schoolers Beware

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Home-schoolers Beware!

I take a back seat to no one in my admiration of home-schoolers. I am a home-schooler myself.

As I have written in my book "Taking America Back," I believe the home schooling movement is the vanguard of what could be a peaceful, social and cultural revolution that will restore morality, justice and freedom in our country.

That's why I want to issue a warning to home-schoolers today: Don't sell out to a presidential candidate too fast or too cheaply.

A Washington Post report suggests home-schoolers are throwing their support to Mike Huckabee in big numbers. While I think there is much to like about Huckabee, there are some major concerns, as well.

One of those concerns is his education policy — specifically, the role of the federal government. You may not know it, and many home-schoolers may not know it, but Huckabee has received the endorsement of the National Education Association's New Hampshire chapter for the Republican nomination. Hillary Rodham Clinton received the group's endorsement for the Democratic nomination.

Huckabee sought the endorsement of the NEA affiliate. He was the only Republican candidate to court it in an address to the group.

Here's what he said at that time: "I'm astonished there are not more Republican candidates here. Do they not think education is important? Or are they just afraid of the NEA? I don't know."

In other words, Huckabee apparently equates education in America with the NEA. I don't know about you, but I find this kind of pandering for money and votes deeply disturbing.

Despite its name, the National Education Association does not promote good education in America. That is a fundamental mischaracterization and error. The NEA is a destructive force to real education in America. The NEA is a powerful teachers union, which, in moments of candor, will admit it is about securing higher pay and benefits for teachers, not improving their performance and certainly not in watching out for the interests of children.

It also maintains an extremist political agenda that certainly should scare away Republican candidates from seeking its endorsement.

If it were up to the NEA, there would be no home schooling allowed in America. The group has repeatedly proposed legislation banning it except when it is conducted by accredited teachers — in other words, NEA members.

The NEA is one of the most dangerous and destructive lobbying forces in America today.

The NEA is spearheading the drive for total government control over all education. The reason it does so is because government empowers the NEA. This is a union that has special privileges no other labor guild has ever enjoyed — including nonprofit status for an organization that actively promotes, endorses and funds the candidacies of partisan political campaigns.

Besides battling home-schoolers and any other choice for parents who recognize the fundamental crises the NEA has created in our schools, the organization promotes bilingual education, homosexual and transgender education, environmental education, after-school care, before-school care and condom education. Reading, writing and arithmetic take a back seat or worse.

This is truly an extremist organization — one that would, if it could, change America's character in ways that would make it scarcely recognizable to freedom-loving people.

Here's my sincere and heartfelt advice to home-schoolers: Before you jump on Mike Huckabee's bandwagon, call on him to repudiate his support from the NEA. Call on him to get the federal government out of education, an institution for which there is no constitutional justification for its meddling. Call on him to challenge the NEA's radical agenda the next time he has an opportunity to address the group. Call on him to take the side of real education reform and freedom in America, not the side of the education hucksters and racketeers.

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.