Dear Editor,
Thank you for the fair and balanced article titled “Two schools of thought: homeschoolers and public school leaders weigh in on growing divide", published in the recent Town and Country (Feb. 4).
The public may be interested to know the difficult path parents have taken to advocate for the right to educate their own children.
Before public schooling, education was predominantly done at home by parents. Parents had assumed this responsibility for most of human history. After Canada’s confederation in 1867, schooling became funded and regulated by provincial ministries of education and delivered by local school districts.
Homeschooling resurfaced in Alberta by the early 1980s but parents faced much hostility from government education agencies and social disapproval from family, friends and neighbours. With the laws being against them they had no other option than to be noncompliant to authority. Parents lived in this hostile climate with being reported and visited by truancy officers.
In the mid 1980s a group of parents who, wanting to reassert their essential role, responsibility, and authority in the education of their children came together to form Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) , officially registered in 1986.
As a fundamentally Christian association, AHEA recognized that underpinning all laws in the legal and justice system in Canada, the Law of God had to be referenced as the objective standard. AHEA holds to the premise that all authority belongs to God and historically the church and state often tried to usurp the authority God gave to parents in the fifth commandment.
They advocated to the Education Minister and pressed the government to include provisions for home education in the new School Act. With the passage of Bill 27 (the new School Act) in 1988, the home education regulations were next on the agenda. Parents wrote and called and showed up in large groups to show they were serious and determined. Those regulations granted permission for parents to home educate, but stated clearly there would be no protectionsfor home education parents. The bottom line was that Albert Education wanted full control! This sentiment is still evident from Aspen View Public School superintendent Constantine Kastrinos in the article recently published.
AHEA found only one board at that time who was willing to allow parents to register with them, but 100 children were registered that fall.
AHEA has continued to advocate for homeschooling rights on the basis of Article 26.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations. It states that “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind the education that shall be given to their children” (United Nations, 1948). Alberta’s Choice in Education Act followed suite and added Article 26.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the preamble of the new Act.
The amended Education Act specifically refers to “home education programs as being valued and integral in providing choice in education to students and parents” (Choice in Education Act, 2020, p. 1) Premier Jason Kenney declared upon the announcement of this new legislation, that it affirms that “parents have the primary right to choose the education their children receive. Parents, not politicians, know what is best for their kids” (Kenney, 2020).
AHEA holds to the belief that no academic discipline is neutral and that all education is religious in nature since one’s view of the world and life is inevitably involved in teaching. For this reason AHEA has advocated that parents should be given the right to determine the content, process and timing of this education.
And despite Superintendent Kastrinos’ negative claims about home education, 35 years of research show that home-educated children and those who are now adults are performing as well and typically better than public school students in academic achievement, social and emotional development, and success in adulthood without provincial-certified teachers and without over $13,000 in tax dollars per year per student (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15582159.2017.1395638, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161956X.2013.796825, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15582159.2014.875411 , www.nheri.org ).
AHEA has never been an advocate for funding for homeschoolers because they argue and believe that if this role belongs to parents the cost of it should also belong to them; interestingly many Canadian provinces do not grant funding or even require parents to register. Thankfully the discussion around the importance of education remains of vital importance to all levels of government, family, church and state.
Kevin and Christina Vanderzyl
Members of the AHEA board
