Authority – LeoGaumont.com

Legalities! A Practical Guide to Home Education – Getting Started (Part 5)

We live in a world of rules and regulations that generally have us do what we are supposed to do rather than what we want to do. In any case, we do need rules to avoid living in chaos, even if we don’t like them at times. Education is a good example.

The question is: who has authority over children, particularly when it comes to education? I intend to fully explain this someday, but for now, let’s just say that the parents who have brought the children into the world would obviously have the responsibility to train, teach and raise them, which is not possible if they do not have the God-given authority to do so.

Suffice it to say that parents are given the legitimate authority for all things pertaining to children. While government may claim to have this authority, God has not given it this authority. Simple logic should bring us to understand that God would not give children to parents and expect government to educate them. Had that been the case, most parents would have deemed potty training as a government responsibility, no doubt!

Once it is clear that parents have the God-given authority and responsibility to train, teach and guide children to adulthood, it is important to note what has to be done to stay out of trouble with the government and its false claims.

Too often, people quote the “render unto Caesar” passage as license to give our children to the government, but once again, consider that God gave them to parents, with no provision for handing off or abdicating the responsibility for raising them.

The rules in Alberta are simple, yet complicated. I am not going to deny that there are ways one can simply ignore the government directives respecting the education of children, but sometimes it is easier to simply play along.

Every child between the ages of six and sixteen in this province must be registered to receive some kind of education. Parents have the option to enroll students in a choice of schools, bring school home or educate the children the way they see fit.

Obviously, it is no burden, at least not at this time, to simply let the government know that the children are being educated, by you, at home, in a way that you approve of. This allows the government to think that it has authority while allowing you to exercise your God-given responsibility to train, teach and guide your children in keeping with God’s directives.

It may appear to be a compromise to some, but giving government what they want, which ostensibly is a desire to see all its citizens get a quality education, while parents retain authority to do so, is not “sin.”

Once understanding our place in this process, the question becomes, with whom will I register or notify? Alberta is unique in funding its home educated students without jurisdictional boundaries. This means that students can be registered either with the local school “authority” or any willing, non-resident one.

I do not recommend registering or notifying with the local school board. The local school system likely has little to no sympathy for, or understanding of, home education and so will naturally direct parents and students back to school, in one form or another. Not only do they believe that only schools can educate children, but there is also a monetary incentive for doing so.

Registering or notifying with a non-resident board provides far more choice and options. Once again, one must emphasize the importance of finding a board that will serve you, rather than manipulate your allegiance to their own benefit. Willing, non-resident boards can be public, separate or private schools, but very few, if any, truly understand the heart of unschooling parents.

It is also important to understand that since home education is funded in Alberta, money can become the primary focus, not only for home education providers, but perhaps even for home educators. Money should be the last criteria for choosing which school “authority” to notify with.

I have created a document that you may find helpful entitled, “Questions a Christian Home Educator Should Ask…” which lists a number of considerations for everyone involved in home education, including the parents. You can find it on our web site, by going to Resources, clicking on Home Education Guide and following through the steps provided to specifically address your present home education situation.

Summarizing, don’t simply believe what you are being told by potential home education providers. Knowing that your children come with money should alert you to go beyond the rhetoric.

Go to their web sites; look into their history; ask yourself, how has this board contributed to the long term best interest of home education? Consider the extent to which school based philosophy and accreditation is advanced; and make sure you will be the authority, otherwise you will be brought right back to the school-based thinking you want to escape.

Oh, and remember, just because a large number of people are doing something, does not mean what they are doing is right or the best option for you. If you make an informed decision in keeping with what is best for your family’s spiritual well-being, everything else will be added unto you.

Goodbye For The Summer

Part of the series Wrapping Up 2015-16
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2016-05-30.

A rather lengthy summary of this year’s Education Unlimited activities.

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: Eph 4: 1-24

Wow! What an incredible year this has been, especially in light of the fact that the Morinville Christian School (MCS), The Home Education Exchange (THEE) and MCS’s former principal gave the appearance of collaborating to kill the EU ministry, destroy the EU organization and steal the students that neither agency had done a thing for, essentially forcing the EU parents to decide whether to stay with MCS or move their children to another school, the Harvest Baptist Academy. After overwhelmingly failing in their apparent hostile take over attempt, another agency, ROOTS, joined MCS to form a rather polygamous union that was sure to rattle the government, who could not comprehend how large populations of students could be moved at will to another school!

Think about this from the government’s perspective. When has an entire school ever moved from one community to another? In the real world, such craziness would never happen but when Independent Contracted Home Education Specialists (ICHES is a term invented to give credibility to organizations that have no place in the government’s world) start moving from one private school to another, both private schools and ICHESs are legitimately called into question. Counting Families Learning Together’s move from the Lighthouse Christian Academy to the Red Deer Catholic system a few years ago, ten agencies (private schools and ICHESs) have been involved in the greatest transfer of students from one school community to another ever to have occurred in the history of education in this province. I cannot be sure that the massive clawbacks that occurred this year are directly related to this craziness, but I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the likelihood of the perpetrators of these very large transfers of students, considering the overall implications of these moves for the Christian home education community, is very small.

What could have been the primary motivation behind this insanity? Student welfare? Or is it more likely to be school and ICHES welfare? Were parents consulted before their children were unilaterally transferred to another school in another community? Don’t the parents have the last say as to where they want their children registered? How can any agency, let alone ones that claim a Christian faith, so brazenly ignore parental authority and trade in students as though they were a commodity? No wonder the government is concerned, as even the secular world would find such manipulation of students offensive. Please understand that while being forced out of MCS after sixteen years of association, EU continued to honour the authority of parents by clearly communicating with our parents both by personal phone call and by letter, what their options were and not what we had decided for them!

Speaking of parental authority, another thing I did was bring to light the news about the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA), our provincial organization supposedly representing the home educators of this province, having sent the Minister of Education a letter offering a form of evaluation and reporting on home educated student progress. Did you know that the organization created to defend home education has now grown to the point where it feels it has the “authority” to tell all parents, facilitators and schools how they will conduct the evaluations of student progress? How about the fact that one “ICHES with a large number of students”, arrogantly assuming to be speaking not only on behalf of all the parents associated with them but for every home educating parent of the province, has volunteered to conduct a pilot program of this newly minted evaluation process? When were the parents and providers consulted about this? Were you consulted before AHEA and the ICHES with a large number of students decided to violate parental authority to appease a ruling that had not actually been made? This unprecedented move strips parents of their authority and validates the Minister’s false claim to having authority over parents in the training of children. If it is a matter of having to answer for the taxpayer funds that private and home education are receiving (remember that we are taxpayers too), then a simple solution is to refuse the funds, if and when it comes with an obligation for evaluation. Given that choice, most parents would likely have opted out of the funding in favour of freedom, but agencies that would cease to exist if the funding was to be discontinued are likely to have a bit of a different perspective on this matter! When parental authority over their children is being violated by agencies trading in students and others willing to sacrifice it on their altar of survival, we don’t really need external enemies to destroy us!

Besides being unbelievably busy making the myriad of adjustments that came along with working with a new school after sixteen years with MCS, Education Unlimited had to make some serious changes in order to completely separate ourselves from the diminishing crowd of ever more compromising ICHESs. We morphed from being an ICHES under MCS into being a highly developed digital management system for traditional home education. Funny how things go, isn’t it? Others may have meant evil for EU, but God used this opportunity (it sure did not feel like an opportunity at first!) for good as we developed not only our web site (www.educatiounlimited.ca) to better serve our school and home education community, but another web site (www.leogaumont.com) which is sure to minister to Christian home educators around the world.

What can be described as the craziest, most nonsensical year we have ever experienced within the home education community was made even more bizarre by the unexpected and unprecedented moves by the Department of Education. Aside from having to wait until January before receiving any funding, our school (Harvest Baptist Academy) underwent three intensive audits this year, likely brought about by their sudden and overwhelming increase of students when having thrown our families a life line and an alternative to MCS. Our new management system proved itself to be outstanding as we seamlessly provided up to date and accurate information in keeping with all rules and requirements. Add to that, a pile of issues like Bill 10, Motion 504, public pressure to defund private schools, the retroactive reinterpretation of the proper use of taxpayer funds in home education, along with an overall near impossible intransigence of the self-declared infallibility of government bureaucrats, and you have a picture of what this past year has been like. It is likely that most home educators of the province were more aware of these last events as they involved a bit more media coverage and changes to funding expectations.

In preparation for these final blogs, I reviewed all the blogs that I have written this year. I was pleased by the outcome and truly thankful for the Holy Spirit’s direction as many times, even I was impressed with what had been said… and I am the one who said it! I encourage you all to start back in September and read through the year. You will get a glimpse of my heart and how it passionately beats for the Christian home education community, the authority of parents and true Christian education. It is sure to encourage you. I nearly never hear from anyone and would dearly love to know not only how these blogs are doing but what you may want to see in the future. Please email me (leo@educationunlimited.ca) to let me know how these blogs have affected you this year.

I want to end by thanking Brian Coldwell, the chairman of the Independent Baptist Christian Education Society, the operators of the Harvest Baptist Academy and all the staff of HBA for giving us a reason to carry on. It has been a great pleasure to have been able to have fellow defenders of Christian education stand beside us as we advance and defend parental authority in education. Thank you, HBA.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to take this time to thank each and every one of you for encouraging us, not only in word, but by being cooperative during these unprecedented times of change, both from without and within this ministry. We may have experienced bell ringing and death defying events, along with some exhilarating things as well, yet we have never lost our focus. We exist to serve our Lord, our schools and families, but most importantly we desire to be of service to our parents as they reclaim their proper authority for the welfare of their children by training their hearts to love the Lord their God with all their hearts, souls, minds and strengths to become servants of the Most High God.

God bless you all. Lord willing, I will “blog” you again in the fall. Please keep us in prayer.

Have a great summer!
Sincerely,
Léo Gaumont

Home Educators (On Life and Authority)

Part of the series The Problem
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2016-04-18.

God gives the authority, but we can give it away.

Bible Reference: Col. 2:8

It should come as no surprise that I would end The Problem series with home educators themselves. If you have been following the blogs closely you should have been able to come to a couple of conclusions. First, I firmly believe… no, actually I am completely convicted of the fact that parents are in complete authority over children for two reasons. First, contrary to recent demonstrations of insanity, God created them male and female and only a mom with a dad can create children. Since they are the only ones capable of issuing progeny, and in keeping with scriptural directives and common sense, I am absolutely convinced of parental authority in the raising, training and teaching of children. The simple plan is God created man male and female with capacity for procreation; instructed them (us) to do just that; children are born to parents who are responsible for seeing them come to adult independence, including all necessary physical, mental and spiritual needs. It is critically important to understand this, since nothing I have said from the beginning of the year will make sense, otherwise.

Next, and equally important is the fact that if God has given parents (dads in particular) the authority over children, then it is very clear that any other claim to that authority is bogus, at best. Let me be crystal clear. Parents have the authority over children, therefore any claim to those children, or for the responsibility to teach them, is a usurping of parental authority. If indeed we find ourselves in a position of having to do what some other agency is telling us we should do, it is because we gave them the authority to do so. This authority is ours, given to us by God, to do with as we please. We can either exercise this authority in keeping with God’s directives, or we can give it away to someone or something else. That is the freedom God has given us. Freedom to do what we want in order to please Him or freedom to give our authority and our blessings away. What a mighty God we serve! Mighty enough to give us all we need towards life and Godliness and wise enough to give us all that we need to self-destruct, if that is what we want. Wow! That’s real power!

Hoping that it is clear that only parents, who can potentially procreate, have authority over children, it is now possible to put things in perspective. Since all the non-procreating agencies we discussed in this series are doomed without an input of life, they must engage in activities to ensure their continued survival. This is accomplished by manipulating parents into willingly or unwittingly surrendering their authority over the children. Parents who surrender their authority, such as acknowledging government claims to authority in education, are either duped with the idea that they cannot succeed without government intervention, or being tricked into trading their children for money or freedom or some other self-serving promise. Again, it is important to note that parents have the authority and must give it away. Others may steal it, but only because we were not aware of having it or failed to guard it in the first place.

Another consideration is that non-procreating agencies do not have to physically steal students to survive. They can engage in a form of parasitism. Parasitism is where one agency (the parasite) benefits while the other (the host) is harmed. However, the parasite must not harm the host too much as the death of the host usually also means the death of the parasite. Hosts usually don’t even know they are being parasitized. They just end up participating in this one-sided relationship without truly understanding that by default, they become part of the problem because they provide the parasite with life and the ability to extend it beyond itself. That is why government has no problem letting parents feed, clothe and shelter children, as long as the teaching is left up to the professionals in school. If the children can be made to think as the agency does, they will unwittingly perpetuate it as they in turn procreate and continue along the same path.

How many parents know that they are part of a system that is designed to benefit one agency over another? How many home educators understand enough about the entities discussed thus far in this series to be able to protect themselves and their children from being used by agencies who cannot survive without them?

Home Education Facilitators

Part of the series The Problem
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2016-04-04.

Facilitators are the front line workers in the home education community and have the power to direct or misdirect the parents.

Bible Reference: Titus 2:1

I have always had a simple philosophy when it came to learning: Go to someone who knows something about what you want to learn. It is important to distinguish the difference between someone who thinks they know something about a topic from someone who does. For example, I believe it is not at all unreasonable to expect a swimming instructor to be able to swim well before signing up for that class! Unfortunately, in our modern world of diminishing knowledge and skills, one need not know much about a topic to claim to be an expert!

Take home education facilitation, for example. This is a position that is unique to Alberta, where funding directed at home educating students comes with the requirement that a certificated teacher visit the family twice per year to ascertain whether or not the student is progressing in his/her studies. The very fact that these teachers are sent to “supervise” a home education program speaks loudly of the government’s belief that parents are not likely to do an adequate job without governmental oversight.

Since the only qualification needed to be a facilitator is to be certificated to practice “teaching” in the province of Alberta, there is no requirement whatsoever to know anything about faith, or to believe, understand or even sympathize with home education. As a consequence, it is not uncommon for facilitators to bring the school to the parents rather than to encourage and equip them to teach the children in keeping with their gifts and talents. One should understand that the very first thing taught to students in teacher’s college, is the importance… no, the necessity of disqualifying parents from being the natural and best possible teachers of their children, which establishes the need for “professional” teachers. Since few bother to question claims to authority that are being made by extra-familial agencies, most facilitators are more likely to represent an authority claimed by government than respecting the authority of the parents of the child.

Facilitators can be very subtle about how they exercise this authority. One way is to “conveniently” visit when the fathers are not present. They may also show up as the experts who quickly normalize the very things parents were escaping when deciding to home educate and to take advantage of their lack of understanding rather than to help them come to a knowledge of the truth.

Another way to demonstrate a false authority is the inspecting of student work and approving or disapproving of what is being accomplished, as if by some “standard”. Considering that there is no such thing as a standard child, there can be no standard by which to make comparison, other than what a facilitator subjectively determines at that moment. The most destructive example of this is in the offering of credits at the high school level. Not only is this unnecessary for post-secondary admission, but doing so can actually hamper a student’s credentials. Validating the secular ideology and “authority of man” may impress a misinformed or insecure parent who may still be questioning their own goals. However, to dishonestly advance a supposed school standard is to arrogantly claim a greater authority over children they do not know, over that of the parents who gave them birth. This completely defeats the reason for home educating in the first place.

This is becoming a major reason why the lines between secular and sacred are being blurred in the home education community. A growing number of home educators bring in a greater need for teachers, some of whom, having little understanding of home education, introduce secular ideology that is assimilated and normalized as acceptable. To be fair, there are good facilitators out there and I am happy to say that Education Unlimited is working with some of the best! Good facilitators often develop wonderful relationships with their families and do indeed encourage and equip them. However, this can only happen if facilitators respect the God given authority of the fathers and that of the mothers who help them meet the responsibilities they have for the training and teaching of children towards God’s eternal kingdom. If the facilitators honour God, they will honour this authority. If they do not honour this authority, they have no business in a home where parents desire to fulfill their roles in leading children to a future that only God knows.

Submission to Authority

Part of the series Feedback
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2014-02-03.

A question was asked: As Christian men when should we fight and what does it look like, in view of the biblical reference to submit to authority?

We do not claim to have all the right answers but based on our present understanding of the scriptures, we will do our best to bring a little clarity to your queries.

Bible Reference: Rom. 13:1-2

There are actually three issues in this question. The question of when we fight is based on the definition of authority which then requires a clarification on what this should look like. All are very difficult questions to answer and ones that have troubled me for many years. I have opinions about this based on a lot of thought in light of my understanding of scripture.

Taken literally, the question of submission to authority found in Romans would indeed suggest that if someone or something is in a position of authority, we must acknowledge this authority and submit to it. However, to submit to an authority that normalizes or advances what scripture clearly states as wrong creates a dilemma for believers who hold the Bible as authoritative. In another scripture (1 Cor. 15:24) where the Apostle Paul is addressing end times prophecy, he refers to a time when Christ delivers the Kingdom to God the Father who “puts an end to all rule, all authority and all power”. Now I don’t claim to be an expert here, but it would appear to me that if God puts an end to all rule, authority and power, He would effectively put an end to Himself as He is all Rule, Authority and Power. More insight is obtained, if we consider the possibility that there could be two types of rule, authority and power. When considering that the biblical narrative clearly states that there are two sides to everything, such as right versus wrong, heaven versus hell, or more generally, being for or against Him, it does make sense that rule, authority and power can also come in either a true or a false version of each. Since putting an end to all rule, authority and power cannot mean God putting an end to Himself, it only makes sense that He puts an end to all false rule, false authority and false power.

Therefore, when the question of submission to authority comes up, it is reasonable, actually imperative, that one questions whether the claim being made to authority is a legitimate, true claim or an illegitimate, false claim. Are there false authorities in this broken and fallen world? Yes. Do these false authorities know they are false authorities? Maybe, but not necessarily. That is why the admonishment to submit to all authority is difficult to understand and often a point of contention. I personally believe that we do, indeed, have to submit to the authorities that God has ordained, but even here we must be wise and discerning as I also believe that if we unquestioningly acknowledge and submit to all claims to authority, we inadvertently agree, enable and empower false claims to authority. We have been advised to “render onto Caesar, the things that are Caesar’s and onto God the things that are God’s”. Good counsel as long as we can distinguish what belongs to whom.

To Be Continued, next week.