The Homeschool How To

#138: Mama Bears vs. Overreaching Legislation

• Cheryl - Host • Episode 138

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In this critical episode of The Homeschool How To Podcast, host Cheryl interviews Mariama, a homeschooling mother from New Jersey who's been tracking dangerous legislation threatening homeschool freedom. With homeschooling rates skyrocketing from less than 1% to 3.7% post-pandemic in New Jersey, lawmakers are pushing unprecedented restrictions that could spread nationwide.

What You'll Learn:

The Four Bills Threatening New Jersey Homeschoolers:

  • Assembly Bill 5825 & Senate Bill 1796: Mandatory curriculum alignment with state standards
  • Assembly Bill 5796 & Senate Bill 4589: Required annual "health and wellness checks" with school district representatives

Constitutional Concerns:

  • First Amendment religious freedom violations
  • Fourth Amendment search and seizure issues
  • 14th Amendment equal protection and parental rights infringement

The Real Story Behind Homeschool Success:

  • African American and Latino homeschooled children outperform public school peers by 20-25 points on standardized tests
  • New Jersey public schools: Only 52% pass ELA, 39% pass math, 24% pass science
  • Why homeschool families are achieving superior educational outcomes

From COVID Awakening to Homeschool Advocacy: Mariama shares her journey from concerned parent during the pandemic to homeschool advocate, discussing vaccine mandates, gender ideology in schools, and the importance of biblical worldview education.

Key Topics Covered:

  • Homeschool laws by state and how to track legislation
  • HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) resources
  • Responding to "sheltering" and "privilege" criticisms
  • The historical context of compulsory education
  • Building community and authentic cultural education at home
  • Why school "confidential curriculum" policies are red flags

Critical Action Items:

  • Follow HSLDA updates on pending legislation
  • Share your homeschool story on social media
  • Monitor your state's legislative calendar
  • Connect with local homeschool advocacy groups

Featured Guest: Mariama (@GodlyMothersChosenLittles) - New Jersey homeschool advocate and mother of two

Blog: https://www.godlymotherschosenlittles.com/

Mariama's YouTube

Resources Mentioned:

  • Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA.org)
  • New Jersey homeschool law information
  • Constitutional amendments and parental rights

Cheryl's Guide to Homeschooling: Check out The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide- Cheryl's eBook compiling everything she's learned from her interviews on The Homeschool How To Podcast.

 
👉 15% off Tuttle Twins books with code Cheryl15


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us today I have Mariama from New Jersey. Welcome, mariama. How are you? Great? Thanks for having me, cheryl. Oh, thank you so much for being here. I've been watching your stuff on Instagram because you are all about the laws that are being passed in New Jersey, and even if you don't live in New Jersey, it doesn't matter, because where a law is passed somewhere, it is going to trickle. So thank you so much for staying on top of this, and I can't wait to get into this today on what kind of laws they're trying to pass for homeschoolers. So let's just start off the bat with how many kids do you have and what are their ages?

Speaker 2:

So I am homeschooling my two youngest, and they are five and seven. Okay, so do you have older kids too? So just at home, I just have those two. So technically one is school age and one is not, but in New Jersey you can start as early as five.

Speaker 1:

Okay, all right. Yeah, you know, I haven't looked at New Jersey's laws for reporting. I'm in New York so I'm right over the Hudson from you, I don't know. Yeah, I think that would be appropriate. I'm like throwing it out there like I know geography, but yeah, so we are very strict here in New York and I know that New Jersey fairly recently just passed a law saying that teachers no longer even have to pass like regular literacy tests. Can you tell us a little bit about that? That one.

Speaker 2:

I did hear about that one. I did hear about that one, that one. From what I understand, they're claiming that you do have to have a bachelor's degree, that you're supposed to, you know like, be proficient in literacy. So there's some, you know some, that are saying that it's not as bad as it sounds. Okay.

Speaker 1:

And that's the hard part, isn't it? I mean, you want to be informed, but obviously reading the headlines is not enough, because you really have to get into it. The headlines are going to try to make you think one way and we're like oh, as the homeschooler, I want to share this. And if you don't really read into it and I did I did read into it and I think you're correct too, that it was like they did still have to have their bachelor's. They just no longer had to pass this basic literacy exam.

Speaker 2:

That most other states Because it was like redundant.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you do have to pass it in other states. So then it's to the point of like, well then, why take it away? So then it's to the point of like, well then, why take it away? Can they not pass it? Now that I don't know. It's been a good, it's very interesting, a lot of it, I have found. That has to do with funding, and we as the common folk will just never know the ins and outs. But what even got you into homeschooling in the first place?

Speaker 2:

Well, in the I would say the height of COVID, which was like spring 2020, that's when my oldest was two and I just had a newborn, and so for us it was the first initial thought was we need to protect our kids. It was about their physical safety I love, you know, watching your channel and listening to your content about health awareness vaccines and for us it was a matter of protecting them. Not for my youngest could have started preschool. We considered, you know, at the time we were living in Pennsylvania, which also has strict laws, and we were thinking, well, maybe we'll send them to preschool and then maybe we'll start with kindergarten. And when I started talking to teachers in my neighborhood and talking to parents in the neighborhood, they started talking about vaccines and the COVID vaccine being mandatory for all staff and for students, and we started thinking, wait a second. You know, our little one wasn't old enough yet, but we could see where this was going, that at some point they might require him to be vaccinated, and we just felt like that was not an option for us. So we started just doing simple little learning activities at home hands-on learning activities, reading books, lots of nature time outside and then I started hearing even more horror stories about families that had been vaccinated, and so I know it's not a debate about vaccinations and stuff whether you should get vaccinated or not but for us it was a matter of protecting our son. We did not want him to have to undergo any, you know for lack of a better term like a guinea pig experiment. We felt like that just was not an option for us, and that was initially what it was about.

Speaker 2:

And then I started, you know, talking again to more families and teachers, because I would go out and we would always meet people in the parks and have conversations with people and I started hearing about some of the ideologies that were being presented to kindergartners and even preschoolers, like gender ideology and certain things that I felt were just not ever going to align with it, just didn't align with our faith. We are Christ followers and so for us it was like almost like an awakening. We started to see and hear things from parents that really it became I think that's what the best word for it is an awakening. We started to realize that this is not the public school that we were, you know, coming up under. Like this experience is totally different. There were certain things that we just, you know, coming up under like this experience is totally different. There were certain things that we just were never taught in schools and my husband and I we attended public, private. I even did a magnet school growing up. So we had I even went to Catholic school, so we had those experiences and not at any point were we introduced to gender ideology. So that was one of those things.

Speaker 2:

For us it was like no, this is a no, no go for us. And so once my son was of age I believe in Pennsylvania you can start at five when we moved to Jersey, they were already asking. There were teachers in my neighborhood asking me well, are you going to bring your son here at the age of five? And I've said no, we have no intentions. And they recruited heavily and I said no, my husband and I said no, we have no intentions. And so we just continued on the path and haven't looked back. And so now he is seven, we have no intentions of looking backwards, we have no intentions of putting him in a traditional school setting. We actually plan to homeschool our kids through high school Awesome.

Speaker 1:

Okay, can I make things uncomfortable for a second here?

Speaker 1:

And that's just because that's who I am.

Speaker 1:

So I get told like, not all the time, but you know, you're just so privileged because you know you can homeschool your kids, or you want to shelter your kids, you don't want to expose them to different cultures, or you know, you, you want your kid to live in a bubble, you don't want them to know the reality of, you know, say, slavery, anything like that.

Speaker 1:

And then and I look back at things and I'm like, well, I don't know, when I think about sending my kids to school, it's more about do you trust the government, Because they're the ones really trickling down the curriculum that our kids are learning. And then I think about who has our government been worst to? It's like, okay, I mean, there were the Tuskegee experiments, there was slavery, and even you know, my son goes to a wilderness class where the leader is a Native American guy and he's like, well, we have to wear masks during COVID. I mean my son didn't go there during then. But I'm like, since when did you guys start thinking the government was like, you know, had your back? You know? So like, do you ever get those questions? Or like to me, it seems to me like plain as day, like it's these questions.

Speaker 1:

I'm trying to say it in a delicate way, but like I know where I went to school. I went to an inner city school and if a black person was like trying to be smart, they'd be like, why are you trying to be white? And it's just. It's like ah, what is it Crabs in the pot like you try to take down others. I mean, why would any of us trust the government if we know what they've done to us in the past? It's true, it's absolutely true. What's your response to that?

Speaker 2:

Believe it or not, believe it or not, and I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole, but I have been asked by people of African descent, african American relatives, people that you know, that we used to talk to and no longer talk to. But I've been asked by people you know how could you, how could you, you know, I guess, forsake all of the blessings that came from the landmark case Brown v Board of Education? It's like, how could you?

Speaker 2:

You know how could you? We finally got our kids in school, right, we finally got the freedom to get into these schools. And it's like, no, that's not what our ancestors fought for. They didn't fight for our kids to, you know, be pigeonholed and put in a box. And we dealt with segregation. And then after that it was like, well, now we're in the schools, yeah, but you're pigeonholed, you're in a box, you're in underperforming schools, they're not educating you. And, yes, you have the freedom to go to the school, but what are they actually doing there? They're not educating us.

Speaker 2:

And this is one of the things that I love about homeschooling because, if you look at the stats, african-american children and even Latino children outperform their peers in public school. Now, I don't know the exact statistics and it's never really exact because, you know, in some states there's no reporting required, like in New Jersey. There are no reports required. You don't have to file a letter, a letter of intent, you don't have to submit registration, assessments, nothing. In New Jersey, there is no oversight. It's one of the 12 states that have no oversight for homeschoolers. So you're not going to get all the stats, but across the nation, african-americans and Latinos outperform their peers in public school, traditional schools, they outperform them.

Speaker 1:

The ones that are homeschooled.

Speaker 2:

ACT that are homeschooled outperform their peers in public and traditional schools. They outperform them on the ACTs, SATs, and I believe let me just double check I think it's 20. Let's just double check because I had it in front of me. I believe it's 20 to 25 points higher, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 1:

I would bet that they outperform everybody. They do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but that is a stat. That's a stat that. Let me just double check. Yes, I believe it is. Yeah, I believe it's 20 to 25 points higher. That's one of the I think, one of the alarming stats that I saw, because when you talk to a lot of people, they'll say oh well, you know, but the system has the supports in place, especially for underprivileged communities. They're usually pointing at people of color. You need to be in the system because they have the supports, and they have, you know, the supports for special needs and the supports that you need for underprivileged communities, and they're usually talking about inner city areas. But the reality is, regardless of socioeconomic background, black children are still outperforming their traditionally schooled peers, regardless of where they live, how much money their family has, their family size doesn't matter, they're still outperforming.

Speaker 2:

So when, I hear people make that argument. You know, what about Brown v Board of Education? I'm like, what about it?

Speaker 1:

They fought for the right for us to have the freedom to be educated, to have the best education possible, and it's not the government school system, and you know what that reminds me of, because I had a post a long time ago too, where I was like you know, so many states fought Like. I grew up in New York where you couldn't get married legally if you were gay. Right, and then that overturned. And you know, I knew some gay people that got married and you attend the wedding and I never really thought about it. But it's like you're fighting so hard to have the right to be married. But what does marriage really do? First of all, a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, marriage was between you, your spouse, and the pastor, priest, whatever religion you were, and you wrote it in a Bible and that's it. The state had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1:

And then now we're making people fight for the right so that the government can just keep track of you. Okay, I never knew that. It's like a very similar thing. We're fighting for this right to be in the schools so that they can actually just keep track of us better, so that they can keep track of our statistics, keep track of where we are, where we are at all day, what we're eating. I mean it really is. Nobody stops to like step outside and look at what are we fighting for and why. It's like the women's movement too, right Of the sixties. I want to get out and work like really, cause you're still going to have to do laundry when you get home, you still have to feed these people, you still have to clean, so why are we fighting to?

Speaker 2:

work. It's true, that's like yeah, that's like a whole different. Yeah, that's a whole different topic it's funny because I used to be one of those people who was like I've got to get out there and I've got to fight for my right to have a voice, to break the glass ceiling, and then I ended up home because this was what I was supposed to be fighting for.

Speaker 2:

I was supposed to be fighting for the right to protect my children and the right to be a parent which is something that the state is trying to literally take from us is the right to be parents, and it's just sad. It's sad what we're seeing across the nation. But in New Jersey right now, what we're up against is we're up against four bills. We're up against four bills Assembly Bill 5825 and Senate Bill 1796. These bills are would require New Jersey homeschoolers to file a letter of intent stating that you want to homeschool, but you also have to provide curriculum that aligns with state standards. You're going to have to essentially adopt whatever curriculum is approved by the state and include topics that may go against your faith, which is our religious freedom as Christian parents, and a Christian homeschool is protected under the First Amendment. Our parental rights are protected under the 14th Amendment.

Speaker 2:

But you're saying you know you're going to have to do X, y, z, which is again, it's clearly overreach. You know this is not about accountability. This is about overreach and taking the rights of parents away from them. This is not even about what's best for the children. It's really like you said, it's about tracking families. File that letter of intent so we can track you, every one of your moves, and then we control what we teach in our traditional schools. Right. But now we want to control what you're teaching your kids too. Overreach. That's a big issue here. And then not only do we have those two, we have two identical bills. Don't ask me why they filed two separate bills. They're exactly the same bill but it's filed two bills, I guess to make sure that it got passed through. But Assembly Bill 5796 and Senate Bill 4589 are requiring homeschoolers to meet annually with a school district representative for a general health and wellness check. Now, private public they don't have to do that.

Speaker 2:

And now it begs the question are you trying to violate our Fourth Amendment rights?

Speaker 2:

You can't go and you know, search and inspect a private home without you know, without a probable cause or without a warrant, right, and so what they're trying to do is get families to meet at a school district or a location where you meet a school district representative. And now they're saying well, we have, you know, we want you to come here because they know they can't inspect your home without probable cause and they're making this blanket requirement for all homeschoolers. This is what they want to do All homeschoolers, regardless of whether you're a good homeschooler or not. There's no evidence that you've done anything wrong, but we want you all to come so that you can meet with our school district representative to do a general health and wellness check.

Speaker 2:

That could be mental health, that could be sexual health, that could be nutritional health. What kind of health are we talking about? You know, why are you concerned about the health and wellness of my child? Unless you have evidence that there was abuse or neglect, right, and so that's. You're going against, potentially going against Fourth Amendment rights, and you're also going against my parental rights to take care of my child and provide care for my child without the state's interference and equal protections clause of the 14th Amendment, because you're not doing that for private and public schools. They are not required to do that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so dumb it down for us. What's the Fourth Amendment?

Speaker 2:

So the Fourth Amendment basically says that we are not to have any suspicionless intrusion, right, or nobody can come into your house and nobody can come and inspect your home and nobody can check on your kids and come and see what's going on without a warrant or without probable cause. So if a mandated reporter, like a pediatrician you go to the doctor, the doctor sees your baby and says, oh, we think there's a problem with your baby, that you might've done something wrong, we're going to call ACS in New York or in, I think, in Jersey, it's called DIPHIS. We're going to call DIPHIS on you and we're going to tell them that we think that there's potential here for neglect or abuse. And then they take the case, they open it up and they start the investigation. Now they can come to your house, they can knock on your door because they have probable cause. There might be abuse or neglect. We have to investigate. But unless there is a case like that, you can't do that Thinking about homeschooling, but don't know where to start.

Speaker 1:

Well, I've interviewed a few people on the topic about homeschooling, but don't know where to start. Well, I've interviewed a few people on the topic actually 120 interviews at this point with homeschooling families from across the country and the world and what I've done is I've packed everything I've learned into an ebook called the homeschool how to complete starter guide. From navigating your state's laws to finding your homeschooling style, from working while homeschooling to supporting kids with special needs, this guide covers it all with real stories from real families who've walked this path. I've taken the best insights, the best resources and put them all into this guide. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident. Get your copy of the Homeschool how To Complete Starter Guide today and discover that homeschooling isn't just about education. It's about getting what you want out of each day, not what somebody else wants out of you. You can grab the link to this ebook in the show's description or head on over to thehomeschoolhowtocom.

Speaker 1:

I have so many things running through my head right now. First of all, I know many teachers here in New York and she's my one friend in particular has said I know there is abuse in this home and there is literally nothing the school can do about it. They will not take the child. I know somebody that works for CPS here in New York, which is called Child Protective Services, and they said, unless we literally watch the parent beat the child, we cannot take the child because of the laws protecting that parent and there's nowhere to put the child anyway. Anyway, exactly this is like and I get that they are, because I think there's a similar bill federally going, like it's being written and it's about like the protecting of the child, that abused child that you know, that hillbilly that just leaves their kid to work the farm and won't educate them and beats them and doesn't feed them. They're targeting the heartstrings of people to say that that's who homeschools.

Speaker 2:

Which is not accurate. It's insane to me. Believe it or not, there are people that buy into this, this emotional language, because there are people that still think that homeschoolers look like the homeschoolers from the 70s, you know where. In some cases they were keeping their kids in the house and they were protecting them and they didn't go far and they don't go anywhere. Sometimes they never left the property because there were other people that were willing to put their parents in jail or their parents could potentially go to jail.

Speaker 1:

Right, or they beat the child and they didn't want the school to see the bruises, that sort of thing. But yes, the majority. Now and I'm in New York, we have pretty strict laws.

Speaker 1:

So I do have to send a notice of intent every year. I have to send something called an IHIP, which is an individualized home instruction plan saying what I intend to do. And then I send a quarterly report saying what I did do, and it sounds a lot worse than it is. Um, cause, you know, I just go through my pictures and the books I took out of library. I'm like, yep, we did this, that and the other thing. And then the school's probably like way more than we did in school, so you're good. And then at the end of the year you give a final report, or a couple of the years they need a test or something, or you can pick one or the other. So it's really not that bad, but we do have it as one of the worst. How do you jump from New Jersey with no reporting to, all of a sudden, we're going to do some home visits.

Speaker 2:

Well, believe it or not, and I was looking, I was researching the homeschool laws in New Jersey. New Jersey enacted the. They don't even really have technically a homeschool law, they don't even call it homeschool. But in 1967, new Jersey enacted I think it was a New Jersey statute section 18A that said all you have to do is provide equivalent instruction in any place other than school. That's it. You just have to provide equivalent instruction. In the 60s they determined that homeschooling met the state's requirements.

Speaker 2:

But then, in 2004, you know, proponents of regular, you know regulations on homeschoolers said you know what? We want to propose some bills that would mandate content for curriculum and oversight and medical exams. It was never enacted. Never enacted. I guess they didn't get enough votes to pass these bills. And so it's been what? 21 years later, and we're living in a very different climate in our country and there are multiple political leaders that are fighting really hard to get these bills passed why now I'm not really sure.

Speaker 2:

I don't know what it is about this year, but we went from you know again, 58 years ago, the law was passed that we could, you know, said that we could, homeschool. And then, you know, 21 years ago, they tried to attack the families. And now here we are. Today they're doing it again. It could have something to do with the pandemic levels and the rates of homeschoolers. In the pandemic the levels went up. They shot up. Prior to pandemic it was less than 1% of homeschoolers in New Jersey, post-pandemic 3.7%. That number just keeps rising, right, because the national rate of homeschooling keeps rising like 2% to 8% annually. So they're probably projecting in the next five to 10 years that number will be so high that it's going to be a problem, right?

Speaker 1:

Because we don't have control over these families.

Speaker 2:

Not only that, we're losing these bodies, we're losing money Funding yeah. Funding. That's the big one. It's not about accountability and oversight, it's just. It is about oversight, but it's not about accountability. It's not about the kids and their welfare, it's just. We need to get ahold of these people because if they keep growing at this rate, we're not going to have anybody in these schools.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And so when you think back to the original reason of why we even have the school, set up the way we do with Horace Mann, he went over to Prussia. He saw that they were had these schools where kids were learning how to be obedient citizens and obedient workers. And oh, he brought it over here to Massachusetts and implemented it there, convinced everybody, hey, let's do this. And then John Dewey and the Rockefellers really pushed that forward, invested all the money into a modern school system. So we have obedient workers smart enough to do the job but not smart enough to question it.

Speaker 1:

We get too many of us educating our kids on things like the total twin stuff where, hey, you can have your own business. Be an entrepreneur, think outside the box.

Speaker 1:

I can definitely see why that's a threat. If it's going up 2% a year and, like you said, you project in five, 10 years they've lost a lot of bodies at that point and not even wow, yeah, like who's going to be in the military then? Who's going to work these governments? I worked in government for 16 years who else is just going to sit there and push papers in a cubicle, like at some point you're like holy crap, there's got to be more to life than this. That's a great point. I hadn't really thought about it in terms of that, like the exponential growth of homeschooling and like you were mentioning earlier. You know, without having the probable cause, like I understand that they want me to send the reports I'm not even mad about that every quarter.

Speaker 1:

I don't think they read them. I think they're just like, oh, that family is doing what they're supposed to do, so if they're on top of this, they're probably on top of providing an education for their kid. And so if you fail to do that, that's like okay, they're not even paying attention to what we're asking. Let's go see if this kid is getting beaten. But yeah, they're jumping in New Jersey from zero to 60, where, like, we're not even giving you the time to send the report.

Speaker 2:

We're just going to assume you're beating your kid, right. I will say, um, I did attend a I think it was, um, it was like a little open air event or something like that with HSLDA, the school legal defense association. We're talking to some of the attorneys there and they did did tell us that these bills were brought on by one single abuse case. Like in all of the other cases across the country, there's this one single case that they can't always prove that it was a homeschooling family. But it's like what you were saying. There's this picture they paint of this family that is, you know, out there in the woods somewhere or whatever, like away from society, I don't know, abusing their kid, neglecting them, not feeding them, not taking care of them, emotional neglect and all this other stuff. This. There was a child that had been emotionally, I believe, neglected, physically, like they weren't eating, they were malnourished, and this story became a big deal and that led to the bills being proposed, just like that one story.

Speaker 2:

And, to my knowledge, the number of homeschoolers who have been involved with Diofus or CPS across the nation. It's a negligible amount. It's like less than like 0.1%, it's just. It's such a small amount. And so this is what they do. They in 2004, there was one incidence of child abuse with a family that claimed that they were homeschooling, and that's why they attempted the overreach then, but they didn't. I guess they didn't get enough votes and so now they're doing it again. One single case, that one single case is supposed to be probable cause to infect every single homeschool family and the way that they're caring for their kids. You know, it's not a trend, it's not conclusive, it's nothing essentially, but they're just using this one case to punish the 99% that are doing right by their kids. It's overreach and proportional levels that I can't even describe. It's just. How do you think? How do you go from, like you said, how do you go from nothing, having no oversight? They're doing better than their peers in traditional schools for 58 years.

Speaker 1:

But now, because another case popped up, I'd love to see a study about, you know, comparing how many kids in school that are abused and nothing is done about it by their parents, how many kids in school are bullied or commit suicide, or even are victims of school shootings? Bullied or commit suicide or even are victims of school shootings, and yet we're supposed to be the ones that are on the stand and have to prove ourselves, because this is how families are supposed to have lived since the beginning of time.

Speaker 1:

You're educated by your home, your family and your community, your loved ones, people that know you, and it is a silly concept when you think about it. Like I'm just going to drop my little kid off. I have a seven-year-old son as well. I can't imagine just dropping them off to somebody that I don't know. Don't know Any 9% chance they do not align with my values and yeah, they're just going to be with them for most of the week. It's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah it is. It's absolutely nuts when you think about it. I mean my husband and I, we both grew up in households where our parents worked.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we went to daycare and we went. You know it was somebody watching us. A lot of times it was. If it was, it could have been a relative usually, but if it wasn't, it was somebody that they felt like they knew really well. And then we went right into public school. We started out in private school, like the first couple of years we both did public school. I did the Magna school and when we weren't in school, somebody else was watching us. Somebody else was, you know, just you know, supervising us until our parents got home, until we were old enough to be latchkey kids, and then you go home by yourself.

Speaker 2:

But it's funny, someone asked me before I got this actually a couple of times in the beginning of my homeschool journey, they said don't you feel? Don't you feel like it's like that? There's something wrong, you know, with not having the village, Like you said earlier, are you sheltering your kids? You know you can't keep them sheltered forever. You know. How long are you going to shelter them? At what point are you going to send them? And I'm like, why should there ever be a point when I have to send them anywhere? Why, you know? Because I think, ideally, if things were different and we were, you know, more close as a family if families were more interconnected, because they're just so broken, right? If families were more interconnected like they were years ago, there would really be no need to send a child anywhere, because they could stay home as long as needed and the family support system was there, and grandma and grandpa there were all these supports to help you, so they didn't have to necessarily go anywhere.

Speaker 2:

But now it's almost like there's no other option you know, and I've had people ask me that plenty of times like why are you trying to shelter your kids? Or? Or they'll come up with the argument that people who homeschool are doing it intentionally so that they can shelter their kids from the rest of the world. And then those homeschool kids are going to grow up weird right, and they're going to grow up with this like very narrow view of the world and they're going to be unable to socialize with everybody else, I guess when they enter the real world, because their parents have sheltered them. And it couldn't be farther from the truth.

Speaker 2:

Personally, like we teach our kids, we teach our kids our faith. That's first and foremost in our house. So they learn about the Bible and they learn the truth. But we also help teach them to be discerning and they ask lots of questions. They're not being indoctrinated, they ask tons of questions. We want them to have a faith that is rooted in, grounded in truth and in evidence, and for us we believe that there is evidence that Jesus was the Son of God, is the Son of God, that he died and was resurrected from the dead and that he lives. Thousands of people saw him on the earth. Like, we teach our kids our faith, but we also teach them about the basic tenets of other beliefs and practices. But we do it from a biblical worldview, so that our kids know, when they encounter someone who says, well, hey, I believe in secular humanism or you know, I believe that you know there's moral relativism and you know like there is no absolute truth or whatever, that they know even at the age of five and seven, how to deal with those arguments when they come across.

Speaker 2:

So, um, like we, we teach our kids you know their foundational faith and their beliefs and we teach them about different views. We want them to see different cultures, but we don't want someone else to tell them you know the story of someone else's culture from a single lens view. We want them to see authentic culture. If I'm going to teach my kids you know about other people's cultures and their ways of life, well, let's dig in and like act like we go, like we're living in Chile or we're going to Africa and we're going to take a trip there, and let's see the stories and hear the stories from the people that live there, not from a textbook where someone's telling you you know their narrow, you know view of this person's history. Like right now we're getting ready to go into a study about New Jersey and the Native Americans that lived here and looking into BIPOC literature Black Indigenous people of color books, picture books by people who wrote these stories, because these are stories passed down from their family and their heritage oral history, things like that, you know and again, helping them to like learn how to be compassionate and empathetic to other people and learning like things that they don't teach in school anymore, like empathy and compassion.

Speaker 2:

You know, there's just certain things that they don't teach in life skills, and there's so many things we want to teach our kids and we want to do it for us. We want to do it from a biblical worldview, and that was pretty much the primary reason why we started homeschooling. Outside of trying to protect our kids physically from vaccines and anything else that we weren't really sure about was, you know, if it was going to be good for them. We wanted them to learn about the world from a biblical worldview, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be, you know, biased and or that they're going to be unkind, you know, to other people because they were raised differently.

Speaker 2:

We actually feel like we're exposing them to way more, more than they would, you know, be exposed to in the schools, but from a positive and a holistic and you know view, and from a loving family and in a safe environment. These are all things that really matter to us. I think it matters to most homeschoolers, which is why it seems almost ridiculous to think that a person that would go out of their way to take their kids out of the system, to bring them into a loving, warm environment, to do all of this, to make all these sacrifices to give them a good childhood, a real education, a living education and a warm home and a loving environment, why would they go through all of that? Just to amuse their kid? Why?

Speaker 1:

are you doing all of that? You know it makes no sense and I love what you said too. It sparked kind of a conversation I had today with my seven-year-old son in the car at one of the stations that I was just kind of flipping through was our K-Love and it's, you know, the religious music channel and we don't listen to it a lot. But the song was catchy and I kind of had it on and my daughter started like pretending she was singing to it and it was so cute. It brought me back to a conversation that my son had said to me before one of our play groups that we go to.

Speaker 1:

He came home one day and he said mom, so and so doesn't believe in god and we're not like, uh, we don't like go to church every week.

Speaker 1:

We've gone to church before, we've read children's bibles and stuff together, we pray together every night, but as far as like we haven't gone over. Yeah, it's not part of our. I guess like it's just kind of in in our, in our daily routine, to like pray together and it's not part of our. I guess like it's just kind of in in our, in our daily routine, to like pray together and it's mostly to let's thank God for everything that we have. So it was interesting that he was like Soren doesn't I don't know I said the kid's name, whatever but he doesn't believe in God and it was really cool opportunity for me to talk to him about. Okay, his family might not and not everybody does, and this is why you know we can and you know I was kind of explaining to him today as I turned on the Caleb channel and you know, I said to him like yeah, not everybody does believe in that, but there's a lot of things in the world that not everybody believes in.

Speaker 1:

But my job is to expose you to it all and as you grow up and become a man, you will pick and choose what seems right for you. And you know. It got us into this really cool conversation just driving in the car about how, like you know really what and I actually explained that to him the resurrection. And I said you know, that's why. That's why people celebrate Good Friday, and isn't that a weird term for it? Because there's nothing good about it. Jesus was murdered on this day and then three days later he rose again and I said you know, there are people that saw it and then there are other people that say, no, you were lying. And so I said but there are also historians that cannot disprove it either, and that's very interesting. I went to catechism growing up and made my confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church and nobody ever explained any of that to me. A really cool book and movie is the Case for Christ, where the atheist goes in to try to disprove the resurrection. That was super interesting.

Speaker 1:

It was just so cool to have this conversation with my son. I'm like if you were in school and I was at a cubicle right now, we would not be having this conversation, this connection. It was just cool that I was not even pushing anything on him. I was just like you know what? All we need to know is that somebody created this for us, for us to be here, and we're here to learn and we're going to make mistakes, but there's forgiveness and the best thing you can do is service to others and that that is just going. That's the message, and it was. I just loved that I could have that conversation with my son, because it never would have happened if I were in a cubicle and he was in his classroom and we were rushing around to soccer practice after school and then rushing to daycare, rushing to this place or even rushing to put dinner on the table or God forbid eating McDonald's.

Speaker 1:

Those kinds of conversations are just so cool to have. It's just planting little seeds in them and we can discover it together, and that's my thing too. I'm like I don't know all about it, but we're going to discover it together as part of your homeschool. We're going to be on this journey together. And what do we believe in? Why are we here? What is our purpose? And like that's exciting.

Speaker 2:

It is. It really is exciting. And I think one of the other things you know that when I get that question about, well, you know, what are you afraid of? That you're? You know you're trying to shelter your kids from. Or what are you so afraid of? Like I've had people say that to me, like it's good enough for my kids. So like, what are you afraid of? Or I've had another mother. I literally just met a mother down the block. She just lives down the block here, she just moved in the neighborhood and she goes. Schools in this district are excellent. They're so good. You know you haven't even tried them, not once. They even give moms a break.

Speaker 2:

You know it's a we get a break from the kids, and I said very matter of factly, the school system has absolutely nothing that I want.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Nothing that I want for my kids and I didn't get into a whole debate or anything, but she was so shocked you should have seen the face. Look on her face. It was like what? Because she like a lot of people and I've been approached by many people over the years. They have this.

Speaker 2:

Many of them have the same you know view of the system. It's like this is a good place If you can move to a place where there's an excellent district. You know it's that's, that's everything. You've got to move. Whenever you're thinking about move, you got to move to the right place. So the best, the best schools are like Ribbon School District, this, and that you know, as long as you have the best school district and it's like okay, even if you found what you think is the best school district, there's going to still be something that you're going to need to shelter your kids from, especially when they're younger.

Speaker 2:

I think older kids can probably fend for themselves when they have a good foundation, but when you have young kids, like we do for me, you might call it sheltering. You might say that we're trying to be overly protective, but really I see it as a bold way of living. It's not about sheltering them from everything. It's about sheltering them from the things that are harmful to them. Right, that they really are not in a place at this young age to mentally handle, until they're older, a lot of the things that, like, I have time to talk to my kids about, a lot of things, like you said, conversations that would never have happened if I was working full-time outside the home. And when I have these conversations and I listen to my kids talking now they're five and seven, but they have the comprehension level of a third grader when I have conversations with my kids, I think, well, what if they were in this environment? You know they wouldn't be able to have a healthy conversation with somebody who is responsible that you know that, because I don't believe every teacher is responsible someone that really has their best interests at heart and someone really, really cares about educating them and them growing and learning. What if there is an opportunity, you know, in this school system and they're there and they're using this opportunity to have this conversation with them that I should be having with them to steer them in a certain direction? And I know that you've heard about this because and I've heard about it so many times I know you've had to hear about it, about the stories about kids that are being socially transitioned in schools without their parents' knowledge yeah, all the time, and lawsuits that are happening because parents are like wait a second, I didn't know you were socially transitioning my kid. When did you have time to have conversations with your kid? Well, you were at work. You were at work all day and so they were talking to their guidance counselor, or they were talking to their teacher, or they were talking to whoever their club leader or somebody that's been helping them socially transition for a year now and you didn't know anything about it.

Speaker 2:

That's harmful, oh, yeah, that's harmful, and so you know. For me it's. No, I'm not. You might look at it shelter. I'm sheltering and overprotective, call it what you want, but I am a mama bear and I am going to do what is necessary to cover my children from things that are harmful while exposing them to things that are good for them. I mean, it's my job as a mother to know what's good and what's dangerous, how to expose you to the good, the beautiful. You know, the pure, the. You know the the things that are going to be helpful to you as you grow and keep you from the dangerous stuff until you're ready to handle it on your own, that's our right as parents to do that.

Speaker 2:

But I get it all the time and I think it comes from a place where most parents feel like, well, it's good enough for my kids, so why isn't it good enough for your kids?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think they've never thought twice about it, and that's why I just went to college. I didn't think twice about it and that's why, like I never, I just, you know, went to college. I didn't think twice about it. It was just well, that's what you did if you didn't want to be a loser. And then you just go get a job, because you're applying to jobs and this one interviewed me and this one offered the job. It's not like, oh, that was my dream. And then you know, 16 years later, you're like what have I been here for my whole life?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you don't think about it.

Speaker 1:

You just send the kids to school, and that's how I always thought I would too. And it was during COVID for me as well, when I realized, oh, I don't even have control over my children when they're in school. And we were just in a private daycare my son was in daycare and I was working and they said we have to start masking three-year-olds, because in New York Cuomo was going to mask three-year-olds.

Speaker 1:

And I was like but you're an in-home daycare. I said, well, we still follow the rules and we get audited by the state. So if they walk in and your kid is three and he's not masked, we would get cited. And I was like, well then I really have no control over my child. If I don't have control over him in an in-home daycare, there's no way I have control. They're going to be putting masks on them in school hand sanitizer. They're going to be feeding them crap. They're going to be injecting them with God knows what because they're going to say that that's the good for the good of all. Right, that's where all of this is headed for the good of all. So toxic, yeah it is.

Speaker 2:

It's absolutely that's and that's how we feel. And I don't know when. I really don't know when we as parents stopped wanting to protect our kids. I don't know if it's because we, many of us, have been indoctrinated by the school system to think that this is what's best.

Speaker 2:

I know a lot of immigrants feel that way. You know, because I've spoken to a lot of immigrant families who say, like well, the education system in America is the best, and I'm like maybe in the 1800s, but no, not now. But that's what they think. When I come over here, that's the first thing I'm going to do do everything I can to get my child in the best schools so that they can go to college, and that's. They feel like this is the way out, to financial freedom or you know whatever. And then a lot of parents here, like you said, they don't like most of the parents I talked to. They don't even question it and it's amazing to me how they won't question the system, but they will question me. They have 20 million questions for me all day, every day, but they don't question the system, they don't question them.

Speaker 1:

Oh God, that's the best line I've heard.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm saying wait, you're not worried at all about what's going on in there Like does it never cross your mind to ask them like at least three questions? Because I'm pretty sure, if you start asking questions, one mom I met recently. She came here from Hawaii. She had her daughter was like fourth or fifth grade and she was in a private school all up until this point and she said she just sent her to one of the public schools here in New Jersey last year and she simply asked a question, one question what is in your curriculum? They said, ma'am, that's confidential. I said welcome to New Jersey.

Speaker 1:

You've got to be kidding. It's confidential. It's confidential, we pay the taxes, we pay the taxes and there are flesh and blood that you're teaching it to. That's what she got, so she went into it.

Speaker 2:

She asked them more and more questions and they were livid. Who is this woman asking us questions? How dare she? This is confidential. And I said I was like I'm so glad that you asked all those questions. You know what? Where did it lead to? And she said well, ultimately they did have to, you know, at some point have a sit down and talk with me, and but they made a really big deal out of it. She wasn't happy. Her daughter also, through the whole process of this, was, you know, being mistreated by the teachers that were being interrogated and so they were taking out their frustrations on her daughter. She just pulled her out and I think she put her somewhere else. But it was just the fact that they said to her it is confidential.

Speaker 2:

And I said you know, this is if you could not see before, I hope that you can see now that there is an agenda. There's an agenda to keep parents in the dark about their kids. Right, if you're the system, that's, you're all caring about the children and what's best for the children, what's best for their future? The children are our future. The parents are the ones that are responsible for them. And if you're keeping them in the dark about what's in the curriculum, then what else are you keeping in the dark about? But you want to ask me a hundred million questions at an annual health and wellness check and also an annual meeting with a licensed evaluator from the state. Who's going to evaluate my child's portfolio at the end of the year this is also part of the bill who's going to evaluate the portfolio and then has to send it to a superintendent of the district to approve it, and that person has the power to disprove it as well.

Speaker 2:

Disapprove of it, and so that could bring you all the way back to square one. It's almost like you did nothing for the year. Wow, and I said this is something. You're keeping parents in the dark. You're not educating kids. You're socially transitioning kids without their parents' knowledge. Most New Jersey kids most of them last year ELA English language arts. 52% of them passed, met or exceeded standards, which means almost half of the kids failed 39% math.

Speaker 1:

This is in the school.

Speaker 2:

In the states in the public schools in New Jersey, 30, I think 39% last year passed math. It met or exceeded the math standards 39%, which means that more than half of them failed right. Science was even low, it was like 24%. So you're not educating the kids. Those levels are where they are now. Pre-pandemic levels were just slightly higher. So you're not educating the kids. No one's proficient in writing and reading math the basics but you're socially transitioning kids and you're keeping parents in the dark and they get a physical and a vaccination at the beginning of the year and you're done with them. But you want to come into my home to see how I care for my kids without any probable cause. You want to meet with my child, to meet with some state representative whoever?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so when are these bills getting voted on and what can people in other states do to keep an eye on it, to see if it's coming to them? Like, where do we find this information?

Speaker 2:

So I always direct people to HSLDA because I feel like they make it so much easier to find. You could go to the New Jersey legislature, you could Google, you know, like the state of homeschool laws in New Jersey, but you're not going to find anything. Hslda, you don't have to be a member. You could just follow them on Instagram or YouTube. I like their Instagram channel because they just updated it today. They update it often. You can also follow my page because I'm always talking about it. And what I like about HSLDA is that they will, once you're part of their I think it's their mailing list, they will send you an email with live updates of what's going on and then they'll tell you what you can do. And today they dropped an update stating that these bills are basically like they're kind of in limbo. They're just kind of holding, holding like in a holding pattern before the summer start of summer recess. They just couldn't get to them. They could barely get to the bills that they had. So now they're kind of like holding them in, like it's like in a standstill until the gubernatorial election, right, so that's a big deal. In New Jersey there's a Republican candidate. That is very much for. You know. Limited or no restrictions on homeschoolers, and then you have a Democratic candidate who's obviously of the other mindset, and so until that election takes place, I think in November, we're probably not going to see anything happen. Today they also mentioned that Senator Paul Moriarty said on different news outlets that he is planning to unleash some more bills this fall, and I guess they're waiting for the gubernatorial election and then they'll proceed with those. So we're looking probably at like November between November and December, we're looking at some.

Speaker 2:

I'm just hoping and praying that these bills don't get enough votes to pass. I'm hoping that there'll be a repeat of 2004, because this is overreach. This is like beyond. I mean filing a letter of intent and submitting a letter annually. Okay, I think a lot of people would be open to doing that right, because it doesn't seem too bad.

Speaker 2:

But once you give them a foothold in, they come and they take over, and now they're trying to flood us with more bills and it's very disheartening, but at the same time it's also keeping me on my toes, so that's why I stay on HSLDA's page. I follow them on Instagram. I get their newsletters. Moms can follow me as well on Instagram at Godly Mother's Chosen Littles, and I'm always sharing it in stories or a feed, because it's really it's something that's very dear to me, because I'm obviously because I'm here in this state and one of the reasons why we moved here was because it was one of the 12 free states.

Speaker 2:

If it's no longer free now, we're looking at potentially other states enforcing similar laws. I know in Illinois a few months ago they were trying to make it almost criminalized parents who didn't file their letter of intent on time. They were going to go to jail, but HSLDA fought against that bill and they were able to get that thrown out. But they're coming at us hard and it's just. It's just proving to me more and more that we are effective in what we're doing empowering our kids and educating our kids, empowering them with the truth, and we are raising up a generation of critical thinkers, and so this is a problem. This is a problem, like you said, because they're who was going to be there to be their factory workers and their cubicle workers and who's going to be there, you know, in the future. So they're coming at us hard and we're just praying and trying to stay positive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's a great point. I will put the link to HSLDAorg in the show notes. I direct people there as well and my membership just ran out because I think my credit card was like at the end of the expiration date and I have to renew it because they do do so much work and you can even use their templates to file your reports if you're in one of the states that has to do that. So I always make sure to file on HSLDA templates and then the school really doesn't bother me because they know I have legal defense backing me, but they are there for so much. So if you can donate to and become a member I think it was like a hundred dollars for the whole year to be a member of HSLDA.

Speaker 1:

So I just I got to go back on and do that, because they do such good work. But, like you said, you don't even have to be a member to get all of this information. It's so important that we stay on top of it, because they're banking on our ignorance and we can't be homeschooling our kids to keep them on top of things and then not keep on top of it ourselves. That's like our one job. We have to be on these laws, and I'm not good at it myself, but that's why I love having people like you on to give us that push and like, show us how easy it is just to like hey, read their Instagram page, and this is how you'll know it's coming down the pipeline, so important. So, thank you, and I'm going to put your Instagram in the show notes as well, because you kind of just like put it in a way that's easy to understand. We don't have to read a whole article. You've read it and you've interpreted it into layman's terms and it makes sense, and thank you for doing that.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And parents. I also wanted to say something that I think sometimes you know parents may not realize is really, really powerful is your voice, your story. Get on social media, talk about your homeschool story, what caused you to start homeschooling, what you're doing right now, you know the homeschool how to podcast is very powerful because when people hear the stories of other people, they're like wait, that's like a regular person just like me, like they did that I can do that, because a lot of people have misconceptions about homeschoolers.

Speaker 2:

They think most of us are elite and wealthy and highly educated you know, go figure and they think that it's just for, like you said, the privilege and the people that have connections and support and all these resources. And the reality is it's just everyday American mothers and fathers that have a burning passion and desire to raise their kids in truth. They want their kids to be liberated. They want their kids to know you know, to be empowered with truth. They want their kids to have a real childhood. They want their kids to you know, be truly educated and regardless of socioeconomic background.

Speaker 2:

So I think it's so important when parents tell their story, get on social media and tell your story. Talk to friends and family, because they don't know what's going on. You know a lot of the homeschool parents that have been following my page in New Jersey said they didn't even know. They didn't even know what was happening. I said follow HSLDA, you know, and then you can follow my channel, get out there and share your story and tell people why you started homeschooling and, believe it or not, that's how other people are inspired to homeschool, because they see stories like that. People are always on social media and YouTube. People are on their phone all the time.

Speaker 2:

They might not look up to have a conversation, but they're online, they're on their phone and they're going to look at clips like that and say you know what, I can probably do that too, or maybe I need to start thinking about that when I come across your content and I see you know the content that you make. It sparks debate, it sparks conversation. It gets people thinking like wait a second, you know, maybe I should be questioning everything. Maybe I shouldn't just believe whatever I'm hearing from the government and from the school systems. Maybe the experts really don't know it.

Speaker 2:

All you know, and so you start questioning everything and then you go down the rabbit hole. But and then you end up doing what we're doing. But it's, it's such a blessing. I'm so grateful that you asked me to be on to talk about this. I'm grateful that you took the opportunity. You saw the opportunity that not only to like just give me an opportunity to talk about this, but also you saw it as an opportunity to educate others Because, like you said, when one act of you know infringement on parental rights or homeschoolers rights happens in one state, it just is a matter of time before it trickles on over to other states.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure, For sure. Mariamma, thank you so much for being here today. I hope you'll come back on again and update us on laws. You know what did pass, what didn't and what we can do in the future, because it's always going to be like a like a baseball game. They're going to be throwing pitches at us and we have to try to hit them out of the park, Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for being here. Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.