The Fight for Homeschool Freedom

“We have got to educate people, as to what freedom and liberty is all about, what the constitution is all about, parental rights, and who our kids belong to. That’s very elementary. Socialism and Marxism would have us believe our kids belong to the government.” – Zan Tyler

While we were at the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center, in Vancouver, Washington to finish filming interviews for Schoolhouse Rocked, homeschool pioneer, Zan Tyler stopped by for a surprise visit. Zan was instrumental in the fight to make homeschooling legal in South Carolina, in the early 1980s. She was in Oregon to speak at the Oregon Christian Home Education Association Network (OCEANetwork) homeschool conference, in Albany, Oregon and wanted to visit Heidi St. John and get a tour of the homeschool resource center. Because her story of the legal battles and persecution that she endured to pave the way for homeschooling families in her state provided such important historical perspective and cautionary advice, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to interview her for the movie and for the podcast.

Zan Tyler (right), Heidi St. John (center, and Yvette Hampton at the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center

Following her dramatic battle for the right to homeschool her children, Zan went on to teach them through graduation and all three of them attended college on a variety of scholarships. Gaining resolve during her battle, she went on to fight for other homeschooling families in South Carolina and across the United States, founding the South Carolina Association of Independent Home Schools in 1990, Speaking at homeschool conventions around the world, and writing several books, including Seven Tools for Cultivating Your Child’s Potential and the forward for Heidi St. John’s Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight: Managing Your Days Through the Homeschool Years. She has also worked to develop Bible-bases homeschool resources as the director of Apologia Press. Here is her story.

Yvette Hampton:           Hey everyone, this is Yvette, and we are back with the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. This is a really fun one, because we are actually on the set filming for Schoolhouse Rocked the movie. It’s so neat to see how the Lord provides just different guests and people for the movie and for the podcast as well.

You are going to love my guest today, her name is Zan Tyler. She is just a sweet, sweet homeschool mom whose kids are grown now. She has an amazing story and I know you are going to be so encouraged by what God has done in her family and through her family, for the homeschool world.

Listen to Zan Tyler on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast (7-30-2019 episode)

So Zan, welcome. I am really excited to talk to you today!

Zan:                              Oh, thank you, Yvette. It’s great to be here.

Yvette:                         Thank you. Tell us a little bit about you and your family.

Zan:                              Well, we have three grown kids, six grandchildren, and we homeschooled for 21 years, from 1984 to 2005, and homeschooled each of the kids from kindergarten through high school.

Yvette:                         So that was back in the day.

Zan:                              That was back in the day for sure.

Yvette:                         You are truly considered, in the homeschool world, one of the pioneers, who really got homeschooling kind of off the ground, and you are very instrumental in homeschooling becoming legal. Not just your state of South Carolina, but in many states, in addition to that. So, let’s talk about that, because there’s so much to tell in your story. Tell us, kind of from the beginning, how this whole story unfolded for you.

“When she said the word homeschool, I just felt like the walls of her little home at Columbia Bible College were closing in on me. I thought, ‘Lord, if you will just get me out of here, I never want to hear the word homeschool again.’ I just thought it was the strangest thing I had ever heard. Our family was extroverts, and I just couldn’t imagine.”

Zan:                              Well, it was 1984, which I just always think is so George Orwellian, and my oldest son was in kindergarten. He was very bright and gifted, but not reading. He was the only one in this little kindergarten of eight that wasn’t reading. So I was looking for answers, because I had no educational background. I wasn’t sure if it was a problem, or what he was going through.

A friend of mine recommended that we hold him back a year. That was normal for boys, they needed a little more time to mature. But another friend of mine, she and her husband were getting their masters degrees at Columbia Bible College, getting ready to go to the mission field said, “Zan, I taught in the public schools for many years before I had Nat and I’m going to homeschool, and I think you should homeschool Ty.”

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You know the scene from Star Wars, where the walls – it’s really a trash compactor – and they start closing in? When she said the word homeschool, I just felt like the walls of her little home at Columbia Bible College were closing in on me. I thought, “Lord, if you will just get me out of here, I never want to hear the word homeschool again.” I just thought it was the strangest thing I had ever heard. Our family was extroverts, and I just couldn’t imagine.

But she gave me a book, Homegrown Kids by Dr. Moore. I took home that book, and all the way home I’m telling the Lord, “Well, I’m never going to homeschool.” I get home and I start reading that book, more as a courtesy from my friend than anything else, and it was like the Holy Spirit was just wooing me, and softening my heart, and showing me what a glorious way to educate homeschooling really is.

Watch Zan Tyler’s full interview for Schoolhouse Rocked at our Backstage Pass members website.

The only problem was, this was 1984, and we didn’t know one person in the world who homeschooled. There were no organizations, no HSLDA. I think it had actually started on the West Coast, but we certainly didn’t know of them on the East Coast. No state organizations, no support groups, no, nobody. So I really had nobody to turn to.

I used to walk in the morning early and pray and listen to the Bible on my Walkman, and I really just felt like the Lord was saying, “Okay, I really want you to homeschool your boys.” I just remember saying, “No, I just can’t do this.” So I ran inside. We went to the public school district in our area, I showed them the testing that Ty should be held back a year, even though he was six, and they said, “Okay.” That was that, and I thought that was the end of the story.

Until others, people in the school district, were getting their orientation packets for kindergarten and I didn’t get one. I called the school superintendent, he said, “You can’t put your first grader in our kindergarten program. We’ve put him in first grade.” I said, “Well, private schools are filled at this point, I have no choice.” He said, “Well, I’m sorry, you cannot do this.”

So, I called my old high school principal, who is now associate superintendent of instruction in the district, and just asked him to write a note to hold Ty back. He said, “Well, Zan, I just can’t do that.” Which, they did those kinds of things all the time. I said, “Well, I guess I’m just going to have to homeschool Ty.” It was a threat, it was my trump card. He said, “Oh, the school district’s gotten so lenient with that kind of thing.”

Later I found out they had approved one person in the history of the district, and she was a certified teacher. I had been an economics major in college. I had planned to go to law school, until Joe proposed and we got married and had children instead. I mean, I did not have the educational background they were looking for. So we had to hire an attorney just to find out what the law was. The local school district, nor the State Department of Education, would give us the law. There’s no internet, no Google, no organizations, no other way to find it out.

So, we hired him, we submitted our application. It’s about, oh, I mean, it was about five inches thick, everything they wanted from me at that point, and they denied my application. So we had to call our attorney again. He said, “Oh, now you appeal to the state board. They will deny you, they will uphold whatever the local school board did.” I said, “What then?” He said, “You’ll end up in family court.” I said, “What then?” He said, “Well, I don’t know, honey.”

“He looked at me and he said, ‘Well, if you continue down this path, Zan, I’ll have you put in jail for truancy.’ So, that was sort of the watershed moment for me. I said, ‘Well, then you’ll just have to put me in jail.'”

Zan Tyler, a homeschooling pioneer

So, I’m telling the Lord, “I told you this was not a good idea.” So, in the middle of all of this, I had a thought. The State Superintendent of Education had actually observed my mother’s classroom. She was a fourth grade teacher when he was getting his PhD. I was in the fourth grade, so I saw him every day after school for several months. I called Dr. Williams, said, “Dr. Williams, this is Zan Tyler. I’m Sybil Peter’s daughter. I have a problem, can I come see you?”

So, I went up there, and just explained my predicament, all I wanted to do is hold Ty back a year. The school district said, yes, then they said no. Private schools were filled, and they denied my application to homeschool. What am I going to do? He looked at me and he said, “Well, if you continue down this path, Zan, I’ll have you put in jail for truancy.” So, that was sort of the watershed moment for me. I said, “Well, then you’ll just have to put me in jail.”

Yvette:                         Which at that point, I would say most parents would probably just say, “Okay.” They would throw their hands up, give up and say, “All right.”

Zan:                              You know, I think that was just when the Lord took over for me. There’s the verse in Acts that says, “Don’t fear when you’re brought before governors, because I’ll tell you what to say.” It was really an out of body experience, because I said, “Then Dr. Williams, you’ll have to put me in jail.” I’m thinking, “Who just said that?” It was really like an out of body experience. But I knew the Lord had been calling me, and in that moment he, I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but he confirmed that to me.

Yvette:                         It’s so neat to have just a piece of God when he asks us to do everything. We’ve talked a whole lot about this on the podcast, is that when God calls you to something, he’s going to provide everything that you need, and he is going to pave the way for you. Whether it’s homeschooling, or, you know, a new job, or a move across the country. Whatever it is, he’s going to provide the way, and he’s going to pave that road.

So I love that you were just obedient and you were willing to listen to what God was telling you, because you have, now since then, impacted so many families. So, continue on. Well, let me ask you this first. How did your husband, Joe, how did he respond to this whole idea of homeschooling? Was he all in favor of it? Was he a little resistant? What was his response?

Zan:                              Well, I’ll tell you now that Joe does a workshop called, You Want to What? Confessions of a Reluctant Homeschool Dad. So, we’ve always had a great marriage. Joe’s a great communicator, and so we could always talk. Basically what he said to me was, “I know how much you love the Lord, and I know how much you love the kids. So I totally trust you, but I think this is the craziest thing we’ve ever done.”

He finally said, “Well, if it’s numbers and colors, you can’t mess up a kid too much in kindergarten.” Then we laughed, because low and behold Ty was color blind, and we didn’t know it yet. I mean, he was very supportive of me, he just thought the idea of homeschooling was nuts.

Yvette:                         So what was his response when you started to get into a little bit of legal trouble?

Zan:                              You know, then we were just all in it together.

Yvette:                         Which is how it should be.

Zan:                              Yes, yes. So, he tons of pizza. I should say this, no man should have to eat as much pizza during those early years of homeschooling as Joe did.

Yvette:                         Yep. You are one busy mama.

Zan:                              Yeah.

Yvette:                         So, how did the rest of the story transpire from there?

Zan:                              Well, it was interesting, because being the brave noble person I was, we had decided not to tell either set of parents we were going to homeschool. Joe said, “You know, you’re going to have to tell them at some point, it’s kind of like being pregnant. People will recognize, at some point, that something is going on.” I said, “Well, when the time comes, I’ll talk about it.” I just had no more emotional bandwidth.

So, when I was threatened with jail, then that forced the conversation, because my parents were very involved in the whole fabric of Columbia. Not social life, but just community life. Dad was, in addition to his profession and being a lawyer, he was chairman of the board of the Baptist hospital system. I knew that the newspapers would not say, “P on homeschool mothers and Tyler goes to jail.” It would say, “John Peter’s daughter goes to jail.”

I knew I needed to tell them. So, I go by to tell them, and I hold it together, “Mom, dad, I’m going to homeschool Ty.” Of course, they don’t know what it is, I barely know what it is. “I’ve been threatened with jail, and my hearing is on Tuesday. I didn’t want you to read about it in the newspaper.” Then I just lost it. I was hysterical, and I left. My daddy, we’ve always been so close, he just went to be with the Lord. But he was just so mad I had been treated that way.

As God, in his very kind of providence would have it, he was speaking at a hospital function the next night with Nancy Thurman, who was the wife of Senator Strom Thurmond, who was a legend in South Carolina politics, served in the Senate for 50 or so years. I had worked for him when I was in high school. It was the first year of the 18 year old vote, and I was female to boot. So I did television commercials with him and toured the state with fundraisers with him and his team. So I knew him, and I had called his office and gotten no response.

Dad said to Mrs. Thurman that night, “Zan needs help from the Senator now.” So she called his chief of staff who said, “We’ll overnight a letter to Charlie Williams, the State Superintendent of Education, telling him to approve the program.” But the next day we got a call from his chief of staff saying that the Senator was actually going to fly down and meet personally with Charlie Williams, who was the State Superintendent of Education.

So, when Senator Thurmond, the legend, walks in and tells Dr. Williams, “Her program is legal, we’ve looked into it, you need to approve it.” Then everything changed. So, the threats of jail averted, and the State Board approved my program. We homeschooled that first year. It was still very tough, we had policemen riding up and down our streets of a very quiet neighborhood. We assumed to make sure that we were inside having school and at home, and we had threatening phone calls, and neighbors.

Yvette:                         From the school board?

Zan:                              Well, you know, at first, we didn’t know. This is before caller ID and cell phones and all of this. So BellSouth had just come out with this very expensive callback system, you could see who called you. I told Joe, I said, “I want to pay for this.” We had no money at this point, legal fees and all. He said, “Okay, you’re paranoid, but we’ll do it.” It was school districts, and it was not just my own. It was other school districts in the state calling me, wanting personal information, seeing if I answered the phone.

It was crazy. But that year, our goal was just to get Ty ready for first grade. But the things that we saw happening in our home, even with all the pressure, the legal pressure outside of the home, there was just this, not magic, that’s the wrong word, but this just incredible depth building in our home that we had never had before, even though I was a stay at home mother up until that point.

So, our vision for homeschooling began to grow a little bit, and legal threats were starting to pour in, and the State Department of Education was getting ready to promulgate very negative regulations. So, it just grew into an eight year struggle, really, or battle, where for eight years our family was, either in court or in the legislature, fighting for good homeschool laws in South Carolina.

Yvette:                         At that point you knew you weren’t just fighting for yourself; you were fighting for others who would come into homeschooling.

Zan:                              Yes, that’s right.

Yvette:                         Through that time, did you start to meet other families who were homeschooling?

Zan:                              Yes, yes. I remember we went to the first conference in Atlanta, and I think there were seven families from South Carolina there. Which I had no idea, we were delighted to see seven. But everybody was so nervous, nobody would give out their phone numbers or their last names, because we were so afraid that there was somebody from the government there. They were scary times.

But during that first year, Joe and I began to keep a database of people who were starting to call us then from all over the country, it was kind of strange. It was think tanks and attorneys, and people looking to move to South Carolina, who may have already started homeschooling in another state where there was no threat. So, we just started collecting names of people who had heard of homeschooling. We weren’t necessarily looking for homeschoolers, just people who had heard of it.

So we started growing this database, which came in handy then, in December of 1985, a year later, when we got the information that the State Department was getting ready to promulgate the regulations that would require teaching parents, and to have a college degree, and only use state-approved tax. So that gave us a little bit of list to begin building that grassroots movement with.

Yvette:                         So how did homeschooling change your family?

Zan:                              Oh, my goodness, I feel like Shakespeare, “let me count the ways.” It just, this closeness. We were close to begin with, I can’t explain it. Just a deeper intimacy. It made the kids closer. The most dramatic change for me is I began to notice my boys’ spiritual gifts. There was no time for that kind of observation before, but even though they were young, I believe that the Lord gave me insight into things that the boys were capable of spiritually, and the way they thought.

For instance, we had been praying, just for our neighbors, that we’d have a chance to witness. One day, during our first few weeks of homeschooling, they were out playing and I called them in, they were riding their bikes in the driveway, and he didn’t come. I said, “Ty, honey, you have to obey me the first time, or homeschooling is not going to work.” He said, “Well, mom, did you see that little boy on the bicycle?” He said, “We’ve been sharing Jesus. I’d never seen him in our neighborhood. I was afraid I’d never see him again, and I just needed to tell him about Jesus.”

Yvette:                         Wow.

Zan:                              It was through instances of being together so much, that I began to see his heart to really share the Gospel, even as a young little boy. Then my other son, who is now an attorney, was always very thoughtful. When Joe and I went to our first homeschool conference, in Atlanta. Conference, I use that word very lightly, there were maybe 60 people there from 10 states or five states or something. My sister took John and Ty up to Stone Mountain, and they were six and four. We’d been learning the children’s catechism, and they found this footprint that looked like a huge footprint in the mountain, and Ty said, “John, look at this. This is so big, it must be God’s.” Four year old little John says, “Ty, God is a spirit and have not a body like man.”

Oh, my goodness! So, I began to see their spiritual depth really blossom. That has always been one of the greatest parts of homeschooling to me, is that we can prepare our kids to take their place in the world, not just academically gifted and other gifts, but their spiritual gifts. The church just needs mature believers now, people who can speak truth.

Yvette:                         Yeah, that’s right. So, kind of take us down the road of what homeschooling looked like. You say you went to these conventions, and there were about 60 people there, you know, to what it is today. Because now you go and you’ve got 6,000, 7,000 people or more at some conventions. It has changed dramatically, obviously.

It’s really interesting, because we’re going into our ninth year of homeschooling, but when we came into homeschooling nine years ago, it was very similar to what it is now. It was a very acceptable culture, it’s not awkward for us to go to the grocery store in the middle of the day. When people say, you know, “Oh, are you off of school today?” My girls say, “No, we’re homeschooled.” Then typically people will respond with, “Oh, wow, that’s great. I wish I could homeschool, or, you know, my sister homeschools, or my daughter home schools.” I mean, everybody knows somebody who homeschools.

Zan:                              Yes, that’s right.

Yvette:                         But obviously, it wasn’t that way for you.

Zan:                              That’s right.

Yvette:                         So, take us through what it was like for you in those beginning years, and other families, to what homeschooling has become today.

Zan:                              I have such a vivid memory of having homeschooled for about six months, and being in tears one morning during my quiet time, just saying, “Lord, remember me, this person you made so extroverted? I now have no friends.” There were people in the neighborhood who would no longer speak to us, people in our church who were suspicious. I mean, this was 1984, and like I said, when I said we knew nobody when we started, we knew nobody when we started. So, there was just no support and nobody for the kids to share that experience with.

Now, as the year progressed and we went into the second year, then we found friends. I mean, it wasn’t unusual for us to drive to Greenville to see another homeschool family, which was 100 miles away, or Charleston. Then we began to develop a few friends and a little bit of a community. I will say this, that the community that developed was very, very close. Then when we were threatened in 1985, with those regulations from the State Department, we started pulling the group together and sending mailings out.

Then somebody gave us an organization that had already the 501(c)(3) status they weren’t using anymore. We took that over and then formed the first homeschooling organization in South Carolina. So, it was definitely hard. It was just hard. But we knew the Lord had called us, and then to watch it grow step by step. We had the first public hearing in South Carolina in 1986, and we actually had about 400 people show up for that, which was really amazing. We had no idea. We just sent out this blind list, this list we had been mailing, and we had all these people show up. It was pretty amazing. That was a ton of people.

Yvette:                         That is a lot, because that’s before the days of even email-

Zan:                              That’s right, oh, no, email, no. That was the days before fax. It was by phone or mail. So, it was very interesting. So, it was the Lord, and then eventually we started going to the National Leadership Conference. It was people from a lot of other states who had … everybody was going through their own set of circumstances. Some people were very free, like in Georgia or North Carolina, other people were like us in South Carolina, where we were very threatened, and it was very hard. But that was our peer group, and that sort of was what the Lord gave us, just to keep us going, and that fellowship we needed to keep going.

I can remember the first time Joe and I were asked to go to Japan to speak at a conference there, and it wasn’t for expats, it was for Japanese. I sat on the plane, and all of a sudden I just started crying, because I looked at Joe and I said, “You remember when we first started homeschooling? All people wanted to do was shut me up. You know, make her be quiet, stop talking about this, go away.” The fact that somebody was paying us to fly halfway across the world to talk to them about homeschooling, it was just overwhelming.

It’s one of those moments that will just always be emblazoned in my mind. But it was like a revival movement, the Lord just kept raising people up and up and up, and it got bigger and bigger, and it was this grassroots ground swell. That was one reason you know it’s really the Holy Spirit, because there’s no other explanation for it.

Yvette:                         Yeah. So, you’ve been through the whole process of helping to make it legal. Where do you see homeschooling going in the future? Do you see that our freedoms are in jeopardy at all? Or do you think that we will be able to continue on with our freedom? And how can people make sure that our freedom stays?

Zan:                              Joe always says, “It’s not that the grass is greener on the other side, it’s the grass is greenest where you water it and fertilize it.” So we shouldn’t ever take our marriages for granted, we should never take our freedom for granted. I know what it’s like to be an innocent person who was threatened legally. I will tell you that is not fun. I never want another mother to go through what we went through. It was horrible. Wandering at night if somebody was going to take my kids, if a neighbor was going to turn us in to the Department of Social Services for something. It was extremely stressful.

So, my love for freedom is very, not guarded, but it’s in the context of knowing we can lose it, and knowing what that feels like. Ronald Reagan said, “It only takes a generation to lose our freedom.” Then there’s the quote, “All we need to lose our freedom is … for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.” So I think it’s very easy to become complacent, when it seems so easy.

But we need to remember we have enemies, whether it’s the National Education Association or the School Administrators Association. There are people out there who think that the fact that we can homeschool our children is the worst thing that has ever happened to the culture. We think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the culture.

Yvette:                         Right, of course, but they want control over our children.

Zan:                              We were talking earlier today about this, I was speaking at a leadership forum sponsored by Clemson University in South Carolina, but this was the education segment, I was the homeschool spokesman. After it was over, this woman asked me, she said, “Don’t you feel guilty for homeschooling?” I said, “Well, I have felt a lot of emotions over homeschooling, but guilt is not one of them, why?” She said, “Because you’ve robbed the school district of all the money the state would have given them for your children, you’ve robbed the school district of kids who probably would have good test scores, because you’ve also robbed the school district of involved parents, all of these things which we need.”

So I got real quiet, and I said, “Well, who do you think my kids belong to?” Well, she had no answer. So I read her this, this shows what my life was like. I used to travel with this in my purse, I had no idea what I’m going to talk about at this day. So I read her this statement, I’m going to read it to you, just because this is where my life was.

“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize his children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state. Those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

So she looked at me like, “Where did you get that right wing Christian propaganda?” She said, “Where did you get that?” I said, “From the United States Supreme Court, Pierce vs Society of Sisters, 1925.” I remember thinking then here is the problem with our society, nobody knows anymore that children don’t belong to the state. When you have to tell an audience that the child is not the mere creature of the state, and that is news to them, we are in trouble as a culture.

So, we have got to educate people, as to what freedom and liberty is all about, what the constitution is all about, parental rights, and who our kids belong to. That’s very elementary. Socialism and Marxism would have us believe our kids belong to the government.

Yvette:                         That’s right, that’s right. We have a couple minutes left. In these last few minutes I would love for you to talk about, because I know you’ve been very involved in your state organization. How can people get involved in their own state organization, or in, you know, the United States as a whole, to keep the freedoms that we have for homeschooling? And why do these state organizations even exist?

“The state organizations have done the homeschooling community such a great service in watching each state, legislature by legislature, and knowing where the threats come up. So, I would invite and encourage every homeschooler to join their state group, and their state group will be the legislative watchdog. Then go to your state day at the capitol. Most states have that, some states don’t. Start one if you don’t. I would tell you to get to know your legislator and your state Senator, and that is not hard to do, they want to know you as a constituent.”

Zan:                              Well, the state organizations have done the homeschooling community such a great service in watching each state, legislature by legislature, and knowing where the threats come up. So, I would invite and encourage every homeschooler to join their state group, and their state group will be the legislative watchdog. Then go to your state day at the capitol. Most states have that, some states don’t. Start one if you don’t. I would tell you to get to know your legislator and your state Senator, and that is not hard to do, they want to know you as a constituent.

Homeschooled kids are the best thing we have going for us, because they’re polite and articulate, and well-educated. It’s like one representative said to me, “Zan, now that I see the artwork, I want to know the artist.” So, we need to do that, we need to take our kids with us to vote, we need to get them involved with pro-life, pro-family candidates. My boys started working campaigns with me when they were little, we would hold out signs in the rain. You know, politics is not glamorous, but it is really necessary.

Then, you know, during the presidential election, every presidential election, we would have a blank map of the states, and we would color a state red if it went to the Republican candidate, blue if it went to the Democrat, and we’d mark in the number of electoral votes. So, explain to your kids the electoral college, there’s a great movement afoot to get rid of it. It would destroy our Republican form of government. So I would just say be involved. If it’s uncomfortable, just decide you’re going to live out of your comfort zone.

Heidi’s podcast is a great podcast. She keeps us up politically with what’s going on, and your state organization will do that. Join HSLDA as well, they’ve been a great safeguard for homeschooling parents.

Yvette:                         Yeah, absolutely. Yes, you’re right. Heidi St. John, her podcast, the Heidi St. John Podcastis excellent. She often talks about just things that are going on in the culture. I get all my news from her.

Zan:                              Yeah, that’s fabulous.

Yvette:                         I listen to it every day. But, yes, people can actually go to the Schoolhouse Rockedwebsite,and there’s a dropdown that talks about state organizations, and people can easily find their own state organization on there. So you don’t even have to go anywhere else, you just go straight to the Schoolhouse Rocked website.

Zan, thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done, everything that you and your family have sacrificed for the freedoms that we enjoy today as homeschoolers. You are a homeschool legend, and I am so excited to be sitting here with you. So thank you for your time today.

Zan:                              It has been my privilege. Thank you so much.

You can find out more about Zan Tyler at ZanTyler.com.

Read Zan’s book, Seven Tools for Cultivating Your Child’s Potential

Read Heidi St. John’s book, Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight: Managing Your Days Through the Homeschool Years

Photo by vivek kumar on Unsplash

Photo by Garritt Hampton

 

 

Getting Started – Understanding State Homeschool Organizations

“In the early days, the Attorney General of Texas said he didn’t believe parents were qualified to raise their kids, much less teach them at home, and we had a class action suit in Texas where we sued the state. We won, the state appealed that decision. So it was almost a 10 year legal battle in the courts. And of course, during that time, homeschoolers were prosecuted in Texas under the compulsory attendance statute. We eventually won that class action suit, but I realize, and I tell people I am slow, but I’m not stupid. Eventually, someplace along the line, I realized that we lived in a culture that did not respect parents and that if we didn’t get involved to participate in the public policy process, that people like Jim Maddox, who said he didn’t believe parents were qualified to raise their kids, would be making policy and law that would directly impact what I believed God was calling me to do, whether or not that was acceptable by the state.” – Tim Lambert, THSC

Yvette Hampton:               Tim Lambert is the President of the Texas Home School Coalition, a huge organization of homeschool leaders who come together to support homeschooling in Texas.

Over the past several months, we have become very excited about and very aware of what the different state homeschool organizations are doing around the country. It’s been a blessing to meet many of these leaders and learn about the ministries that they have, serving homeschool families in each state. In this interview, I talk with Tim Lambert about what he and his organization are doing to protect the rights of homeschoolers in Texas and to promote homeschooling in general.

Hi Tim, It’s good to talk with you. Could you introduce us to your family and tell us how many kids you have and how long you’ve been in this homeschool world.

Tim Lambert:                       Sure. My wife and I have been married for about 42 years and we have four children, two boys and two girls. They’re in their 40’s to 30’s and we have seven grandkids and they all are homeschooled. We’re very excited about where the Lord has us and we’re kind of laying the foundation for the next generation. So we’re happy to be where you are.

Yvette:                                      Yes, well it is great to have you where you are because you’ve been in this for quite some time. You started homeschooling back in the ’80’s, right?

Tim:                                            That is correct. Yeah, we homeschool dads always say, “We homeschool,” but we all know that our wives do the heavy lifting, but it’s still a cooperative effort.

Yvette:                                      It absolutely is, and actually later on in the show I would love for you to talk to some of the dads, those homeschool dads who need encouragement as much as the moms do. Tell us why you got into homeschooling in the first place.

Tim:                                            You know, my story’s a little bit different. A lot of the stories that I hear from dads is mom usually gets the vision and she’s the one that goes to dad, and her husband says, “I really think we ought to do this.” But I was in sales and traveling a lot and I heard a Focus on the Family program with James Dobson about homeschooling and I came home and said, “Honey, this is a great thing. We really should homeschool.” And she looked at me and she said, “We?”

Listen to Tim Lambert on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. (5/6/2019 episode)

So we began to look at that option. Our oldest son has a November birthday, so he was one of those kids that we struggled with. We were told, “You shouldn’t put him in a younger-” So he was academically progressed so we had a wonderful Christian woman who had taught in the public schools for 30 years and private Christian schools for 10, and a friend of ours at church got a small group, so he was in a little group of four or five kids for his kindergarten and first grade year, and so by that time he was first grade age and was doing second grade work.

So the Lord kind of backed us in because all the Christian schools basically that you either repeated the coursework with your age group or you went ahead. So because of that circumstance, I think we were open to exploring homeschooling and we began to do that and we said, “You know, we’ll just do this for a year,” and we did it for another year, and before long it was a lifestyle, and helped start our local support group back in 1984, and got associated with the state organization in 1986. I became the executive director in 1990. So it’s been a long, fun road.

Yvette:                                      Yeah. So there already was a state organization in place when you started.

Tim:                                            Yes, that is correct. So the state organization was established by a couple who are both attorneys and they were kind of the grand masters of homeschooling and they fought. In the early days in Texas, the Attorney General said homeschooling was illegal and people would be prosecuted, so it was a very negative environment. They led the organization in those formative years and I came in in 1990 and became the executive director. We started with a Mac computer and a phone line and our kids were our staff. We’ve grown from there.

Yvette:                                      Nice. Did you ever get into any kind of legal trouble? How did you handle that with your family?

Tim:                                            We were prepared. We spent almost all of our group meetings in the beginning, we talked about what the law was and how to avoid these problems. There were a lot of people in those days who didn’t let their kids go out in the yard until after 3:00. But I’ve always been kind of an assertive person so we always had a plan. Our plan in those days was if somebody came to the door, then Lindsey was to not answer the door, and after they left, she would get in the car and head to New Mexico, and when she got there, 100 miles away, she would call me. That was, of course, before cell phones and that kind of stuff.

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So we were prepared for that and I kind of led locally and talked to the local superintendent and those sorts of things. Later, as I became the executive director, we took that leadership to the state level.

Yvette:                                      I can’t even imagine, being in the time that we’re in today with homeschooling and the freedom that we have, and not just the legal freedom that we have, but the way that it’s accepted in society, it’s hard for me to imagine living in a time like that, which was not that long ago. I mean, that was when I was a child. I’m 44 years old and so that was my childhood. We knew just a couple people homeschooling at that time, but today, I take my kids out all the time, and not only do we not get in trouble for it, I cannot believe how many times people will say, “Oh, did you have the day off of school today?” And my girls will say, “No, we’re homeschooled.” And they’ll say, “Oh, you’re so lucky.”

That is almost always the response that we get is that people say, “Wow, that’s great. If I could have homeschooled my kids, I would have,” or, “I would homeschool my kids but I don’t have the patience for it,” and that’s a whole different topic. Because then I want to say, “Oh, well, I don’t either, but God gives it to me.” But it’s amazing to think back that it was just not that long ago that it was a really different time.

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Tim:                                            Yes, and part of our mission is to help homeschoolers remember that history. One of the homeschool pioneers in Texas just passed away recently and so she’s been commemorated, but we recognize that we have a 501c3 education organization and a 501c3 for our advocacy organization and a political action committee, so we work in the political arena and the legislature because we have to protect our freedom, but we also try to help the homeschool community know our history. Because if we’re not vigilant and proactive, we could lose that freedom.

Yvette:                                      That’s right.

Tim:                                            There’s a lot of opposition today across the country, and so that’s part of our mission is to help cast the vision, not only for the freedom that we do have, but help people understand how we got here.

Yvette:                                      Right. So, okay, then let’s talk to those parents who don’t know all of the history. I mean, you gave a brief explanation of it, but who don’t know all of the history and what dangers might be lurking ahead for homeschoolers today.

Tim:                                            In the early days, the Attorney General of Texas said he didn’t believe parents were qualified to raise their kids, much less teach them at home, and we had a class action suit in Texas where we sued the state. We won, the state appealed that decision. So it was almost a 10 year legal battle in the courts. And of course, during that time, homeschoolers were prosecuted in Texas under the compulsory attendance statute. We eventually won that class action suit, but I realize, and I tell people I am slow, but I’m not stupid. Eventually, someplace along the line, I realized that we lived in a culture that did not respect parents and that if we didn’t get involved to participate in the public policy process, that people like Jim Maddox, who said he didn’t believe parents were qualified to raise their kids, would be making policy and law that would directly impact what I believed God was calling me to do, whether or not that was acceptable by the state.

So we talk to new homeschoolers like you do and the mom’s eyes are glazed over and she just wants to talk about learning styles and how you choose curriculum and how do you organize your day and those sort of things, and I like to talk to the dads and basically say, “It’s our responsibility as husbands and fathers to know what the law is, be prepared.” We’ve pretty much won the battle with the school districts and the truancy officers, but CPS is a real problem for us today.

Of course, as you probably, I’m sure, are aware, there’s been a real national movement over the last year and a half of groups that are highlighting news stories of families that abuse their kids or whatever and say, “This is why we need to regulate homeschoolers.” And I’ve been blogging about that for a year and pushing back to let some of the major newspapers in Texas last spring call for the state to regulate homeschooling, saying that we had too much freedom. I’m happy to say our legislature’s in session and nobody filed that kind of bill.

But our focus today, legislatively, is to reform CPS and protect parents. We have probably as many as two dozen families a year that are members of our association that are contacted by CPS and investigated. We have legal counsel on staff to handle those situations.

So we celebrate our freedom. God gave us a great victory and he’s given us freedom, but we recognize that we have responsibility to maintain that freedom, and that means we need to be informed, we need to know what the law is as individual families so we know how to react. If CPS comes to the door, we field lots and lots of questions that people have every year, and then to participate in electing godly leaders that will help us protect that freedom at the legislative level.

Yvette:                                      Yeah, that’s right. Then talk to parents and tell them how can they help to support what you’re doing? Because I think oftentimes, and this was the case with myself, I didn’t really understand. We’re from California and so CHEA, the Christian Home Educators Association, they were kind of our state covering, and I didn’t even understand when we started homeschooling, I mean, several years into it, who they were, what they did, why they existed, and why they were important to me personally as a homeschool parent. So can you talk to the parent who’s listening to this who maybe just doesn’t understand what state organizations are and how they can get involved in protecting their own freedom to homeschool?

Tim:                                            Sure. So every state, we go to some national meets every year, mostly Christian homeschool leaders, and every state has an organization and we all developed back in the 80’s. In those early days, we didn’t just have legal problems, but curriculum providers wouldn’t sell to us. So you had a problem of finding resources and that sort of thing, and so every state has an organization that was established, and in the early days we did conferences and it was a place to get information, to share information, to get resources. Also, we acted as a clearinghouse for information, so we, in our state as in most states, our organization acts as kind of the liaison with the state government.

Whether that is the education agency or the state Department of Education or the Child Protective Services or college admission or whoever it might be, we are the organization that has contacts. We know what the law is, we have people that help us. So it’s great for people to connect with their state organizations. We probably have close to 75,000 families on our mailing list in Texas and we have, obviously, blogs and YouTube channels and all that sort of thing. We try to connect people and give them information.

Then, of course, our legislature meets every other year, so we have a team of interns and staff in Austin. For the first five months of this year we’ve been following bills and testifying against bills, issuing calls to action when we’ve got bills that need to be killed. And then at the same time, we do a couple of conferences, one in the Dallas area and one in the Houston area, every summer. That’s kind of like every homeschool mom’s inspiration time. We have a children’s program and a teen program, so it’s a great time for the whole family to come and have a great time of inspiration and encouragement, and buy your curriculum for a year. It’s kind of like an in-service for public schoolteachers, but it’s also a great time for the kids.

Our mission is protection. It’s also inspiration and education and, of course, to be there when homeschoolers have issue. We have a customer relations team so we field probably 1,000 to 1,500 emails and phone calls a month and probably 60 to 70% are those of non-members. They’re people just trying to get started and they want information or questions. We kind of run the gamut.

Yvette:                                      We were talking about conventions and just the different ways that your organization, the Texas Home School Coalition, can support Texas, those who are in your state. Of course, you’re in Texas. There’s same organizations exist in pretty much every state. Talk a little bit about your conventions because I know you’ve got conventions that are coming up pretty quickly here.

Tim:                                            Sure. Yeah, we have two conventions in May. One is Mother’s Day weekend in Dallas and the other one is the last weekend of May in the Houston area in the Woodlands. These events all grew out of a way for the homeschool community to be connected with exhibitors and vendors, people who have great resources, people who are great speakers who inspire. That’s a great time annually for us as an organization. We try to help. This is something for the whole family. We’ll have a children’s program and a teen program. People develop relationships there that go on for years and it’s a great time of inspiration for mom and dad. We have a lot of dads that attend that. People always look for curriculum.

They come together, they get inspired, the get educated, they find out … and then of course we do workshops for leaders. We have different tracks, so we’ll have one for single parents, we’ll have one for special needs folks. We try to provide things across the gamut of the homeschool community. It’s a wonderful time. It’s very exhausting. It’s like Thursday through Saturday, but it’s a great time of encouragement. People, it’s kind of the end of school and get ready for the new year before the summer starts.

Yvette:                                      Yeah, it’s a great time of year to have it because oftentimes this is the time of year that moms are really trying to think through what they’re going to do for next year. They’re a little overwhelmed, maybe. They’re getting to the end of the school year and they’re counting down the days faster than their kids are.

Tim:                                            Exactly.

Yvette:                                      They just need that boost of encouragement. They need to maybe explore some different options. Maybe the curriculum that they’re using this year isn’t working so well. It’s interesting to hear you talk about how, back in the day, curriculum companies wouldn’t sell curriculum to you. Now, the options-

Tim:                                            Yeah, now we’re a major market.

Yvette:                                      Right. The options are overwhelming and endless, but in a good way. There’s so much to choose from and so many great resources out there for families today, and praise God for that, because every child learns differently. Every mom and dad teaches differently, and so it’s great to have those resources. But it can be overwhelming to go to those things.

I remember, I think it was Janice Campbell was talking about how she remembers going to her first homeschool convention back in the ’80s and she said it was at a church and there were 100 people there and they had a few six foot tables set up with some books on them, and she was just elated. That was like a big convention for them and now you look at where they’ve gone.

I want to speak on behalf of some of the vendors that go to these conventions-

Tim:                                            Please, please.

Yvette:                                      … and I’m not one of them, so I’m going to just speak for them and to encourage those who go to conventions. One of the things, as a matter of fact, Jamie Erickson just read a really great article, I’ll link to it in the show notes, about this. These vendors, and again, this is something I didn’t realize until we were well into homeschooling. Most of the curriculum vendors that you see at these conventions are nothing more than moms and dads who saw a need, created a curriculum to go with whatever their need was, and developed this stuff to serve the homeschool community. They go to these conventions. It’s very expensive. You have to pay for travel and hotel and your booth and everything that goes along with it in hopes of being able to encourage the homeschool community through the sales of their different products that they have.

What a lot of people are doing today is they go and look at the products, they touch it, they feel it, they open it, and then they go find it online somewhere for $5 less or $10 less. I think I can safely say that if people don’t start taking care of the vendors and those who are coming out with these different products and serving the homeschool community this way, we’re going to lose them. Vendors will not continue to come if no one is supporting them and everyone’s just buying used curriculum and buying it form other places where it’s a whole lot less expensive.

Tim:                                            Yvette, I couldn’t agree more, and in a lot of states, the smaller states, these conventions are dying and that is exactly the reason, folks. I understand everybody needs to do what is best for their family, but we’ve worked really closely with our vendors this year and trying to help them with some marketing ideas, do some online specials so they can order and do some of those kind of things. But the reality is you’re exactly right. If the exhibitors who essentially pay for these conventions are not supported, in other words, you don’t buy there, and eventually those conventions go away, and now you’re looking at having to travel further away to a conference or not even have a conference.

We recognize, we value our exhibitors and our vendors. They are the reason we do these conferences, and so thank you for bringing that up. I just want to put an exclamation point on that to encourage people. It’s a great time to come. It’s not uncommon for us to hear about the buy America. Buy in America. We like to say, “Buy at the convention.” We want to support those folks that are supporting us.

Yvette:                                      That’s right, and if you think about the whole cycle of how this whole thing works, I fully understand we have to be the best stewards of what God has entrusted to us financially, as most homeschool families are … we are typically a single income family on a tight budget because most homeschool families are single income on tight budgets, so they need to be good stewards of their finances.

However, think of it this way: You’re really supporting yourself by purchasing at the conventions, because as people purchase curriculum and products and such at conventions, then those vendors will be able to continue going to conventions, which then support the state organizations, and those state organizations use those conventions to help support their organization that then supports the homeschool families.

Tim:                                            That’s exactly right.

Yvette:                                      It’s very, very much needed. It’s critical. It’s critical that we support our different state organizations. By spending an extra $5 or $10 to purchase products at the conventions, you’re really supporting your own freedom to homeschool in your state. Does that make sense?

Tim:                                            That’s exactly right, exactly right, and I would go further than that and say these state organizations are the watchdogs in your state that are watching the legislature or what happens with the litigation or all those sorts of things. If we lose the state organization, now you not only don’t have a conference anymore, but you don’t have a guard dog watching for your freedom.

Yvette:                                      Right, that’s absolutely right, and so for those listening, it is critical. Support your state organizations.

I would love to talk a little bit about your role as a father, as a Christian leader of your home. I think that so many people don’t realize it, and oftentimes dads don’t realize how very important their role is as the leader of their home. Especially when it comes to homeschooling, they think, “Well, my wife is the one who does all of the schooling, I go to work and provide so that she can do that,” which, praise God for that. I am so grateful for dads who support their wives in doing that.

But what would you say to the dad who, maybe he’s not sure about this homeschooling thing. He’s heard about it but he doesn’t think his wife is capable, he doesn’t think she’s organized enough. What would you say to that dad? How can you encourage him?

Tim:                                            As a Christian, if you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 6 and you look at the exhortations there that God through Moses is laying out to the nation of Israel, there’s a very clear exhortation to the father to teach things to your children, when you rise up and when you sit down and when you walk in the way. As Christians, that’s discipleship. We are not moms, but dads are exhorted by the Lord to raise up our children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord.

When we started homeschooling, Yvette, it was because we wanted to pass our faith on to our children in the course of giving them an academic education. As the years rolled on and we began to enjoy the blessings and the fruit of homeschooling, I have come now, at the end of where most people are in their homeschool journey, to say the greatest benefit of homeschooling for our family was not academic. It was the relationships that we have with each other. It was the ability for us to spend time in knowing our children and raising them in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord.

As a father, what I say to homeschool dads is one day we are going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and we’re going to give an account of how we handled the responsibility that God gave us as husbands and fathers. Part of that, for me, is enabling my wife to homeschool. Most of us dads don’t do much of the teaching, but I used to say, “We’re the superintendent.” We have a little plaque in our house that says, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

I think it’s the husbands who God has given us the responsibility and really the ability to help our wives homeschool. I know I tell dads that moms will generally not homeschool for the long-term if they don’t have the active and assertive support of their husbands because moms get overwhelmed. They have a hard time prioritizing and they need us as husbands to say, “Honey, you can’t do everything. You’ve got to cross some things off the list here,” or to encourage them and spend time talking about our kids and what are decisions, what curriculum we need to make, all those sort of things.

I just tell dads when I talk to them that usually homeschooling is the mom’s choice, but if we do it well, it is a dad’s legacy to raise up a godly family that can carry on that family.

Yvette:                                      I love that, and I love that you say, “You can’t do everything,” because I think oftentimes dads expect that, well, mom’s home all day and so she should be able to do it all. She should be able to keep the house clean and have dinner on the table and homeschool the kids and have all the grocery shopping done and the doctor’s appointments gone to. It’s not possible to do everything and I think that’s definitely one of the main concerns that dads often have, is what’s going to fall apart, and they’re afraid of that. It scares them that something in their family is going to fall apart.

But instead of saying, “What’s going to fall apart,” looking at how is this going to benefit our family and how is this going to benefit the eternal security of our … I mean, not that homeschooling is the gospel. We say that all the time. Homeschooling does not save our children by any means. Jesus is the gospel.

Tim:                                            Amen.

Yvette:                                      But allowing your wife some grace and not expecting her to have everything in order all the time, because it’s never going to happen.

Tim:                                            Sure, well, Yvette, I think dads who have those fears, many dads see homeschooling as some academic alternative. When they begin to see that this is a spiritual decision that will help me disciple my child into maturity and a godly Christian, then they begin to say, “Okay, that’s important. So now I prioritize that and how do we have to work around all these other things? How do we do the… ” When our kids were older, they had to clean the house. You make adjustments because this is a priority, because it’s not just about academics. It’s about discipling my children and laying a foundation for them for the future and for eternity.

Yvette:                                      Yes, yes, that’s right. That’s absolutely right. I would say, too, any of the dads who are listening right now, encourage your wives. Come home and ask her, “What can I do to encourage you? How can I serve you right now?” Whether it’s dishes or laundry or getting the kids bathed and ready for bed, or my favorite, take the kids and let your wife go out and have coffee with a friend or go walk around the mall or the park or something. Mommies need breaks, too, and so I think dads who do that are … they’re my heroes. My husband does that. He’s fantastic. He’s great at serving our family, though we’re together all the time.

Tim:                                            Yvette, one of the things I recommend dads to do is read the book The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Chapman. That just revolutionizes, because when you talk about what you can do for your wife, we need to prioritize that, and if her love language, most of the time it is different than yours, and you’re loving her in your love language and it’s not connecting. That book was really revolutionary for me to help me understand how to love my wife in a way that she felt loved. It’s just great, a great book.

Yvette:                                      Yes, that is a fantastic book, and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. We are out of time, unfortunately, for the podcast, but tell people where they can find you. Where can they learn more about Texas Home School Coalition and your conventions that you have coming up?

Tim:                                            Well, it’s THSC.org, so you can find us on the web. You can find a YouTube. We have a YouTube channel and a Facebook group, so we’re everywhere, so please join us and we’re glad to help you.

Yvette:                                      Okay, and what do you have on your YouTube channel? I didn’t know that you had a YouTube channel.

Tim:                                            We have a YouTube channel. We have all sorts of videos. We actually did a … years ago we did a documentary with some of the pioneers of homeschooling in Texas, so it’s kind of a history of homeschooling. Then we have YouTube videos of the work we’re doing in Austin at the legislative sessions, different animated videos about the history of homeschooling in Texas, so just a plethora of different videos.

Yvette:                                      Okay, that’s great. We will link back to that for sure, as well. Thank you so much, Tim, for your time. Thank you for what you do to support homeschooling. I know that you primarily work in Texas, but I know that your work is spread. It ripples throughout the rest of the country and you are a great blessing to all of the people that you’re serving in the homeschool community.

LINKS

Book recommended by Tim: The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman

Article on homeschool conventionsby Jamie Erickson

Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash

Photo by Enrique Macias on Unsplash

Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash