Homeschool mom Kristin Barclay and her family recently moved from South Carolina to North Carolina, where there are a few more hoops to jump through if you want to homeschool your kids.
One of those hoops is that North Carolina requires homeschool parents to have at least a high school diploma and submit it to the state along with their intention to homeschool statement, which was no problem for Barclay. She graduated from Sweet Briar College, a historical women's school in Virginia.
But North Carolina's Department of Non-Public Education denied her application.
From the Home School Legal Defense Association:
She received an email from DNPE containing a concerning message: ‘One or more problems exist in your notice of intent.' Specifically, ‘The diploma evidence was not written in English.' The email added that until this problem was corrected, ‘your homeschool is not legally registered with the state of North Carolina.'
The foreign language in question was Latin.
All the diplomas from Sweet Briar College are issued in Latin.
In fact, a lot of universities, including most of the Ivy Leagues, issue diplomas in Latin or at least partially in Latin.
(Which is another reminder that universities are an inherently western tradition, and if the activist students were serious about tearing down the influences of the western world, they wouldn't be going to college or be emulating Karl Marx, who was a German philosopher ... )
Anyway Barclay contacted Sweet Briar, and they sent an English translation to the department, who again denied her application. This time they said the translation didn't have her name on it, so they wanted her college transcript.
Sensing that she was getting the run around, she contacted the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which sent the state a ridiculum-est (this is ridiculous) letter.
HSLDA Senior Counsel Darren Jones wrote to the DNPE on Kristin's behalf, pointing out that their request for additional documentation went beyond what state law requires.
What he didn't add, but could have, is that the DNPE was wrong to consider the Latin diploma sui generis — an outlier posing a unique problem.
They pointed out that the department was asking for more than what was legally required.
The state backed down almost immediately, accepting Barclay's Latin diploma and the translation the university provided, so they could read it.
‘Thankfully, it wasn't a scary legal issue, but it was unnecessarily difficult,' she said. ‘The most frustrating part was that I did what they asked, but they said, "No, no, you need to do more." My feeling was that I have my diploma, and that should be enough.'
HSLDA says scenarios like this happen a lot, as government bureaucrats all over the country try to stop parents from homeschooling their kids.
But if there's any fight worth fighting, parents having a say in how their children are educated is definitely it.
"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)
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