Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

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Position on Homeschooling
Volume 76, Program 26
8/13/2007

This week’s Home School Heartbeat, featuring an interview with Congressman Tom Tancredo from Colorado, is the fourth installment of our presidential candidate interview series. Home School Heartbeat has invited all of the 2008 candidates to participate in these interviews, and an interview will be aired for each candidate who accepts. Each candidate will be asked exactly the same questions. Neither this interview nor any others should be construed to be a political endorsement.

Mike Farris:
This week we’ll be talking with Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo. He is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2008. Tom, we’re very honored to have you with us on the program.

Congressman Tancredo:
Thank you, it’s a pleasure always.

Mike:
What’s your position on homeschooling and how much involvement, if any, should the government have in family’s homeschooling decision?

Congressman Tancredo:
None. When I was in the state legislature thirty years ago, I authored the first bill in any state legislature to protect homeschooling from the state. I remember speaking to a homeschooling conference in Colorado about that time; it was the first one they’d ever held. It was in a church and there were twenty-five people or so, maybe ten kids. The last homeschooling conference I spoke to, there were over 7,000 people. The thing I always tell folks is that they have to be wary of one thing and that is being victims of their own success. The better you do, the more people that are involved, the more people you end up getting annoyed at you and looking at you as a potential threat to the system and so as the homeschooling phenomena grows you must be wary of attempts to try and stifle it.

Mike:
Congressman, thank you so much. I’m Mike Farris.

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