Rick Boyer and his wife Marilyn are pioneer homeschoolers. Since 1980, they have educated their 14 children at home, having started when homeschooling was still illegal in Virginia. As a pioneer in the home education movement, Rick has written several books on the homeschool experience and has been a much-in-demand speaker at many homeschool conventions all across America. As devout Christians, Rick and his wife believe that Scripture provides a powerful model for the upbringing of children that, when followed, produces wise, proactive young Christian adults who are capable of achieving great works for the glory of God.
Rick also believes that God created the homeschool movement for a purpose: to raise up a new generation of young Americans who will “take back the land.” Mike Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College, called these new young homeschooled adults the “Joshua Generation,” because they are being called to do what Joshua in the Bible was called to do after the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and the death of Moses: to take back the land of Canaan from the heathen, land that God had given to the Israelites. His mission was to lead the Israelites in battle to retrieve the land.
The situation is almost similar in America, which was founded by Christians and which grew and prospered as a Christian nation until the middle of the 20th century when the secular humanists, today’s heathens, took it over. The result is a nation in decline, awash in sin and pornography, with public schools destroying the minds and souls of millions of American children.
Christian parents created the homeschool movement because they refused to hand over their children to the atheist schools. And by now about three million young Americans have been educated at home and are ready to take their place in American society and culture. But these homeschooled young adults represent a special generation, destined to lives of serious purpose.
Boyer’s new book, Take Back the Land, addresses the meaning of that purpose and how God has chosen this homeschooled generation to save America. A very tall mission, but one that homeschoolers welcome, because they know that they’ve been schooled for a special reason. And in order to help this generation understand what is expected of them, he has written a kind of instruction manual on how to become an effective leader in this battle to restore Christian values in America. He tells these future leaders:
“Our culture is in desperate shape, and my generation has been praying for national revival for many years. I believe that your generation is the answer to our prayers.”
Take Back the Land is based on the bold premise that the Joshua Generation of homeschoolers must become the leaders to return America to its Christian roots. Boyer sees today’s homeschoolers very much resembling the young men who became America’ s Founding Fathers. They got most of their education at home. He writes:
Franklin, for instance, went to school for only two years, total. For the most part he educated himself. Washington and Jefferson likewise got their educations outside the public schools. Washington went to the university at 13. At 14, Jefferson was running the family plantation, an orphan. In those days, people carried responsibility early and grew up early. Today, I see the same thing happening with homeschooled young people. They are more mature, they take responsibility, and they know how to think critically. They are preparing to lead America back to the spirit of the founders.
Are America’s Joshua Generation of homeschoolers ready and able to take on the mission that Boyer says they are destined to assume? He believes they are. Indeed, this book was written after he gave a speech to a graduating class of homeschoolers in Iowa in May 2008. He writes:
On that sunny Saturday afternoon, I told 106 bright, beaming young men and women some of the things I’m going to tell you in this book. I gave them a challenge — a challenge to worship a big God and attempt big things for Him because that is our purpose in life.
The speech got him a standing ovation and that’s when he realized that they were not responding to his eloquence but to his message that they must take responsibility to change the world for God, because that’s what was expected of them. In other words, the purpose in life for homeschoolers is not merely to get better jobs or start new families and businesses, but to take this great American land back for God.
To do so they must see themselves as the future presidents, Supreme Court justices, pastors, business owners, authors, and heads of corporations of America. They must see themselves as leaders, not followers, as producers, not merely consumers.
The public schoolers have been dumbed-down to become followers, not leaders. They are the ones who elected Barack Obama because they believed his promises of “hope and change” without any curiosity about what that change might be. And today they are Occupying Wall Street because their left-wing puppeteers have directed them to the capitalist “enemy.” Public schoolers live in an artificially extended childhood which requires no adult responsibility, an extended adolescence devoid of analytical thinking. Indeed, they are stuck in perpetual adolescence, their brains having been lobotomized by their public schools.
Rick has dedicated his book to the late Chris Klicka, a pioneer in the homeschool movement who used his great legal talents to help parents defend their right to educate their children as they see fit. Chris was the kindest, gentlest human being who ever walked the face of this earth. His contribution to the cause of educational freedom will remain an imperishable legacy for future Americans to appreciate.
Rick Boyer, Chris Klicka, Mike Farris and their colleagues are the founding fathers of a movement that will in time change America. All of this is being done under the radar screen of the big media and the American public in general. By now most Americans have heard of the homeschool movement and many new families are joining. This is a movement driven more by spiritual need and the imperatives of family life than anything else. And because it is not a mass movement driven by mass media hoopla, its influences will be felt in ways that are virtually invisible, ways that cannot be easily calculated. But when something good happens these days, there may be a homeschooler behind it.
Boyer is planning to conduct Take Back the Land conferences around the country to bring his vital message to homeschoolers. He can be contacted at the Boyer website: www.thelearningparent.com. If you like large families you will enjoy the picture of the Boyer Family on the site. Too big to fail! Can you imagine all that love and success in that one tribe?
