Back on July 14, New Hampshire family-court judge Lucinda Sadler ruled that the daughter of a divorced couple who had been homeschooled by her mother (Voydatch) must be sent to public school. This was in accordance with the father’s (Kurowski) wishes, though the girl had resided with the mother since the divorce in 1999, when the child was an infant. Judge Sadler’s decision was based partly on the socialization issue (which was the father’s main concern) but also at least in part on her opinion that the girl’s Christian homeschooling was too rigid, that she would be better served in life by being exposed a wider range of views than what her mother provided. [You can read the entire court document here]
Since this case is a custody-related case, it, like the In re Rachel L. case in California, was at first not on the radar screen of the leading homeschooling watchdog groups. It is now. For a little over a month the story was unknown in the homeschooling world. But on August 24 an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a conservative Christian legal organization Voydatch had contacted for support, issued to the New Hampshire court a motion for reconsideration. Two days later the ADF issued a news release on the case. By the next day the story had been picked up by onenewsnow.com, and it quickly spread around the internet, abetted especially by a post on August 28 on WorldNetDaily.
A few days later the story broke in more traditional media outlets. Fox News ran a story on the case on September 1. On September 4, The Washington Times made it the day’s lead story. Since then coverage and commentary has exploded among Christian and conservative publications, websites, chat rooms, and so on. While both the Fox and Washington Times stories were balanced and sensitive to the complexities of the case, much subsequent discussion has not been. A writer for the Christian Coalition saw it as an example of Big Brother taking away Christian freedoms. Popular conservative columnist Cal Thomas used it as an example of elites trampling on the rights of ordinary Americans. Some Christian bloggers saw it as an example of persecution.
Other commentators, however, have exhibited more subtlety. The engaging blogger Christine McLaughlin didn’t buy Thomas’ inflated rhetoric but found herself agreeing with conservatives that the court had overstepped its bounds. Libertarian leaning Eugene Volokh, always worth reading, also thought that Judge Sadler overstepped her authority but had trouble coming up with a neutral principle that would allow the court to make the right decision in this case. An editorial published in the Concord Monitor described well the tensions involved in custody decisions and concluded that the court had actually made the right decision here.
While tongues have been wagging, the gears of the justice system have slowly been grinding. The New Hampshire Sate Supreme Court has agreed to rehear the case. The commentary on this case is a fascinating illustration of how the same set of facts can be interpreted so many different ways. Given such wide ranging interpretations, I’m glad the State Court agreed to hear the case and can’t wait to read what it finds.
A second, fully revised edition of my 2008 book Homeschool: An American History, was published in March of 2017. 
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Homeschooling Research Notes 
The judgement seems to say that one demonstration of Amanda’s rigid beliefs is her worry that she and her father won’t be together for eternity if he doesn’t believe the same as her. Some of the comments on Christine Mcglaughlin’s blog jogged my memory of being extremely worried about a very close friend of mine who was no longer a Catholic like me, but had joined a Baptist-type church. I was 18 at the time. I was convinced she wasn’t going to go to heaven. I’m sure that this kind of fear is normal among any children who have a strong religious belief and shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a red flag.
Oh, and I know that it is a custody case and the court is trying to make the best decision it can for the parents who can’t come to an agreement, but their language in this regard is just so reminiscent of that in many court judgements in Germany (eg. homeschooling can provide for a good academic basis, but it can’t enable the child to develop normally in society, or something along those lines). In this case, it’s just about Amanda, but one wonders what part the judges’ own beliefs and assumptions about schooling play in making this judgement. It looks (to me) like the mother failed to make the point about the socialisation aspect in the court case. Maybe she’ll get a chance to do it in the rehearing.