Expert Witness on Education - Blount v. State of Maine,

Attorney Samuel L. Lanham, Jr., of Cuddy & Lanham in Bangor, a member of William B. Ball’s legal team in Bangor Baptist, asked me to testify four years later in Blount v. State of Maine, Maine Superior Court in Augusta (Docket No. CV-86-474). The Blount case concerned the right of Robert and Susan Blount to educate their child at home without permission from public school leaders. The Blounts, insisting they had a God-given responsibility to control the upbringing of their daughter, had refused to seek the local public school district’s imprimatur for their home-schooling activities, as the law required. What sense does it make for a public school system to have approval power over home-schooling, its most frightening competitor?

Attorney Lanham, whose letters are reproduced under Photocopies, initially wrote:

“I am deeply grateful to you for your assistance in this case, and your testimony was, in your usual fashion, excellent! I was very pleased with what occurred in the court room while you were on the witness stand, and I was particularly impressed by the colloquy which took place between you and Judge Brody. His discussion with you was one of the few times during the entire week that he engaged himself with any witness.”

Looking back years later, Lanham said the Blount case had “the best expert testimony the nation had to offer.”

My function was to defend home-schooling as a valid educational approach, and according to Attorney Lanham, I persuaded the judge of that. The judge ruled, however, that requiring prior approval of the intention to home-school was an appropriate, minimally restrictive expression of a compelling state interest. The Blount’s lost their battle. They won their war, however, because, as Lanham indicates, state officials, perhaps newly cognizant of evidence in support of home-schooling, and perhaps still stinging from their rebuke in the 1983 Bangor Baptist case, stepped aside thereafter and allowed the Blounts to teach all their children at home year after year without interference.

These developments reflect an interesting national pattern that developed little by little, both behind the scenes and through cases like this one: Home-schooling can be done in every state without legal difficulty if parents follow proper guidelines. In some states home-schooling is explicitly legal. In other states, parents can avoid trouble by following the advice of good attorneys and home-schooling associations. As I argue later, however, home-schoolers have little ground for complacency. Unless a persistent, powerful legal defense is maintained, the situation could easily change.

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