In light of the court decision in California that just struck a death blow to homeschooling there, my piece on the subject (that I wrote a year ago) suddenly becomes a little more timely. (Just cancel out the box that comes up inviting you to print it; this is the only link that gives you the full piece on one page.) A snippet:

William T. Harris, the most prominent figure in the American educational establishment after the Civil War, and who possessed the mystical reverence for the state so characteristic of Hegelians, warned in an 1871 address to the National Educational Association: “Neither is it safe to leave the education of youth to religious zeal or private benevolence,” since “our State [will] find elements heterogeneous to it continually growing up.” We certainly can’t have that.