College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right

Guest Blogger - Of the nearly 100 interns working in the White House this semester, 7 are from the roughly 240 students enrolled in the four-year-old Patrick Henry College, in Purcellville. An eighth intern works for the president's re-election campaign. A former Patrick Henry intern now works on the paid staff of the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove. Over the last four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns in their offices or on their campaigns, according to the school's records.

"I would definitely like to be active in the government of our country and stuff," Mr. Olmstead, 19, said as he sat in a Christian coffeehouse near the campus, looking up from a copy of Plato's "Republic." "I would love to be able to be a foreign ambassador, and I would really like to move into the Senate later in my career."

The college's knack for political job placement testifies to the increasing influence that Christian home-schooling families are building within the conservative movement. Only about half a million families around the country home-school their children and only about two-thirds identify themselves as evangelical Christians, home-schooling advocates say. But they have passionate political views, a close-knit grass-roots network and the financial support of a handful of wealthy patrons. For all those reasons, home-schoolers have captured the attention of a wide swath of conservative politicians, many of whom are eager to hire Patrick Henry students.

Patrick Henry College is the centerpiece of an effort to extend the home-schooling movement's influence beyond education to a broad range of conservative Christian issues like opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and obscenity in the media. The legal defense association, located on the Patrick Henry campus, established the college as a forward base camp in the culture war, with the stated goal of training home-schooled Christian men and women "who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values."

"We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read," Mr. Farris said. "The most common thing I hear is parents telling me they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the farm system, some may get to the major leagues."

"Mike Farris is trying to train young people to get on a very right-wing political agenda," said Nancy Keenan, the education policy director at People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, and a former Montana state superintendent of public education. The number of Patrick Henry interns in the White House "scares me to death," she said. "It tells us a little bit more about the White House than it does about the kids."

About two-thirds of the students major in government. It is one of the few schools that offer a special program in intelligence and foreign affairs.

Now Mr. Farris is trying to enlist even younger students in Christian conservative politics. He estimates that there are more than two million home-schooling children in the country, or more than the number of children attending New Jersey public schools, and in February he sent a letter encouraging home-schooling families to enroll their children in Generation Joshua, a new hands-on civics program for home-schooled teenagers. Participants will learn about government by helping conservative churches get voters to the polls and by volunteering for the campaigns of like-minded conservative politicians, he said.

"Home-school teens could become one of the most powerful forces in American politics, rivaling the labor unions in effectiveness," Mr. Farris wrote, adding, "The best way to train the leaders of tomorrow is to have our young people help to elect the leaders of today."

From Amy - that is TRULY frightening. I am beginning to believe my parents were right when they said there would be a revolution in this country in my lifetime. Yikes & ick. I am going to start learning the Canadian anthem!

el - Here dare they sully the name of the great Deist Patrick Henry who was vilified by the conservative GOP forefathers as a 'godless atheist."