Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has passed into eternity. His 89 years on this earth were filled with a mixture of incredible success and small acts of daily faithfulness that are the hallmarks of a life well-lived.
While Dr. Dobson’s ministry and messages of faith touched on an expansive variety of topics, his impact on home education was so profound that he is rightly viewed as one of the key catalysts for the launch of the modern homeschooling movement.
Around 1982, Dr. Dobson interviewed Dr. Raymond Moore on Moore’s book Better Late Than Early. Moore’s research led him to recommend the delay of formal education in favor of home-based instruction in the early years of a child’s development. This idea eventually grew to broad consideration of home education for the full scope of primary and secondary education.
Dr. Dobson hosted many other discussions on home education throughout the 1980s and beyond. He influenced many when he said that if he had to do it over again, he and his wife, Shirley, would likely have chosen homeschooling for their two children.
Two of the people who heard that first broadcast were Mike Smith and Vickie Farris, my wife. Mike talked with his wife, Elizabeth, and they made the decision to begin homeschooling right away. I met Dr. Moore at a different event a few months later and went home to tell Vickie about this new idea. It turned out that she had been praying for the courage to bring it up to me ever since she heard the interview. My dad was a public school principal, and she wasn’t sure how I would react.
Together with the Smiths, we launched HSLDA in March of 1983, with all four of us as the original board members.
A significant number of the early homeschooling families that we served had been introduced to the idea by Dr. Dobson’s broadcasts. There is little doubt that the movement’s growth was given great momentum because people trusted Dr. Dobson’s insights and wisdom, especially on matters concerning child-rearing and education.
Dr. Dobson with Mike and Elizabeth Smith in 2009
Not only was Dr. Dobson instrumental in launching the movement, he later came to our rescue in a profound way when, in 1994, a bill in Congress threatened to shut down this innovative approach to education.
Representative George Miller (D-CA), who was tightly aligned with teachers’ unions, introduced a provision into the 1994 version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that required every teacher in every school to have a state teaching certificate for every subject they taught. Miller’s provision was buried in a massive bill, H.R. 6, when it was before the Education Committee for consideration.
Representative Dick Armey (R-TX) noticed this provision during a committee hearing and moved to strike the Miller language. The Democrats were then in the majority in the House, and Armey’s motion failed on a straight party line vote.
Rep. Armey contacted me immediately after the hearing to see if I agreed with his view that the measure would harm homeschooling. I fully agreed and pointed out that it would also hurt private education and have some negative impact on public schools.
HSLDA went to war against the Miller provision in H.R. 6. While we used snail mail and phone trees, our most important means of communication was Christian radio. And there is utterly no doubt that the program with the highest impact was Focus on the Family with Dr. James Dobson.
I recorded that episode on a Friday. Dr. Dobson’s broadcast aired the following Monday, and the jet took off. In the 8 days between the committee hearing and the floor vote, we went from a few hundred thousand calls to Congress to over 3 million.
Jim Dobson’s multiplication of our message was so effective that when the final vote was taken to replace Rep. George Miller’s provision with protective language written by Rep. Dick Armey, the vote was 422- 1.
We saw the hand of God in several ways through that entire battle. But there is no doubt that without Dr. Dobson, the impact and the number of calls would have been a fraction of the landslide that we experienced.
Over the years I became good friends with Jim Dobson. On one occasion, Vickie and I were interviewed on his program, and I made several other appearances alone. I saw Jim in countless meetings and events and even went hunting with him more than once. Jim shot an amazing elk on one of those trips.
It takes incredible courage for a person with a large national ministry to risk their reputation on a new idea that challenges a great number of accepted ideas. Jim Dobson was fearless. He opened the door for homeschooling and helped keep it open in our most vulnerable moment in those early years.
We have lost a very good friend. I am just one of many who will really miss him. But we celebrate more than we mourn. Our friend walks with God today, and we are the beneficiaries of just one of his many acts of effective and faithful servant leadership.
Well done, Jim. Very well done.