For those who think they can simply keep their children out of government schools, there is an unfolding story that every parent should know. In New Hampshire, a family court judge has ordered a divorced mother, Brenda Voydatch, to place her home-schooled 10-year-old daughter in a public school. The girl’s academics are excellent, but the non-custodial father sought a court order to force her into public school.

Why? Because the court order expresses the judge’s concern that the daughter shares “her mother’s rigidity on questions of faith.” In other words, the girl is a devout, evangelical Christian. The court wrote that she must be exposed to “multiple systems of belief,” and so must attend a secular school.

Where, evidently, she will watch Barack Obama and write papers about how to help the president advance his leftist agenda.

To be fair, it must be noted that the divorced parents agreed to joint decision-making as part of their divorce. This is yet another example of how children all too often pay the price in domestic disputes.

But the court tipped its hand. If this were about meeting a child’s educational needs beyond academics, that might be another discussion. But the court references the girl’s Christian faith, and the mother’s faith, and cites that as a crucial factor in ordering the girl into a secular public school.

The court overstepped its bounds, violating both the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom and the rights of conscience of both the mother and daughter. The Alliance Defense Fund has taken this case to contest the order.

Controlling the learning environment allows you to control a child’s mind. When children are in school at a young and impressionable age, they know that they’re there to learn. They’re told by their parents to listen to the teachers, to do what the teacher says, to trust what they are told. In this environment, children can be taught to believe almost anything. Communist and fascist regimes have taken advantage of this for decades, indoctrinating children to become obedient servants to the government, to adore the head of state and to fanatically follow that leader.

This New Hampshire situation is frightening, especially in the context of public schools being told to channel in Barack Obama.