About The Elijah Award
Each year, the Quaqua Elijah Award honors a person who has, over the course of one or more years, made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of parental liberty or other liberties and conditions of special significance to the alternative-education community. Recipients are identified and nominated by the Society without an application process.

Although Elijah is a historical figure of great significance to millions of people around the world, including Christians, Jews, and Muslims, the Quaqua Elijah Award is not a religious or theological honor. Elijah was selected because of the theme associated with his life-- turning the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Malachi 4:5.

The symbology, organizational monikers, and literature of the home-education movement is replete with references to Elijah and his theme. For purposes of the Elijah Award, Quaqua construes the theme broadly to include advancement of all conditions, behaviors, and principles which tend to enhance interaction between children and their parents.

The historical tradition of thought associated with Elijah's theme stands in stark contrast to the Platonic philosophy of child-raising advocated in the Republic and adopted by totalitarians throughout time. Plato's tome advocated severance of familial bonds and recommended compulsory, centralized, regimented government education. Plato enthusiastically endorsed cultural genocide through mandatory social homogenization and infanticide.

The Platonic ideology was wisely rejected by early English Common Law, the Founders and Framers of the United States, and a majority of relevant justices on the United States Supreme Court. Many of the statesman pivotal to protection of parental liberty were themselves graduates of home-education. The United States owes much of its cultural, economic, and political prosperity to its legal tradition of protecting parental rights and alternative education.

Through the Elijah Award, the Quaqua Society honors people of diverse demographic backgrounds who act to make the benefits of healthy parent-child interaction available to people around the world.