March 9, 2008 2:20 PM
California homeschool crisis - news roundup
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the rescue, as reported in the Los Angeles Times:
Bill on home schooling rights urged
Governor criticizes court requirement of a teaching credential and says he will move to protect practice.
By Seema Mehta
March 8, 2008
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called Friday for the reversal of a recent appellate court decision banning parents from educating their children at home if they lack a teaching credential. If the state Supreme Court fails to act, the governor vowed to push through legislation guaranteeing families' right to home school. Read article here.
Time magazine weighs in:
Criminalizing Home SchoolersParents of the approximately 200,000 home-schooled children in California are reeling from the possibility that they may have to shutter their classrooms — and go back to school themselves — if they want to continue teaching their own kids. Read article here
The Washington Times reports the fallout:
Home-schoolers 'in shock' over court ruling
By Amy Fagan
March 8, 2008National and California home-schooling advocates are banding together to fight a state court ruling they say could essentially outlaw the practice of allowing parents to teach their children at home.
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and the Home School Association of California (HSC) say the court decision, which said home-schooling parents must have a valid state teaching license and they have no constitutional right to home-school, takes aim at the education programs many families use to get exemption from the public school system.
Read article here.
For homeschooling parents heretofore uninterested in the politics of public education this should serve as a wake up call. The warning of encroachments by the public school system on parental rights may have seemed like distant thunder to those who've so far chosen not to send their kids to public schools - but all parents need to be vigilant about protecting parental rights against any type of government bullying or judicial dictatorship.
Whether you live in California or in one of the other 49 states, and whether you homeschool or not - we all need to work together to protect the rights of all American families and parents.
Catholic Online is the only place I've seen reporting the history that led to this surprise ruling:
California Court ruling threatens homeschooling
3/8/2008
Catholic News Agency (www.catholicnewsagency.com)
"Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them"A California court decision restricting two parents’ ability to homeschool their children could subject all California parents to criminal penalties for homeschooling, WorldNetDaily reports.
Allegations of abuse had been brought against Phillip and Mary Long of Los Angeles, who disciplined their homeschooled children with spankings. After the case was closed by the court, the two attorneys appointed to represent the Longs’ two youngest children filed a special appeal challenging the Longs’ right to continue homeschooling their children.
Every parent needs to be familiar with the history of public education in the United States, particularly the turning point that came with the philosophy of John Dewey. This will provide some context for understanding what exactly is at stake here.
From Thomas Brewton, writing at Borderfire Report:
Why the animus of liberal courts and teachers’ unions against home schooling?The obvious answer is that home schooling does a better job, revealing the poor quality of public education. Less obvious is the desire of home-schooling parents to teach Judeo-Christian moral principles, which directly conflicts with the public school aim of teaching the secular religion of liberal-progressive-socialism. Propagating that mind-set necessitates identifying as ignorance all ideas of fixed and timeless moral principles.
Such was the work primarily of John Dewey, the leading liberal-progressive theoretician of the early 1900s. He taught Columbia University students that Darwinian evolution had proved that everything, including morality, was continually evolving. In such a world there can be no timeless principles of morality. Rules for social behavior are simply whatever intellectuals think they ought to be in matters of sexual orientation, sexual promiscuity, and every sort of sensual gratification.
Under the impact of such schooling, the traditional family unit is no longer the bedrock of society. The norm tends toward single-parent units. Home-schooling by parents in traditional families is, to that style of moral relativism, a direct affront.
There is now abundant evidence, in all parts of the nation, that public-education students are inculcated with anti-Americanism and a moral relativism that will not even condemn the Nazi Holocaust. Liberal-progressivism teaches students that there are no real differences among nations, races, and cultures, even sexes. We are all homogeneous and ready for a single world government that will end wars and guarantee harmony and economic plenty, equally for all. In such a world, callow students must be conditioned to see every atrocity from the other guy’s view point and to avoid all judgments of right or wrong.
An interesting snippet from a Worldnetdaily report, Judge orders homeschoolers into government education:
"We find no reason to strike down the Legislature's evaluation of what constitutes an adequate education scheme sufficient to promote the 'general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence,'" the court said in the case. "We agree … 'the educational program of the State of California was designed to promote the general welfare of all the people and was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual in the field of education.'"The words echo the ideas of officials from Germany, where homeschooling has been outlawed since 1938 under a law adopted when Adolf Hitler decided he wanted the state, and no one else, to control the minds of the nation's youth.
Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has said "school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens."
Read entire article here.
And here's a great entry I ran across on a blog called Right on the Left Coast: Views from a Conservative Teacher (and isn't it nice to know there is one?):
Friday, February 29, 2008 What's Wrong With Teacher Education, You Ask?I'm glad you did.
I received a newsletter today from the College of Education at CSU, Sacramento. The message from the Dean, prominently displayed on the front page of the newsletter, had a few points that merit some negative attention. I now quote from the Dean's message:
There are four main goals that we have and will continue to focus on in the College, which are expressed in the acronym TEACH:Transformative Leadership
Equity and Social Justice
Action
Collaboration
Human Differences and Diversity
1. Which four are the main goals?
2. I've posted enough on this blog about so-called equity and social justice, and the lack of logic from which those code words spring, that I probably shouldn't repeat myself.
3. Somehow, I'm more inclined to believe that the Dean's view of "human differences and diversity" is more in line with "disabled lesbians of color" than with anyone or anything that might be considered "conservative". I'd like to be proven wrong on that, but I doubt I will be.Honestly, I despise most teacher education programs. What you read above encapsulates why.
I've bookmarked this person (still working on figuring out my RSS :)
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Comments
Barbara, you are so right that homeschooling families need to pay attention to what's going on in the public schools. When public schools are free (as in speech) institutions concerned only with education and respecting the rights of parents, they have no need to encroach on homeschoolers. But the more they become centers of indoctrination into political correctness and less they care to be responsible to parents, the more they see homeschoolers as escaping their grasp -- the more they feel they need to reel us in.
What happens in the public schools affects us all. It shapes the minds of most American children, and creates the world in which we live. All parents need to be paying attention.
Posted by: Michelle | March 9, 2008 4:15 PM
Thanks for posting this update! I hadn't yet read about Gov. Schwarzenegger calling for a reversal of the decision, and found it suprising, yet encouraging news! I'm also encouraged at how so many are pulling together to retain their rights and their children.
Thanks so much for getting the word out and for the updates and links.
Posted by: Dell | March 9, 2008 5:19 PM
Thanks for the article round-up. History shows that if a government controls your education and your health care, it controls you. We must pay attention.
Posted by: Marian | March 9, 2008 6:34 PM
I homeschool, but I write a lot about the public education system.
I recently received an email from a teacher in an urban city school. She said that all the "teacher education" days would be unnecessary if they actually taught the basics. But they don't. They keep trying to come up with new ways to teach what people have been teaching well for centuries. (Can anyone say new math?)
In the latest class, the principal was asked to demonstrate the proper way to teach subtraction with decimal points. He couldn't do it, and said it wasn't necessary. As long as they can make change from $10, then that's all that matters. Trying to do things the "right" way inhibits real learning.
She was appalled. But that's what they're taught at teacher's college. And then we wonder why kids don't learn.
On the other hand, my kids, who are homeschooled, are four grade levels ahead in math. Go figure.
Posted by: Sheila Gregoire | March 9, 2008 8:20 PM
Rights are not freely granted top-down by some government authority.
It is only when people feel inalienable rights in their bones can they assert them proudly and openly. Parents should not be meek and humble as supplicants and petitioners in face of government heavy handedness.
Parents have choice in how their children are to be educated, publicly, privately, or at home. This ruling in California is so feudal it sticks out as an outrage in a democracy.
Furthermore, it is parents’ duty to educate their children. School laws across the free world state that. Only in totalitarian countries is home education not permitted.
The first School Laws in America (Mass.1642) underlie the system to this day: “Universal education of youth is essential to the well-being of the State. The obligation to furnish this education rests primarily upon the parents.”
Parent groups should evolve their own Charter of Parent Rights statements and educate their members about what is decent and proper in this day and age. I am providing a link to such a statement, compiled in 1977 in Canada, and which can serve as a good starting point for others.
I was heavily involved in Home Education causes in the 80’s and do know such statements empower parents to confidently do what is right by their children.
http://www.theschoolsweneed.com/forums/attachments/43.pdf
Tunya Audain
Posted by: Tunya Audain | March 10, 2008 10:22 PM
Please add my name to your email list. thanks!
Posted by: Barbara | April 22, 2008 5:37 PM
