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I know this news is a few days old, but I was out of town for the weekend and this is my first opportunity to address it. As many have probably heard, a California court has effectively killed the option of home-schooling for many families in that state. As a result, it has also effectively made 166,000 children truants. Naturally, the social service apparatus in California will demand that the McGovernator increase their funding so that they can tend to this surge in unsupervised rascalism.
It came as no surprise to me to hear that a California court bowed to the legislature rather than protecting the sacred right of parents to raise their children without undue interference from the state. It would be one thing if, on a case by case basis, it was determined that some parents were neglecting to educate their children at all. It’s quite another thing to tell a parent that they cannot direct the educational upbringing of their child at all. Notwithstanding the well-reported statistics demonstrating that homeschooled children outperform government-schooled children on standardized tests (though I would hazard to guess that their socials skill may atrophy relative to their government-schooled colleagues), this fiasco grates on a whole other level: the fact is that much of the impetus for the homeschooling movement comes from parental protest at the curriculum, socialization, or values taught at government schools. And, the legislature (with the court’s imprimatur) has deigned that this parental instinct (and, I would argue, Right) is just plain wrong. But WHY? According to the judge, here’s why (drumroll please):
Quote:
“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”
The judge lifted that quote from a 1961 court opinion. Some things never change…
I was at work eating lunch when I read this and I literally almost choked on my sandwich. All this time I had thought that the primary purpose of educational institutions was…to educate people - you know, so that they can make a living and be self-supporting members of society. Boy was I wrong. All along the whole purpose was to indoctrinate children to love their country and to “train school children…in loyalty to the state“!
Fascism before our very eyes, courtesy of the liberal establishment. “Tyranny begins in the cradle.” Those words were never truer. Stand up, begin your day with the Pledge of Allegiance. And - not to be outdone - the conservative establishment requires that we and our children be reminded daily that this nation is Under God (subtext: “you know which God this nation is under, kids! No other religion calls their god “God”!).
I say the Pledge proudly, and I criticize Obama for not putting his hand over his heart when he says it. But, it doesn’t take me long to remember back to Catholic high school when my teachers would upbraid me for not saying the pledge each morning. Even then I was smart enough to know the difference between indoctrination and pride. I have a real problem with any adult who is not proud enough of this country to stand and say the Pledge when given the opportunity. But, I have an even bigger problem with the GOVERNMENT COMPELLING CHILDREN to recite an oath of undying loyalty to the state and God.
But this, we are told, is precisely why parents cannot homeschool their children. We can’t have parents interfering with the indoctrination of their children! The real irony of this is that atheist parents hate the fact their their children have to say “under God” in the Pledge every morning, and Christians are educating their kids at home because God has been kicked out of school.
The lesson here is obvious (and I would guess especially to students): No one wins when the government controls them. This is doubly true for children compelled to attend government schools against their parents’ wishes.
Fascism: everyday before lunch. Come and get it!!!
March 10th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Actually, Homeschooling is NOT outlawed in CA. Read this article: http://ace.mu.nu/archives/257230.php
March 10th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Jamison - that link didn’t work. May just be my computer though.
I’m aware that children can be schooled at home if the individual teaching them is certified, or if the parents register themselves as a private school, or if other loopholes are followed. But, the underlying principle is the same. I’m just not down with the idea that the government should be interposing itself between a parent and his/her child without a finding of actual neglect in each individual case.
I’m generally opposed to government schools. I understand that they are a necessary evil, but parents should certainly be able to opt out of them (and get a voucher!!) if they choose to do so and if the child’s educational needs are not being neglected.
I’m most opposed to the idea of compelling children to come to a building by law, having the government run that building, and then make those whose attendance has been compelled stand up, salute the flag, and pledge their allegience to the government and their faith in a particular god. Anyone who characterizes themselves as freedom-loving should be appalled at this practice. It is most certainly not, nor is any part of it, “conservative”. It is facist, and it is wrong.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
And I should add that this government lash-out (justified by an explicitly fascist rationale) at parents who reject the government school system is most wrong of all.
I may not like God in government schools, but then again, I clearly don’t like much of anything in government schools. I like God (I pulled a 12-year stint of Catholic school, after all), and I would prefer not to get his good ideas all tangled up in the compulsion and bad ideas fostered in government schools.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
As someone who was homeschooled in California, I think I’m qualified to comment here.
California doesn’t have any laws about homeschooling–instead, homeschoolers have exploited loopholes in educational laws to do what they want. What these judges did isn’t part of the “liberal establishment” (no matter how tempting it is to cast things in a partisan light). Instead, they basically just upheld the laws as they were written.
Also, I would argue that the homeschooling system as it operated in California was basically unfeasible. One of my (homeschooled) friends didn’t learn to read until he was 12. Why? His parents never bothered to make him learn. Any system that allows things like that to occur interferes with the CHILD’s right to an education.
I wouldn’t want to see homeschooling disappear completely, but the state does have a responsibility to ensure that these children are getting some sort of viable education.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Statistically speaking, home school kids nationwide are far, far ahead of the norm. The last time I heard, the 50th percentile home school child was in the 87th percentile of all children.
My daughter home schools all her children, and the only problem they will have is that they are going to be really small compared to others in their class if they go back to a public school at the grade level of their competency. My 9 year old and my 10 year old grandchildren voluntarily each read over 6000 pages of higher level reading books last year alone, plus got way ahead in all their other subjects.
I do tend to think that Government could have a role in cases where parents are not really teaching anything, and just using that as an excuse for them to play hooky.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:19 am
(subtext: “you know which God this nation is under, kids! No other religion calls their god “God�!).
Well, maybe. But the pre-Christian Hellenistic world — the one that worshiped Zeus and company — also came to the conclusion that there was one big God above all of the little gods. The mystery religions of the Hellenistic world certainly included this viewpoint, as did Gnosticism, which may or may not have pre-dated Christianity. Muslims think there is only one God, and Zoroastrians did too, thousands of years earlier. So I don’t think it’s necessarily true that the reference to God in the Pledge is an exclusively Christian statement. Though I agree that there’s no reason that a public school student should be compelled to pledge allegiance to any deity at all by the state.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:33 am
“pledge allegiance to any deity”
I have some theoretical problems with requiring the Pledge of Allegiance, but is it a pledge to a deity? The wording is that we are pledging allegiance to the flag and to the nation, and then noting that the nation is “under god”. What exactly “under god” means in this context I’m not sure, but it doesn’t appear to mean that the allegiance is to the god.
Although I don’t like the compulsory nature of the pledge, it’s about one millionth on the list of things I get worked up over.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:52 am
“One of my (homeschooled) friends didn’t learn to read until he was 12. Why? His parents never bothered to make him learn. Any system that allows things like that to occur interferes with the CHILD’s right to an education.”
Huh? The parents don’t make the child learn the read. He learns to read when he wants to, at 12. Are you arguing that the child’s right to education involves compulsory (by force) education? That sounds odd.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:56 am
California court attacks homeschooling, ergo conservatives are fascists. Uh-huh. You’re a nut.
Can we get back to the race for 2008, by the way? If I wanted to read this level of commentary on current issues I’d go trolling at Free Republic.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:13 am
This was a judicially conservative decision. The law in California is that teaching requires certain qualifications. The only question was whether something you can find a right to privacy in a penumbra of an emanation of the Constitution, and the California Supreme Court decided not to be judicially activist on that question. I applaud them, even though I think it’s a bad policy decision. But that’s what it is to be judicially conservative. It’s to avoid letting your policy preferences become the law simply because you’d like it to be but to allow the proper process to go through.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:23 am
I support a parent’s right to homeschool if they want to. Having said that, I think it’s a horrible idea. If I ever have kids, you wouldn’t catch me homeschooling them in a million years. Half of the education a child gets from school involves learning how to mix with the other kids (something they will one day have to do in the workforce). I guess a parent has to decide whether they want a kid with above average intelligence who can get along with other people or whether they want a kid who can’t really relate to anyone else their age but is able to understand Shakespeare completely. It also doesn’t bother me that most public school teachers are liberal. Plenty of people in society are liberal. I was a conservative since I was 8 years old, but I think having a lot of liberal teachers in school helped me understand the other side better. Home schooled kids or even private schooled kids tend to be very intolerant of anyone with a different philosophy than them. Right-wing parents who freak out over teachers being too liberal are about as sensible as left-wing atheist wackos who freak out that their kid has to hear the word “God” during a Pledge of Allegiance. We need to lighten up in this country. On a legalistic level though, I think parents should be allowed to homeschool if they are doing it properly.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Many Home-school children actually do mix well with other children.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I’m sure there are many who do, but I just haven’t met any of them. I don’t really like the idea of kids being with their parents all the time like that either. They need to hear other people’s perspectives. It is a parent’s choice though, not the government’s.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I’m with Clarence here. Homeschooling robs children of the social interaction that is part of the learning process.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:29 am
–While public schools rob them of the academic experience that is essential to the learning process.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:31 am
May I add, this is a tough issue for some people to form an opinion on, but once you actually meet a homeschooled kid, and see how unfounded all these fears over the “lack of socialization,” then you quite readily come to acknowledge homeschooling for the fine educational alternative that it is.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:18 am
This was a judicially conservative decision.
No, because the court could have rejected the case on narrow, statutory grounds if it wanted to. In fact, it did, and then just made a sweeping ruling that parents don’t have the right to educate their children because it wanted to.
socialization
Nonsense. I don’t homeschool, but this is a pretty stupid knock on homeschoolers. Homeschooled children socialize just fine, in that they learn how to get along with and relate to other people. Homeschooling doesn’t make you autistic. What homeschooling does do is that it gets kids to socialize into the larger community instead of just their peer group. This seems odd to us, because since WWII and “the invention of the teenager,” most of us have come to think that being socialized primarily by your peer group is natural. In fact its a rarity in human history and has had some pretty nasty consequences.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:24 am
The socialization at most public and private schools is socialization into drugs, sex, academic cheating, rebellion, and raw status competition. I applaud any parents who rob their children of that. Most of the decent people I know found themselves on the frings of their school, especially in highschool, or else viewed “socializing” at school mostly as an ordeal to be endured or engineered around. I learned a lot from my own highschool ordeal–for one thing, it stripped me of my illusions about human nature–but I can’t fault parents who don’t want to put their kids through that in quite that concentrated a form.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Alex, I have met several homeschooled kids, and the concerns are most certainly not unfounded. You may have met more well-adjusted kids, but I’ll give you an example. One 20 year old girl who had been homeschooled was working on a campaign for a candidate I was supporting. The candidate asked her to walk door to door with him. She showed up in high heels. Then the next day she said she couldn’t walk with him because her feet were too sore. That is what I mean about many of them lacking common sense. I’m sure there are some who are perfectly well-adjusted. And Henry, if you think kids are better off being sheltered and home all day with their ultra-conservative parents rather than seeing how the world really is, I disagree with you.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
The problem with home schooling isn’t the lack of socialization, the children get that in church and perhaps sports. It’s that they become unprepared for the “real” world. Once they are forced to interact in a job or higher education they are like fish out of water. Then they try to over-compensate and end up getting into real trouble. Or else they become so unhappy for not fitting in that they return to their roots and don’t move far from their parent’s orbit.
It really is a disservice to the child.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I have to object, Casey. I was at a cocktail reception for Gov. Mike Huckabee about a year ago at a billionare’s pad on fifth avenue.
When I entered the room I saw a youngish-looking young man talking to Governor Huckabee.
Turns out, the kid was a 16 year-old homeschooled boy there with his father.
Would a public-schooled kid ever have been interested enough to do that?
March 11th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
The candidate asked her to walk door to door with him. She showed up in high heels. Then the next day she said she couldn’t walk with him because her feet were too sore.
So, uh, public school kids learn not to go walking in high heels? I’ve seen the exact same thing appen (well, not the exact same thing, it wasn’t a political campaign) and the girl was public-school educated. A lot of 20-year old women just haven’t spent a lot of time tramping around in high heels and haven’t figured out that its not a good idea yet. Sorry, but of all the ridiculous anti-home school arguments I’ve seen that takes the cake.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Then they try to over-compensate and end up getting into real trouble. Or else they become so unhappy for not fitting in that they return to their roots and don’t move far from their parent’s orbit.
Actually homeschooled kids tend to commit less crimes and do better financially than kids from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. So your smear is also a lie, in case that matters to you.
March 11th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Henry, the high heels thing was just one anecdote. It’s not really an argument in and of itself but an example of how home-schooled kids often lack common sense. Alex, I went to public school all my life. When I was only 15, I went up to Bob Dole at a New Hampshire event and started talking to him. So to answer your question of whether a 16 year old public schooled kid would be interested like that, the answer is yes!
March 11th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Alex, yes. A public schooled child would be that active and involved if his/her parents were that involved.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
My admittedly anecdotal evidence is that, yes, homeschooling deters socialization.
This comes from a former homeschooler who knows a lot of other homeschoolers, so my bias is certainly towards a homeschool agenda, but I have to look around and say: “Yep, these people have no social skills.”