Activist Judges
Roger Ailes [the good one] covered this earlier, but Kristin Kloberdanz of Time magazine would like to catapult some propaganda in : Criminalizing Home Schoolers
Parents 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. On Feb. 28, Judge H. Walter Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles ruled that children ages six to 18 may be taught only by credentialed teachers in public or private schools — or at home by Mom and Dad, but only if they have a teaching degree. Citing state law that goes back to the early 1950s, Croskey declared that “California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.” Furthermore, the judge wrote, if instructors teach without credentials they will be subject to criminal action.
Apparently there is absolutely nothing worst than judge who actually reads the laws as written and determines that the literal interpretation of the law is what was meant.
Florida, like the majority of states, has a Blaine Amendment in its constitution. While it was really handy in ensuring that Catholic schools would receive no funding from the state, it has proven to be problematical because the damn literal minded judges keep reading it as written and won’t allow the state to fund Christianist schools. It’s amazing how the same wording is reasonable and prudent when it excludes Catholic schools, but discriminatory when applied to evangelical schools.
The part that isn’t exactly highlighted is that this started with a claim of child abuse, by a child, and the parents were ordered to put their children into public school as part of the investigation. The parents filed a law suit claiming the “constitutional right” to home-school their children.
This is California law. In Florida parents can pretty much do what ever they want as long as the kids are nominally being taught something.
6 comments
How *DARE* those activist judges actually apply the law to a white Christian couple! Why, everybody knows that the law is just for *those* people, you know, *those* people, kinda suspiciously dusky, speak that heathen gabble, maybe even liberal? THOSE people! Not for good white Christian fellers and gals like you and I!
— Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Their lawyer didn’t do them any good pursuing this. He can’t have believed it would end well after reading the law. I guess he thought the state would give up after a trial court decision, but that has never been my experience with Child Welfare in any state – they just don’t like to lose. The trial court can usually be swung to the current political climate, but appeals courts only look at the law and procedure.
This is one of those laws that isn’t enforced because no one knows it exists until some lawyer brings it up. Now people know it exists and there will probably be a few law suits of the divorce court nature to follow.
Oh, good grief. A “constitutional right” to home-school their children? Give me a break! I’ve read the entire Constitution more than a few times, and… oh, never mind.
Such a ruling would not have affected me or my parents’ household one iota, because both my parents were fully credentialed (and, may I add with some pride) very well-respected schoolteachers in public school systems.
But let’s step back from the legal issue for a moment: neither of my parents would ever have considered home-schooling me, for more reasons than I can enumerate here.
For one thing, not one or even two degreed, certified schoolteachers can teach every subject to their children: the home-schoolers I have known end up joining with other parents whose expertise is different from their own, in effect forming “schools” in fact if not in name.
For another, schools inevitably serve a social function of integration of children into society, and home-schooled children (who often end up attending colleges fed mostly by home-schooled children) never receive that socialization. I know some very bright kids of home-schoolers who show evidence of never having interacted on a regular basis with kids of different religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. Forgive me for saying point-blank that this is not a good thing in a society as diverse as our own.
And forgive me my lack of sympathy in the current case. Our society has agreed for my entire lifetime that the government may require a certain level of education of every able-minded citizen. How is this any different? All the court has ruled is that the government may also require certifications of those who provide that education to the citizenry. This is no heavy-handed deprivation of someone’s rights; this is a minimal action to assure that a society is able to function at all in the modern world.
According to the records of the debates on providing public schooling, a major concern was making sure people could get jobs, and were prepared to vote. Society pays for public schools because society requires informed citizens.
I know more than a few local kids who can’t get a job in this area, because the jobs require a degree from an accredited college or university, so the thousands their parents spent on sending them to “Christian” institutions was wasted for anything other than working within the “Christian” system.
For the record, it is possible to do “home schooling” right. There are some parts of the country that have “home schooling leagues” to handle the socialization part, for example, where the home schooling parents and their kids get together for various events. In far too many cases, however, parents use “home schooling” as a cover for abuse or neglect. Dr0ve the Child Welfare officer nuts at my last school job… “they’re not educating that child, they’re just letting him sit home getting dumber!” This is especially true for “Christians” who believe that it is impossible to raise a child without beating it. Anybody who has properly trained cats to be pleasant creatures knows that it is possible to raise a young animal to pleasant adulthood without beating it (I dare anybody to try beating a cat — those claws and teeth are *sharp*!), but folks still persist in using their religion as a cover for being a sadist child abuser… which, apparently, was true for this case.
California home schoolers apparently have been getting away with it by forming “private schools” affiliated with a home schooling company as the “single administrative unit” required by California codes. The only requirement for private school teachers in California is that a) they have a college degree from a recognized accredited institution, b) they are not felons, and c) that they are not on the child offender list, not that they have teacher certification. In this particular case, the parents fail part c and possibly part b of this list. But I did not see anything in this decision which would require private schools to have certified teachers, so it is likely that respectable home schoolers in California will continue to be able to use the “private school loophole” to conduct home schooling in California.
Having to acquire a college degree from an “accredited” institution may well be a major stumbling block.
Actually, there are a number of different sources for curriculums for home schooling, and networks to assist people. Most are not religious -based, and can certainly be helpful through middle school, but once you get into the high school subjects, you really need to understand what you’re talking about and how to explain it to a child. The sciences really require lab work.
Too many people fail to appreciate the hell that is high school teaching and dealing with teenagers. Teaching at the college level is a positive joy compared to trying to deal with the hormone-induced craziness of high school.
If you don’t get the reading right, nothing else is going to work.