According to three California judges, parents “do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children.”
By thus ruling, the judges turned the parents of some 166,000 home-schooled children into criminals with the snap of their fingers and the stroke of a pen. According to these paragons of justice, parents should be forced to send their children to government-run education camps, whether they like it or not.
Wars have been started over less.
In Nevada, at least for now, the law sorta recognizes a parent’s right to educate their own children at home. However, the state still requires home-school parents to “register” with the government, ostensibly for “truancy” purposes. But this raises the same legitimate argument raised against gun registration: If the government knows who all the home-school parents are, and if three nitwit judges suddenly determine they’re all criminals, the government will know exactly who to round up.
Which is why I have pointedly elected NOT to fill out the “required” paperwork “registering” my children as being home-schooled. While many home-schoolers maintain that simple “registration” is not an onerous condition, I strenuously object to being required to notify the government of what I consider to be an inalienable right to teach my own kids - with or without a “teaching” degree.
And if the local school district wants to do something about it, bring it on. They know where I live. If not, just call Child Protective Services. They have the address. We’re the same folks who let our kids play out front without shoes on.
All kidding aside, let me put this in even more stark terms.
Suppose a woman decides she wants to terminate her pregnancy. Is she required to “register” with the government in order to notify the authorities of this decision? No.
So then, why should a mother who chooses to bear the child instead not have the right to educate that child without “registering” with the government, hmmm? Why does a woman have the right to make a life-and-death decision, literally, without providing official government notification, but not the freedom to decide how to educate her child? Whose child is it anyway?
Granted, there is a community interest in having an educated populace. But that means education should be available and encouraged, not mandatory. In a free nation, people should retain the right to be stupid - a right exercised with reckless abandon by three judges in California last month.
If you outlaw home-schooling, only outlaws will be home-schoolers. Just call me Josie Wales.
Posted on March 25th, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
I believe the idea is that every child has a right to education; a parent who chooses not to educate their child is somehow abusing the child. Therefore, parents who chose not to public school their children must register so the superintendant is aware of the child’s situation and that they parents aren’t purposefully withholding education.
I’m not saying that I agree with this line of thinking but this probably what the intent is behind registration.
On a side note, I was homeschooled for 7 years in Montana by my parents so your concerns are familiar. Perhaps non-compliance with the law is not the best way to protest.
There are a number of rules we are required to comply with that make no sense but make someone else feel better (e.g. TSA regulations regarding liquids on airplanes). This law was put in place so school administrators feel better about their performance; that they aren’t somehow not serving students out there. By not complying with the law, is this course of action better than people who cross the board illegally or speed through school zones or subvert building codes?
This is a VERY dangerous road you’re starting down, Ambro.
First, there is no obligation on a free people to comply with an immoral law. Indeed, I’d argue the obligation is to oppose it with every fiber of one’s being.
Secondly, there are child abuse laws in place to handle matters of parental refusal to provide their children with an education. The truancy excuse is nothing short of a red herring used to compel compliance and subservience to government.
That being said, if one grants the government the power to compel registration by parents who wish to educate their own children their own way, it’s not a huge leap to the frightening thought of extending to the government to power to pre-screen prospective parents and determine whether or not they can be trusted with pro-creation. Will people some day have to “notify” the government of their intent to have children?
Non-compliance with an unjust law is as American as apple pie. Or Boston tea. Indeed, as Thomas Jefferson said, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.” Catch the spirit!
Justice H. Walter Croskey ruling included, “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.”
I noticed it did not include learning math, English, history, geography, chemistry, physics, etc. How foolish of me to expect children to learn something of benefit.
Howard,
Cheyenne, WY
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Chuck: I totally agree with you that the “state” has no business being
in education but we’ve found that the more kids a school can count
as their own, the more money they get. We have many cases here
where all the home school kids are counted to get more state funding
for the government schools ……. I wonder where all that $ goes?
Certainly not into educating the kids !
Chuck,
You stated that, ” I strenuously object to being required to notify the government of what I consider to be an inalienable right to teach my own kids - with or without a “teaching” degree.”
1. As Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Roberts read the Constitution, if ain’t written, it ain’t a right.
2. I’m glas you mentioned, “Granted, there is a community interest in having an educated populace. But that means education should be available and encouraged, not mandatory. In a free nation, people should retain the right to be stupid …” True, except these people have a disproportionat ability to then become wards of the State, and when they procreate (another non-inalienable right), their kids become wards.
In olden days (within the last 100 years), one would be thrown in prison (debters prision), for not paying ones debts. So the government has a reasonable interest in an educated populace.
Even the current US Supreme Court would not agree with you that the act of registering with local school officials that your intent is to home school your own kids is “unreasonable”.
And, let us not forget, all the Court did in this instant case was to uphold a previous ruling from 1953!! Hardly an act of judicial activism. They applied the law as written and acted as judges not legislators. Good for them.
Mr. Shaw, you obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. Please see the 9th Amendment of the United States Constitution and read the United State Supreme Court’s landmark 1925 Pierce v. Society of Sisters decision.
I have done so. Scalia is a Chigaco School of Law guy as was Bork. Bork testified during his confirmation hearings: “I do not think you can use the Ninth Amendment unless you know something of what it means. For example, if you had an amendment that says ‘Congress shall make no’ and then there is an inkblot, and you cannot read the rest of it, and that is the only copy you have, I do not think you can make up what might be under the inkblot.”
Continuing, my Oxford Guide to the Supreme Court says: “On this view, empowering judges to protect rights where the Constitution is silent enables them illegitimately to ‘create’ rights based soley on their personal preferences and improperly obstruct the will of the people as expressed by their democratically elected representatives.”
Now you may disagree with this interpretation, but Scalia, Thomas, Alito and to a fair measure Roberts have said as much in dissenting opinions. In commentary of the drift of the USSCT, this “Unenumerated Rights” issue is it (as in “there is no enumerated right to abortion written in the Constitution “-Scalia)These guys all are Federalist Society guys, which, as you know, arose from the mind of USAG Ed Meese after the Bork debacle.
As for Pierce, I’m not sure what your disagrement is with what I posted earlier, but lets us review the case. Again from Oxford: The case arose because of an initiative in Oregon requiring nearly every parent to send a child between the ages of eight and sixteen to public school. The Court found that the initiative “unreasonably interfered with the liberty of parents…to direct the education and upbringing of their children and this interference with the school threatened the destruction of the plaintiffs’ business and property”
” The Court (USSCT) indicated, however, that the states have the power to require attendance at ’some school’ and to regulate all schools to ensure that ‘certain studies plainly essential to GOOD CITIZENSHIP (my emphasis)…be taught…and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare (p.534 of 268 U.S. 510)
“The Pierce Court could have adopted an of three standards…it might have determined that any compulsory education law violates the liberty of parents to control the education of their children. The standard adopted by the Court is that states may compel attendence at some school.”
“Others see Pierce as involving the fundamental rights of parents (not explicitly protected by the Constitution) to raise their children……From this perspective, the modern debate over original intent and constitutional interpretation, best exemplified by the Senate’s rejection of Judge Robert Bork for the Supreme Court in 1987, is but a continuation of the debate over the premise and implications of Pierce.” (pg. 735/Oxford).
ya got me thinking and researching, thanks, Chuck. The following is from, eck, Wickpedia….
“Professor Laurence Tribe…..: “It is a common error, but an error nonetheless, to talk of ‘ninth amendment rights.’ The ninth amendment is not a source of rights as such; it is simply a rule about how to read the Constitution.”[7] Likewise, Justice Antonin Scalia has expressed the same view, in Troxel v. Granville (2000):
The Declaration of Independence…is not a legal prescription conferring powers upon the courts; and the Constitution’s refusal to ‘deny or disparage’ other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even farther removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges’ list against laws duly enacted by the people.”
….and from REDSTATE;
“…..Scalia claims that fit parents have a right to direct the upbringing of their children. Yet he also says that it’s up to the legislature to make such rights explicit….”
redstatescaliadeadwrong
So, Chuck, I don’t disagree with your Madisonian view of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, I only point out that four members of the Supreme Court of the United States have a very different and peculiar view, not supported by Madison and the Federalists. This is the state of our “rights” today.
This is the same USSCT that in last weeks decision in Medellin v. Texas, said that some treaties are self executing and others are not, despite the Constitution declaring that: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
We are in strange Constitutional times. These four Justices are not libertarian in nature, and much to the contrary.