Schwarzenegger defends homeschooling
March 7th, 2008, 11:33 am · 8 Comments · posted by Steven Greenhut
From Steven Greenhut:
Here is the governor’s much-needed statement following an appeals court ruling that could outlaw homeschooling in California: “Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what’s best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights then, as elected officials, we will.”
The problem is the Legislature is so dominated by the teachers’ unions, and those unions love this decision. State law does not directly address homeschooling. Any attempt to legislative a fix could end up making matters worse. Perhaps an initiative is what’s needed. But kudos to the governor on this one.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Steven,
Good post, I agree. Although I am a critic of Homeschooling and personally would never choose it for my children, I do believe parents do have a right to do it if they so choose. My personal opinion, Homeschooling is just a way for parents to try and turn their children into utter clones of themselves. I have seen Homeschoolers on both sides of the political spectrum and I would not consider that quality education, more of a brainwashing if you ask me.
BUT
That is the parents right to make that dumb mistake, not the governments. It was a horrible decision by the courts.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I’m curious to learn what the case was that led to the ruling in the first place. The ruling, as I understand it, was just that all elementary teachers (I believe) have to be licensed. The effect may be to make parental homeschooling illegal (in some sense anyway), but exactly how this all falls out is unclear to me. Did the case directly address homeschooling or was this a ruling with the always enjoyable unintended consequences . . .
And as for the idea of immediately floating an initiative, please, please, no. I frankly hate California’s initiative process. Not only is it a complete corruption of its original intent as practiced today, it’s become a creature of first resort instead of one of last resort, as originally intended. Instead of going tthough the political process and forcing the legislature to deal with these issues (and perhaps to address them in a fashion that involves compromise, which is of course anathema to all true believers), going immediately to initiatives takes the legislature off the hook on controversial issues, thereby encouraging their avoidance of such matters, and forces voters to all-or-nothing decisions that are inevitably fraught with unintended and bad consequences. And spare me the complaints that legislatiuve action is hopeless - you don’t know til lyou try, and if we all really forced the solons to do their job they would. Plus they’d then have something to be truly accountable for come election day ,which might be better than term limits for getting rid of the rascals.
Most of the initiatives we face are poorly drafted, drawn up by partisans to get them 100% of their goals without regard to other public interests, and marketed duplicitously. The result: bad public policy, innumerable vagaries that have to be addressed by the courts (thereby building in a guaranteed complaint about activist courts when judges have to do their job and clean up the mess), and too often little if any practical effect on the problem(s) involved. It’s no way to run an airline, and we should go cold turkey on the whole process.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Claudio Gallegos Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Steven,
I do believe parents do have a right to do it if they so choose
____
No, parents do NOT have the “right” to home school their kids, just as they do not have the “right” to beat their children or throw them off bridges.
This case was about a scumbag couple with 8 kids, and a “home schooling” mother that was a 10th grade drop out. Do you seriously think they have a “right” to so that??????????
Well, I can tell you straight up THEY DO NOT.
Therefore the parents were palcing the children in harm and danger-by physical abuse in this case-as well as educational abuse by allowing a mental moron to “home school” her kids.
March 8th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Johnny Vegas..what a stupid remark!
You’re the type of liberal I am so frightened of!!! So….you want to remove the liberty of every single parent in the entire state because of one bad example??? What a jerk! I have a right as a parent to choose how to educate my child…without gthe goverment telling me how and what’s moral and normal and what’s not!
Keep your broad-sweeping, all-inclusive, short-sighted, ignorant liberal comments to yourself!
March 8th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Go AHNOLD! Kudos to the good governor for taking swift action on this outrageous ruling by a rogue court. He is absolutely correct and I think this may ease the minds of many anxious homeschooling parents that faced the prospects of prosecution if they continue to do what they feel is in the best interests of their children.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:47 am
My greatest objection to the ruling was the statement by Justice Croskey that, “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and nation as the means of protecting the public welfare.” That makes my skin crawl. I would fight that ruling to the last breath even if I despised homeschooling. That statement should strike absolute terror into the hearts of any freedom loving American citizen. So while I have not been a member of HSLDA for some time, I will be sending them a donation to battle this ruling. It is just a shame that our judicial system does not allow for the expedient removal of Justice H. Walter Croskey.
My family has both homeschooled and privately educated our children, and our youngest is now in a public high school. I guarantee his privately educated siblings, educated by teachers who were not credentialed, received the better overall education, and we are considering pulling him from the public system. Licensed and credentialed teachers do not necessarily factor into the quality of an education, smaller private schools with uncredentialed instructors can at times do a better job. Home schooling parents, with adequate support networks to provide socialization, can competently educate their children. If a parent is doing a terrible job of parenting, we remove the children from the home; we do not take all children from all parents as a precaution. If a parent is doing a terrible job of educating their children, the same applies; we do not penalize all homeschooling parents for the poor behavior of a few.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Good for Gov. Arnold! The moment the State assumes it knows more about what is good for children than ordinary parents, that moment this country has ceased to be the land of the free.
Schools were created for citizens who wished to delegate their responsibility so that mothers could go to work and earn more money for the family. But when those citizens wish to take back their responsibility, the State should step aside and bow to the wishes of the people.
All 50 states have legalized homeschooling without requiring parents to become certified teachers. It is reasonable for schools, which use taxpayers’ money to do their work and must render account to the government, to require their employees to be qualified. But, outside of tyrannical and non-democratic countries, the children belong in families and their parents have always had the primary right to raise and educate them to the best of their ability–it is one of those “inalienable rights” guaranteed by the Constitution.
Will California (my home state) next require parents to own a home, a car and a bank account before children may be born to them? Why not require a marriage certificate before you can have sex? Just how far is Big Brother going to go in trying to decide what is good for us?
There are many “non-conformists” in the good ol’ USA, people who don’t fit the mold. America, after all, was founded by non-conformists. We became the world’s leader because we allow and respect all faiths, all colors, and all basic differences. To tolerate diversity is the essence of greatness and just as sure as we start eroding away at this great foundation pillar, we will lose our strength and become weak and base and second class. How sad that California courts should try to lead us in this direction!
I hope California homeschoolers will at last get it right, and go for proper legislative protection. It will be harder now than when I suggested it 20 years ago, but it’s the way democracy works–through laws and citizen participation. We did it in WA 25 years ago, and you can too. –Kathleen McCurdy
March 10th, 2008 at 4:06 am
JohnnyVegas Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
. . . No, parents do NOT have the “right” to home school their kids, just as they do not have the “right” to beat their children or throw them off bridges.
**************************
Excellent point, JV!
And what’s more, “JohnnyVegas” doesn’t have a right to free speech, just as parents do NOT have the “right” to home school their kids, just as none of the above has the “right” to beat their children or throw them off bridges!
After all, MrVegas used some pretty intemperate language there, and I don’t happen to approve of it, just as he doesn’t approve of the way this particular couple was schooling their kids.
So let’s not get hung up on some notion of “freedom” or “rights.” The whole reason God invented wise and caring bureaucrats was to sort those things out for us. We can have wise bureaucrats decide what views JohnnyVegas is permitted to express, just as he would have wise education bureaucrats decide how people get to train up their kids.
And to further back up Johnny’s point, it should be obvious to everyone that the benighted children of the parents involved in this court case would be far better off being socially promoted through the government schools than remaining under their own parents’ tutelage. They’d end up just as ignorant, but they’d receive a really nifty piece of paper!
But as for any putative “right to free speech” on the part of JohnnyVegas:
Let’s see to it that the ideas the happen upon JohnnyVegas STAY in JohnnyVegas.