Sunday, March 2, 2008

Attack on Home Education

Attack on Home Education - by Todd King
We should have seen it coming. In fact, those of us who have our heads out of the sand did see it coming. The Appellate Court of California, 2nd App. District, 3rd Division, Judge Stephen Marpet, taking a sheet right out of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto has ruled against a homeschooling family in case number JD00773. Never mind that this family has raised 5 of their 8 children successfully via home education, now they have been ruled "unqualified" to properly teach their children at home. Have the children in question been ruled mentally deficient, or have they received sub-standard scores on the dumbed-down standardized tests they have been made to take every year? The answer to both these questions is, "NO!"
The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) does not claim that the children involved were victims of incompetent, sub-par education, neither did the court find any evidence that might support such a claim. Even though in "the court's opinion... the home schooling the children were receiving was 'lousy,' 'meager,' and 'bad,'" Judge Marpet never qualified any of these terms or how he reached such a conclusion. Instead, he ruled that the parents could not prove that the education being provided was "as good or better than the children would have obtained in a public or private school." This in spite of the fact that standardized testing was done on a regular basis in a private academy.
No, it's not enough that parents provide an education that is equal to the public education system. If they can not demonstrably show that the education is better than what the children would have received otherwise, then it is not a risk the state is willing to take. And why does the court feel that the risk is too great? Well, in their own words, "keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where; (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting."
This is a pretty bold challenge which, if it has merit, may be worth considering. I'll examine it point by point to see if it does have any merit.
1) "They could interact with people outside the family"- Is the judge seriously suggesting that these children never have interaction with others at the park, grocery store, church, field trips and other activities? Or is DCFS accusing the family of locking their children in the house and never allowing them to see the light of day? Well, if such an accusation had been leveled, it never got presented to the court, so we can safely presume that such is not the case.
2) "There are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives"- That's right, the parents are not only unqualified to teach their children, but they are not qualified to interpret their children's behavior and emotions, let alone to counsel them or teach them appropriate ways of dealing with anger, frustration or other negative behaviors. After all, we all know that the state cares more for our children than we as parents do, right?.
3) "They could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting"- In other words, children do not develop emotionally until they have been exposed to such corrupting influences as sex education, bullying, rude and crass joking and language, peer pressure, and environments that produce low self-esteem. It would also seem they deem it impossible for children to properly develop emotionally without the school system administering drugs, many times without the parents knowledge or consent. It has become commonplace in many schools in America today for fluoride, Ritalin, Prozac, and other behavior altering drugs to be administered in order to keep children subdued and docile.
It is interesting to note that the majority of home educated children in the past 30 years (yes, the modern home schooling movement has been around for that long) are amazingly well socialized. They also tend to excel in the national spelling bees, geography fairs, music competitions, and other academic contests. So much so, that homeschoolers are now beginning to be banned from some of them. If this is accurate, and statistics indicate it is, then what is the purpose of forcing these parents to place their children in the care and the custody of the public education system? Again, let us turn to the court for the answer. "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."
You heard it yourself, schools are not here to teach your kids the 3 "R's" or to teach them skills necessary to prepare them for the future. The primary purpose of schools is to teach children to be loyal to the state, just as children were taught in Lenin and Stalin's Russia/Soviet Union or Nazi Germany in the 1930's and 40's. And this is the ultimate reason why homeschoolers are under attack in California right now, and why we will begin to see this trend spread. Children who are home educated develop an inconquerable loyalty to family. Even more, the majority of home educating parents teach their children, rightly, that the current state is a thing of evil and should be resisted insomuch as it infringes upon your rights or the rights of others.
Please, consider taking your children out of the state sponsored day care now before it is too late. Just as the Soviet Union collapsed under Marx's principles, and Nazi Germany fell under the all-powerful state policies of Hitler, America will fail also if we allow these same architects, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, to mold our education policies for future generations.

Todd King is self-employed, and with his wife, is home educating their two children. Todd is also actively involved in the homeschool movement. For more information on home education or to give your feedback on this article, you may contact Todd at creatorsdesign@gmail.com

Editor's note: For more information about the reality of the public education system in the United States, please check out former Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's website and book, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America".http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/index.html