The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28.
"Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws...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,"
So what is your opinion on Home Schooling? Do you believe the Judge is correct?
""Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling "
I'd go along with that
"under the provisions of these laws"
Not so much...
"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"
Yes, but when said educational system fails to meet their primary purpose, then what? When tax monies are forceably taken from people wallets for schooling and this schooling is not provided, what recourse do people have?
As far as home schooling, Ive seen both ends of the spectrum. Ive lived in the same apartment complex as one home schooled girl who goofed off all day while her (single) mom worked her day job, then was out playing with other day-schooled kids every evening, so when was she getting schooling? She ended poorly - no job, baby, welfare, etc...
On the other hand, there is a young man where I work who is just rocketing up the corporate ladder - and justifiably so, he's smart, well educated, and very well liked. His parents ran and lived on a summer camp for kids, and dad ran the camp, while mom was home teaching the kids.
So - Ive seen home schooling fail, and Ive seen it work wonderfully. My opinion is, it's much like public schooling - it depends on the parents.
With home schooling are there any tests that the kids take to ensure that theyre progressing at the proper level? What happens oif the tests arent passed? What happens if theyre not even given?? What happens if the parents say the kids are being home schooled, but really are just left on their own like the girl in my old apartment complex?
I guess the term "Progressive" has acquired a new meaning in Clownifornia. They just took a huge step BACKWARD ... to the thunderous applause of too many public-school administrators.
If the state mandates education -- as Ohio's constitution does -- that interest should END at testing and enforcement. Home schooled children should be issued tests by the state in order to achieve parity with those in the public and private schools.
parents will never consent to testing. An assessment is done at the end of the school year or the parents can opt to have their homeschoolers take a test.
That is why it is called home schooling. It is up to the parent to decide what type of homeschooling they will do. There are many types of home schooling. But "home" is the operative word.
I was too succinct. I was talking about the grade-level tests that public-school students are subjected to, in order to qualify their way through their grade levels. I didn't mean that home schoolers should be taking daily or weekly tests as are given in each class in the schools.
I don't know what those 1 or 2 yearly tests are called, and I'm too lazy to just look them up. I just know that a 6th grader, for instance, is expected to know a base level of things in order to "graduate" to grade 7. The same base level should be applied to home schooled children.
That can't be much of a burden to administrate. Just have such children show up to the nearest public school when such tests are issued. They can take them with the rest of their age-grade.
Many think an education is a right. It's not.
Public education didn't become widely accepted until about 100 years ago. Prior to that it was only available in some communities and on top of that it wasn't required.
Most children were kept at home and apprenticed.
However mandates on public education improved literacy in this country to levels that were higher than any country had previously seen. However I don't feel home schooling should be testable. Amish communities for one would be affected and they still generally follow the apprenticeship model. So there's a case of schooling mandates infringing upon a religion, something that actually is a right.
MikeyA
So, because it's a product of ONLY the last ONE HUNDRED YEARS, education is not a right?
I mean, if longevity is your criteria, than how about the emancipation of the slaves? That's only 150 years.
Or how about ballot access?
etc
James Madison, writer of the constitution, believed that rights are things that the government cannot take away from you.
Where in the constitution does it say the government must educate me?
We have rights of the press but none for literacy.
In fact the found fathers stance on ballot access proves my point on this subject. Only land owners could vote. That meant you had to be of an education enough to purchase land, have the means and the motivation to purchase land and vote, and have the education to get teh means to purchase land and ultimately vote. Yet despite all these obstacles they did not give us a path to how.
They wanted only the truly motivated and educated to vote yet felt compelled to add provisions to hinder only those they felt qualified. In other words they wanted us to figure out the how.
Yet despite the two centuries that have passed the Federal government has not seen fit to amend the constitution to make education a right. So these poorly defined "rights" are left debated.
I'd argue that if the right to an education is in fact a right then teachers should be stripped of their "right" to strike. After all a government given right should take presidence over a labor agreement.
MikeyA
And THIS is why many people opposed the Bill of Rights. They argued that some day down the road somebody would argue that something is not a RIGHT because it's not enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
To use legalese, the Bill of Rights is very much a case of "...Including but not limited to..."
The enumerated rights have always been those that we hold most sacred. It's never been designed or treated as a catalog of all rights extended to the citizenry.
I would agree with you Shane if teachers were not allowed to strike.
By them going out on strike they are immediately countering the right we give our children. So our children lose their right while the teachers keep theirs. Again under that scenario education is not a right.
MikeyA
http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/constitution.cfm?Part=6&Section=03
Rights not mentioned in the US Constitution are left to the people and the states. If Ohio then makes public education a mandate, then it's the law in Ohio and we must submit to it. If we don't like it, we can try rising up in a majority and change that part of the state constitution, obliterating the requirement.
I believe Maggie Thurber was on here some time ago and pointed out another part of the Ohio constitution that more clearly illustrated how the state made mandatory education legal.
As I outlined with my example of the Amish I would ask the following: "Does a right granted by the constitution lose presidence to an unspecified state right?"
I believe if that were true we give up our right to own guns, our right to an abortion, a right to search and seizure, our right to free press(actually we've already given this one up so forget that one), our rights to assemble.
MikeyA
I believe there is a difference between a law and a right.
A law can be easily overturned or eliminated by the ruling of one judge. So in that sense the law was just a law and was never actually a right. Again a right is something the government can't take away from us. Too often we use the term "a right" when law is better applied. The use of the term "a right" cheapens the term itself but we use it to strengthen our argument.
I believe we don't have a right to an education but a right to be uneducated. It goes back to the leading a horse to water but you can't make him drink. As we've seen with many troubled youths some just choose not to learn despite our efforts. We can try to motivate them, beg them, bribe them, threaten them, but ultimately the decision to be not be educated is the right of the person.
So from that thinking I then look to our education as a governmental service. It is in our best interest to have those around us to have an education so the government seeks to serve the people's interest.
Expand on it to this. Some say we should have a right to healthcare. Thus they want to tax the whole populace in order to fund that right. Yet Christian Scientologists do not utilize healthcare. By taxing them we are asking them to fund what their religion does not support nor would they take part in it. So again I'll ask where does our actually state rights lose precedence to those not stated or those we "should" have.
MikeyA
Homeschooling has taken on a fairly large following not because it "works" but because the traditional schoolhouse model does NOT work. Further, homeschooling has risen in popularlity simply because parents have no real alternative to schools (whether public or private) but to keep their children at home.
Unfortunately, homeshooled children basically get the same teaching and learning approach in their own homes that they would be getting in formal schools and unless the homeschool "teacher" (usually a parent) is highly skilled and able to dedicate upwards of 8 hours a day to this task, the children as often as not do not emerge any better off.
What is needed is a better way to enable children to learn and provide for them to do so outside of their homes and without needing for one or more parents to make a life commitment to it. Take a look at the definitive treatment of this problem developed by Trigon-International in its recently released commission report, "Education in America -- What's to Be Done?"