Ruling from courts on Home Schooling

When wrote my last post on the crazy creationist tour guides I made the point that home schooling is a problem because there is a lack of regulation. I missed this story when it first came out but back on February 28th a California Court passed a ruling making it unlawful in a particular case for parents to home school their children without having a teaching certificate.

Justice Walter Croskey said, "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children." If they don't comply with the law, he ruled that they can be prosecuted.

This case has brought about a flurry of gnashing and wailing from home school parents, advocacy groups, and the general christian conservatives in the country. Now the case is going to be reheard.

At first glance I would say that I don't have an objection to home schooling as long as it's done properly. I also don't necessarily agree that the parent has to be a certified educator. Don't get me wrong. I still think home schooling is a poor option and that we should be working harder to improve public schools. However, if you're going to allow home schooling there should be regulation to ensure that the children are getting what they need. The advocacy groups like the Home School Legal Defense Association say they're for minimal government intervention and that they trust parents to do what's best for their children. This is a completely flawed strategy. Sadly you can't just trust that all parents will do what is best for their children. If you could then we would never heard of cases of neglect or abuse. But you do because sometimes parents do horrible things.

In a recent episode of the Diane Rehm Show, Rob Reich, associate professor of political science and ethics in society, at Stanford pointed out that there are no studies or reliable statistics on how well these home schooled children are doing academically. He also feels that a teaching certificate is not necessary for parents but basic regulations are needed so that we can track how many students are being home schooled and so some kind of standardized testing can be performed. On the show Mike Donnelly of the HSLDA was trying to claim that they do have studies showing home schooled children performing better on the ACT and doing as well or better than traditionally schooled children in socialization studies. Professor Reich quickly pointed out that all the studies presented by Donnelly were of varying degrees of 'badness', ranging from small volunteer samples to the fact that all the studies were actually performed by advocacy groups. If you have time to listen to the show please check it out. It is terribly frustrating at times but overall I think professor Reich made Donnelly look foolish.

I also came across this editorial which points out the knee-jerk reaction of home school advocates. Most newspapers are toeing the line that parents should be able to exercise guardianship in terms of where and how their children are educated.

But pause for a moment and substitute the word "nourishment" for "education" in all this. Do parents have the right to provide as much or as little nourishment for their children as they like? If they don't provide adequate nourishment, don't they at some point become guilty of child abuse?

That sounds extreme but it goes back to the parents who tell their children that the world is only 6000 years old, or the ones who teach their children that prayer is more important than medical science. We don't grant parents unlimited rights to discipline their children physically. At some point it is abuse. Just because they don't have bruises doesn't mean the children's rights aren't being violated.