Homeschooling: Whose children are they anyway?

I just saw a minor skirmish of opinions in the Dayton Daily News (Dayton,OH) concerning a ruling by an activist judge in California. Judge H. William Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals has ruled that parents do not have a Constitutional right to teach their children if they are not certified to teach. There are several points that need to be considered about this ruling and its implications.

Judge Croskey is a federal judge. This ruling was passed down in the Second District Court Of Appeals, which is in the federal court system. Further, this ruling speaks to the Constitutional right of parents to decide about the education of their children. Because of these two points alone, this ruling is monumentally dangerous. This sets a precedent that can be used all across our nation to eradicate the rights of Christian homeschoolers. If the parents must be certified to teach, can licensing be far behind, and then approval of curricula? So much for separation of church and state! The Godless humanists of the public schools will soon be mandating that homosexuality is natural, that there is no God and that we all descended from slime.

I know this ruling was a question of California law. However, we must remember that it was handed down in a federal court and it was a question of constitutional rights. Since Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, (1803) it has been an established fact that federal law holds ascendancy over state law. This means that a federal precedent has now been established. If any other state departments of education care to challenge the constitutionality of a parent's right to homeschool their children, the way has now been cleared. A federal judge has decided it is not a Constitutionally-protected right.

The next thing we need to look at is the certification process. Of course, the certifications must come from the states. This means the state will mandate what knowledge and what types of information parents must learn in order to become able to teach their own children. This, in several areas, violates the Establishment Clause. It is no secret and, considering the sorry moral compass of our current school systems, no surprise that many of the parents who choose to homeschool their children do so for religious reasons.

The teachings of abortion as birth control, homosexuality as normal, promiscuity as inevitable, and evolution as fact are only some of the ways our schools have become hostile to Christian students. It has already become an acknowledged problem in academic circles that it is nearly impossible to achieve a doctorate in the physical sciences if your thesis supports creation instead of evolution. If this isn't a violation of the separation of church and state, I don't know what a violation would look like. But then the courts have historically decided against the Christian viewpoint in establishment cases almost every time.

This whole thing has been coming at us for some time, and it's accelerating. First, there was the Scopes trial. Then Madeline Murray-O'Hare, got the Pledge of Allegiance banned from our schools. Other cases came and went for years. Then, in 1988, we voted into power an administration that was solidly bent on taking away the rights of all Christians in this country. It takes a village to raise a child, they told us. Parents and God just aren't enough it seems. We all need health care the government pays for and regulates, they said. We need to remove all references to God from our government buildings, money and documents.

This last bit was their most honest proposal. The liberal socialists want God removed not only from our government but also from our daily lives and our lexicon. They want government to be our god. They want us to turn to our government for everything. Why would they want that? Because they are the government! In short, they want to be our god.

So now we will be required to jump through their hoops to be allowed to teach our own children in our own homes. We will have to teach the Godless curricula they dictate. I really question the mentality behind the recent mania to wipe out homeschooling. Is this the same country where our classrooms are so overcrowded? Is this the same country where I see news story after news story about outstanding children who used the freedom of homeschooling to excel in math, science or the arts? Take a look at the educational background of almost all of the winners of the National Spelling Bee for the past ten years! They were taught at home. Have the liberals not been paying attention, or is it that they just don't care? I guess the process of becoming a god must not involve caring. I wouldn't know. I'm not interested in being God. I've read the book that contains the job description.

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Update:

Since I wrote the piece above I have found that this decision is going to be directly affecting my family very soon. You see, I am a military retiree and I must file for dependency status for any of my sons over the age of eighteen if they continue to go to school. I recently did so for our middle son, citing the fact that he was finishing up high school at home. I received a denial of my claim saying that our homeschool is not "accredited" and therefore we are not allowed to keep Sam as my dependent, which will leave him without health care. Fortunately, Sam has graduated from high school now and will be attending a local community college in September, but we will have to wait until we have a paid fee bill before I can re-submit the paperwork to claim him as a dependent. Your tax dollars at work! I wonder if we'll get a similar missive from the IRS when we try to claim our sons at tax time. Probably!

Second Update: Some people have been asking me for links about this problem. The best one I can think of is for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). They defend the Constitutional rights of parents to homeschool their children. They are affiliated with the American Center for Law and Justice and they have a very informative website at: http://www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1 Check it out and join today!