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!

How Things Used To Be

How Things Used to Be

You hear people say it all the time. "Those were the days", they say. When you're young you don't think you'll ever say it. That's probably because, when you're young, you don't understand what the phrase means. I recently started saying, "Those were the days". I also recently turned fifty, so I guess the phrase means more to me now than it might have some years ago. I think of the phrase when I think of how different things used to be.

There were days I remember when I was in school. The teachers had no problem keeping order and discipline in our classrooms. Kids who misbehaved were disciplined by sitting in the corner, or if the infraction was serious enough, they were sent to the Principal for a firm application of his fraternity paddle. Kids didn't continue to act up in schools and parents didn't sue the schools for disciplining their children. This took place in a rural society where little boys were not expelled for trying to kiss little girls and almost all of the boys carried pocket knives because both of those things were pretty much expected. Teacher strikes were things that happened in the big cities. My academic career was never interrupted for a teacher's strike until after I finished junior college. The biggest difference is that back then actual learning was possible for the kids who cared to apply themselves. Those were the days.

I start to think of those days when I look at our churches. There were very few churches of over 1,000 members then. Even the least popular churches were at least forty percent filled on an average Sunday, but that still only represented about 100 to 250 parishioners in the bigger churches. The most common question about religion back then was, "Where do you go to church?" Today the question is, "Do you go to church?" Were we more devout back then? I don't think so, but there seemed to be more consciousness of morality then and more of a sense of propriety. Those were the days.

I think of those days when I go into the outdoors, as well. Then, rivers were safe to wade in cutoffs and tennis shoes. Now the same rivers we used to wade and fish in Northeastern Illinois are polluted to the point that they smell like a container of floor stripper. Then, you could go fishing in a park and people would generally have the courtesy to keep their voices down when they walked by the place where you were fishing. Now, children are taught that they have an inside voice and an outside voice and that the outside voice is allowed to be as loud as they can make it, which they do whenever and wherever they get outside. Maybe our wildlife isn't really disappearing as quickly as we think. Maybe they just don't like our outside voices. Fishing was also a different sport then. People went fishing as a pastime or to put food on the table then. There was no thought of making tens of thousands of dollars for catching more fish than somebody else over a couple of days. Fishing was fun, not a job. Those were the days!

I think of those days when I try to take my family camping. Back then, with a tent, a car and few bucks a night, you could camp your way to just about anywhere. Try finding a tent spot now in most campgrounds in America. They are almost non-existent. Camping doesn't mean camping anymore. It means parking. Campgrounds have become RV parking lots, the tent spots replaced with gravel, cement or asphalt pads to keep the air conditioned mobile cabins from becoming mired if it should rain. On one particular trip, our family got our routine of pitching camp honed to the point where we could set up the tent, put the bedding in place and have supper cooked within twenty minutes. Then we would drift off to sleep with only our sleeping bags and the floor of the tent between us and the ground. Dawn would usually find us awake, enjoying the cool and peaceful surroundings as bacon and eggs sizzled over our campfire. Nothing has ever tasted better than those breakfasts. Those were the days!

Do I mean to say that I think we should return to those days? I don't think it's possible . First of all, America isn't the same now as it was then. There was more of a sense of innocence then. I think people were more courteous then. I think our society considered right and wrong less ambiguous concepts then. But then again, as I have been saying, those were the days!

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