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Indoctrination in the California Education System

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A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," 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."

Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

"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," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...7/MNJDVF0F1.DTL

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"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," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

They certainly don't try to hide what they're all about, do they?

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According to the "Home-School Association of California", this ruling ought not change anything. The reasoning goes something like this: while home-schooling (aka "private tutoring") must be done by "a teacher who holds a valid California teaching credential for the grade taught", the typical home-schooler in California technically belongs to a school's program.

Firstly, parents can file an affidavit with their local county stating their intention to set up a "private school" in their home. While private tutoring must be done by credentialed teachers, no such restriction applies to a private school. The owner of the school can make those decisions. So, if your home is a private school, you have a lot of latitude.

Secondly, some parents sign up with a real private school's "Independent Study Program (ISP)"

Finally, it seems that many public school districts also offer "ISPs".

It seems to me that the notion of calling one's home a "private school" is completely at odds with a reasonable meaning of the (bad) law. How can any reasonable meaning be given to the term "private tutoring" and to the stricter standards assigned to such private tutoring if anyone can declare that they aren't tutoring, but are actually running a school? Since this has been going on for decades, I assume that the courts have accepted this status quo. However, it seems to be a shaky foundation.

One would think Californians should be campaigning to change the credentialing requirement for private tutoring. However, the "Home-School Association of California" is advising their members not to write to their legislators, asking for changes to the law. Perhaps they fear that opening up the issue to new legislation could endanger the status quo.

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One would think Californians should be campaigning to change the credentialing requirement for private tutoring. However, the "Home-School Association of California" is advising their members not to write to their legislators, asking for changes to the law. Perhaps they fear that opening up the issue to new legislation could endanger the status quo.

That might actually be very smart advice. If that lobbying group is worth its salt, it woud know the current conditions of California's legal climate quite well enough to know whether there is a strong liklihood that a case could backfire. It would not surprise me if that were the situation.

The Legislature is controlled by big-government Democrats whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger needs to get along with in order to get his priority proposals approved. Sure, Arnold can issue rhetoric as he has criticizing the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruling, but that's where it would likely end regardles of what he says publicly. This is not a fight worthy of torpedoing other priorities for the sake of a relatively small constituency.

My newspaper was given similar advice when we had sought to obtain the 911 call tapes and surveillance recordings from a restaurant where a murder-suicide had taken place a few years ago. The police department was going to give us what we asked for on the advice of the city attorney. But the corporate owner of the restaurant chain sued to block that, arguing under subjective emotional reasoning, and a lower court judge granted an order as such.

We sought to appeal that to the 2nd District, citing that it was a public record as defined by the California Public Records Act. However, our attorney and that of the California Newspaper Publishers Association suggested against it. Citing some court cases and opinions released by the attorney general, they advised that it could backfire and actually result in a precedent-setting published opinion against our interests and that of every other media outlet in California. Given that most of the time we get what we want, we backed off in this case.

The homeschoolers might be well to do the same.

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So many of these homeschoolers are fundamentalist Christians who want to indoctrinate their kids in BS, creating any army of ignorant religious zealots. So there is definitely an upside to this.

Currently there is a Christian school suing the University of California because it won't allow some class credits to count towards admission. The denied credits are are all from classes based on distorted Christian textbooks. I haven't heard an update on that one but last I heard it was going to trial last November.

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