World Gone Mad
Judge orders home schoolers into public schools
Court: Family's religious beliefs 'No evidence' of 1st Amendment violation
According to a report on WorldNetDaily.com, a California court has ruled that several children in one home school family must be enrolled in a public school or "legally qualified" private school, sending ripples of shock through the nation's homeschooling community.
- The ruling came in a case brought against Phillip and Mary Long over the education being provided to two of their eight children. The Longs are considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, because they have homeschooled all of their children, the oldest of whom is now 29. They cite anti-Christian influences in California's public schools for their decision to homeschool.
- The 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles granted a special petition brought by lawyers appointed to represent the two youngest children, after the family's homeschooling was brought to the attention of child advocates.
- "We find no reason to strike down the Legislature's evaluation of what constitutes an adequate education scheme sufficient to promote the 'general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence,'" the court said in the case. "We agree … 'the educational program of the State of California was designed to promote the general welfare of all the people and was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual in the field of education.'"
- The words echo the ideas of officials from Germany, where homeschooling has been outlawed since 1938 under a law adopted when Adolf Hitler decided he wanted the state, and no one else, to control the minds of the nation's youth.
- Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has said "school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens."
- Specifically, the appeals court said, the trial court had found that "keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting."
- The appeals ruling said California law requires "persons between the ages of six and 18" to be in school, "the public full-time day school," with exemptions being allowed for those in a "private full-time day school" or those “instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught."
- The judges ruled against the Longs when, in the court’s opinion, the family failed to demonstrate "that the mother has a teaching credential such that the children can be said to be receiving an education from a credentialed tutor," and that their involvement and supervision by Sunland Christian School's independent study programs was of no value.
- Nor did the family's religious beliefs matter to the court.
- Their "sincerely held religious beliefs" are "not the quality of evidence that permits us to say that application of California's compulsory public school education law to them violates their First Amendment rights."
- "Such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to homeschool his or her child," the court concluded.
- The father, Phillip Long, said the family is working on ways to appeal to the state Supreme Court, because he won't allow the pro-homosexual, pro-bisexual, pro-transgender agenda of California's public schools, on which WND has previously reported, to indoctrinate his children.
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Our Take
Since when can’t we choose to raise our kids the way we want to raise them? If home schooling is to be allowed – and it should – then home schooling based on religious beliefs ought to count for something. Although to be fair, the point must be raised: how would WND – or anyone else – react if the family was Muslim and they wanted to home school?
What Muslims refused as a group to send their kids to public schools so as to indoctrinate them at home with Anti-Americanism? Should we not say in such a case that what is fair for one religion ought to hold true for any?
Nevertheless we are sympathetic to the plight of Phillip and Mary Long and their children. For society at large, their legal struggle is just the latest evidence of the Pandora’s Box of issues we face when church and state collide.
