Pass The Ammo

As a California parent who has been through the homeschooling thing here, (we homeschooled our oldest in Kindergarten but chose to go the public route thereafter), I have studied this ruling and correlated it to my own experience, and I can say with absolute certainty that all the rhetoric about homeschooling being made illegal is false. YES IT IS STILL PERMISSIBLE TO HOMESCHOOL YOUR KIDS IN CALIFORNIA, and this ruling effectively changed nothing about the law. I could get into the gritty myself, but the Ace of Spades has already done it over at his blog. To summarize:

The short version: The LA Times got it wrong in the first sentence of their article. Parents without teaching credentials can still educate their children at home under the various exemptions to mandatory public school enrollment provided in § 48220 et seq. of the Cal. Ed. Code. The parents in this case lost because they claimed that the students were enrolled in a charter school and that with minimal supervision from the school, the children were free to skip classes so the mother could teach them at home. There is no basis in law for that argument. If only the parents had attempted to homeschool their kids in one of the statutorily prescribed methods, they would have prevailed.

As for the constitutional right issue, that’s true. No parent in California (or anywhere else in the country that I’m aware of) has a constitutional right to homeschool their children. It’s just not something the constitutions address. All that means is that the state (in this case, California) is free to put rules and restrictions in place to regulate the kind of schooling that goes on at home, to make sure it is in line with the educational standards the state requires. This is a good thing, because it prevents lunatics and/or utter buffoons (both terms that could be used to describe the parents in this case, along with “child abusing wastes of protoplasm”) from indoctrinating their kids with any old thing they choose. Ordered liberty is a good thing.

Because of my previous associations with homeschool groups in California and our tight connection with our church (where my wife works in the children’s ministry), I’ve had a front-row seat to witness all the hysteria and panic that one irresponsible reporter at the Times sent through the community. I’ve had more than enough e-mails, angry calls to petition, mass forwards IN ALL CAPS!!!!1!11 and whatnot. I think it’s funny to watch, but at the same time it saddens me that so many people are willing to accept whatever some nonauthoritative figure tells them without verifying it themselves first by going to the source.

Like my granddaddy always told me, “Verify everything. Barring that, deny everything. Either one will help keep your nose clean.”

Bah, no worries. You know I enjoy a good spoutin’ now and again anyway.