Homeschooling Ban in California

Do you have a teacher’s degree? According to the lastest ruling by a California court, you must be a state certified teacher in order to homeschool your children.

“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.”

Read the complete article here.

Just as upsetting to me as the outrageous ruling itself is the statement from the judge:

"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."

Children belong to the state? Does this judge live in a communist country or the USA? There are more outrageous philosphies however as you read along being expressed by the director of a Children's Law Center:

"Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state."California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," he said in a statement. But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs' two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law. "They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor," she said. "If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers."Heimov said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."

Do teachers have more of a duty to ensure the safety of children than the parents themselves? Is she assuming that all parents everywhere are not capable of having a greater love and concern for their children than an accredited teacher? I do understand she is representing a group that strives to uphold the rights of children they believe are being mistreated. I have no doubt there are many children that have been and will be mistreated in someway by their parents. However, her statement is very dangerous for she begins with the assumption that all parents do not fulfill their duty to provide love and safety for their own children. I hope to see this decision overruled soon by the California Supreme Court. I was homeschooled third grade through twelth by my parents, and I can tell you one of the very reasons they homeschooled me was their duty to ensure my ongoing safety and to provide me with a quality education. Quality education was precisely one item they saw lacking in the public school I attended! I don't know what part of Los Angles Ms. Heimov lives in, but a Los Angles CA public school is not the safest place in the world for all children, accredited teachers or not.