I agree with the outcome of this case. If every individual parent could decide exactly what his kids are to be taught in school, public schools would be even more ineffectual than they are now. However, I'm sure that if the parents had been objecting to the teaching of morals and patriotism in schools, the 9th Circus would have invented a right of parents to shield their kids from such "dangerous" lessons.
In summary, we hold that there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents “to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs” and that the asserted right is not encompassed by any other fundamental right.
Agreed. The particulars of this case has been greatly distorted in most of the editorials and subsequent posts that have appeared here.
Most of the editorials only mention that a consent form was mailed to parents in passing, if at all.
It is embarrassing to conservatives that we often read ignorant or inaccurate information and then go off into a tirade. I'm used to these things from Michael Moore, but we should do better.
Grammar school exists to teach kids the basics - the "Three R's." It has been coopted over the last 30-40 years in an attempt (mostly successful) to append all sorts of social, sexual and (im)moral "instruction" to American youth that is directly counter to the wishes and values of parents.
Parents, NOT the state, are the primary educators of their children. That's simply the natural law in practice. The fact that many parents abdicate this responsibility is immaterial here. Millions still do not. Even where they do, that is due mostly to their own laziness and the instilling of moral relativism in their OWN education.
We're not talking about the crank "flat-earther" who objects to universally acknowledged geography curricula. We're talking about moral and religious principles being contermanded by the very same state that has already BANNED direct expression of religious principles in the political forum. These topics are properly within the sphere of parental upbringing, not state tutelage.
The state has long since banned student-initiated reference to religious principles in political and educational discourse, thus instilling a prejudice and/or shamefaced disavowal of such principles in these students. That's bad enough. Now, we have the state saying that parents "cannot" control the basic moral worldview of their children, even in a cultural moral vacuum already engineeered, in large measure, by the state! This is simply an outrage.
A return to proper subject matter is what's really needed. Let's lose all of these peripheral subjects that have nothing to do with a traditional primary and secondary school education. If only for the practical considerations! Kids can't read, write, spell and figure because most of their school day seems caught up in all of this extraneous nonsense.
In the meantime, what ever happened to the idea that parents can at least "opt out" their children in scuh situations?