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California Court Rules Homeschooling Illegal
LifeSiteNews ^ | 3/5/08 | Hilary White

Posted on 03/05/2008 4:16:01 PM PST by wagglebee

LOS ANGELES, March 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Thousands of homeschoolers in California are left in legal limbo by an appeals court ruling that homeschooling is not a legal option in the state and that a family who has homeschooled all their children for years must enrol their two youngest in state or private schools. Justice H. Walter Croskey in a written opinion said, "California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children."

The sweeping February 29th ruling says that California law requires "persons between the ages of six and eighteen" to be in "public full-time day school," or a "private full-time day school" or "instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught".

The two youngest of Phillip and Mary Long's eight children must be enrolled in a state approved school. Phillip Long told WorldNetDaily, "We just don't want them teaching our children. They teach things that are totally contrary to what we believe. They put questions in our children's minds we don't feel they're ready for."

Mr. Long cited the state curriculum's inclusion of sex education, including its promotion of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle. "When they are much more mature, they can deal with these issues, alternative lifestyles, and such, or whether they came from primordial slop. At the present time it's my job to teach them the correct way of thinking," he said.

The Los Angeles-area family was targeted by Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services after one of the children reported "physical and emotional mistreatment by the children's father," according to documents submitted to the court. 

The 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles agreed with the trial court decision that had found, "keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where they could interact with people outside the family".

"There are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives, and they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting," the ruling said.

Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), said in a March 3 statement that the organization "strongly disputes this interpretation of California law" and is studying the decision.

The group called the ruling "a very bad decision" saying, "the opinion holds that homeschooling is not a legal option in California."

"If the opinion is followed, then California will have the most regressive law in the nation and homeschooling will be effectively banned, because the only legal way to homeschool will be for the parent to hold a teaching certificate. Parents should not have to attend a four-year college education program just to teach their own children."

Smith added, "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."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Back to School: Organization Gives Reasons to Consider Homeschooling
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/aug/06082407.html

Home Schoolers Concerned Over New Ontario Compulsory Attendance Law
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06020301.html

Three More Families Appeal for Help as Germany Continues Crackdown on Homeschooling Families
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07041609.html



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: 10thplank; caleducation; communism; education; edunazis; homeschool; homeschooling; hslda; judicialabuse; kalifornia; moralabsolutes; ninthcircus; ruling
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This is an abomination!
1 posted on 03/05/2008 4:16:02 PM PST by wagglebee
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To: 230FMJ; 49th; 50mm; 69ConvertibleFirebird; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; An American In Dairyland; ..
Moral Absolutes Ping!

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2 posted on 03/05/2008 4:16:22 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: metmom; Gabz; SoftballMominVA

Ping


3 posted on 03/05/2008 4:17:09 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

All your Kids are belong to us!


4 posted on 03/05/2008 4:17:14 PM PST by The_Republican (You know why Chelsea Clinton is so Ugly? Because Janet Reno is her Father! LOL! - Mac is Back!)
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To: wagglebee
"California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children."

This one line says it all. The Gov't will let Parents keep financial responsibility for their offspring but it will control their development. This is as Orwellian as it gets IMO.

5 posted on 03/05/2008 4:19:13 PM PST by TCats (The Clintons Are Not Just Wrong - They Are Certifiable AND Dangerous! See my Page)
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To: wagglebee

So what they are saying is that you have no legal right to teach your children. What a bunch of bull! What’s worse is that we homeschool and I was considering taking a job in San Diego. Now I may have to rethink this.


6 posted on 03/05/2008 4:19:41 PM PST by CougarGA7 (Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.)
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To: wagglebee

The ruling or California?


7 posted on 03/05/2008 4:20:32 PM PST by VanDeKoik (George Washington 2008)
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To: wagglebee; informavoracious; larose; RJR_fan; Prospero; Conservative Vermont Vet; ...
+

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Originally published in The Education Liberator, Vol. 1, No. 4, December 1995/January 1996 



Our children might all be in public school today were it not for an improbable conflict more than seventy years ago involving unlikely participants in unexpected roles: the Ku Klux Klan and the Society of the Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary. It led to the Supreme Court decision Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which is the cornerstone of parental rights in America today. The parties and actions that led to the decision form one of the most astonishing of history lessons, one that demonstrates how the monolithic public school system could be turned into an ideological tool for any opportunistic group.

 

It happened in Oregon in 1922. A state ballot initiative passed requiring all children ages 8 to 16 to attend public — and only public — schools. The King Kleagle of the KKK hailed the victory by offering these congratulatory words: "[The Ku Klux Klan] with its white-robed sentinels keeping eternal watch, shall for all time, with its blazing torches as signal fires, stand guard on the outer walls of the Temple of Liberty, cry out the warning when danger appears and take its place in the front rank of defenders of the public schools."

 

Following a logic peculiar to itself, the KKK successfully channeled its hatred of diverse groups into a statewide effort to coerce all children into public schools. To be sure, the KKK thought, and still thinks, that anyone who isn't a child of Albion in color, ethnicity and creed is inherently inferior, but they came to see public schooling of all children as a good thing. It was a canny strategy. The close mixing of races and religions might be temporarily distasteful, but well worth the prize in the long run: control over children's minds.

 

Their rhetoric pointed attention in another, more patriotic, direction; a Klansmen leader pronounced, "I believe that our Free Public School is the cornerstone of good government and that those who are seeking to destroy it are enemies of our Republic and are unworthy of citizenship."

 

Be assured that public schools in Oregon were in no jeopardy of impending 'destruction' when the Klan set about to destroy private schools; only 7% of Oregon elementary school students even attended private schools. The only possible explanation of what happened in Oregon in 1922 is that the KKK tried to take advantage of the overwhelming majority position of "their kind of people" to choke out the tiny minority groups in their midst. Oregon had a minuscule black population of 0.3%. Catholics amounted to only 8% of the whole. And at the close of an era when Ellis Island was a turnstile to immigrants by the millions, only 13% of Oregon's citizens were foreign born.

 

The Klan's signature was evident throughout the campaign, and they infiltrated other groups to promote their purposes. The Scottish Rite Masons, either as a front for the KKK or as a fellow in promulgating hate, took a leading role. A 1920 resolution of the Scottish Rite Masons declared,

 

"Resolved, That we recognize and proclaim our belief in the free and compulsory education of the children of our nation in public primary schools supported by public taxation, upon which all children shall attend and be instructed in the English language only without regard to race or creed as the only sure foundation for the perpetuation and preservation of our free institutions."

 

Letters in the press more precisely reveal the paranoia at large in the populous. One man wrote, "young children in private schools have no defense against any private ideas antagonistic to our free institutions. We cannot afford to run this risk any longer, and we positively know that traitors are now at this deadly task." But it was not exactly private schools that the KKK and those who leagued with them took aim at; parochial schools were the main target: The initiative "is not a question of Catholics having the right to follow the teachings of their Dago pope, but the right of Protestants to educate their children by the best school system in the world", according to one letter. Another called children of Catholic schools "catechized monstrosities."

 

Minorities in Oregon rose in opposition, of course. The historical record finds the voices of Jews, German Lutherans, Seventh-Day Adventists, Catholics, and blacks raised in protest, with echoing support from elements of the Presbyterian, Unitarian and Congregational churches. Educators outside of Oregon joined in. The president of Yale called it "thought control." Surprisingly, Oregon's public school teachers supported the bill. A reading of teacher's periodicals indicates that to some extent they may have missed the point and gone to a defensive posture because they imagined that a vote against the bill was a vote against public schools. There is also in their writings a palpable tone indicating that paranoia and bigotry had infected their ranks, too.

 

On election day, the Oregon initiative to ban private schools passed, 115,506 to 103,685.

 

Opponents did not delay in taking the matter to court, and Governor Pierce found himself having to defend his constituent's duly enacted law. His attorney argued, "the great danger overshadowing all others which confront the American people is the danger of class hatred...[we] don't know any better way to fortify the next generation against that insidious poison than to require that the poor and the rich, the people of all classes and distinction, and of all different religious beliefs, shall meet in the common schools, which are the great American melting pot, there to become...the typical American of the future. "

 

The Supreme Court saw otherwise and rejected the Oregon law in a 9-0 vote. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters the Court gave us our firmest avowal of the fundamental rights of parents — no small result.

 

On the other hand, the Pierce decision treated a festering symptom without treating the cause. While it averted an immediate threat to freedom at that time, it did not eliminate a deep vulnerability that persists to our time. As long as America's children have no choice but to attend public schools, groups from the margin and groups in the mainstream will grapple for command of the Grand American Curriculum.

 

It's not hard to identify a threat when it shows up in bed linens, illuminated by burning crosses and preaching overt racism. Now then, what if it appears dressed in fashions from JCPenneys, spotlighted by the kleig lights of TV, and touting the latest politically correct persuasions?

 

Extreme or subtle, the threat is the same. Only one action will protect us: the separation of school and state.

 


 

Jackie Orsi is a freelance writer in Moss Beach, California. She also serves as a Trustee for the California Homeschool Network.

 



This article is copyrighted by the Alliance for the Separation of School & State. Permission is granted to freely distribute this article as long as this copyright notice is included in its entirety.



8 posted on 03/05/2008 4:22:15 PM PST by narses (...the spirit of Trent is abroad once more.)
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To: wagglebee

If this becomes reality, we will be leaving Kalifornia.


9 posted on 03/05/2008 4:22:18 PM PST by FightforFreedomCA (McCain?!?! Really? ugh....)
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To: lainie

what a bunch of bushaki!

only because the coffers are emptying from disappearing children


10 posted on 03/05/2008 4:25:12 PM PST by BurbankKarl
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To: wagglebee

Yeah make them go to public schools so they can learn that homosexuality is normal.


11 posted on 03/05/2008 4:25:34 PM PST by ckilmer (Phi)
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To: wagglebee

I still am homeschooling my youngest, California better have deep pockets if they expect to take legal action against all homeschoolers. This ruling won’t stand.


12 posted on 03/05/2008 4:25:38 PM PST by Godzilla (Have you laughed at a liberal today?)
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To: wagglebee

The state is a pedophile! To hell with the victims!


13 posted on 03/05/2008 4:27:49 PM PST by Waco
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To: wagglebee
Believe it!
14 posted on 03/05/2008 4:29:14 PM PST by tflabo (Truth or tyranny)
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To: FightforFreedomCA

It won’t. There are way toooo many homeschoolers in California. If there were only a few unorganized homeschoolers, then I could see it sticking. However, California’s homeschoolers are very well-organized.


15 posted on 03/05/2008 4:29:34 PM PST by luckystarmom
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To: wagglebee
Support HOME SCHOOL LEGAL DEFENSE! This needs to be a nationwide effort.
16 posted on 03/05/2008 4:31:39 PM PST by firebrand
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To: wagglebee
Take it higher, ALL THE WAY to the SCOTUS if necessary
They cannot force anything while it is in litigation.
17 posted on 03/05/2008 4:32:00 PM PST by gidget7 (Duncan Hunter-Valley Forge Republican!)
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To: wagglebee

Here’s some more information about this:

http://www.hsc.org/Appellatedecision


18 posted on 03/05/2008 4:33:01 PM PST by luckystarmom
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To: wagglebee
......after one of the children reported "physical and emotional mistreatment by the children's father," according to documents submitted to the court.

They used one bull$#it law that prevents dicipline of ANY sort to enact another bull$#it law mandating government indoctrination.

Q. What did dad do?
A. He gave the social engineers exactly what they were waiting for, an "opening".

19 posted on 03/05/2008 4:33:07 PM PST by JoeSixPack1
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To: wagglebee

Time to “vote” from the roof tops...


20 posted on 03/05/2008 4:34:13 PM PST by Friend_from_the_Frozen_North (If you are, as Rush would say, "A Glittering Jewel of Colossal Ignorance" don't waste my time...)
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