You have to see it to believe it, but a California appeals court has apparently ruled that parents have no legal right to homeschool their children. The ruling contends that parents who do not enroll their children in a public, charter, or private school can face criminal charges.
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 situation is further outlined in this article that notes if the court’s ruling is upheld the parents of some 166,000 homeschooled students in the state of California could be subject to criminal sanctions.
The decision from 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. The lawyers appointed by the state were unhappy with a lower court’s ruling that allowed the family to continue homeschooling and challenged it on appeal.
Justice H. Walt Croskey, whose opinion was joined by two other judges, then ordered: “Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”
The determination reversed a decision from Superior Court Judge Stephen Marpet, who ruled “parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home.”
Further reading through the articles indicates that the family involved in the case is using a Christian-themed curriculum from “Sunland Christian School, a private homeschooling program.” Apparently the state of California has difficulties with children being brought up in a Christian home and having Christian values inculcated in their minds and hearts — specifically, they do not appear willing to allow a parent to discipline their children, teach a creationist viewpoint, or address the Biblical admonition against homosexual relations.
The current case was brought by two attorneys who had been appointed by the state to represent the family’s minor children in a dependency case stemming from accusations of abuse that resulted from the parents’ decision to impose discipline on their children with spankings. The case actually had been closed out by the court as resolved when the lawyers filed their special appeal.
Phillip Long has told WND he objects to the pro-homosexual, pro-bisexual, pro-transgender agenda of California’s public schools, on which WND previously has reported.
“We just don’t want them teaching our children,” he told WND. “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.
“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.
UPDATE: I’ve read a few comments around the net about this case. One of those comments suggested that the family involved in this court case had registered their children with a charter school and then were allowing the kids to miss classes in that school and stay at home, so the mother could homeschool them. I have no (repeat NO) proof that that comment is an accurate description of the case. So right now it is just hearsay and nothing more. If — and that’s a big IF — that is true, it would make the courts decision more easy to understand.
Several years ago I was in conversation with a very high ranking freemason over public education. He informed me that it was the freemasons who first championed public schools paid for from tax dollars. He also informed me that freemasons still take seriously any religious involvement in public education. Our discussion turned to Christian schools and he informed me it was his opinion from what he was taught that this took children out of public school and should be illegal. He has the very same argument this court issued: namely that it was illegal for anyone to teach children who were not licensed or certified by the public school system. So, now I am wondering if any of these judges who issued this ruling have any connection to the massonic lodge, and if so, was this a subtle ruling of the lodges issued from the bench by members upholding that prejudice?
G. Reckart
Tampa, Florida