🚀 go-pugleaf

Andrew Dashiell wrote:
> 

[ ... ]

> What do you mean "a right they now lack"? Do they lack the right to
> raise their children illiterate and ignornat? Good! 

Many parents now lack the right to raise their children any other way.
If you are a parent who cannot afford private school, and who lives in a
bad school district, and who cannot homeschool fulltime, or get
permission to do so, you are entirely at the mercy of the school
authorities. The public school system inhales thousands of healthy and
curious 6-year-olds and exhales thousands of violent, alienated,
illiterate and fully credentialed 17-year-olds every year. Why should
parents lack the right to refuse to send their children into this
system?

> As regards home
> schooling, why shouldn't the home curriculum be state approved - or, if
> that gets someone's anti-guvmint dander up, how about one of several
> private accrediting organizations - the same ones that accredit most
> private schools?
> 
> So, by your analysis, the *only* thing that passage of A17 would have
> changed would have been the right of parents to home school without
> government permission or accreditation. If so, is that really a
> desireable outcome? Homeschooling *should* have *some* minimum
> standards; and, IMO, one of them really should be that mythology is no
> substitute for the scientific method.
> 

Look, here is the law as it stands. There are variations from state to
state, but compulsory education is the law in all 46 states and 4
commonwealths in this country. This means parents have the following
choices:

1) Send your child to public school for a specified number of days per
year, at specified times of day, to a specified location, where s/he
will be confined to a specified series of rooms with a specified series
of adults not known or related to him, whom neither he nor his parents
are permitted to choose(minor exceptions exist). S/he will study
specified topics from specified books, and will give specified answers
at specified intervals ... need I go on? Do you need convincing that to
enroll a child in a public school is to sacrifice a great deal of
freedom, both for parent and child? Payoff: free daycare. Expense:
institutionalization for 12 of the most impressionable and important
years of the child's life; poor quality education; violence; drugs;
etc., etc., etc.

2) Send your child to a private school, which must gain permission to
exist from the same authorities that run the public school, above.
Payoff: some gains in choice, quality, and freedom, at the expense of
tuition. This option is not open to families of modest means. 

3) Beg the same authorities who accredit the private schools, and run
the public schools, for the "privilege"(NOT "right"!) of educating your
own child in your own home. Grant the authorities the right to specify
the curriculum, schedule, even furniture, in your own house. In some
states, sign away your rights to privacy under the 4th
Amendment(inspection visits of the "school", i.e., your home, may be
required). Accept the fact that permission may be denied, or, once
granted, revoked. Not an easy road for persons of minimal means.
Payoff:freedom from the school system(limited); expense:time, loss of
privacy, financial burdens. 

4) Face legal action, up to and including criminal charges(child
neglect), permanent loss of custody of your children into the foster
system and eventually to forcible "adoption". Payoff:zero;
expense:everything. 

Bear in mind that poor parents have a choice of public school on the
school's terms, or permanent loss of custody. 
So, parents have enough rights now? Is this your idea of the right way
to do it? 

=Eric