alt.education

"Josh Rosenbluth" wrote in message
news:2sudnZSI0vUbvH7anZ2dnUVZ_viunZ2d@comcast.com...
> Jeff Strickland wrote:
>>
>>>
>>
>> Well, when I was a kid, my parents spanked me when they felt I needed it.
>> Somebody somewhere at sometime challenged a parent's right ot spank, the
>> court ruled that spanking was intolerable and the legislature created a
>> law to codeify the ruling.
>
> "Somebody somewhere"? That's another way of saying you don't know what
> you are talking about.
>

Spank your kid in a public place and see what happens.



>>>> In my example of the homeschool and CPS, the courts clearly jumped into
>>>> an area of state law that is covered and works -- schooling --
>>>> and forced a family to send kids to school, and the court did it in
>>>> such a manner that all home schools in the state may be shut down. The
>>>> court is doing this, not the legislators.
>>>
>>>
>>> In this case the legislature passed statutes which required schooling at
>>> a public school, private school, or tutored elsewhere (including the
>>> home) by a state-licensed teacher.
>>>
>>
>> This is not true. A home schooled child (as of today) can be taught by a
>> parent or legal guardian that registers with the state that they are a
>> home school, and they use a cirriculum administered by the proper
>> authority (where the gamit of authority is too broad to specify here, and
>> makes no difference). It is the court that is dictating the credentials
>> that a home school must have.
>
> No, you are wrong. From the case
> (http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B192878.PDF):
>
> "... enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is
> required by *California law* for minor children unless (1) the child is
> enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually attends that
> private school, (2) the child is tutored by a person holding a valid state
> teaching credential for the grade being taught, or (3) one of the other
> few statutory exemptions to compulsory public school attendance (Ed. Code,
> § 48220 et seq.) applies to the child."
>
> The legislature made the rules.
>

California law provides for home schooling. Period. Just because you have
not found the code does not mean home school is not allowed.



>>> None applied to the parents and child in question, and so they sued
>>> asking the courts to invalidate the legislature by declaring a
>>> Constitutional right to home schooling.
>>>
>>
>> That is patently false.
>>
>> The ONLY issue in the case was child abuse. Period. CPS never challenged
>> the schooling, never.
>
> I stand corrected in that the parents did not sue. It was a lawyer
> representing two of the children asking the court to enforce the statutes
> as passed by the legislature. The issue the court dealt with was not
> child abuse (even though such allegations set the ball rolling), but
> rather whether there is a Constitutional right to home schooling that
> trumps the statute.
>

Child abuse was is at the core of the entire case. You are looking at the
outside layers, but the core is hugely problematic because CPS sought to use
the school system as a surrogate for case workers, and the family resisted.
The case was never about home schooling, it was about requiring a child to
attend school because CPS could not investigate claims of abuse.

If CPS did not come in and mandate sending a child to a school as a remedy
for something that it could not substantiate, this discussion would not be
happening.

I am all in favor of taking kids away from a home school that does not work,
don't get me wrong. But, the argument to close a home school has to be that
home school is ineffective.

Clearly there are home schools that perform far better than any public or
private school can ever hope to perform, so a blanket ruling that no parent
is able to teach his own kid is patently absurd.

Which brings us back to court rulings inhibiting a parent from taking charge
of his own kids. The issue in the case we are discussing is not over yet,
and my prediction is that the current ruling will be overturned because the
issue at the core is not about a crappy education received at the hands of a
parent insistant on home schooling, it is really about the failings of CPS
and their remedy for their own failings.