California Children Still Considered State Property

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2008/08/19/...tate-property/

Thomas A. Bowden

California Children Still Considered State Property
2008-08-19

In a decision being widely hailed as a victory for parental rights, a Los
Angeles County court has confirmed, grudgingly, that homeschooling "is
permitted under California statutes." In so ruling, the court reversed an
earlier decision that ordered the parents of "Rachel L." to send her away to
a public or private school, where she could get a "legal education."

But where's the real victory for parents' rights? Rights identify actions
you can take without permission. A true victory would have been a judicial
declaration that parents have an absolute right to control their children's
upbringing-and that they therefore don't need government permission to
educate their children as they see fit.

Instead, as this decision makes clear, California's parents are expected to
accept the status of perpetual supplicants, knees bent and backs bowed down
to an all-powerful legislature that can decide at any moment to revoke its
homeschooling "permission."

Neither the state nor "society as a whole" has any interests of its own in
your child's education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the
government's only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of
its citizens, including yours and your children's, against physical force
and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests
that can override your rights.

To give parents a permanent victory, California would need to make its law
consistent with America's founding principles. Parents are sovereign
individuals whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
includes the right to control their child's upbringing. Other citizens,
however numerous or politically powerful, have no moral right to substitute
their views on child-raising for those of the father and mother who created
that child.

Instead, a proper legal system recognizes and protects parents' moral right
to pursue the personal rewards and joys of child-raising. At every stage,
you have a right to set your own standards and act on them without
government permission. This parental right to control your child's
upbringing includes the right to manage his education, by choosing an
appropriate school or personally educating him at home.

Of course, there are certain situations in which government must step in to
protect the rights of a child, as in cases of physical abuse or neglect. But
no such concern for individual rights can account for California's arrogant
assertion of state control over the minds of all school-age children
residing within its borders.

Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a
child's parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and
neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to
fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the
fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit
government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and
order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed
cafeterias.

By confirming that homeschooling is legal in California (at least for the
time being), the recent court decision will undoubtedly quiet the shockwaves
that were threatening to impact the apologists for government
education-teachers' unions, educational bureaucrats, and politicians. Their
political and financial survival depends on a policy that treats children
as, in effect, state property-but they have nothing to gain, and everything
to lose, when the undiluted collectivism of that policy is trumpeted
publicly.

The defenders of public schooling can now go back to papering over their
system's own failures--the very failures that helped fuel the homeschooling
movement, by driving desperate parents to seek refuge from the
irrationality, violence, and mediocrity that have come to characterize
government education, in California and elsewhere.

But what if parents stopped groveling and started asking whether the state
has any right at all to be running schools, dictating educational standards
for children, and "permitting" parents to homeschool their own kids? This
would call into question the moral foundation of public education as such.

As the smoke clears from the current round of litigation, the battle lines
remain as they were, clearly drawn. Are parents mere drudges whose social
duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory indoctrination
sessions at government-approved schools? Or are they sovereign individuals
whose right to guide their children's development the state may not
infringe?

The answer could determine not only the future of homeschooling but the
future of education in America.

Neither the state nor "society as a whole" has any interests of its own in
your child's education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the
government's only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights
of its citizens, including yours and your children's, against physical
force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with
interests that can override your rights.

The States' own interests override your rights everyday a as standard
procedure!

BTW, Public Education in California is a $50 Billion dollar industry, they
need your kids to feed the education system!