Home School Saved!

    

In California, on Friday, August 8 ^th , the 2 ^nd District Court of Appeal reversed a dreadful decision it had made in February.

The first decision the Court approved made it illegal to home school a child in California unless someone in the room had a teaching credential. The reversal of this decision allows over 166,000 California Home Schoolers to enjoy what should be sacred rights, without the threat of government determining whether or not parents may decide what sort of education their children receive.

The first decision certainly would have benefited our wildly under- performing schools in California, schools which routinely show at the bottom of results when compared to other states in testing. And this is testing entirely slanted toward what our public schools supposedly deliver in the way of education. Children would have been forced to return to these schools by the tens of thousands, schools already (by their own admission) overburdened and dangerous. Let us please remember that laws supposedly exist to provide a fair playing field for citizens, protecting their rights. The law exists to serve the people. The people were never intended to service the law, or government. In what way was the court serving the people with this decision?

Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger praised the reversal by the 2nd District Court of Appeal as a victory for students and parental rights. He and top state Democrat Jerry Brown worked together to drag this case back into the courts, and are both to be highly commended for protecting not just the rights of Californians. The grim truth is that, as California goes, so often goes the nation...and then other nations follow.

But why were our rights threatened in the first place? Regardless of the relative success or failure of public education, when did the right to determine how our children are educated become the property of the state? This could only happen in an environment where "we, the people" are simply not united.

One powerful reason we are not united is that politics and religion in America are generally employed in the United States in a divisive manner. But regardless of political or religious persuasion, there are at least five points that I believe most parents agree on, particularly home school parents;

1. Parents, not the state, should have the largest degree of authority over their children.
   
   
2. Parents should have a strong hand not just as to educational processes and methods, but also educational content. Our schools, public and private, are generally forced to avoid certain subject matter (such as religion, and political theory) and to adhere to testing standards that, to put it mildly, are far too limited in scope.
   
   A very telling case in point : My son recently passed the California State test for high school. In that test, there were no history questions, no science questions, no questions about the arts or culture of any kind, no questions about how one plans to live their life, no questions about skills that may have been acquired during the process of receiving an "education", nothing that would verify that a student is actually prepared to leave high school!
   
   What did the test question? Basic grammar, the silliest and most basic reading comprehension skills that my boy quite literally scoffed at (and that would have been considered elementary skills to school children 50 years ago), and mathematics; that was petty much all he needed to know according to the state.
   
   Exactly what are our schools "training" our children to be? Good McDonald's employees? Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?
   
   This disgusting standard was the educational result our court was determined to enforce!
   
   Clearly the schools and the "system" should not be allowed to limit the horizons of our children. In fact, their one and only job should be to expand those horizons. Yet, the courts in California attempted to grant these same self-serving schools nearly the only right to educate in California! And they are self-serving -- they get paid per student in attendance, be they public or private schools.
   
   
   
3. Children are generally brighter than the schools assume.
   
   
4. Children work best when their unique qualities are recognized and supported. (So do adults.)
   
   
5. Our children are the future. And we, as parents, are responsible for their well-being. We are the guardians of the children who will keep the ship afloat or sink it.

I feel pretty good about handing the reigns of this world over to my son, William. He's ready. He's bright, highly educated, moral, and motivated. He was also home schooled for the last 6 years of his school life. He would not exist in his currently bright condition had we been forced by some suppressive law to school "traditionally".

This time, California lucked out. We cannot count on there always being a "Governator" and a Jerry Brown to protect our rights. A movement to curtail home school rights could start anywhere, in any municipality in the world. There will always be people who "know best" what your children need.

Somehow, parents everywhere are going to have to find the need and the courage to be louder and more proactive. It's simply too easy to turn over the responsibility for our children to the state, and to assume that the state knows best. They most certainly do not, as the statistics more than prove. Even using their own ridiculous tests as a barometer, home school children fare far better than other educational groups.

My part of this struggle has been to create a home school curriculum that I believe will provide a true and complete education in the areas our government does not feel even need to be tested for. I've worked at authoring Connect The Thoughts, and 1 ^st Step, for around 9 years now, and I'm not finished. Many people are using these courses and winning with them.

But this is going to be a long-fought battle. If you're not sure it's worth the effort to fight it, take a hard look at your children, and the world they will be stepping into shortly.

     Steven Horwich
     Connect The Thoughts™
     1st Step™