Comments

Lynette Leggett:

With 26 years teaching experience in the public schools, I whole heartedly support home schooling. The home schooled students I have met through teaching, or as I traveled the country working on completing my Ph.D. in education, or as neighbors, friends and relatives were students advanced academically and socially compared to their public school peers. Whereas this is anecdotal, quantifiable data is available to confirm this.

Let's face it. The word PUBLIC means we teachers have to deal with a cross section of the public. Teachers like my self are retiring in numbers when we are perfectly capable of staying. I don't mind saying, I was an excellent teacher who delivered gifted lessons. But many factors drive quality teachers into retirement. One, the number of parents who care little about rearing courteous, disciplined, respectful children. Two, piles of administrative paperwork. Three parents who verbally insult teachers who (as required by administration) report a misbehaving student. Four, the amount of time expected to donate to off-the-clock school related activities. Five, the lack of funds that creates a need for teachers to spend their own money to buy items or to provide coursework to help improve instruction. Six, the pressure to improve test scores at the expense of challenging students to use their minds to think analytically. Seven, the one-size-fits-all expectation of all students to learn in a similar manner despite students' diverse learning needs.

FOR MORE INFORMATION on this topic look up: http://library.hku.hk (University of Hong Kong Library) then enter in the search box: Grence-Leggett, Lynn or High School Students' Comparisons of Newer versus Traditional Learning Methods.

What occurred in California shows a lack of research. The California teachers union as well as school administrators, as some articles point out, exerted intense pressure through lobbying efforts. But the resultant judicial arguments do not hold up. For example, superior materials are available for teaching children. Come on judges! We are in the age of technology! That said, public schools are often behind the curve with budget restraints.

Home schooled students, unlike public school students, tend to feel a greater sense of responsibility for their learning because they are not looking to some one to "fix" them with pabulum doses of information-bits that will appear on a test. Conversely, the variety of learning opportunities available to the home schooled can be more like a spectrum. Books that augment their subjects are introduced by parent-teachers enthusiastically encouraging and supporting their search at the library or on-line whereas the public school child is told they should use the library but peer pressure suggest that borrowing books as extra curricular effort is not cool.

The public schools' approach by its very nature is more narrow. Public school classrooms cannot possibly afford the open ended amount of time, movement, exploration, enjoyment of digging into extra reading material nor more frequent field trips related to subjects being studied.

Critical thinking can be challenged at home. In public schools, CT largely became passé years ago when the pressure was applied to improve test scores. Hence the battle cry, "Teach to the test." In my research I came across articles from university professors annoyed with the numbers of students coming from high schools with TERRIBLE critical thinking skills. They complained that such students expected their professors to do as their high school teachers and essentially give out the answers to the test.

Another plus for home school students is the ratio of students to teacher being very low. Always, in advanced classes where my student numbers were lower, I was able to provide a much better learning experience.

Let's not forget that the public school teacher has students who disrupt the learning atmosphere. This always dilutes the quality of learning for all involved. I RULED in my classroom but there were always those kids (not students) who would act out, challenge and destroy an optimum learning opportunity for the entire class.

The parent-teacher has more time to devote to improving learning for his or her student(s). He or she does not have piles of administrative paperwork to document poorly behaving students, attendance issues nor do they have committee meetings to attend to go over information that could have been sent out in a memo. Yet, parent-teachers are probably like so many public school teachers who sit through lunch with teaching materials in one hand and a sandwich in the other. But they do not waste lesson preparation time patrolling the school yard, lunch room, locker area or do bus duty. They do not have to spend precious instructional time calling roll, settling down students, passing materials out to 30 or so students, stop instruction for the occasional disruption of a tardy student, investigate an issue in the hall, endure P.A. announcements or any other of the multitude of daily distractions experienced in public school classrooms.

In conclusion: We all need to guard against freedoms such as our choice to home school being taken away. We each need to spend time writing politicians, judges, etc. supporting the best opportunity for a quality education for any child! Creating an opportunity to be a home schooled student, when it is possible for parents to do so, is a highly preferable form of education in my opinion. Certainly public education has its benefits. But do the research: Do home school students on average show evidence of a better education? YES!

Retired Sgt Everhart:

While America is not perfect, I praise God for the right for every individual to voice his/her opinion. The state where I lived for many years required parents to maintain reasonable control of their children. That is a huge responsibility for parents. As such, parents must be given the tools to complete that task - as well as the law to support them.

Inevitably, when you do not agree with someone, the first thing brought out is that someone is a religious fanatic/Jesus Freak, etc. If they are not criticizing your beliefs, then they call you phobic. Let's remember this is America, and for now, we have the U.S. Constitution to guide us. Rulings such as this chisels away at the strength of our supreme law of the land. Americans must stop electing politicians and judges who are eroding the Constitution. And, just because I disagree, doesn't mean one needs to blame religion or that I have fears. I am just an American, exercising the rights still afforded to me, to express my opinion.

I am glad to know that even the governator did not agree with the ruling. Most times, these type of rulings are due to pressure from unions or interest groups that have tickled the ears of judges so that evidence is ignored. Keep on home schooling!

When will America wake up to see where eroding our Constitution is taking us?

Orthodox4GOP:

Stan's comment that: "The truth is what you believe" is indicative of the lack of critical thinking thinking skills and moral/ethical equivalence on a grand scale.

No Stan, truth is truth, despite of what people believe or chose not to believe. Truth is not dependent on the subjective opinions of individuals.

Here's an article about Truth by the same author. You should read it:
Truth in Organizations is Not Just a Matter of Opinion
http://chrisbanescu.com/blog/2007/10/03/truth-in-organizations-is-not-just-a-matter-of-opinion/

FYI, Have you seen the latest data on the "successes" of public education?

Only 1 of 2 students graduate high school in US cities
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2008/04/01/only-1-of-2-students-graduate-high-school-in-us-cities/
"Three out of 10 US public school students do not graduate from high school, and major city school districts only graduate one out of two students, according to a study released Tuesday.

In a report on graduation rates around the country, the EPE Research Center and the America Promise Alliance also showed that the high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school — in big cities falls to as low as just 34.6 percent in Baltimore, Maryland, and barely over 40 percent for the troubled Ohio cities of Columbus and Cleveland."

Stan Gilder: euclidix@racsa.co.cr

It is obvious that I have strayed into the wrong forum here. The opinions are so biased and so religiously oriented that I don't even know what to say. Let's just agree to disagree. Telling me to consult "studies" is foolish. Studies can be twisted into any shape that the studier desires. I could probably, although I don't feel it is worthwhile, come up with a dozen studies that show home schooling is deleterious.

In my opinion, it is the socialization with people of all stripes that makes me prefer public education over home schooling. I know that that is the very aspect that some of the HSers want to avoid. They have enunciated the devilish influences fromm which they want to protect their children.

We all have a different world view and mine is different from those on this site. They are not wrong but neither am I. The truth is what you believe.

On another point, people should not presume what the founders of the US had in mind. The founding era was one of extreme tumult, varying opinions and serious challenges. There was no single ethic or direction taken by the founders. They took the line of least resistance (slavery) and brought us a workable system that could be improved upon as time went on.

That is why we can have these discussions without having to kill each other. Thanks for the opportunity to have my say.

Jan B: jrbehar@verizon.net

This is one more step for the government to control what we do... America the FREE? Here is a link that shows many rights of many people being taken away: http://www.silencingchristians.com/video4of.aspx Rather you are a Christian or not, the government wants more control of you and what you do. It's important to vote and be an informed voter. I am a mother of 3 homeschooled children. They are well into their twenties and very successful. They have common sense and a good self esteem and I contribute that to homeschooling. They weren't some hermits not knowing how to deal with society either. They weren't infulenced by the children in school that were into promisuity, drugs, fowl language, mind games, intimidation, and the list could go on. I kept them involved and now the proof is in the pudding and I am ever so proud to say I was a homeschooler.

Robert:

Time also either to impeach or recall H. Walter Croskey and the other two judges who joined him in this outrageous decision! I believe such an effort could even make the November ballot this year.

Stan might also want to check out the literacy statistics here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm

A few other tidbits:
Forced training was for slaves. Among free men, learning was self-discipline, not the gift of experts.
Socrates recognized that teaching knowledge was much too important to ever be allowed to be professionalized. If it became a profession, the professionals would have an incentive to make what is easy appear difficult (and so it has).

Robin Monroe: rhm94611@yahoo.com

I am doing to assume for the sake of argument that all of Stan Gilder's misspellings are hyperbole. Beyond that, I would like to say that I too attended public schools and received a decent education. However, most of my early education I owe to my parents. My parents were older than average when I was born. My father was fifty-eight, and my mother was forty-two. My father was born in severe poverty to German-speaking immigrant parents on the prairie of North Dakota and he only attended school through the eighth grade and then quit school to work on the family farm. My mother was a farm girl from Minnesota, also born to immigrant parents, and she completed high school. In today’s world, these backgrounds tend towards setting one up to stay stuck in poverty. However, that was not the case for my parents. My parents believed that education is a life long pursuit because that is what they were taught by their parents. My father, with his limited education, could do trigonometry in his head. He left the farm at age twenty-two to make his way in the world. He worked hard, saved money, read a lot, and started his own business. Years later when my brother and I were born, my father taught us both to read long before we attended a single day of school. (There is that dang homeschooling stuff again.) He also taught us that we could learn to do anything that we wanted to do if we could read well. When I attended public school, we sat at the dinner table each night after dinner to do our homework where our parents could watch us and when we were done with it my mother would look it over and help us with anything that needed correcting or was incomplete. Their goal was that we would have a much better life than the one that they had whether went ever went to college or not. They instilled good manners, a serious work ethic, and a passionate drive to learn more each day. This was not the work of the public school; it was the work of my parents who viewed raising responsible, self-reliant children as their responsibility since they choose to have children.

I believe that our public school system is failing as it is because so many parents are failing at parenting. Teachers should not have to spend the majority of their teaching time trying to get children to behave. Thirty children in a classroom should be no more of an issue today than it was when I was in school. I have all of my classroom photos from elementary and junior high school. Every single photo features between thirty and thirty-five students and ONE teacher. We respected our teachers. We sat quietly in class and did as we were told. Each of the schools I went to had one principal and one vice-principal, and two women working in the school office. Our parents raised us to believe that when we behaved inappropriately that it not only reflected on us, but on them. We were afraid to be sent to the principal’s office, not because we would be punished because we were not. We were afraid to be sent to the principal’s office because it would reflect badly on our individual name and reputation.

Mr. Gilder, you can make fun of home schooling all you want to if it makes you feel better about yourself and your beliefs. You can be misinformed about curriculum for home schooled kids because people who home school their children have to register their curriculum and teaching plans just as any teacher does and have them approved before school begins. You can even be ignorant of the facts that home schooled kids have much higher SAT and ACT scores than kids who attend public schools; but throwing money at the problem is not going to do anything to repair the fundamental societal problems that are making a mess of public schools. You can look at school systems around the world that function much better than the schools in America and find that not ONE single country spends anywhere near the money America does to educate its children. The problem is NOT money. The problem is that we are fast becoming an uncivilized nation.

At the end of the day, the truth is that many of the very problems that are crippling the public school system are problems in the home with parenting. These problems cause teachers to have little respect from the students, students having little respect for themselves, and entirely too many children with no one at home to care about them growing up to be responsible, respected, productive, members of society. Those problems are at the root of our failing schools.

Orthodox4GOP:

Stan, Your assumption and blanket generalization that "education should be a group effort not a curriculumless mess of home skooled kids" is proven absolutely false by the research and data compiled by the Pacific Justice Institute and the Home School Legal Defense Association. Take the time to educate yourself about the reality and truths of homeschooling before making such biased and uninformed opinions.

Also did you actually read this article? I don't think you did since you completely ignored the research that backed up the author's comments:
The appellate court also chose to ignore the many studies and solid research data showing that homeschooling is a well-established and exceptional method of education that overwhelmingly produces superior academic results and well-adjusted individuals. According to David Barfield’s review of the available data on home education “dozens of studies have yielded the consistent result showing home educated students average 15-30 percentile points above the national average. Research demonstrates that, unlike their public school counterparts, the performance of home educated students bears little correlation to family income, the degree of state regulation of homeschooling, teacher certification, the educational level achieved by parents, sex, or race.” In another study by Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) he shows that “home educated students excelled on nationally-normed standardized achievement exams. On average, home schoolers outperformed their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects.”

It helps to know what one is talking about before making false and incorrect generalizations that have little basis in fact.

Stan Gilder: euclidix@racsa.co.cr

The public education system, although lately falling on hard times, was establishedd to educate as many children as possible. The great literacy rates that thee US has enjoyed in the past was due to the progressive thinkers of the late 19th and early 20 th century. Lately though parents have abdicated their responsibility for their materialistic goals and have left their children with under fundedd and understaffed schools. I went to public schools and received an excellent education. Education should be a group effort not a curriculumless mess of home skooled kids

Robin Monroe: rhm94611@yahoo.com

I just don't understand why some parents don't counter sue the state of California. Here in Oakland, the majority of teachers are not "credentialed." They have temporary, emergency, credentials. And they teach with them far longer than is allowed by law. So, why don't parents sue the state for the school districts hiring uncredentialed, ineffective teachers that they are powerless to fire because the teachers unions own all the politicians. I don't get it. Frankly, I think that parents in this country have been sold a very bad bill of goods by the teachers, their unions, and the politicians. The judges ruling said that to qualify to teach one's kids at home a parent had to have a Five Year Preliminary creditial or hire a teacher who has one. So, sue the state to make that the requirement of all public school teachers as well. They need to either level the playing field or get the heck off of it.

Kitty Antonik Wakfer: kitty@morelife.org

Specifically in response to those who think that believing in a god is necessary for holding ideas that promote individual liberty, *not* being a religionist does *not equate* with being a Statist. Although raised by practicing Catholic parents, I am and for the past 35 years been an atheist. I am also very much opposed to governments, the only entity with the monopoly on physical force in a geographical area, having *any* role in the education of children.

The goal of every parent properly is to raise each child into an independent and self-responsible individual. This will inevitably come into conflict with the State, for when the State is the educator, its primary purpose - whether acknowledged or not - is to turn out good citizens, ones who will obey laws. And having large numbers of dependent citizens (those receiving favors, subsidies or all the way to complete welfare), provides large number of voters who will select options that maintain the paternalism of the present system.

Keep in mind though, that it is the *enforcers* of every law that really are the problem. Without them, this judge's ruling and all other edicts/laws/mandates/directives/etc. are just so many words uttered and/or ascribed into text. If there are very few, if any, individuals who are willing to carry out this ruling and others by the judiciary, legislators and/or executives of a state or the federal government, I don't think the judges, legislators, governors and/or president are going to go out and do the enforcing themselves. So while writing to protest a state/federal law, remember that negative social preferencing toward enforcers of such laws is even more important than towards those who author those many items of legislation contrary to individual liberty. http://selfsip.org/solutions/Social_Preferencing.html


**Kitty Antonik Wakfer

MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness,
individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting

Orthodox4GOP:

For anyone not familiar with "KipEsquire" he is "a lawyer who doesn't practice, an investment banker who does no deals, an academic who doesn't teach". Here's a sample story headline and comments from his Blog, it should elucidate where he's coming from:

Organized Religion's Blood Libel Against Atheism (1/30/2008)
http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/atheism/
"Can someone explain to me why apologists for religion so easily get stuck on stupid in this manner? ... Leave it to a Jesuit priest — no blood on their hands, right? — to be so good at obfuscation."

"Hitler was a male. Hitler was an Austrian. Hitler was a vegetarian. Hitler was a Taurus. Hitler was left-handed. Hitler was an atheist. So what? What does any of that have to do with the millenia of unspeakable misery perpetrated upon humanity by organized religion?" (KipEsquire's own words)

Speaks volumes doesn't it!

KipEsquire: kipesquire@yahoo.com

You realize, I hope, that the court was merely applying a duly enacted and unambiguous statute -- Ed. Code, 6 § 48200 et seq.

Actually, I know you realize it, since you are attorney -- but to acknowledge it would emasculate your shrill "judicial activism" gobbledygook. So you omit it.

Fine display of intellectual honesty (and legal ethics), counselor.

melincali: mysticmindu@aol.com

I'm curious to know how this ruling effects the CAVA program? It's government regulated, basically a homeschool taught by the parents, visited and checked up on by an accredited teacher, but under JUSTICE H. WALTER CROSKEY's ruling, he's now made CAVA illegal. Does anyone know for sure?

Peter Dixon: riff7raff@gmail.com

“Is it merely coincidental that homeschooling was outlawed by the Soviet State in 1919, by Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1938, and by Communist China in 1949? Will California be next? America? Will we yield control and our educational rights as parents?” - Chuck Norris 2008

Why is it that the same laws enacted by 3 of the most oppressive regimes in modern history are now being implemented by Justice H. Walter Croskey in the modern state of California?

Do you not see what Croskey is doing here? He is implementing the same laws as Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Tse Tung - Some of the most powerful and murderous dictators in history - Such dictators would stand trial for crimes against humanity in the Hague if they were alive today. The education laws were only the beginning of some of the darkest most violent chapters in modern history.

Every freedom loving American must stand up and oppose this law as assault on the very freedom and liberty that our forefathers fought and died for. Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson would be horrified at the way in which our precious liberties are being tossed aside by radical activist judges abusing their position to further their own perverse political agenda.

Shawn O'Neil: peace02229@comcast.net

Paragraph 2229 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"As those first responsible for the education of their children, parents have the right to choose a school for them which corresponds to their own convictions. This right is fundamental. As far as possible parents have the duty of choosing schools that will best help them in their task as Christian educators. Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise."

I pray that the Catholic Authorities of California will recall the motives of the Missionaries who named Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco and so many other California locales, when they publicly react to this injustice -- brought on by those (government unions) who wish to: separate children from their parents (with or after abortion), taxpayers from their honestly earned wages, and replace The Church with the state.

Parents Ecumenically Allied for Choice in Education

Dana Oyler: doyler625@yahoo.com

I am appalled over the Second District Court of Appeals decision. My sister-in-law started homeschooling one of my nieces due to the anti social behavior of other students when she was in the 3rd grade. Other students taunted her because she was quiet and shy. At school she had become a loner at the ripe age of 8 years old. I am proud to say that my niece, now 20, is a beautiful, well adjusted, talented, young Christian woman. She has her Associates Degree and is now pursuing to further her education. If my sister-in-law had not homeschooled her, I am afraid her self esteem would have suffered and consequently led her educational foundation to suffer. The other daughter wasn't homeschooled and is a brilliant elemantary school teacher. It really is what is best for the individual child. We would never administer blanket medical treatment for our children so why would we practice it for the educational needs of our children. I myself do not have children and I can see the need for educational options, why can't our judicial system?

Sincerely,
Dana Oyler

Rabbi Louis J. Feldman: theologicalethic@aol.com

In Germany it is a crime to homeschool your children and it will land you in jail. It is part of the European paternalism--
the state knows what is best for your child. G-d forbid that the United States should fall to this evil mentality.America was founded upon a regard for the individual.

Homeschooling and Parental Rights Under Attack in California

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