“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,†Croskey wrote.Friedman writes about unschooling his children. His daughter is now applying to college, using her SAT scores -- and a very long list of the books she's read -- in lieu of grades.
Homeschoolers vs. the state
March 17, 2008 By
Do Homeschoolers Need Teaching Credentials? I've got a Pajamas Media column on the California appellate ruling that bans homeschooling by uncredentialed parents. I believe homeschooling is here to stay. If the ruling isn't overturned on appeal, it will be overruled by the state Legislature.
David Friedman, "academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field," noted Justice H. Walter Croskey's call for indoctrination.
Let’s all pray the ruling is overturned. In some respects, the picture looks bleak. See:
http://americascultureofconservatism.blogspot.com/
I’ve read the court ruling and I can’t see how to conclude that homeschooling is much in danger.
From the article:
Okay.
So register as a private school. Like a lot of California homeschoolers have been doing for years.
The ruling doesn’t address private schools and doesn’t suggest any change in the rules for who can form a private school.
How does this ruling make homeschooling illegal?
-Mark Roulo
Let’s all remember that there are plenty of homeschoolers who are not religious. I don’t care if other people pray, but I get sick of them asking me to do it.
Homeschooling parents need “teaching credentials” like a fish needs a bicycle.
Does it ever seem to you that homeschoolers just need a good publicist/ PR guy?
It’s hard for me to believe that anyone could consider a teaching credential related to ensuring good instruction, and yet, every time home schoolers get represented in the mainstream press like the family in this case is, reasonable people completely unaffiliated with public schools can come to think that the state may have some compelling interest in “protecting” kids from parents like this and may be more willing to accept state meddling with homeschoolers.
(There are a lot of great reasons to homeschool; being afraid that your kids will meet “snitches” who will report that you are abusing them, like the father of the family in this case, really isn’t one.)
Credentialing is a scam and keeps a lot of good teachers out of the public schools.
We unschooled our eldest, and because she worried about being forced to go back to school, at 16 she took that CA high school equivalency exam. It’s a total joke, but once she got the certificate she stopped worrying.
I have a PhD in math from a good school, and have earned a living for many years as a mathematician and/or computer scientist, but I’m unqualified to teach her math. I know because the courts tell me so, and before that a teacher at the high school that my daughter endured for 2 months explained rather impatiently to me “how people learn math”. The occasion was when we found out that my daughter was being forced to take trig despite having already taught herself a bit of calculus of variations. (For her 8th grade science project my daughter chose the brachistochrone problem, and made an very nice display, including history, numerical approximations to the solution and a very clear explanation of gradient descent algorithms, and building a model so that people could compare the time it took for a ball bearing to traverse a straight line track vs. the best 3-segment numeric solution.)
The teacher had no idea what my daughter was talking about, but she knew my daughter needed to take trig because she was an expert on education.
Yes, we need public schools to teach patriotism and loyalty to the state and nation–because we in the public schools are doing such a fine job of doing that already. Che Guevara posters in class, anyone? How many secondary students say the pledge of allegiance?
Yes, I’m with Darren. I’d venture the guess that homeschoolers in general teach their children more about civics, good citizenship, the rights and responsibilities of citizens, etc., than the public schools.
I can just hear Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz skipping along and singing, “If I only had a credential…â€
Here’s what we can do without a credential– http://learningathome.freedomblogging.com/2008/03/08/an-uncredentialed-day/