raw principles

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Your Child Is Not State Property

 

By Thomas A. Bowden

 

Rocked by a nationwide storm of criticism, the Los

Angeles County court that declared homeschooling

illegal in California has agreed to rehear the case in

June. At issue is Justice H. Walter Croskey's Feb. 28

decree, which ordered the parents of " Rachel L. " to

send her away to a public or private school, where she

can get a " legal education. "

 

Justice Croskey's edict interpreted state education

laws that govern all children, whatever their home

situation and " whatever the quality " of their home

education. Except for the rare case when parents

already hold state teaching credentials, parents who

find public schools intolerable and cannot locate or

afford a suitable private school were branded by the

decree as outlaws if they choose to instruct their

child at home.

 

California legislators were entitled to enact this

blanket prohibition, according to the judge, because

they feared the supposed social disorder that would

result from " allowing every person to make his own

standards on matters of conduct in which society as a

whole has important interests. "

 

" Allowing " ? By what right does government presume to

" allow " (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your

own standards concerning your child's education?

 

Government has no such right. 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.

 

If Justice Croskey's description of California law is

correct, then the state's educational policy is at

odds 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.

 

The shockwaves from Justice Croskey's decision will

likely impact not just homeschoolers but also 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 only rarely is the undiluted

collectivism of that policy trumpeted so publicly.

 

What if, in the harsh glare of the " Rachel L. " case,

parents start asking whether the state has any right

at all to be running schools and dictating educational

standards for children, in order to advance society's

" interests " ? This calls into question the moral

foundation of public education as such. In this light,

one wonders if the court's decision to rehear the case

could be a first step toward muting, and muddying, the

controversy.

 

For their part, the defenders of public schooling can

be expected to stay busy papering over their system's

own failures--the very failures that helped fuel the

homeschooling movement, by driving desperate parents

to seek refuge at home from the irrationality,

violence, and mediocrity that have come to

characterize government education, in California and

elsewhere.

 

For now, at least, the battle lines are 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.

 

Thomas A. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand

Institute, focusing on legal issues. Mr. Bowden is a

former attorney and law school instructor who

practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland. The

Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) promotes

Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of

" Atlas Shrugged " and " The Fountainhead. " Contact the

writer at media.

 

 

 

 

 

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