16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

The cat is finally out of the bag. A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."

There you have it; a primary purpose of government schools is to train schoolchildren "in loyalty to the state." Somehow that protects "the public welfare" more than allowing parents to homeschool their children, even though homeschooled kids routinely outperform government-schooled kids academically. In 2006, homeschooled students had an average ACT composite score of 22.4. The national average was 21.1.

Justice H. Walter Croskey said, "California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice Croskey said.

If that is the law in California, then Charles Dickens's Mr. Bumble is right: "the law is a ass, a idiot."

The California Constitution says, "A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement."

[...]

I think the state court is looking at the state Constitution upside down. The court finds no constitutional right to homeschool one's children. But in a free country, people are free to do anything not expressly prohibited by law. If the Constitution is silent about homeschooling, then the right is reserved to the people. That's how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution said things are supposed to work.

Last week, the appellate court surprised everyone by agreeing to rehear the case. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the judges "hinted at a re-evaluation of its entire Feb. 28 ruling by inviting written arguments from state and local education officials and teachers' unions."

On top of that, state Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell says he thinks homeschooling is legal and favors choice in education.

That's reasonable news. But why is education the business of government? It's taken for granted that the state is every child's ultimate parent, but there's no justification for that in a free society. Parents may not be perfect -- some are pretty bad -- but a cold, faceless bureaucracy is no better.

Let's hope the court gets it right in June.

emphasis mine

musical interlude (not work safe): 

Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it? 

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