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Blog Entry 6 of 6 Fresh Air and a little vinegar

It's pretentious, I think, to write my own blog intro, but Here We Go! If you want to read an ongoing blog soundly based in the living, breathing, world, and not on the stifling and bizarre theories of liberal academia, this is your blog. If you love to gain meaningful and inspiring knowledge, then you've come to the right place. If you like the outdoors and can't stand staying inside any longer than you have to, this is your blog! If you want to hear a teen's perspective on things, and wonder just how much 'our generation' can achieve, you might want to read this blog too.

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The divine right of judges?

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Contributed by: Johnathan Osborn on 6/26/2008

Author's Note: the citations in this article are taken from "Rude Awakening" by Andrea Longbottom. Further information can be found at hslda.org

Most people learn the basic structure of our government and the roles of its respective branches at a very young age. The executive branch carries out defense, diplomacy and management of the country.

The legislative branch creates and examines laws, while the judicial branch interprets and occasionally evaluates laws according to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It is not the judiciary's responsibility or right to create laws, and judges are supposed to be as fair and balanced as they can, and rule according to the law, not according to their own opinions and wishes.

Perhaps the California Court of Appeals forgot those early lessons about the structure of our national government when they ruled homeschooling illegal. Personally, I think they never learned them.

The case that rewrote California's education laws began as a "juvenile dependency" case, which, for the rest of us, means it was a case involving child neglect or abuse. The family also happened to homeschool.

The children's lawyers demanded that the family stop homeschooling and the children attend public school. The judge maintained that the parents had a constitutional right to school their children.

The lawyers then brought the case to the Court of Appeals where the judges declared that homeschooling, unless the parent has a teacher's license, is illegal according to California State Law. This ruling, although it has been suspended pending review, effectively turns 200,000 law-abiding families into criminals, to be disposed of at the state's leisure.

Interestingly enough, the rulings have no basis in the state's education code, which provides for the legality of private schools so long as the school turns in a written affidavit. A homeschool is essentially a microscopic private school, and is protected under this law.

So there was no legal basis for the court's decision. The overall opinion and agenda of the judges are probably best expressed in this quote from the case.

"We agree with the Shinn court's statement that "the educational program of the State of California was designed to promote the general welfare of all the people and was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual in the field of education.""

So, according to the judges, no one, not even the parents of students or the teachers, has the right to legally introduce their own ideas or innovations into "The field of education."

Presumably, it is the state's ability to control education, and parents have no legal right to improvise or improve their child's education. If the ruling is upheld, thousands of homeschool families could be torn apart, the children put into foster homes, the parents prosecuted.

The judges essentially changed the laws to suit their own opinions and tastes. They took authority that was not theirs and condemmed 200,000 homeschool families to censure and prosecution.

Think about it. If these people were senators and congressmen, they would have lost their jobs already because of all the public outcry that has occured over this event. But they're not, they're judges, and they are insulated from the repurcussions of their actions.

They will probably spend the rest of their lives smugly handing down politically motivated, baseless decisions like this.Should judges, be they at the highest level of the judiciary or the lowest, ever have that right?

To see what life for homeschoolers is like without legal protection, visit this link
http://http://www.hslda.org/docs/link.asp?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewnd%2Ecom%2Findex%2Ephp%3Ffa

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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Johnathan Osborn

Larkspur , CO

Johnathan Osborn has posted 6 blog entries and 5 comments since joining on 4/11/2008. Johnathan Osborn 's average blog rating is 5.

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