Monday, June 23, 2008
Parents Who Home School Need Credentials
I was watching the news today and some blow hard was talking about parents who home school their kids need to be certified in order to do so. California is talking about this now. Basically he wanted to make sure these parents are teaching their sons and daughters what he (government) wants them to know because parents could be teaching their kids any old thing and that is unfair to the kids. He used the 14th amendment to support his argument saying that the kids should have a choice to what they are taught. Is there anything the government does not want to control. Just another example of government thinking they know better than parents. Is there anything government will not try and take control over?
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3 comments:
Let's not be coy here. You clearly believe that sometimes the government knows better than parents what is right for their children. If a parent believed that our incest and age taboos were strictly cultural constructs with no real validity, you'd clearly want us to stop them from fucking their kids. I imagine that if they were teaching their kids that martyrdom was the only true path to heaven and that the most honorable act one could ever commit is a suicide bombing in a crowded building, you'd probably want us to step in and preevent them from teaching that to their kids.
I don't know whether you'd draw the line at the parents who were forcing their kids to spend 8 hours a day phonetically memorizing the Qur'an (since they didn't speak the language) and not teaching them anything else, but I would. Either way, this is clearly just a matter of where you draw the line. The question isn't whetehr or not the government knows better than parents. This is a question of whether or not the government has a duty to protect the rights and interests of children, from their parents or anyone else who would harm them.
I agree that there are some things that parents could teach their kids that I would not be happy with. Problem is when goverment gets involved it is such a broad area they take over. Government cannot just minimallly get involved and stop the parents teaching violence. It will affect all. Hence you have to accept that some people are going to get taught crap things. Even if you got these paretns credentials it does not mean they will stop teaching violence so there really is no point to get these parents certified.
I don't know about certification of teh parents, btu I thik that some minimal controls can weed out the worst offenders without putting undue burden on everyone else. For instance, do home-schooled kids currently have to pass the same standardized tests as everyone else in order to be certified as an elementary/middle/high-school graduate? That's pobably enough of a check on the system for me, but it IS government interference.
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