Friday, March 21, 2008

Home Schooling Ruling II

A California appeals court had upheld the ridiculous ruling that California home-schoolers must be credentialed teachers. That means that for elementary school-aged kids, a year of college and a year of teacher training in a classroom (why would a home schooler need to know anything about classroom management?). For middle and high schoolers, the parents would have to be credentialed in each area they taught in. Now, if you want to understand the true range of stupidity of this, what this means is that if I lived in California, it would be illegal for me to home school my daughter (in a few years, when she's old enough) because I don't have credentials, even though I have a B.A., a M.A., and a Ph.D. More than that, I would not be allowed to teach her anything other than biology, chemistry, English, and the Humanities because those are the only areas in which I have a degree. But then, I wouldn't be allowed to teach her any of those things because I'm not credentialed. However, I could be hired at a university in California to teach composition, literature, creative writing, and/or literary theory. So somehow, I am qualified to teach adults, but not children. The knowledge I have is sufficient to teach adults, but not children.

One of the biggest issues opponents to home schooling raise is that of "socializing" children. But let's be honest -- the opponents are unhappy that they cannot indoctrinate these children with their own values, and find the values of most home schoolers to be abhorrent. They will object that they provide a "values-free" education, but that is impossible. The very selection of what should or should not be taught to a child implies that the thing being taught has value, and that not being taught doesn't (or at least is less valuable). If you want to know what the liberals who control our schools find to be of value, take a look at what they teach and don't teach our children.

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