The Political Inquirer

California’s recent appellate court ruling that stated rather concisely that parents have no constitutional right to educate their children at home has cause quite an uproar. Many homeschooling families in the Golden State and many others nationwide (well aware of California’s infamous “ripple effect” when it comes to social and legal movements) have expressed outrage, fear, and confusion at the court’s decision. How can parents be prohibited from educating their children? What privacy exists if not within the home?

The firestorm has been a bit sedated by a few things. First, there is always the appeals process, which, if it takes the case all the way to Washington, would likely result in a complete overturning or at least qualification of the ruling. Second, and not so dramatic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has thrown a bone to the conservatives of his party by vowing to uphold parental education rights. Others, the media included, have condemned the ruling. From surface appearances it would seem the court is in a rather small boat in their thinking.

Small, perhaps, but the court is not without a few fellow sailors. The ACLU of Southern California has been strangely absent from the debate, and the always helpful National Education Association has been quick to praise the decision.  But perhaps the most aggressive enumeration of anti-home school angst has come from Walter Coombs and Ralph Shaffer, who have written an op-ed entitled “Regulating Home Schoolers” as a response to the LA Times editorial stance that called for a reversal of the court ruling.

Reading the piece, one has to wonder whether Mr. Coombs and Mr. Shaffer, both former college professors, personally know ANY homeschooling children or parents. The article is decorated with stereotypes, generalizations and slippery-slope intellectualism. The authors praise the California decision, but they apparently feel no obligation to imitate its scholarship and persuasiveness.

Take the very first paragraph. The authors write, “A California appellate court has struck terror in the ranks of home schooling advocates by ruling that their children can’t be taught at home without at least some oversight. Public education foes see this as an all-out attack on the concept of home schooling.” Anyone who actually knows the case and the discussion about it should be quick to dismiss these two sentences as ignorant.  First of all, the court’s decision was far more comprehensive than the article implies. The court ruled decisively that, given any interpretation of the Education Code, home education by the parents is unconstitutional. Homeschooling families all across the nation willingly consent to “some oversight,” such as registering with the school district and maintaining core curriculum requirements. What the court decided was in fact that the concept of home education by the parents was unlawful, not only the procedure.

But it only gets better. Coombs and Shaffer seem not only bent on distorting the ruling, but also getting some ad hominems off at anyone who dares to disagree with them:

“The decision has caused anguish among families who fear that they may now be required to demonstrate that home schooling is an adequate replacement for their children’s attendance at a public institution. The court’s decision means that homeschoolers must be given some substantive instruction in social studies and not simply spend their time watching Fox with its strange assortment of oddballs pontificating on current events.”

I hope you laughed, as I did, as you read that. I personally know of no homeschooling family that defines civics lessons as watching Fox News. It is completely absurd to insinuate that homeschoolers do this or that even frankly anyone does. Does this seem of a certain flavor? Why Fox? Why didn’t the authors say CNN or MSNBC? The answer is obvious: The authors are writing just as much out of vitriol against conservatism as they are of concern for the education of children. A valuable opportunity for serious critique, in the pages of one of the most influential papers in the nation, is being wasted here due to the writer’s inability to contain their own ideological tantrums.

And for the record, homeschooling parents need not worry themselves with “demonstrating” the “adequacy” of home education. That has been done already, a few times. Meanwhile, the failure of mass public education has been equally documented, and an interesting question for Mr. Coombs and Mr. Shaffer might be what they would say if, by any chance, homeschooling were already shown to be an “adequate replacement” for public schools?

But I give them kudos for this: They are correct in asserting that a key issue in this discussion is just how effective homeschooling really is. The numbers speak for themselves, and I think intellectual integrity mandates conceding that, regardless of one’s philosophical convictions, home education appears to be a widespread success.

But this, according to Mr. Coombs and Mr. Shaffer, is simply not the case with most homeschoolers. How do they know? Why, they’ve researched homeschooling families on the most concrete, objective method known to intelligentsia:

“If home schooling forums on the Web are indicative of the views held by parents of learn-at-home kids, their offspring are getting an extremely warped lesson in civics. Typical of the shrill screed now running on the Internet are these comments: “This [ruling] is a good example of bureaucratic tyranny! Kiss liberty good-bye, people.” Another wrote: “Perhaps the judge could be impeached for incompetence. Else Christian families need to flee California.” And: “This is another example of how socialist mentality destroys our God-given rights as parents.””

This is sounding more and more like one of those Rob Long pieces in National Review. Give me a break: Scouring internet forums for solid data on what homeschooling parents are like? Absurd. Frankly, if internet blurbs are half the indicators that the authors seem to think they are, humanity is in exponentially worse shape than any of us thought.

Finally, Coombs and Shaffer bid us adieu with one final misguided paragraph:

“There has always been something decidedly elitist and anti-democratic in home schooling. It smacks of a belief that privileged children should not have to associate with the other kids in the neighborhood and that by staying home, they would not be subjected to the leavening effect of democracy.”

No, no. There is nothing elitist about wanting the best education possible for one’s children. What IS elitist and anti-democratic is the Left’s obsession with centralized controlling of education and their hatred of anything that offers kids and parents an alternative to the failing debacle of tax-supported public education.

Homeschooling is not a threat to liberty. Absolutist policies (bordering on statism), like the ones advocated by Mr. Coombs and Mr. Shaffer, are the real threat to both education and all of American life.