The War on Education

The governments' policy with regards to education could easily be called “The War on Education” in the sense that the War on Drugs was supposed to eliminate drugs and the War on Poverty was supposed to eliminate poverty, except that unlike the other two this particular war has been successful.

California has done much in recent years to bring the whole conflict on education to the fore, because while other states are quibbling about stilly attempts to insert creationism into the science curriculum California has been arguing the basic premises of the educational system, and coming to the wrong conclusion.

Many people are familiar with a recent ruling against Home Schooling as issued by the California Judicial System. It is bad, but it was bad before the ruling as California has always been hostile to home schooling. The only people who are actually authorized to home school are credentialed educators. The rest have been using a loophole in the law that allows parents to declare their home a private school and thus private school the children at home. While the ruling has prompted potential reform of the law in a way that might increase liberty, it also has the potential to close the loophole instead.

But this needs to be viewed in light of a slightly older ruling issued by the California Judicial System. In the city of Palmdale the students in the elementary school were given very sexually explicit surveys. When parents protested, the courts decreed that parents had no right to protest what the school teaches once the child is handed over to the government schools.

These two items taken together help paint a more full picture of the nature of the problem. Parents cannot withhold their children from government schools, and once parents deliver their children to government schools they have no grounds on which to protest what the schools decide to teach.

Now combine that with the statement of the judge in the home school case

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,"

A parent must send their child to school, the school is there to teach loyalty to the state, and parents have no grounds on which to protest any topic the school decides is necessary for the education of the children.

It’s bad enough that the schools fail to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to have to pay for this alternative education really is modern tyranny. That is not an exaggeration. When this is combined with programs such as DARE, where children are encouraged to tell school officials if parents have drugs or guns, the situation is positively frightening.