Missouri is taking a look at a parental rights bill, one which also includes a specific provision for homeschoolers. It is short, so here is House Bill 1316, with my thoughts interjected:
210.890. 1. The general assembly finds and declares that it is the natural fundamental right of the parents and legal guardians of unemancipated minors less than eighteen years of age to determine and direct the care, health care, teaching, and education of their children.
I am glad that the assembly was able to “find and declare” the “natural fundamental rights of parents and legal guardians.” But even for someone like me who tends to agree with their finding, it raises an immediate problem. Do you have the right to direct the teaching of your child if you enroll him in public school? Some authority has to be given the teacher or no classroom in the entire state of Missouri will function. It is possible to opt out of some aspects of class, but every parent cannot possibly demand that their child be taught a specific way. It just couldn’t work.
2. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, a parent or legal guardian of an unemancipated minor less than eighteen years of age shall have the following rights:
I am still a little stuck on the notion that the general assembly cannot determine what rights a parent does or does not have. Rights are not granted by the state, but protected by it.
(1) The right to make all health care decisions for such unemancipated minor. Such right of the parent or legal guardian shall supersede all other state laws regarding health care decisions for unemancipated minors; except that, no parent or legal guardian shall have the authority to require an unemancipated minor to have an abortion.
NARAL is already declaring this portion unconstitutional. I am not quite sure I follow the argumentation. If MO law allows for a child to become temporarily emancipated for the sole purpose of obtaining an abortion against the parent’s will, than that child, for the time covered by this temporary emancipation, will not be subject to this right. If I am misunderstanding something, please explain it to me!
(2) The right to request reimbursement of a portion of the real estate taxes paid to the county of residence by a parent or legal guardian for moneys expended by the parent or legal guardian for the private or home schooling of an unemancipated minor. Such reimbursement shall not exceed that portion of such parent’s or legal guardian’s real estate taxes paid to the county of residence which would otherwise have been directed by the county to the school districts within the county in which such taxes are owed. Upon providing evidence satisfactory to the county of the expenditure of such moneys, the county shall provide such reimbursement.
And here we have tax credits for homeschoolers. Since the parent cannot claim more than their own real estate taxes, this model only further aids parents who are more likely to be able to realistically afford alternative educational options. My support for “school choice” has to do with giving low-income families more choices, not financially supporting those who already have choices, thanks to their wealth. On the state level, I do not see the same issues I do on a national level. For one, they can fit rather smoothly in with existing law. But that doesn’t mean they do not come without restrictions. The question really centers on whether the existence of tax credits can somehow eventually effect those who choose not to participate. Some more thoughts on tax credits:
An article posted at HEM, decidedly against homeschoolers and tax credits.
And an interesting pro and con article from VAHomeschoolers.org
[tags]homeschooling, homeschool, parental rights, PRA[/tags]
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“Temporary emancipation”? Sounds like doing the hokey-pokey with parental responsibility. If my kids decide to stick their right foot out, the rest of their body is going to follow!
I completely agree that rights are not outlined by our laws, but protected by them. The problem is that judges who legislate from the bench are doing the opposite- ‘granting rights’ based on what is explicity expressed in the law instead of realizing that our rights and liberties are assumed- and so they should be.
So now we have all these folks trying to delineate all these aspects of human choice and giving citizens the ‘right’ to live out certain choices while attempting to curtail others. More hokey-pokey.
As for tax credits, I have proposed before that gov’t is never going to let money out of their hands without strings attached. If HSers get tax credits, there are going to be folks who expect oversight privileges.
For some reason, after reading this post, I feel slightly nauseated.
I’ll come back after the Pepcid kicks in.
The State of Missouri is doing an end-run reigning in the homeschoolers under its’ wings. Better to duck and run.
As Mayberry is in MO, I am grateful for the heads up.
Thanks.
David, you have a representative I really like…out of St. Louis? I can’t remember, but he homeschools and gave an interesting interview over Thanksgiving while I was driving through Kansas City.
Sunniemom, I couldn’t agree more. But political activism brings problems of its own. We have resorted to trying to define everything, which will eventually make our relatively simple constitutions read more like the tax codes, with lists of definitions, clauses, exceptions and mandates. And the opposition is rather powerful. I found this article quite interesting:
The CO Parental Rights Amendment, How and why it failed
Some may question HSLDA’s support of some of these initiatives, but what about the opposition? This was a skilled political campaign, mounted with professional campaign managers who researched the issues people were concerned about then mounting a campaign designed specifically targeting these concerns.
It wasn’t just some group sending out mass emails, trying to motivate its membership to vote a certain way.
While I agree that mandated government oversight of homeschooling would be bad, it’s frustrating to me that I’m paying to send someone else’s kid to school via property taxes and then paying extra money to teach my own. I want to keep more of my own money!
I’m generally all for tax credits…but if public education has been deemed a public good, everyone pays, whether or not they have children.
I did read an interesting argument recently pointing out that homeschooling parents were already doing “their part” by taking on the responsibility of educating their own.
On the other hand, we had a tax credit discussed here although it died in committee. It was for education and could be claimed by anyone for educational expenses, including those in the public school system for school supplies, gas, etc.
But it could not be used for any religious material, so if your curriculum has religious references, it wouldn’t qualify.
Dana, about the NARAL argument you mention above — in effect the provision would mean parents could inflict motherhood on their child but not prevent it.
I understand that is the fear…but if they already may secure temporary emancipation to get an abortion, I do not see where that changes. The law affects only unemancipated youth and these youth would be emancipated.
Regardless, their concern seems to be that a constitutionally neutral approach would hold all available private health care and reproductive decisions parallel instead of treated differently in law based on one value system or another?
In other words, would a daughter also be legally able to seek “temporary emancipation” for reproductive health services related to preventing or avoiding motherhood, such as birth control and morning after prescriptions? If the answer is no, NARAL would make the case that it is a subjective moral agenda being impermissably slipped into secular law.
I wonder if the morning-after care is part of the concern, because it especially does not lend itself to court-ordered status change interventions — by definition there’s so little time.
That doesn’t appear to change the way things are handled now.
This is sort of a side issue, but I have issues with the “morning after pill,” at least given without parental knowledge. We can argue all day about abortion, but the use of this medication requires follow-up care and I don’t know that every teenager in this situation has the responsibility to take responsibility for that.
No argument about that!
– but again, it should apply legally and practically to all such health-related services and substances over which teens might differ with their parents and perhaps seek without their consent (piercings and tatoos, for example, need responsible forethought and aftercare too. Not to mention driving, sigh. . .)
Remember the case of the homeschooled kid with the possible concussion a few weeks back? The dad refused treatment and the sheriff stormed the home.
But from a policy POV, I wonder what would have happened if a teenager in that situation had wanted treatment, maybe tried to get in the ambulance with his parents forbidding it and perhaps physically restraining him? What would have been their rights and his rights and the right thing then, and would the legal answer have been the same as the practical or medical or political answers?
I think we have to come down on the side of privacy rights, parental responsibility, and personal freedom.
IOW, and IMO, unless the parents are doing something criminal, then the school and the gov’t and Aunt Sally have to stay out of it.
Like I said, if my kids as teens want to be responsible for their own lives, they can get a job and an apartment and their own transportation. No one is going to tell me that I can only parent in certain situations as long as I am being politically and culturally correct. I can provide them with a car, but I can’t tell them where they can and cannot go? I can pay the medical bills, but I can’t make any medical decisions? I can bear the burden of the education, but I can’t teach them my beliefs about life? As if teachers in traditional school settings merely transfer information in a sterile environment? Puhlease.
I am in a situation right now where my in-laws have repeatedly disregarded our instructions for our kids because they don’t agree with our beliefs on some things. They think it is within their rights to ‘correct’ our boundaries and rules. So we let them know they no longer have unsupervised access to our kids, and now they have started WWIII and my husband’s entire family has stopped speaking to us, and they are threatening ‘consequences’ for our actions.
Overriding parents who are not doing anything criminal opens the door to a very ugly and smelly boogey-man, and children WILL NOT benefit from such intervention.
Sunniemom, I agree. First wrongdoing must be proven (probably cause at the very least.)
This was a huge issue with some of the kids I worked with. A foster child cannot be denied medical treatment for obvious reasons. It isn’t your child and you cannot tell him he doesn’t need a doctor.
Two different kids I worked with claimed problems with asthma after earning consequences because they didn’t want to deal with taking responsibility. So everyone goes down to the ER, knowing nothing is wrong. Tests confirm nothing is wrong. Everyone’s time is wasted.
Unless their is reason to believe otherwise, the biological parent needs to retain the right to make medical decisions.
Except for the case of incest or abetting the rape of the child, I fail to see how parents could “inflict motherhood” upon their child. Assuming the girl consented to the sex, she inflicted motherhood upon herself…
Quite true. : )
Have to disagree there. Motherhood is SO not about mere sex, same with fatherhood. And I don’t know any mothers who believe otherwise, at least when they consider their own motherhood!
There are certain elements of cause and effect that are inescapable. I always wonder why there is such a push to remove the consequences of sexual irresponsibility, but none to remove the repercussions of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, smoking, or just plain stupidity.
I also wonder why some folks think that unless the population is pastuerized and homogenized, there can be no unity of purpose or cohesive society. All the cool stuff gets invented by nerds and weirdos- get rid of the geek factor, and you can kiss colonizing Mars good-bye! :p
I don’t think she was saying that is what makes someone a mother, but it was a choice of hers (and his) that made the baby. Hence motherhood is only forced in the case of rape (and incest, which really is only a particularly perverse kind of rape.)
Abortion isn’t the only alternative.
Colonizing Mars? Hmm…interesting tangent. Do you think they’d be allowed to homeschool?
If all the effects of sex were really inescapable, we wouldn’t face any choices or decisions, would we?
Yet another engaging discussion, thanks all. I can’t turn off my own “weird” thoughts on this, because you guys stimulate much worth thinking about. I won’t “inflict” that on you further in this thread, but you’re all more than welcome at Snook anytime, where I will muse on about your provocative comments and then ask myself questions I cannot answer.
Thanks for the links. I’m still looking into the pros and cons of tax credits for homeschoolers, as a Colorado homeschool Dad has introduced House Bill 1081, which would create three property tax credits for tuition and educational expenses. HSLDA sent out an alert yesterday asking CO homeschoolers to make calls in support of the bill.
Thank you, JJRoss. You are welcome here any time. I keep meaning to comment over at your place, but I’ve barely been keeping up with my own blog with all the illness!
Shauna, that is interesting. I thought they were opposed to that sort of thing…or at least I remember something in one of their articles about homeschoolers not wanting any favors, only independence. I guess that isn’t exactly the same thing.
I don’t have my mind fully made up. On the one hand, anything that gives people a little of their own money back is good. But that comes with strings, which are fine when people consent to them. But does that mean anything to those that don’t? And should most people opt to voluntarily take on more restrictions in exchange for a tax credit, will that possibly eventually weaken the independence of those who have chosen not to?
More questions than I have definitive answers for!
If this bill passes, we will 99 per cent leave Nebraska. We will take our income and tax paying to another state.
I’m a home school mom who has raised her 3 daughters on home schooling 12 years now. I was raised in a small town public school. I will take PMS over the extremely low expectations and poor socialization of the public schools any day. The greatest thing I have learned is that my family and our faith is the most important thing to teach my children how to become a well-rounded secure successful adult. An adult who knows who they are because they have explored the realms of their own talents without being held back. They are generally not afraid to stand on their own through the trials of life. They can make friends easier, love and respect themselves, their friends, and their family easier. They have seen it. They have the time to think through their problems and one on one attention is given them from their family and others throughout their childhood. They refer to this to work through the tough stuff in life. They like their parents much unlike their public school counter parts.
Let’s see by the time I was a freshman in High school in the 80’s I had seen girls go for abortions without their parents knowledge, fellow classmates so drunk or drugged up in the parking lot of my high school they couldn’t function, the educational cheating was rampant and many teachers didn’t have a problem with it, The language Art teacher was having an affair with one of the boys in my class, the Biology teacher flirted with all the girls while his wife was teaching language downstairs, the PE teacher had drinking parties at his apartment and was having sex with my neighbor and fellow classmate, too many of the kids including me were talking to our parents as though they were the lowest forms of life,,, oh that’s right we were taught to be independent of our parents in school, we learned it well and thought we didn’t need them. WE were told we were to be our own people even though none of us had a clue how because we had been shoved into classrooms or sports programs 9 hours a day with only 1 stressed out adult and only kids our own age,,,every year of our life. Public school is a socialization prison where parents are sentenced to send their kids and told it is best for them. They then take all these kids and force them to learn one ideal logy and their own NEA enforced theology. The only way for many of us to free our kids from this mess is to home school. As it turns out this is the best method my family could have chosen. Our family has families of friends of all ages. Our kids have done every kind of class from gymnastics,, to art,,PE, soccer,,, to caving,, to Theater,, to shooting,, too long to list. My husband and I have fought but we have also resolved and the kids got to see what it looked liked for a family to work out its differences. Wow,, what a shocker in today’s ! PMS,, yep, my GIRLS have seen me learn to control my emotions. You think they will know what to do as they face the same thing? I think so. You see home schooling lets your kids work within the family and the community. That is why so many homeschoolers can go out and face the world’s prejudice against us and be just fine. So any of you considering home schooling out there? You go for it! The first thing you will need to do is throw out public school methodology. Oh,, I have to go,, my 17 year old daughter, who doesn’t smoke, do drugs, have sex, cheat, or graduate without being college ready needs me to review with her “the effects of a catalyst on the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide” Chemistry experiment. This has gotten to be great fun for our family! I hope it is for all of you, too! I love these kids and the other homeschool families we work with!!
And Tax credits,,, absolutely. We are already saving the American tax payer literally millions. Why not allow us back a little of the thousands we have paid in over the past 12 years!