I wasn’t going to comment on the case in California since I have taken a pleasant week off from serious blogging but the lead paragraph of an editorial at SFGate caught my attention.

A California appeals court is showing good sense – and a feel for public sentiment – by reconsidering a sweeping ruling that undercuts the thriving home school movement.  SFGate.com

As frustrated as I am with the decision, I still hold that the judiciary should have some measure of decisional independence, meaning that the justices should rule on the law before them rather than the swaying tide of public sentiment and subsequent media attention this case has garnered.  After all, if a “feel for public sentiment” had been the standard of the judiciary 20 years ago, the legal status of homeschooling in America would be very different than it is today.

Rather than an appeal to public sentiment, I would prefer to appeal to basic rights.  Or to the accepted manner in which the California Board of Education and the California legislature have chosen to adopt policies amenable to homeschooling within the application of the law.  Or perhaps a call to rule narrowly, as it appears the lawyers in the case are doing.

Priscilla Winslow, the California Teacher’s Association’s (CTA) lawyer, stated in her brief,

Parents do not have an unfettered right to dictate the terms of their children’s education.  SFGate.com

But who is claiming this?  The law as it is currently interpreted states in the opening of paragraph 48222 (emphasis mine):

 Children who are being instructed in a private full-time day school by persons capable of teaching shall be exempted… California Department of Education

How hard can it be for the state to rule that somebody with a history of substantiated abuse is not capable of teaching?  No one has an “unfettered” right to anything, but that does not mean that the parent must be “fettered” to a state issued teaching certificate in order to teach their own children in their own home.  I much prefer the approach of another advocate of public schools and standards for instruction:  the California Federation of Teachers.

Why create a firestorm, a backlash, that draws time and resources away from the central project of educating children?  SFGate.com

And it makes me wonder.  If the NEA and its various state counterparts continue in this adversarial nature against homeschooling, how long will it be before they make their own voice irrelevant in the national debate?  This article almost makes it sound like it is the CTA against the governor, the legislature, the homeschoolers, other teachers’ unions and public opinion in their call for certification.  It definitely sounds like  the CTA is motivated by self-interest rather than interest in the education of the children of California.

Being unnecessarily adversarial rarely helps your cause, and it is something I particularly wish certain groups within homeschooling could learn as well.  It is unlikely, for example, that Rev. Wiley S. Drake’s appeal to a higher authority is going to score many points with union, judges, politicians or the public.

The Bible, our legal document, says the family is required to educate children based on the Scriptures,” Drake said. “We’re against government schooling in any form. People who put their kids in public school probably should be arrested   LA Times

Perhaps it is due to the selection factor in homeschooling’s early days  (that only the most passionate about their beliefs would risk ostracism and possible imprisonment to remove their children from school) or to the fact that so many Christians hope that a First Amendment appeal would be stronger in court given our history of allowing wide liberties in the name of freedom of religion.  Either way, statements such as these serve no purpose other than to bring derision and hence a sort of martyrdom to attract the attention among those who already agree.  It isn’t an argument, per se, but a rallying of supporters and it has no place in a courtroom.

Except perhaps to plant a seed in the mind of justices that there really is something to fear in this minimally regulated practice of homeschooling where outspoken proponents appeal to a law other than that of this state and this country.  As an “ambassador of God,” Reverend Drake should know something about gentle words turning away wrath, about mercy, about humility and about self-control.  But then last year, he asked followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of the Alliance for the Separation of Church and State after they called for an investigation of his nonprofit status.  

How much does he really expect to gain from this kind of heated speech?  Christians, too, can make their own voices irrelevant by screaming too shrilly.  Even when the public is inclined to agree that homeschooling should be legal, these kinds of emotionally charged public antics could potentially turn the tide against us.

Hat Tip:  Corn and Oil for a nice selection of articles on California.