The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A Los Angeles County court has declared homeschooling illegal in California, but it has agreed to rehear the case in June. At issue is a court decree that ordered the parents of ÒRachel L.Ó to send her to a public or private school, where she can get a Òlegal education.Ó Except for the rare case when parents already hold state teaching credentials, California parents who find public schools intolerable and cannot locate or afford a suitable private school were effectively branded as outlaws if they choose to instruct their child at home. California legislators were entitled to enact this blanket prohibition, according to the court, because they feared the supposed social disorder that would result from Òallowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests.Ó ÒAllowingÓ? By what right does a government presume to ÒallowÓ (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your own standards concerning your childÕs education? Government has no such right. Neither the state nor Òsociety as a wholeÓ has any interests of its own in your childÕs education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the governmentÕs only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of its citizens against physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can override your rights. Of course, there are certain situations in which government must step in to protect the rights of a child, as in cases of physical abuse or neglect. But no such concern for individual rights can account for CaliforniaÕs arrogant assertion of state control over the minds of all school-age children. Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a childÕs parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias. Parents are not mere drudges whose social duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory sessions at government-approved schools. They are sovereign individuals whose right to guide their childrenÕs development the state may not infringe.
