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Sacred and Profane

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.

The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.

The ruling was applauded by a director for the state’s largest teachers union.

“We’re happy,” said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. “We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting.”

We’ll cover the insanity of this ruling in a future post. For now, I’d like to point out one of the more incredible contadictions I’ve run across. Self-styled “Progressives” are typically supporters of a “woman’s right to choose.” That is the politically correct way to say that modern liberals tend to approve the aborting of unborn children by parents. Among the defenses are that women own their own bodies and can choose to do with it what they wish; or that the unborn child, if anyone’s property, is the property of the mother.

A large majority of teachers’ union members and administrators and public school supporters also tend to consider themselves “Progresive.” It is these unions and their supporters that are “pleased” (pleased!) with the ruling that parents cannot educate their own children according to their own wishes. So, I’d like to pose a question, when does a woman’s (parent) sacred right to do with her own children as she wishes turn into something profane? For modern Progressives it is not when the women chooses to end that child’s chance at an adult life, rather it is when parents have the audacity to educate their children according to their own wishes. Sounds anything but Progressive to me. I suppose the Progressives will defend the consistency of these two positions (what about their morality?) on the basis that “society” or the state should have a say in what happens to the lives of all children, born or unborn. But that seems a little off, no?

One Response to “Sacred and Profane”

  1. Michael says:

    There maybe a sick twisted logic to liberal though: parents never have any rights over their children. Remember that in abortion, the child is not a child, but something unwanted akin to a cancer. However, if the child is born, then it becomes society’s interest to see that he/she is raised in the most “tolerant” and “educationally correct” environment possible. In other words, if the parent isn’t raising the child up to be a liberal, then society has every right to step over the parents rights to try and generate that result. Conservatism, like unwanted pregnancies, is a disease that liberals wish to eradicate.

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