John Stossel wrote a piece on the recent California judge’s decision making some homeschool parents criminals that starts out with a foreboding quote.

The cat is finally out of the bag. A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

There you have it; a primary purpose of government schools is to train schoolchildren “in loyalty to the state.”

Silly me! Here I was thinking the government schools were supposed to, I don’t know, teach children about academic subjects. But no, according to this judge the primary purposes include teaching patriotism and loyalty to the state. I can’t imagine why thoughtful parents wouldn’t be eager to send their kids to a government run indoctrination center.

• Home schooling criminalized in California
• WSJ Editorial on California homeschooling ruling
• Bush wants to expand No Child Gets Ahead
• Children left behind in LA
• SCOTUS rules against discrimination

This entry was posted by Brian on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.