The right of California parents to homeschool their children is in jeapordy. A Court recently ruled that they found no right to homeschool in the state constitution, and, as John Stossel writes today, there is legitimate worry than any legislative action taken to protect homeschoolers will end up seriously restricting the practice since so many of the policymakers take marching orders for unions.
There is plenty of evidence that homeschoolers come away with better educations than their peers taught in government-run public schools. But that should really be beside the point in this question. The real issue is that parents shouldn’t have to send their kids to be indoctrinated in government schools if they don’t want to and are willing to educate them themselves. Stossel makes the further point that this is really about how we consider what is legal in a free society:
I think the state court is looking at the state Constitution upside down. The court finds no constitutional right to homeschool one’s children. But in a free country, people are free to do anything not expressly prohibited by law. If the Constitution is silent about homeschooling, then the right is reserved to the people. That’s how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution said things are supposed to work.