California Court rules homeschooling illegal Options

[impala454]

http://blogs.chron.com/momhouston/2008/03/...eschooling.html

In a decision that is sending shock waves throughout the homeschooling community, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles ruled that all California students between the ages of 6 and 18 must attend either a private or public school full time until they graduate or be tutored by a credentialed teacher.

I just love it when government tries to parent other people's kids.

[Inferia]

It seems like there will also be a budget cut for educators in California. I wonder how they're planning to balance all this out. I'm not sure what % is 170k extra students in Californian schools as compared to a 10% decrease in funding, but everything seem rather counter-intuitive. I feel like rulings like this will eventually get over turned. Anyway, other homeschooling news, I thought this article was rather interesting. I feel like some of the stories on it mirrors the Long's story.

In the SFgate article, it stated the judge wrote:

A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.

I remember we had this conversation briefly in one of my social science classes, and I've always wondered about it. What is the purpose of education in this country? And what should be the purpose of education (general)? I feel like you can't ban homeschooling if you don't have a set definition of education, it just becomes the opinion of the judge that to him the above quote is the purpose of education. Likewise, the article on Muslim parents homeschooling their kids, they obviously have a different definition of education. I guess in the case of the Long's is that essentially they were fired for being poor teachers, so perhaps their biggest mistake is not joining an union.