Tim Ellsworth

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A state appeals court has agreed to reconsider its decision last month that barred homeschooling by parents who lack teaching credentials, raising the possibility that the judges will change a decision that has infuriated homeschool advocates nationwide.

The Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles granted a rehearing Tuesday at the request of a couple who have taught their eight children at home without credentials.

It is not unusual for appeals courts to reconsider decisions, and the result is often a minor revision that leaves the original conclusion unchanged. But the three-judge panel in the homeschooling case hinted at a re-evaluation of its entire Feb. 28 ruling by inviting written arguments from state and local education officials and teachers’ unions.

This is good news. Maybe this time they’ll get it right. I previously blogged about the original ruling.

Interesting article in the New York Times about the increasing number of Muslims who are home schooling.

No matter what the faith, parents who make the choice are often inspired by a belief that public schools are havens for social ills like drugs and that they can do better with their children at home.

“I don’t want the behavior,” said Aya Ismael, a Muslim mother home-schooling four children near San Jose. “Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders. In Islam we believe in respect and dignity and honor.”

I’m glad to see that Albert Mohler has weighed in on the utter insanity coming from the California, where an appeals court ruled that parents must have teaching credentials to educate their children at home.

As part of the ruling, the court argued that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.”

So now the government is in the business of denying people rights that are not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution? I wonder when they’ll start cracking down on people eating Big Macs, because I don’t find that right in the Constitution, either.

As Mohler noted:

This is a controversy that demands the attention of all parents. After all, if parents have no constitutional right to educate their own children, what other aspects of the parent’s choices for their own children lack protection? This question reaches far beyond educational decisions.

UPDATE: The Home School Legal Defense Association has started a petition for the California Supreme Court to depublish the opinion handed down by the loonies on the appeals court. Please go and add your name to the list. This is serious business, my friends, and something that warrants your time — even if you do not home school your children.

From Louis Berkhof (1873-1957), in “Foundations of Christian Education,” by Berkhof and Cornelius Van Til.

The Reformed Christian, who believes that the child is the image-bearer of God, naturally proceeds on the assumption that the most fundamental truth may not be ignored in any part of his education, and especially not in his school education. This fact may well be stressed in our day. In view of the fact that the influence of the Christian home is waning, and that the church can devote only a couple of hours a week to the religious training of its youth, the school is easily the most important educational agency of the present. Is it not the height of folly even from a purely educational point of view to let the most important agency in education ignore that which is most essential and most fundamental in the life of the child? And can Christian parents reasonably expect their children to be imbued with a spirit of true religion if they persist in sending them to a school where for twenty-four hours a week they are taught in a spirit that is fundamentally irreligious, if not positively anti-Christian? The answer can only be a decided negative. And experience will bear out the correctness of this answer. America is today reaping in its churches what it has sown in its schools. It has sown through the secularized schools, and it is reaping a purely naturalistic religion. (Emphasis in original)

Tim Challies interacts with some of Albert Mohler’s thoughts on public schools in Mohler’s forthcoming book, “Culture Shift.”

If schools truly are “prime battlegrounds for cultural conflicts,” as Dr. Mohler states, why would we purposely remove ourselves from them? Why would we give up and retreat from this battleground? If this is where the hearts and minds of generations of citizens will be formed, why would we take no interest in it? If we retreat, we lose our voice.

What do you think about Tim’s conclusions?

We have decided to home school our son next year for kindergarten. We’ll see how it goes, and then evaluate whether to continue doing so the following year.