destroy the home schoolers in order to save them

Some of my colleagues have noticed the news flurry about home schooling and the sudden declaration of its illegality by a panel of federal judges in Los Angeles. The formal decision features a spicy stew of judicial threats to parents, in a section entitled “Consequences of Parental Denial of a Legal Education”.

That certainly got my attention and that of many friends, since (dare I now admit?) I've been home schooling my children since 1987. Two have finished with honors at good universities and are now productive taxpayers, two more are now making their way through college, and the rest are ahead of grade level and nicely socialized, thank you. Who knew my wife and I were guilty of Parental Denial of a Legal Education? (Gotta get some of that Legal Education. It must make you as wise as a Judge.) To those of us in the home schooling community, the general consensus is more adequately phrased in a San Francisco Chronicle Op-Ed: “What planet are those judges coming from?” I realize the education of one’s children is a culturally subversive thing to do, but since when is California suddenly shy of cultural deviancy?

One can only wince in wonder at the ideal California those judges are contemplating. The state has an interest in many children’s rights beyond mere education, such as nutrition. Perhaps we should require parents to be certified dieticians before they cook their children’s lunch. Or, let’s just go all the way and eliminate the inconvenient families, by requiring a parental license before the first child is brought to term. That would bring everything nicely under control, and our Wise Judges could rule a utopian, aristocratic Plato’s Republic—which is really a nice place to study, but a terrible home.

In my own home town of San Jose, I just noticed a reasonable Mercury News editorial on the subject. Common sense still rules in San Jose!

I make one key exception to the Merc.’s editorial position: All else being equal, I as a private citizen greatly prefer benign neglect to any form of regulation. But unlike us private citizens, editorial writers and politicians seem to have a professional rule: Never make ringing calls to do nothing. (And the corollary: Never be without a ringing call.) I am thankful that, somehow despite all the political fidgeting, life goes on anyway.

Also, I’m proud to say that the two debaters the Mercury mentions are from our group’s debate club. I think it is not too much to hope that, in their day as judges or other community leaders, they will write better opinions.

In the end, my advice to judges, and even to friendly editorialists and politicians, is: Leave parenting to us parents. It worked when all of us were growing up, and it works now.

Posted by jrose [Personal] ( March 12, 2008 06:48 PM ) Permalink

it's a beautiful thing...

I just browsed the gift catalog at Heifer International, http://www.heifer.org. Here is a truly great antidote to all those worst-of-the-season ads urging you to "give yourself a gift" of whatever the advertiser is selling. The idea is to give a family in some other part of the world an animal which can help them create food and clothing. What a cheerful, hopeful charity!

My grandmother, Evenlyn Ashbrook, has been giving us "kids" Heifer gifts for Christmas over the last half century. (Bless her, she keeps us supplied with National Geographic subscriptions too.) When we were very young we were disappointed that we got just a slim envelope, and some other family elsewhere got a farm animal. But soon enough we saw the wisdom of redeeming the process of gift-giving from the passions of acquisitiveness, by giving gifts to people that need them. Rather than to us kids (of whatever age) with full toy boxes.

This year, at the instigation of relatives (thanks, cousin Kris!) there's a little old lady in Texas who is going to get a menagerie from her family... Shhh, don't tell her.

Merry Christmas, all!

Posted by jrose [Personal] ( December 10, 2007 10:05 PM ) Permalink | Comments[2]

Truth, Beauty, Machine Code

I was struck by Roger Penrose's words in his recent book The Road to Reality, as he describes the difficulties physicists face in evaluating each other's mathematical accounts. It sounds like he knows the difficulties we software designers face:

...Mathematical coherence [let alone mathematical beauty] need not itself be readily appreciated. Those who have worked long and hard on some collection of mathematical ideas can be in a better position to appreciate the subtle and often unexpected unity that may lie within some particular scheme.

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Posted by jrose [Personal] ( July 12, 2007 05:50 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]