State supreme

I have said this before, and I'll probably say it again.  Having freedom means that I am free to fail.

Where this gets dicey in our modern American minds is when it comes to children.  If my failure means difficult circumstances for my children, should I still be free to fail.  Again, I say yes.

Consider those who founded our nation.  They left the civilization of western Europe at great risk to themselves and their children to find a place where they could live in freedom.  In most cases, they sought a place where they could worship the God of the Bible as their conscience and understanding of the word dictated.  During the voyages across the Atlantic, fathers died.  Mothers died.  Children died.  Should that state have stepped in to prevent this "abuse" from parents?

The real abuse, though, in the mind of the Church of England and the mind of the Vatican, was that the parents would have the arrogance and the audacity to presume to teach their children what the Bible said.  Only the "Church" had the authority to do such a thing, so they believed.

We look back on those pages of history and shake our heads that anyone would allow a nation to become like that and worse, that we would let the Church become like that.

Fast forward 500 years.

It's happening again.  Consider this from the California Law Review*:

• There are legal and constitutional limits on the ability of parents who home school “to teach their children idiosyncratic and illiberal beliefs and values."

Oh, really?  As a parent I'm limited as to what I can teach my child?!  How 'bout this from a George Washington Law School professor:

• "The growing reliance on homeschooling comes into direct conflict with assuring that children are exposed to such constitutional values."

The value she lauds is tolerance.  Continuing,

• "Indeed, the long-term consequences for the child being home schooled or sent to a private school cannot be overstated. The total absence of regulation over what and how children are taught leaves the child vulnerable to gaining a sub-par or non-existent education from which they may never recover."

What is the solution to this problem of parental autonomy where dad and mom teach their children as they see fit?

• "[T]he more appropriate suggestion for our current educational dilemma is that public education should be mandatory and universal."

Ah.  No private school.  No home school.  Just public schools.  Shall we use an adjective that adds a bit more clarity?  Let's try state schools.

We reel in our minds over what the Catholic Church and the Church of England did during their darkest days.   We shake our heads in disbelief that Nazi Germany made little Nazis out of the children by imposing formal training and creating the Hitler Youth.  So why do we not shudder when the UN and educators in our own country begin asserting that state education be mandatory and that it be mandatory at a younger and younger age?

Here's the deal.  Every education form has some fundamental worldview as its foundation.  Whose worldview will undergird the education of my children?  At this point, parents have a choice in how their children will be educated.  They can opt for the state school.  They can opt for a private school with a worldview that has birthed that private school in the first place.  Or they can opt to school their children at home.

(By the way, where are all of the atheistic private schools?  Is their lack because there is no need?)

So here, again, we speed toward an historic crossroad.  Will parents be allowed the freedom to fail by educating their children in the manner that they see fit, or will the state step in to prevent such abuse by insuring our children get a "proper education?"

I can't believe I'm asking that on the threshold of 2011 America.
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* All quotes taken from a speech by Michael Farris and transcripted here.