Loyalty to the State

POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Monday, March 31, 2008 03:34
VIEWED: 19263
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SIGNYM

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 3:27 AM

Quote:
What the fuck!!!? I took my son to Peru because he gets better here. His allergic reactions are a fraction of what they are in the States.

Ummm, as I recall your son was allergic to most proteins, which cause severe underweight/ malnutrition. The doctors recommended that you feed him a balanced mix of pure amino acids which would provide him with the building blocks to make brain, muscle, skin, and organs while "real" foods were slowly introduced. But because of the expense, and because you didn't want to be "dependent" on modern medicine you decided to take him someplace else and feed him "real foods" and practice homeopathy.

You say your son is doing well, but I'm under the impression that you isolate your children from mainstream doctors, teachers, television, the internet, and possibly even children their own age, preferring them to see only people who feel as you do (homeopaths, other homeschooling parents etc.) It may be a seriously flawed impression on my part, and if it is I most humbly apologize.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

CANTTAKESKY

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 4:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
But because of the expense, and because you didn't want to be "dependent" on modern medicine you decided to take him someplace else and feed him "real foods" and practice homeopathy.

Expense is not an issue. Dependence is an issue, and the reason why I investigated alternative medicines like homeopathy. But it was not the reason why I decided to take him someplace else.

We originally took him to South America to spend a few months at the beach, at the recommendation of our MD family physician. While here, I discovered accidentally that his health improved tremendously in Peru. We did a few months trial in Peru, and his weight shot up. It was the same way when he traveled to Africa for 2 months. But everytime we returned to the States, his health would deteriorate again. So we decided to move to Peru for a couple of years and let him heal. Here, he can eat things that he cannot eat in the States. It's the weirdest thing. I can go into more detail about it, but suffice it to say, we are here for his health--not because we want to take him away from his doctors. Everyone in the family is making tremendous sacrifices to live here, and none of us would do it if his health weren't at stake.

Quote:
You say your son is doing well, but I'm under the impression that you isolate your children from mainstream doctors, teachers, television, the internet, and possibly even children their own age, preferring them to see only people who feel as you do (homeopaths, other homeschooling parents etc.)

I don't deliberately isolate them from doctors. I use them when necessary--it is just that I don't find them necessary very often. They don't see school teachers, but they do see other teachers. In the States, I took my daughter to gymnastics classes, dance classes, science museum classes, etc. They watch plenty of TV, though I prefer DVDs without advertisements. And when they are not watching TV, they are on the internet or playing some computer game. I take them to parks, beaches, pools and public venues as often as I can--cause like all kids, they get bored in the house.

Quote:
It may be a seriously flawed impression on my part, and if it is I most humbly apologize.

Thanks, Sig. I, too, apologize for flying off the handle there. I am sorry. It is VERY hard to split the family apart geographically and live here in Peru, and I wouldn't do it if my son's health weren't at stake. Feeling accused of isolating my kids and going through all this trouble for some ideological agenda just pushed a button.

The good news is I heard of a place in the States where my son might be able to thrive. We're planning to try it out for a few days when we return for a visit in September. If it works, we'll be back.

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When you can't run, you crawl. And when you can't crawl, when you can't do that...
... you find someone to carry you.
--Firefly

CANTTAKESKY

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 4:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I know that book better than most believers, considering that is what turned me against them and the vicious soul sucking monster they call God.

Hahaha. Reminds me of this quotation: "What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer." --Bertrand Russell

I know you probably have no use for religious philosophy, but you might like the writings of a Jesuit priest named Anthony de Mello. Of course, the Catholic church has issued some warning letter against him, that he doesn't represent church teachings, but that is probably a plus in your book.

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"I wish to become a teacher of the Truth."
"Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?"
"I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?"
"You will have grown accustomed to it."
--Anthony de Mello, S.J.

CANTTAKESKY

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 4:36 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
No, it wasn't just fine. It is illegal under California law for a parent without a teaching credential to establish themselves as a private school, ...

Can you back this up? Cause, you know, it isn't exactly what I'm reading.

Quote:
Teachers in private schools do not need to hold state teaching credentials, even though many state officials seem to think they do. The
statute is very clear on this point. §48222 requires that the teachers be "capable of teaching," but this phrase is not explained or defined. We believe most people who can speak and read competently in English generally
could be capable.

http://www.hsc.org/legalprivateschooloption.html

There you have it. "Capable of teaching" is vaguely worded enough that a judge (as in this instance) can interpret it to mean credentials, and another judge can interpret it to mean something else. The point it, no one else has interpreted it as requiring credentials up to now. I'll grant that the wording can be better defined to explicitly require no credentials, but otherwise, the law is just fine.

I'll also grant that record keeping for private schools in CA requires a lot more paperwork than in TX. We don't have to do squat in TX other than have a curriculum. But once the record-keeping is accomplished, the effect remains the same. In both states, you can do whatever you want and set whatever standards you want with no state oversight. There is no "minimum" educational standard to be supervised by the state, and no mechanism to make sure homeschoolingis not "abused." And that is just fine with me.

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Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.
-- Anne Sullivan

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 4:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
And Richard Dawkins thinks that indoctrinating kids with obviously false religious beliefs should be considered child abuse. If teaching kids that the world is flat is abuse, what about teaching them things in conflict with current law? (teaching them that the war on drugs is a load of shit, for example). The issue is whether the decision of how I raise my children is, in general, subject to majority rule, or is it a private matter, to be interfered with only when tangible neglect or abuse is suspected. When we start trying to use politics to decide how everyone should raise their kids, I think we've taken majority rule too far.

The aspect that does clearly split us into two camps on this issue is the question of burden of proof. Should the state's involvement occur only after a parent is suspected of neglect or abuse, or can the state pass laws that preemptively require parents to answer to the state as a matter of course.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

Dawkins says that kids should not be called "Muslim" or "Christian" until they are old enough to define that in themself. Until then, they are children of Christians or Muslims.

A lot of this boils down to a definition of harm. You say harm is being physically, sexually abused and proven. On that matter alone I could discuss for several pages, because its incredibly hard to prove that within in afamily environment. But I won't

I would say that children who are denied access to a reasonable education are harmed. Reasonable education means that should be basically able to keep up with state standards, which shouldn't be too hard if your education system is as crap as you all seem to make it out to be.

Without that, kids will face real disadvantages as adults in the job market and unless you are rich enough that it doesn't matter, most of us need to face that world.

So, yes, there will be parents who are able to do it, and there will be parents who cannot. How can you ensure that kids are not being just left to rot under the guise of homeschooling?

Rights becomes a dodgier issue when they are rights over someone else, rather than our rights as an individual. Hence, the idea that we no longer have rights over our children, but responsibilities...to care and provide for them (and that includes access to education).

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 4:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
There you have it. "Capable of teaching" is vaguely worded enough that a judge (as in this instance) can interpret it to mean credentials, and another judge can interpret it to mean something else. The point it, no one else has interpreted it as requiring credentials up to now. I'll grant that the wording can be better defined to explicitly require no credentials, but otherwise, the law is just fine.

It doesn’t make any difference what some home schooling site claims. Their opinion of the law means nothing. The 1953 People v. Turner concluded that a teaching credential is required for any tutorial setting, which means that no parent can declare themselves a private school without a credential teacher. So absence legislation to refine what “capable of teaching” means, you’re out of an argument and most homeschooling in California is illegal without a credentialed tutor.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

CANTTAKESKY

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 5:48 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
The 1953 People v. Turner concluded that a teaching credential is required for any tutorial setting, which means that no parent can declare themselves a private school without a credential teacher.

That is not statute. But this is not my dispute anyway. I don't have a problem refining the definition to explicitly include non-credentialed teachers in the statute.

My dispute with you is your recommendation to "review the law," as you call it, to monitor homeschoolers and prevent "homeschooling abuse" (educational neglect). My point is the current standards in the law (including the allowance of non-credentialed teachers) are adequate and do not need to be augmented. We do not need MORE bureaucratic hoops to jump through to prove we can and are teaching our kids.

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Before there were television and video games, kids used to play outdoors, entertain themselves and work around the house in the afternoons. Kids don't choose television over people. They choose television because of lack of people interaction.
-- Brook Noel

CANTTAKESKY

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
So, yes, there will be parents who are able to do it, and there will be parents who cannot. How can you ensure that kids are not being just left to rot under the guise of homeschooling?

Well, how do you answer this question when it comes to providing a nutritious diet? Some parents are able to do it, and there will be parents who cannot. How do you ensure that kids are not being left to rot malnourished on junk food?

Ideally, a concerned community will catch this and put pressure to bear on the parents to provide more nutritious meals. If the malnutrition is severe enough to constitute criminal neglect, the police and court will intervene.

Similarly, friends and family will know something is wrong when parents don't provide adequate education. If the educational neglect is severe enough, the police can intervene. The court can then review the individual case and order remediation.

There does not need to be a test for every family to screen for educational neglect, anymore than there is a test for every family to screen for nutritional neglect. The law does not need to assume potential guilt for everyone until proven innocent once a year. That is not the role of law.

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An orchestra requires men with different talents and, within limits, different tastes; if all men insisted upon playing the trombone, orchestral music would be impossible. Social co-operation, in like manner, requires differences of taste and aptitude, which are less likely to exist if all children are exposed to the same influences than if parental differences are allowed to affect them
-- Bertrand Russell

FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:17 AM

Scuse me MAGONSDAUGHTER, imma deconstruct that a bit and offer some perceptions, your mileage my vary of course, this is just opinion and admittedly a somewhat biased one given my own experiences.

Quote:
Dawkins says that kids should not be called "Muslim" or "Christian" until they are old enough to define that in themself. Until then, they are children of Christians or Muslims.

Fair enough, one of the oddities of my own family is the specific lack of any formal religious instruction, each to their own path has always been our way, both for most families their morality is in some way tied to their beliefs, and they are only passing down what they know - most folks don't really know hardly anything outside their own belief system in any kind of detail to talk about, so as a device for passing on basic moral standards, any religion will do as a background in how morality and faith work in general.

My sister is agnostic, half brother follows santeria, my father a deist, his wife evangenlical and sisters ex-husband and family are baptist, and yet all of them shared a basic christian instruction to start with, so that one I'll give you, however one must remember Dawkins has an agenda, and an axe to grind with religion as a concept, thus as with any known bias, skepticism should be encouraged.

Quote:
I would say that children who are denied access to a reasonable education are harmed. Reasonable education means that should be basically able to keep up with state standards, which shouldn't be too hard if your education system is as crap as you all seem to make it out to be.

With respect, it is not the place of the State to make those decisions, as stated before, once a person can read, write and do simple math - everything past that is DIY, and neither the State, nor well meaning parents, can force a child to learn if they flat dig in their heels and refuse to do so.

Conversely, there is NO effective means of denying a child education even if you really mean to do it, the curiosity of children knows no bounds, and as a rule they are quite good at subverting attempts to cut them off from information, especially in the internet age, but even before that - case in point the abysmal sex education that's been the case in the US for many years, one way or another, in spite of all the barriers raised against them, they DID learn.

In fact that issue is one where the State standards are so abysmally far below even basic self-protective necessity that it borders on the outright harm that you speak of, giving lie to the ridiculous idea that somehow the State standards are in any way better than the ones set by homeschooling folk - the fact is that the child themself sets the standards, by deciding on their own how much effort they wanna put into their own education, and while they can be encouraged or discouraged, what they cannot be, is forced - that decision is entirely their own, and attempting to take it from them is as impossible as it is ludicrous.

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Without that, kids will face real disadvantages as adults in the job market and unless you are rich enough that it doesn't matter, most of us need to face that world.

Tell it to Brian, who wound up pumping gas because that degree he worked so hard for made him too expensive to hire - yes, companies put a lot of stock in that paper, but all the paper really tells anyone is how compliant you are and how much crap you'll take to obtain a State seal of approval on your efforts.

Lets take the A+ certification, for example, cause it's something I know in intimate detail - it looks nice, and it's supposed to mean something, but most of the "education" involved is rote memorisation of sales floor buzzwords, and information favorable to a particular manufacturer (some of which, I might add, is untrue), but not one whit of actual functional ability to repair a damaged PC is tested, nor is there any hands on requirement, which results in "certified" technicians who've never even popped a case or handled a screwdriver in their lives deval

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
The 1953 People v. Turner concluded that a teaching credential is required for any tutorial setting, which means that no parent can declare themselves a private school without a credential teacher.
That is not statute. But this is not my dispute anyway. I don't have a problem refining the definition to explicitly include non-credentialed teachers in the statute.

My dispute with you is your recommendation to "review the law," as you call it,

Yes, “review the law” as I call it, which means for the legislators to “review” or reexamine the “law” or language in the California code to make homeschooling legal. Don’t tell me you just wasted the last two days of my time because you don’t understand what “review the law” means?

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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