With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
by Greg Perry by Greg Perry
I’m not surprised by California’s attack on homeschooling. I’m surprised people are surprised.
California despises freedom unless you’re an illegal Mexican (one who President Bush so lovingly calls "Guest Worker"). Even some LewRockwell.com readers have written me saying I should not use the term illegal Mexican. I don’t understand why not. When statistically 100% of illegal immigrants are Mexican why is it incorrect to call them what they are? I don’t hate Mexicans. Using such an accurate term helps pinpoint the problem instead of hiding the destruction it causes. Are we just going to start throwing away adjectives from daily usage now?
(For the sake of any now-confused public school English teachers reading this, an "adjective" describes or modifies a person, place, or thing in a sentence.)
It’s that hatred of freedom that enables California and its leaders make such a big push toward alternative energy and away from fossil and nuclear fuels. They actively seek to eliminate power facilities in their own state but they are the largest purchaser of electricity from other states. They buy electricity from you while screaming at your state’s leaders to get rid of the fossil fuels that generate the electricity they buy from your state.
They are such hypocrites on so many issues. They are such power-hungry control freaks. Why are people surprised they want to destroy homeschooling families?
The California Homeschool Problem
California wants all teachers of children to be accredited. "Accreditation" is code-talk for government-approved.
If you love your children enough to protect them then you homeschool your children. California says you should not be allowed to do that unless you’ve been accredited through the state in all subjects you teach your child. This is nothing more than a back-door approach to eliminating homeschooling in California.
I could go into all the reasons why that is so ludicrous but other LewRockwell.com writers have and will do a far better job at that than me. I just want to offer a proposal for you to consider.
If the accreditation requirement passes, here’s what I’d like to see happen: when a child comes home from a fully-accredited California government school with a grade that is below the median level, that child’s parents should immediately sue to school district for damages. Not only did that accredited teacher harm the child by not giving that child an adequate education, not equipping that child for success later in life, but the emotional harm to that child’s self-esteem will be rampant and only vast amounts of money paid to the family for counseling (and hopefully moving expenses to another state) will enable that child to overcome the burden of being sub-par. I would encourage such families to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act as such a child will be disabled intellectually.
Now if you’ve read any of my writings, you know I’m the last to be lawsuit happy. Some of you know from my writings that I have more than a few issues against the Americans with Disabilities Act. But what do those in charge expect anyway, all authority and no responsibility? (Actually, yes they do expect that.)
Even in the very first Spider-Man comic book published in 1962 one learned the fateful line, "with great power comes great responsibility." The government school wants great power in California and they’re going to take it whether you want them to have it or not. So why shouldn’t you make them have the great responsibility that goes along with that power?
Don’t even wait for this homeschool situation to be resolved. Go ahead and sue them now! Let them know that a C— means big bucks for little Timmy and Sarah.
No, Lawsuits are Not the Real Answer
If you’re familiar with LewRockwell.com’s articles you already know that Lew’s site is great on examination, great on solution proposals, but light on calling to action. By that I mean, most articles don’t tell you to start a letter-writing campaign, most articles don’t tell you to call your congressman (they won’t listen to you anyway), and certainly most articles don’t tell you to start suing people.
A freedom-respecting site’s mindset simply doesn’t default to such call-to-actions. True conservatives and libertarians (the classic liberals) know that mass lawsuits are generally not the way to usher in freedom.
Public school lawsuits won’t usher in any freedoms either.
I really don’t want you to start suing your school districts. If you live in California I just want you to move. Now that would be the best thing you can ever do to help your family be more free. I know, I know, you have a good job, you love the weather, and your kids are learning Spanish anyway so why not stay — perhaps freedom is overrated…
You’ve got to admit that when you started reading this article and it turned the tables from the usual talk against this law to what one can do to hold the leaders’ feet to the fire it spurred a little passion in you didn’t it? You said, "Hey that’s right! What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If they want to administer all education then let them be responsible for it when they fail. After all, they’re the ones who wanted this, not us." This is the mindset I want to encourage.
It’s Also True of the FDA
The FDA, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, successfully took the same power California’s school districts want. Consider a new drug. Instead of selling that drug to dying people at a low cost, a drug company has to spend millions of dollars and years of paperwork getting that drug through the FDA approval process. ("FDA Approved" is code-talk for FDA-bribed.)
Yet, if the drug is ever found to be defective or have gross, unexpected side effects, who is blamed? The drug company that made it. In a perfect world the drug company should be blamed. Liability for ones actions is the central problem in all this. The drug company made the defective drug, the drug company took the business risk to sell it, and the drug company should be liable for the damage if the drug doesn’t perform as expected.
But shouldn’t the FDA be held liable also? If not then what good is FDA approval?
I could re-word that. Shouldn’t the accredited teachers be held liable? If not then what good is the government accreditation?
In 1998, an AMA journal wrote that between 76,000 and 137,000 deaths in America are caused each year by prescription drugs. That number is now 175,000 and is the fourth leading cause of death in America. The numbers, therefore, are growing over time. Has the FDA helped America be safer from drugs? Or has the FDA hindered the drug companies so much in the FDA’s grab for approval (called bribe money, remember) that drugs are more dangerous than ever in our country’s history?
I would say that if you look at America’s miserable 30-year track record of education in all major subjects compared to all other industrialized nations on the planet, the Department of Education’s grab for power has caused more stupidity in America than ever before. Why do you let this keep happening?
What to Do?
Again, to begin the reversal, move to a different state.
To begin the reversal, vote against every tax increase, every levy, every mil, every single name they call higher taxes.
To begin the reversal, homeschool your children. Don’t be a Welfare King and Welfare Queen — parents of public-schooled children. If that last sentence just really offended you I’m only the messenger; you need to look at what you’re doing to your country and especially to your children. How can you teach your little boy not to steal and then put him on a school bus every morning paid for in part by your neighbor’s hard-earned tax money?
Let California have its accreditation without you.
When the government school system does something like this I rejoice. Those in the system expose their own evils when they go one step too far as they so often do. I love it when the public airwaves and websites are full of such stories. It was far worse throughout the 1900s when the usurped power of the government school system was growing without much public scrutiny. It got the way it is today slowly and without fanfare.
Its exposure for the failure that it is will only come about when it makes bold moves such as this. Only when the government tries to take over the role of loving parent and gets national exposure will a few people wake up and discuss the fact that the government has absolutely no business being in the education business.
