My apologies to you HTG. I had not read the actual link. I actually took the time to do so and it was fairly interesting. I found all of the comments about
The court affirmed the assertion by the school borad that said parents have no right "...to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance to their personal and religious values and beliefs."
on the pages at 15608 were hard to follow and I didn't fully understand exactly what they were saying. In fact I agree with you, it looked like they were saying exactly what it says.
However, go look at what they wrote on page 15803 at the conclusion. It says,
In summary, we hold that there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents "to control the upbrining of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs" and that the asserted right is not encompassed by any other fundamental right. In doing so, we do not quarrel with the parents' right to inform and advise their children about the subject of sex as they see fit. We conclude only that the parents are possessed of no constiutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on that subject to their students in any forum or manner they select.
I think in some crazy fashion they are splitting hairs. They are saying you have no right to control your kids by introducing them to sex as you see fit. I mean literally, they are saying you can't
control your kids by introducinig them to sex. Why else would they say right after that, "we do not quarrel with the parents' right ot inform and advise their children about the subject of sex as they see fit." They are saying you can talk to your kids about sex all you want, that is your right. However, you have no right to
control your kids by talking to them about sex.
Think of it this way. You have no right to control your kids by telling them about the planets. "Bobby you will do what I say because there are nine planets!" Honestly, I am not joking, I think that is what the courts are saying. "Betty, you will go to your room and not come out until I call you because STDs can be transmitted by oral sex and you are not to have oral sex until you are 47 years old." Your authority to tell your children what to do (
control) does not come from informing your children about sex. It comes from some other place.
So had the parents phrased it differently, they might have done better in court.
I think we can all agree on one thing. If you want full control of your kids upbringing, you have to take them out of the public schools. I am a public school teacher. You have to take them out if you want more control over their education. And I am a conservative teacher. I tell them what I really think. I have no problems telling them right is right and wrong is wrong. I share my belief in God with them. I don't care because I believe in what I stand for. I don't judge them based on my beliefs nor do I grade them based on my beliefs. However, if you worked with the kids I worked with, you would see they get no support at home. I honestly teach them as much about life in general as I do academics. Now keep in mind I work at a continuation school, but still, it happens all the time. Parents are just not raising their kids anymore. TV and their friends raise these students today.
So if you want your children to have a decent public education, you better move to a small conservative town or move back east. They are not going to get it in California and especially not urban California. Take your kids out! Pax is right, get them out of my class or I am going to get on my soapbox. Yes I teach them the content standards too, but I have to provide them with my personal beliefs. They need to follow someones and if isn't mine, it most likely is going to be what they see on TV or get from their friends. And yes HTG is right, vouchers would help. As with anything competition is good. If you have no competition in schools, no wonder you get the teachers and the administrators you do get.
Gaiudo, you are comparing apples to oranges. Michael Newdow (however you spell his name) argued that the pledge of alliegence violates the separation of church and state. It was not thrown out because he didn't believe in God and wanted his views to be the law of the land. It was thrown out because having students pledge an alliegence to one nation under God is government sponsored religion. You can still say you believe in God, I can tell my students I believe in God, you can still say what you want.
When the majority of a school district says they want to have sex education, by sending your student to school there, you agree to their learning about sex education. Go read through
the actual decision. It won't take long and it is fairly interesting. You will see that
Parents have a right to inform their children when and as they wish on the subject of sex; they have no constitutional right, however, to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so. Neither Meyer nor Pierce provides support for the view that parents have a right to prevent a school from providing any kind of information — sexual or otherwise — to its students. As the Brown court said, “Meyer and Pierce do not encompass [the] broad-based right [the parent-plaintiffs seek] to restrict the flow of information in the public schools.” Id. at 534. Although the parents are legitimately concerned with the subject of sexuality, there is no constitutional reason to distinguish that concern from any of the countless moral, religious, or philosophical objections that parents might have to other decisions of the School District — whether those objections regard information concerning guns, violence, the military, gay marriage, racial equality, slavery, the dissection of animals, or the teaching of scientifically-validated theories of the origins of life. Schools cannot be expected to accommodate
the personal, moral or religious concerns of every parent. Such an obligation would not only contravene the educational mission of the public schools, but also would be impossible to satisfy.
As the First Circuit made clear in Brown, once parents make the choice as to which school their children will attend, their fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished. The constitution does not vest parents with the authority to interfere with a public school’s decision as to how it will provide information to its students or what information it will provide, in its classrooms or otherwise. Perhaps the Sixth Circuit said it best when it explained, “While parents may have a fundamental right to decide whether to send their child to a public school, they do not have a fundamental right generally to direct how a public school teaches their child. Whether it is the school curriculum, the hours of the school day, school discipline, the timing and content of examinations, the individuals hired to teach at the school, the extracurricular activities offered at the school or, as here, a dress code, these issues of public education are generally ‘committed to the control of state and local authorities.’ ” We endorse and adopt the Sixth Circuit’s view.
If we allowed this to go through, every single aspect of the teacher's curriculum could be controlled in the interests of every single parent and child. As the court has said, this would be impossible to make work.
Again the choice is clear. If you don't like the public schools, you have to move your kid out of them. The only way you can change the public schools is to go to the school board, get on the school board, or be an administrator. If that won't work because the majority of the people around you agree with the job the school is doing, you have to take your kid out. That is just the way it is.
