Dear Friends,

I am an Ohio attorney, social worker and adoptive parent.
I agree with your assessment about the risks of agency caprice. Many of my fellow attorneys as well as judges perk up when someone says they want a “child centered” policy. You have to be polite, but point out that courts are much more transparent than agencies.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Wolpert

It’s easy to read, thorough, and exposes just how bad this legislation is. It makes me want to show up at the next hearing in Columbus and protest this bill!

HB 371 would repeal the terms “abused”, “neglected”, and “dependent” children in major sections of Ohio’s civil code and create a new category – “a child in need of protective services” This shift in core terms in state law will affect every Ohio famil…

*Doctrine of Parens Patriae – loosely, Child of the State – Black’s Law 8th ed. pg 1144

My name is Dr. Larry Sanger. I am best known as co-founder of Wikipedia, and am now Editor-in-Chief of Citizendium.org, and am now starting a non-profit educational video project called WatchKnow.org. I am speaking on my own behalf, however. I earned my Ph.D. in Philosophy from Ohio State in 2000, and have moved back to the central Ohio area (we are in Pataskala). My wife and I have a two-year-old boy who is very precocious; we are certainly going to homeschool him, and have planned to homeschool him since before he was born. I work at home, and I already personally read to him and do other fun educational activities often for a few hours a day.

I would like to give some personal and philosophical background and then discuss the current issue.

The main reason we want to homeschool our son is simple: in this way he can get the best possible education. Our reasons are absolutely not religious (I’m agnostic). I myself am a product of public education and I always felt that I was never challenged enough, and that having to work at the same rate that other kids were working was very constraining. I still have considerable resentment about the poor job that was done in educating me and my siblings–and this was in Anchorage, Alaska schools in the 1970s and 1980s, where the public schools were about as good as anywhere. This resentment is not toward my teachers, some of whom were wonderful. It is simply that I did not learn nearly as much as I could have. The root causes of the problem are well expressed by John Taylor Gatto’s book, *Dumbing Us Down*. It comes down to a very simple fact: schooling, whether public or private, generally involves having everyone doing everything at the same time, in the most efficient way possible, like a factory. Therefore, the individual needs and changing interests of students simply cannot be accommodated adequately, or certainly not as well as they can be at home.

As a philosopher who has studied political philosophy and philosophy of law, as well as philosophy of education and education policy, I very firmly believe that parents have the right to direct the education of their own children. This entails that they have the right to teach their children themselves. The state no doubt has an interest in seeing to it that the citizenry is well educated by the state’s own lights; but this interest is far outweighed by the parents’ interest in determining what good education shall consist of for their own children. This is not a routine question of liberty vs. the public interest, such as might arise in the case of legalizing gambling or drugs. Rather, the power to direct a child’s education is precisely the power to determine what sort of person the child will be: how much knowledge he has and about what, and what sort of beliefs and moral character he will have. For the state to remove or restrict the power of parents to direct their child’s education would, therefore, be tantamount to the state seizing the right to determine the knowledge, beliefs, and morality of all children in the state. That would be almost perfectly inconsistent with the sort of society we live in, a society founded on the ideals of freedom and self-determination. This is why, even if I did not personally plan to homeschool my child, I would strongly defend the right of others to homeschool theirs–even if I disagree, as I’m sure I do, with many of the lessons they wish to teach.

I have read (and studied) the current rules on http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDefaultPage.aspx?page=255 as well as Section 3321 of the Ohio Revised Code.

In my opinion, if any changes are to be made to these regulations, they should tend to remove barriers or requirements for homeschooling. For example, I see no reason why a parent should be required to prove to the state, as the lines at Administrative Code 3301-34-03(A)(6)-(7) are evidently intended to do, that the sort of education the parent will provide will be consistent with the state’s standards. That is for the parent to determine, not the state. If anything, it is the *parent* who has the right to judge and replace textbooks that the *state* proposes to use–not the other way around. I do recognize that these lines are a reasonable interpretation of ORC 3321.04, however. Certainly, *no more* than is currently stated should be required.

To speak briefly of the underlying theoretical issues, not the interpretation of law, it is exceedingly offensive to my notions of liberty–which are the common American notions, I think–that as a parent I should have to seek *permission* from the state to remove my children from school. That, rather, is my right. To the contrary, the *state* ought to seek *my* permission to educate my children; and I personally will not be granting it that permission. The irony here is rich, considering that I wish to remove my child from state schools precisely *because* they do not do as good a job in educating my child as I can do myself. To pursue its own interest in an educated citizenry, the state ought not to say that it is granting permission, but rather that it is acknowledging the proper exercise of a strong parental right. Indeed, the state’s interest is not in a schooled citizenry, but in an educated one. Of course, I am realistic enough to understand that compulsory school attendance laws will not be repealed, at least not as a result of this comment.

Finally, I would like to address those who might propose to impose further burdens and restrictions on the right to determine the education of one’s children–burdens such as more severe testing, portfolio review, interviews, or state accreditation of parents. Section 3301-34-04 of the Administrative Code, on Academic Assessment, is already more than ORC 3321.04, condition (A)(2), strictly requires; I do not see that the statute requires testing in order to determine “the cessation of proper home instruction”; they may simply ask the parents to confirm the fact.

There is certainly a slippery slope to be feared here. The last thing that we need is for the state to attempt to accredit parents or to impose specific curricula, for that could very easily become politicized and abused, especially by teacher unions. The notion of the state imposing more arduous conditions or tests in order that we may exercise basic parental rights is outrageous. If parents cannot judge their own educational standards, then why cannot the state license and test parents for ordinary parenting? In any event, under the current wording, the state (i.e., the Department of Education) has *amply* executed the statute. Again: so far from the state having the right to set arduous tests and conditions, perhaps members of the public ought individual to have the right to set arduous and tests and conditions for the teachers who will teach their own children. Parents, not the state, are vested with the right and responsibility to determine whether their children are being properly educated.