Newspaper article:
Los Angeles - A California judge ruled that parents without teaching credentials cannot legally home-school their children, and then asserted, "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children."
News conference:
"Ladies and gentlemen of the media, thank you for attending our Posturing & Image Management Event today. I will now turn the proceedings over to our Chief Legalcrat, Sue Pantzoff, commissar of the Department of Unjustified Prosecutions for the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia."
"Thank you Mr. Flack. There has been so much debate over this ruling during the past few months that we finally decided to stage this happening during prime time to clarify the state's position and to give myself a photo op. I'll make this earth-shaking announcement quick and easy so you reporters can understand it and then parrot it back to your editors who will then repeat it to the public verbatim. Ready? Kalifornia will vigorously prosecute all unauthorized unqualified uncredentialed parents who try to home-school their own children. Home-schooling is a dangerous threat to our economic way of life. Any questions?"
"Cindy Kayshan of the Sacramento BeeEss. How is home-schooling a threat to our economy?"
"Forced
government schooling justifies property taxes. Property taxes for
schools are vital to our economy because they fill the pockets of the
school-construction industry and the textbook-publishing industry and
the school-lunch-program food-processing industry and the
school-bus-fleet sales industry and the Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder pharmaceutical industry and the state
teacher-training and
-credentialing industry, to name just a few.
Those taxes pay the bloated salaries and benefits and retirement
plans of the education bureaucracy. A tiny percentage of that money
trickles down to pay the salaries of classroom teachers who pay dues
to the their unions that keep the pockets of union officers bulging
with bloated salaries and benefits and retirement plans and, more
importantly, also create big fat slush funds to funnel money into the
pockets of education lobbyists who funnel money into the pockets of
state assemblycrats. You think anyone would run for public office if
all they got was the official salary for that office?"
"Mike Crowfone of Endlessly Repeated News Channel. So what if some people home-school their kid? They're still forced to pay property taxes in the school district where they live."
"Let me over-simplify this for you. Schools are allocated money based on the number of kiddy butts in each kiddy seat in each kiddy classroom. Every kid being taught at home by an unauthorized unqualified uncredentialed parent is one less kiddy butt in a classroom somewhere, which means one more decrease in state allocated money. That's a financial threat to the whole system. An estimated 166,000 home-schooled butts not in public-school seats is an estimated 166,000 threats to the system."
"Cameron Closeup from BlabberCast News. Isn't the purpose of public education to benefit the schoolchildren?"
"Schoolchildren? Are you kidding? Oh, that's right, you went through one of our government schools, didn't you? I guess they didn't teach you that the primary purpose of bureaucracies is to benefit the bureaucrats who run them."
"Libby Terrion of the Free Press. What about the idea that the Constitution doesn't give parents the right to home-school? Isn't it true that rights don't come from constitutions? Isn't the purpose of a constitution to define and limit the powers of governments? Shouldn't the judge's ruling have been that the Constitution does not grant the state any power to interfere with the right of parents to home-school their children?"
"You there! Police officers! This crazed radical anarchist lunatic is threatening my taxpayer-funded career. I want her removed immediately. What's the matter, don't you realize she's a threat to your vested interests, too? There, that's more like it, get her out of here."
"Thank you, Ms Pantzoff. This concludes today's bread and circus performance."
Garry Reed is a longtime advocate of the libertarian philosophy of non-coercion that espouses personal autonomy and individual responsibility, civil rights and economic liberty, maximum freedom and minimum government. His Web site is (http://www.freecannon.com).
