N.H. case: Can a divorced parent veto home schooling?

[MCWAY]

Having home-schooled my kids and sent them to private schools, I can tell you that THIS STUFF is scary.

If courts can dictate you can't homeschool your kids, what's to stop them from saying you can't send your kids to private schools (most of which are religious)?


N.H. case: Can a divorced parent veto home schooling?



When divorced parents disagree on whether a child should be home-schooled, how should courts weigh the issues?

US grants German homeschoolers asylum. Will others follow? How parents keep the faith: The rock of belief is at home It’s a difficult job, especially when part of the dispute is over the religious views that one parent is imparting to the child.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday in a case that pits a mother’s desire to continue home-schooling her daughter against a father’s concerns that the religion-based home-school environment is not giving her broad enough exposure to other ideas and life skills.

In 2009, a trial court ordered Amanda Kurowski to attend public school after she had been home-schooled by her mother, Brenda Voydatch, through the fourth grade. Ms. Voydatch, whom 11-year-old Amanda has lived with primarily since an infant, appealed that ruling.

Religious groups and those supporting home schooling are watching the case closely.

“If the trial court’s unqualified opinion were allowed to stand ... this case could become a model for other courts around the state to follow. This result would harm homeschoolers across the state and potentially across the nation,” argues an amicus brief submitted on behalf of Voydatch by the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va., and several other groups.

Martin Kurowski, Amanda’s father, argued before the trial court that the type of education she was receiving at home was socially isolating, not giving her the opportunity to work in diverse groups and confront other opinions. He also raised concerns that she was being taught that women should be submissive. He recalled one conversation with Amanda in which she said her mother told her that Hillary Rodham Clinton was a sorcerer and that a woman can’t be president.

Voydatch used educational materials from Bob Jones University, a fundamental Christian college Greenville, S.C., but she also sent her daughter to classes such as art and gym at the public school in Meredith, N.H., the Associated Press reports.

The trial court’s decision was based in part on reports from Amanda’s guardian ad litem, who recommended she attend public school.

Home schooling is often a matter of dispute between separated parents, says Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore. He has served as a witness in such cases, and in his view, “the vast majority of guardians ad litem are biased clearly in favor of institutional public schooling.”

Judges often seem biased, too, Mr. Ray says, and the burden of proof is usually placed “on the parent who thinks home schooling is best for the child.”

Home-schooled children do as well as, or better than, their peers, says Ray, citing research...




http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/0106/N.H.-case-Can-a-divorced-parent-veto-home-schooling

[MCWAY]

I wonder how much of this is being influenced by those dunderheads at the UN.

Homeschoolers must never take for granted the freedom to educate their children at home. As attested by the case of 8-year-old Domenic Johansson of Sweden, who was taken from his parents by the government and placed into foster care because his family homeschooled him, in many parts of the world, the freedom to homeschool is being challenged and revoked. Driven by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is a movement to curtail parental rights, and especially home education, through Europe and many other parts of the globe. It is this treaty which gives the government (more specifically an international committee of 18 individuals) the power to determine the "best interests of the child" over parents. Not surprisingly, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been used to regulate or eliminate homeschooling in countries that have ratified it, as part of the child's "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds" (Article 13, part 1).

The United States, one of only two UN Nations that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, generally values parental rights, and the freedom of parents to make decisions (including educational ones) for their children. However, American homeschoolers cannot become complacent; there are undercurrents of potential threats to both parental rights and the freedom to homeschool within our own country, of which American homeschoolers need to be cognizant.


http://www.examiner.com/homeschooling-in-roanoke/nh-supreme-court-hears-case-of-homeschooled-girl-ordered-into-public-school

[Dos Equis]

Home-schooled children do as well as, or better than, their peers, says Ray, citing research...[/i]

That has been my experience.  In fact, I haven't encountered any home-schooled kid who wasn't smart and very well educated (at or above their peers). 

This is something the courts need to stay out of.