“One Little Hour”

Over the past weekend various conservative blogs have been in a tizzy about the implications of a recent appellate ruling in California concerning homeschooling. The court upheld the decision that homeschooling teachers must be qualified by the state. Since a significant number of California homeschooling parents are not, they are understandably worried that they might be prosecuted for educating their children as they see fit.

The significance of the ruling depends upon who you ask, ranging from the coming of the apocalypse to the technical upholding of an unenforcable law. Whenever I interacted with homeschooling supporters on a policy level, the right to homeschool was placed on a special pedestal normally reserved for the Bill of Rights or the Ten Commandments so I am a bit skeptical of some of the more extreme claims. In any case, my libertarian beliefs constrain me from being overly excited about government intervention in the educational marketplace at all, let alone banning a mode of education that has consistently outproduced the public school system.

All of that is somewhat boring because it has already been written about ad infinitum on other blogs. But there is an interesting possibility here.

When defending the ruling, Judge Walter Croskey cited an earlier 1961 case writing, “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.” The 1961 case appears to stem from a California state law passed in 1953. Indeed, the California Statutes in general were revised in 1953.

For those of us who were fortunate enought to be born during or after the Baby Boom, 1953 was at the height of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against communism, including a focus on Hollywood liberals with Communist sympathies. The case, People v. Turner (1953) 121 Cal.App.2d Supp. 861, 865 et seq., involved a homeschooling family in Los Angeles who were forced to pay a fine for educating their children at home with an uncertified tutor.

I know nothing about the Turner family. But it is entirely possible, and I’ll even say it’s compelling since it makes this post much more interesting, that the Turners were the “victims” of a law written by conservatives who were afraid of Communist infiltration. Take a second look at that quote I provided earlier: “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.” [emphasis mine]

That is the sort of language conservatives used in the early 1950s to defend their blacklisting of suspected Communist sympathizers. The only way to prevent the Communist infiltration to stop was the prevent the next generation from being brainwashed by their parents under the guise of receiving an education.

Wouldn’t it be truly ironic if a law possibly supported by Christian conservatives in the 1950s were now being used against them? What goes around comes around.
Let me reiterate that all I have is circumstantial evidence and I would be interested to hear from any of you who dig up anything that contradicts or supports my tenuous hypothesis.

Here is the news article that sparked this idea: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/MNJDVF0F1.DTL