Get your children out of "government schools"

Milton Friedman has long referred to public schools as “government schools.” Some object to this term, considering it ridiculously authoritarian – even Soviet-sounding.

But the latest absurdity (or should I say obscenity) from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals make it clear that Friedman is right. And so are those who consider the term “government schools” to sound like a Soviet gulag.

In Fields v. Palmdale School District, parents sued after discovering that their primary school-aged children had been administered a questionnaire that asked them, amongst other things, how frequently they had, “touched their private parts too much,” “thought about having sex” or “thought about touching other people’s private parts.”

(Side note here: does someone explain to the seven-year-old who doesn’t know, what “having sex” is?)

Although the parents had authorized their children’s participation in the survey, they were not told that it contained sexual content; rather, in what has become all-too-common public school deception, they were told that the survey was evaluating children’s “exposure to early trauma (for example, violence).” The parents who sued only found out about the survey’s contents after their children told them about it.

The parents’ lawsuit claimed that the school had violated their constitutional rights to control the upbringing of their children, particularly with regard to sexual matters. The school board and other defendants responded, saying that, “… there is no deeply rooted and fundamental right of parents ‘to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs.’”

Oh, you may say, but surely the court did not agree with that position.

Oh, and you would be wrong. Here’s what the court said:

"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 [emphasis added], when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so."

And just in case you didn't catch that the first time, the court concludes:

"In summary, we hold that there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents 'to control the upbringing 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."

And that “other fundamental right” that the 9th Circuit is referring to here is the much-vaunted right of privacy – the same right that gives us the right to abortion on demand. In other words, although your 15-year-old daughter may have the right to kill her unborn child – and your grandchild – without your knowledge or consent, you have no right to determine how your children are exposed to sexual matters – even sexual matters beyond their intellectual or emotional comprehension.

And when do you lose that right? When you drop your children off at the government school door:

“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.”

Still think it’s not a gulag? Parents, if you have any hope of raising your children with some shred of your own values instilled in them, pull your children out of government schools, and put them someplace where the instruction – and the culture – is consistent with those values.