Four children ages 9, 7, 5 and 3 from a homeschooling Catholic family in Notre-Dame-des-Bois in Québec, Canada have been ordered into public school for socialization and non-phonics reading instruction. As Lydia McGrew explains:
This case from Canada, which one would like to think couldn’t happen in the U.S., is a fairly egregious example of judicial micromanagement: Judge Nicole Bernier (it would be a female judge!) ordered four children from a home schooling family into school and, in the case of children too young for school (down to age 3), into daycare so as to get what Judge Bernier calls “socialization.” To add injury to injury, Bernier wants the children to go to public school so that they will be taught to read (or, as the case may be, not taught to read) by non-phonics methods!
Now, this is crazy. The parents have not been accused of abusing or neglecting their children. Judge B. (by whatever ill fate she was brought into these innocent people’s lives) is just having a grand old time throwing around her weight and forcing them to raise their children as Judge B. would, presumably, raise her children. The notion of any sort of familial independence to make judgment calls about education is nowhere in the picture. (For the record, while I am a staunch advocate of phonics, I would consider laughable and pernicious the suggestion that some judge should interfere if parents were “caught” teaching their children to read by a look-say method.)
McGrew also considers an proposed amendment to the (U.S.) Constitution that would codify parental rights, and explains why it might not be sufficient.
June 2nd, 2011 | 10:52 am
In a certain sense, this is not surprising.
The culture gets the education system it deserves. Our poor broken culture has a broken public education system. Which is a big reason why home schooling is so huge and growing.
Canada’s culture is somewhat more broken than ours, but in many ways it’s more-brokenness is simply a reflection of their being a few years ahead of us on the deterioration curve. Let this be (another) warning of what befalls us as we move down our current path.
June 2nd, 2011 | 1:17 pm
I wonder if this will worry Canadians as this Judge has now violated the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
(This would include the belief that phonics based teaching is superior to non-phonics teaching.)
Article 26: 3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Very clearly Judge Bernier has violated the human rights of these people.
June 2nd, 2011 | 1:46 pm
[...] Second, a Canadian judge has forced some homeschooled children into a government indoctrination program to avoid … phonics. See Judge Intervenes to Prevent Homeschooled Catholic Children from Getting Hooked on Phonics. [...]
June 2nd, 2011 | 2:18 pm
It’s more about the hearing disability of one child, and the judge’s contention that they are not giving an equivalent education to their kids, mostly because of a “circle the wagons” mentality. Without knowing what they actually are teaching, it’s half of the story.
Especially since every single link I can find save for the original in french is a recap by pro-homeschooling advocates. I make no secret I dislike homeschooling as a concept, but we need to see all sides of the story here.
June 3rd, 2011 | 9:05 am
[...] there is a dumber reason to take kids out of a parents home, I’ve never seen [...]
June 3rd, 2011 | 9:06 am
[...] there is a dumber reason to take kids out of a parents home, I’ve never seen [...]
June 3rd, 2011 | 12:37 pm
This is truly evil, and the whole premise underlying the judge’s decision can be exploded by asking one question: By what right?
June 3rd, 2011 | 11:36 pm
Purely evil, totalitarian in spirit, evil to the core. A hearing problem, indeed. Stupid excuse. And how, pray tell, would a child with a hearing problem perform better in a noisy classroom with 25 children, than in silence in front of a book, or speaking with her mother face to face?
Yes, there are always two sides to a story. Sometimes they are the evil you do see, and the even greater evil which you had not ever imagined, which lies behind it. How much do you want to bet, if we examined Nicole Bernier’s opinions and judgments, we’d find something more extensively nauseating than this nauseating thing in front of us now?
But just imagine if the judge had ordered the mother to take her children OUT of daycare and take care of them at home. She’d be impeached. The feminists would be putting her in front of a firing squad.
June 4th, 2011 | 7:43 am
Quebec is not a totalitarian state, but for the family involved this is a totalitarian act. I can only hope the people of that province rise up and fight this despicable action.
June 4th, 2011 | 1:16 pm
That’s really the part that makes this whole thing insane. To order a child who would not, in the ordinary way of things, be compelled by law to attend school, into compulsory *daycare* — even if the rest of the ruling made sense, that would undo any “child’s-best-interest” rationale driving the judge’s decision. Is this a precedent for potentially requiring any family, including families whose older children do attend school, to enroll their preschool-aged children in –not just preschool, mind you, but daycare facilities, because not to do so is to neglect, criminally, a small child’s supposed social needs? This element of the case makes it not about homeschooling at all, really, but about the role parents should play in the lives of their own children. Welcome to “Supporting Cast,” Mom and Dad.
June 5th, 2011 | 4:30 pm
I must disagree with Mrs. Socrates. The harm is not by a long shot limited to the family involved. If some vicious monsters dress up in white sheets and burn crosses on the lawn of a black family, and if they do so with the tacit approval of the government, we would never say, “It is a racist act for that family.” Every other family in the area is watching. Every family understands the implications. Every family is “taught” the lesson.
I believe that Christians and their well-wishers need to begin using the “B” word freely. The judge in question is a bigot. Her ruling, too, is the sort of thing that the word “prejudice” was invented for. She has not actually done any research about homeschooling, or daycare, or phonics; she has a congeries of attitudes picked up from mass entertainment, mass journalism, and mass education, rather as a dog picks up burrs in a vacant lot. Anyone who has been in the presence of homeschooled children for about 10 minutes comes away abashed, if he’s ever entertained the notion that these kids are not — note the term with its impersonal and mechanistic connotations — “socialized.”
Hey, I see the “socialized” kids all the time — the good ones, the bright ones, the survivors. I meet anywhere from 100 to 200 of them every year, and spend the year with them as their professor. Some are sullen; some are awkward; some are debauched; some are cynical; very few are cheerful, open, comfortable with themselves, and pure of heart. Just yesterday I met a couple of young men who could ONLY have been homeschooled, and in fact were.
June 6th, 2011 | 9:08 am
@Tony Esolen,
I stand by what I wrote while agreeing with everything that you’ve written. I think we’re on the same page.
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