- Federal judges have just hit parents
with a triple whammy. Two appellate courts held that parents have
no right to stop offensive, privacy-invading interrogation of their
own children in public schools. In a third case, the U.S. Supreme
Court indicated that it is not going to do anything to protect parental
rights concerning schools.
-
- It has become clear that many courts
have adopted the notion that a village - in these cases, schools
- should raise children. Judges prefer to side with schools and
against parents.
-
- When a New Jersey mother was horrified
to learn that her daughter and classmates had been asked how many
times they had tried to kill themselves, she filed suit to protect
the rights of parents and pupils. She won on the first appeal to
the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in C.N. v. Ridgewood Board of Education,
but the school was relentless in litigation to assert its primary authority
and the court finally ruled in favor of the school.
-
- At issue was a 156-question survey called
"Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes and Behaviors," which
probed students about their personal lives and activities. The survey
included questions about sex, drugs, suicide, incriminating behavior,
spirituality, tolerance and other personal matters.
-
- Questions 92-93 in this survey given
to Ridgewood children asked "how many times" they "had
used cocaine" in their lives, or during the last 12 months, and the
answer choices were 0, 1, 2, 3-5, 6-9, 10-19, 20-39, and 40+. This gave
students the false impression that casual use of cocaine is common
and acceptable.
-
- Misleading questions can have a powerful
effect. Our legal system recognizes this by providing dozens of
reasons for lawyers to object to questions in court in order to
protect their witnesses from having to answer improper questions.
-
- Children lack the maturity to tell the
difference between questions they should or should not answer. Children
are trained in school that they must answer questions or face discipline
or a poor grade.
-
- Ask an adult when he stopped beating
his wife and expect to be told to get lost. Ask a child in the classroom
how often he takes drugs or has sex, and the child will think he
ought to answer.
-
- But judges who routinely uphold lawyers'
objections to improper questions in court think it is OK to ask
offensive questions of children in school. In the Ridgewood decision,
the court agreed with the parents that the students' participation
in the survey might have been mandatory, and conceded that the leading
questions could be suggestive to students, but nevertheless ruled that
parents' and pupils' rights were not violated.
-
- The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
went further, marking the school door as the line where parents'
rights end and the "village" takes over. In Fields v. Palmdale
School District in November, the judges ruled that the right of parents
"does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door."
-
- Just last term, the U.S. Supreme Court
devoted time and energy to a silly lawsuit over the replacement
of a male teacher as coach of a girls basketball team. When a teacher
has a complaint, the Supreme Court springs to attention; but when
a parent has a complaint about indoctrination of his or her child, the
high court doesn't even want to hear about it.
-
- In the same 30 days as the Ridgewood
and Palmdale cases, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review another
parental rights case in Crowley v. McKinney. The high court is spending
its time this term on a slew of cases about prisoners' rights (even
about the alleged right of prisoners to read pornographic magazines)
rather than hear a single case about parents' rights to raise their children.
-
- In Crowley v. McKinney, the 7th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the parent, saying that the
school has a constitutional right of "the autonomy of educational
institutions." The parent had appealed to the Supreme Court to recognize
the "settled law" of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which in
1925 recognized the constitutional right of parents to control the
education of their own children.
-
- Even though recognizing the Supreme
Court's holding in Pierce that "Oregon's project of forcing
all children to attend public schools implied a hostility to private
education that had no footing in American traditions or educational policy,"
the 7th Circuit ignored its application to the current case. Does forcing
children to answer questions about sex, drugs and suicide have a "footing
in American traditions"? Of course not.
-
- It hasn't grabbed the attention of the
Supreme Court that the 3rd, 7th and 9th circuit courts have ignored
the settled law of Pierce. You can bet the high court would take
a case that requires testing schoolchildren for use of illegal drugs,
yet the Supreme Court refuses to face the issue of requiring schoolchildren
to participate in classroom surveys that suggests doing drugs is normal
behavior.
-
- Teachers are not required to answer
these intrusive questions, so why are children? Evidently, parents are
the only ones who do not benefit from equal protection of the law.
-
-
- Phyllis Schlafly is the President and
Founder of the Eagle Forum.
- First published 12-19-5
- Copyright © 2005, 2006 Copley News
Service
- http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/phyllisschlafly/2005/12/19/
179728.html
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