NHEG-Magazine-January-February

www.NewHeightsEducation.org
www.NewHeightsEducation.org
Homeschool Is
Unconstitutional?
That’s What
Brazil’s Supreme
Court Ruled.
The idea that the state should
protect children from their
parents should be cause for
astonishment among liberty
defenders.
The Exclusionary
History of Public
Schools in the
U.S.
The public high school’s unifying
importance, especially compared
to private schooling, is very much
wanting for proof.
By Octávio Arruda
Thursday, October 18, 2018
The supreme court of Brazil, the Federal Supreme Court (STF), referred to as the "Enlightenment vanguard" by Minister
Barroso, recently ruled that the practice of homeschooling is unconstitutional. The trial occurred on September 12, and
nine of the ten ministers present for the ruling rejected parents’ right to practice homeschooling. The Brazilian Constitution
of 1988 is considered by many jurists to be a great, positivist, and rights-insuring document of the 20th century.
Yet despite the popular belief that it is an inclusive guarantor and regulator, the constitution is completing its 30 years in
2018 with another reinforcement that it is a great enemy of individual liberties.
The guardians of the constitution voted all but the rapporteur to deny parents’ ability to choose how their children will
be raised and educated. The idea that the state should protect children from their parents should be cause for astonishment
among liberty defenders.
Parents or Monsters?
Among the arguments the ministers used against homeschooling were:
"Legitimizing this practice could stimulate child labor and conceal other serious ills affecting minors."
"An overprotection harmful to the child..."
"Brazil is a very large, very diverse country. Without specific legislation establishing frequency monitoring, I am afraid
that we will have major problems with school drop-out. Brazil already has one of the highest dropout rates. Without
detailed congressional regulations, with pedagogical and socialization evaluations, we will have scholastic evasion of home
teaching.”
Such statements prove that the court considers the parents of students who adopt homeschooling to be more negligent
and abusive than the Brazilian state itself despite the fact that it is responsible for what is considered one of the greatest
negative examples of public education in the world in almost all indexes and rankings, including PISA and The Learning
Curve.
The Law Only Serves the State
Another name for the Federative Republic of Brazil could be, easily, "Bastiat’s Nightmare." A reading of the French economist’s
The Law should amaze any Brazilian because all legal norms in Brazil protect everything except the freedom and
property of its citizens, including, unfortunately, their own bodies and their children. The complete perversion of the law
is clear in the Brazilian homeschooling scenario, and it is impossible not to relate this situation to the warnings given in
Bastiat’s book:
By Neal McCluskey
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
If someone told you that public high schools have taken people with political and social power and brought them together—to
the exclusion of other people—would you celebrate those schools? Probably not. But that is essentially what a
new Atlantic article does in extolling public high schools and attacking school choice.
The piece, by English professor Amy Lueck, asserts that public schools—particularly high schools—have been crucial,
unifying institutions. After criticizing US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for calling public schools a “dead end”
(DeVos actually said monopolistic public schooling is a dead end for innovation), Lueck offers the following:
Far from being a “dead end,” for a long time the public school—particularly the public high school—served an important
civic purpose: not only as an academic training ground, but also as a center for community and activity in American cities.
The public high school’s unifying importance, especially compared to private schooling, is very much wanting for proof.
Lueck talks a lot about public high school football games, dances, yearbooks, and supporting the country in World War II
to back her thesis but says nothing about whether private schools did the same things. Of course, they did. She also says
nothing about whether public high schools were especially effective in forming good citizens, while the research suggests
that private schools and other schools of choice actually do better jobs than traditional public schools inculcating
civic values such as voting, political tolerance, and volunteering in one’s community.
More important than ignoring what private schools have done, though, is what Lueck concedes in a few welcome but
quick admissions: public high schools have a highly discriminatory history. This is not just with egregious segregation
of African Americans, which Lueck mentions, but also in some places Mexican Americans and Asian Americans. Public
schools have also been demeaning places for immigrants, and from early on in the history of public schooling, numerous
Roman Catholics felt they had no choice but to stay out of the often de facto Protestant—and sometimes openly hostile—public
schools. Indeed, by 1970 more than 1 million students attended Catholic high schools. But Lueck somehow
doesn’t mention Catholics at all, including the recent evidence that Catholic schools are powerful forces for community
cohesion. And Catholics have hardly been the only religious dissenters against the coerced uniformity of public schooling.
“The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to
exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to
protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.
How has this perversion of the law been accomplished? And what have been the results?
The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.”
— From The Essential Frédéric Bastiat, published by FEE
The indignation from the defenders of individual freedom in Brazil was profound, and even more so because the Ministers'
decision is in accordance with the law. The Brazilian constitution mandates the attendance of children in school,
and it is saddening that the problem is not in the decision of the magistrates, but in the 1988 constitution which makes
Brazilian citizens nothing more than state property.
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
78 NHEG Magazine | January - February 2019
https://fee.org/
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
https://fee.org/
January - February 2019 | NHEG Magazine 79