So why, then, do you say “Imprisonment and fines are not valid reasons to cease doing what God has clearly instructed as an essential role of parenting.”?

In theory at least, why couldn’t all Christians send their children to public or private accredited schools and then do the obvious–give them their necessary (and commanded by God) Biblical education outside of normal school hours?

Now, I know there are lots of reasons people home school their kids, but in this article you only seem to be focusing on the fact that we believers are to instruct our children about God and our faith. Unless you take the “hot house” approach to education–where you don’t let your kids get near an unbeliever– then I don’t see a conflict with children of Christians attending public school while getting their Christian education at home.

n.b. I’m not, for the moment, talking about other reasons for homeschooling such as a child’s illness or disability, the parents live an itinerant lifestyle, the local schools might be physically dangerous, the local schools might be too low performing, the local schools might not offer enough electives, etc. I’m only talking about the fact that–so far–the government has not made it against the law for us to teach our children at home and at church about God.

For the record, I did not home school my children, though I was very involved in their public school education and I did a lot of “home schooling” with their homework and their Christian education. I know this won’t be a popular opinion, but I see home schooling in many cases as elitist, and that worries me a little. Yes, it is great for the children whose parents are educated enough themselves to teach their children, who have the financial resources so that both parents don’t have to work, and who have the personality to be able to do the teaching every day. But that begs the question: what about the kids who don’t have that? Also, I think some homeschooling Christian families look down their noses at families who don’t home school, like “oh, you’re ruining your children!” Like I said, that opinion may not be too popular with many of you who were home schooled yourselves or who now home school.

Back to the California ban. I’d like to know the reasons for the ban. Do they have hard facts about home schooled children who have done poorly on standardized tests?

And to close this too-long-already post, I have a little personal anecdote to share. I started to home school my oldest child when we lived overseas. I had a college degree, but no training in education. I was told to use the phonics method to teach my 4 year old to read, so I tried. After two weeks, I was entirely convinced that my son was retarded because he could not do “ba be bi bo bu.” I was in tears, blah, blah. Well, this child ended up getting an advanced degree from Harvard, so he wasn’t actually retarded, but at the time I did not know that not all children can learn to read by the same method. Once we started holding up flashcards that said “airplane” he learned how to read just fine. This is something a trained teacher would know, but not necessarily any old mother like me.

I’m not, for the moment, talking about other reasons for homeschooling such as a child’s illness or disability, the parents live an itinerant lifestyle, the local schools might be physically dangerous, the local schools might be too low performing, the local schools might not offer enough electives, etc. I’m only talking about the fact that–so far–the government has not made it against the law for us to teach our children at home and at church about God.

In the case of my kids, there may not be a conflict. But there are many instances of all kinds where a Christian parent would need to keep their children at home. The law would seem to ban that. This is not a law Christians are obligated to comply with.

Surely formal public education and education about God need not conflict. However, laws like this one set up public schooling as a monopoly on education (that is their primary function) - this is not biblically acceptable. However, as Christians, it is not really our job to be social advocates for effecting public schools - but we are to resist the government infringing on our obligation to practice our biblical duties to our children.

This law (along with compulsory schooling laws) will have that effect for some parents.