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Hearing for homeschooler forced into gov't system
- Nov 26, 2009 at 10:24 PM
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Judge: 'Lost opportunity' if child's Christian views not challenged in public setting
Posted: November 24, 2009
8:50 pm Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
The New Hampshire Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of a 10-year-old homeschool girl who has been ordered into a government-run school because she was too "vigorous" in defense of her Christian faith.
As WND reported, a girl identified in court documents as "Amanda" had been described as "well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising and intellectually at or superior to grade level."
Nevertheless, a New Hampshire court official determined that she would be better off in public school rather than continuing her homeschool education.
The August decision from Marital Master Michael Garner reasoned that Amanda's "vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view."
The recommendation was approved by Judge Lucinda V. Sadler, but it is being challenged by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, who said it was "a step too far" for any court.
The ADF filed motions with the court on Aug. 24 seeking reconsideration of the order and a stay of the decision sending the 10-year-old student in government-run schools in Meredith, N.H. On Sept. 17, a lower-court judge refused to reconsider or stay the order.
The denial of the motions, signed by Judge Sadler of the Family Division of the Judicial Court for Belknap County in Laconia, states, "Amanda is at an age when it can be expected that she would benefit from the social interaction and problem solving she will find in public school, and granting a stay would result in a lost opportunity for her."
The dispute arose as part of a modification of a parenting plan for the girl. The parents divorced in 1999 when she was a newborn, and the mother has homeschooled her daughter since first grade with texts that meet all state standards.
In addition to homeschooling, the girl attends supplemental public-school classes and has also been involved in a variety of extracurricular sports activities, the ADF reported.
But during the process of negotiating the terms of the plan, a guardian ad litem appointed to participate concluded the girl "appeared to reflect her mother's rigidity on questions of faith" and that the girl's interests "would be best served by exposure to a public-school setting" and "different points of view at a time when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief ... in order to select, as a young adult, which of those systems will best suit her own needs."
According to court documents, the guardian ad litem earlier had told the mother, "If I want her in public school, she'll be in public school."
The guardian ad litem had an anti-Christian bias, the documents said, telling the mother at one point she wouldn't even look at homeschool curriculum.
"I don't want to hear it. It's all Christian-based," she said.
The marital master who heard the case proposed the Christian girl be ordered into public school after considering "the impact of [her religious] beliefs on her interaction with others."
"Courts can settle disputes, but they cannot legitimately order a child into a government-run school on the basis that her religious views need to be mixed with other views. That's precisely what the lower court admitted it is doing in this case, and that's where our concern lies," ADF-allied attorney John Anthony Simmons said in a statement.
Simmons said the court wrongly interfered with Amanda's education plan after admitting the child was sociable and "academically promising and intellectually at or superior to grade level."
"[B]ut then it ordered her out of the homeschooling she loves so that her religious views will be challenged at a government school," Simmons explained. "That's where the court went too far."
Now the New Hampshire Supreme Court will hear the case. ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson said the lower court is setting a dangerous standard.
"We are concerned anytime a court oversteps its bounds to tread on the right of a parent to make sound
educational choices, or to discredit the inherent value of the homeschooling option," Johnson sad. "The lower court effectively determined that it would be a 'lost opportunity' if a child's Christian views are not sifted and challenged in a public-school setting. We regard that as a dangerous precedent."
Here is the point I was trying to make (below) in my responses to some replies in this journal.... you see for yourself!
Comments:
This is MY journal... please do not stop in here calling me names, ma'am!
And YES, it does sound like Hitler Germany to me, because Hitler did the same thing... it's called "re-education" ...or better said, BRAIN WASHING!
Our rights as parents include raising them as we deem is BEST for them ...the government has NO RIGHTS to our children! They did not birth them... they do not care for them! Should we force non-Christians to go to a Christian school??? If your answer is no, then do NOT expect us to feel happy about our children being FORCED to be re-educated in things that are against our beliefs and convictions - thank you very much!!!
BTW... if you had access to more news than just the far left, you'd realize that this is not an isolated incident. This is happening right and left over the past year or so. Christians are being jailed for their beliefs ...IN THIS NATION!
And BTW, our children do not have to go to a public/governemt-run school to be exposed to "other belief systems" ...it's all over the TV, on commercials, in the grocery stores, on the news, in the magazine racks that stare our children in the face (at their eye level) every time we go into a public place.
We talk to our children and discuss things and they tell us their thoughts ...we have a right, and a GOD-given responsibility to teach our children the difference between RIGHT and WRONG ...and there IS such a thing!
BTW ...I happen to be a woman of German descent whose grandparents came here to the US in the 1940's, and also have ancestors who were German Jews from way back.
I would NEVER "downplay" such atrocities that occurred during Hitler's times! But you have to stop and realize that there were reasons those things were able to take place. Government had MUCH to do with that.
The more prejudice-type thinking we see against specific religions, the more likely we are to see another holocaust.
I am seeing a classic example of that with each of your replies.... I am see classic examples in incidents such as the one in this journal post (which main-stream news media purposefully neglects to report on time and time again!).
We educate our children well about what things are going on in today's world... the only difference is we show them the solution to the problem and most people do not do that for their children! Do not try to force others (parents) to educate their children in the ways you do just because YOU think your way is best - IT IS NOT.
You say that you feel it was wrong to force this little girl into a government-run school ...but you still AGREE with the exact same mindset of the people who did it! That is hypocrytical !!!
I've left your comments up as an example of the way society is going. We are seeing this VERY prejudiced, VERY biased, VERY rigid anti-Christ(ian) thinking more and more every day!
If this were a child of a different religion, being homeschooled and taught the strict rigid rules of their faith, such as the Muslim faith, there would be no government interference or demanding they be placed in public schools in order to understand and be more tolerant of other religions. Why are Christians singled out? And why do people not realize this? I hope this womans lawyers are able to stop this from being enforced. This is supposed to be a free country, and the government has no right to interfere with the way we choose to raise our children.
Well, my friends, if you are reading this journal and are confused by my replies (lol) that is because someone came in here with some rude comments and then came back later and removed them. I figured, for the record, that I'd repost them, being that I had my page still loaded from before the replies were removed.
These are what I was replying to in my replies (above):
I admit that I think the girl should be exposed to outside opinions, I don't agree with the decision to force her into public school when her education was never in question.
And to the previous poster - how insulting, rude, ignorant and down right STUPID was your comment? Sounds like hitler? Really? The school system is holding our children captive and brutally murdering them?
Please, explain to me how wanting a child to have less rigid and more tolerant beliefs is anything like being a ruthless dictator that brutally murders people based on their lineage.
MY issue is with your comparison between this and hitler. I am quite sure I could find a dozen people who lived through german occupation and they will tell you flat out they are nothing the same. Don't downplay the horrific experiences they went through.
So you think the government trying to force her into public school so that her narrow, rigid, world-view will be challenged in a peer-to-peer setting is a form of brainwashing? And not just any brainwashing, but brainwashing comparible to that of hitler-germany - where they brainwashed children into killing people who were different.
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Sounds an awful lot like Hitler-Germany to me!!
- Trust_HIM_Ps57
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