Christina’s Common Sense

Well guys, finals are over and I’m back to writing about stuff that actually matters.

Ben Stein’s new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is making liberals in general and specifically evolutionists everywhere squirm, which is what they do when their agenda is scrutinized.

I have yet to see this movie, but the New York Times gave it a scathing review. This means I will probably love it. The newspaper refers to Expelled as “a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.”

Well, they’d know.

People who say liberals are against free speech are wrong. They love it—for them. They don’t want anyone else’s speech to be free of their regulation. If liberals were really confident in their positions, they wouldn’t be worried about Expelled. They’d offer evidence, debate Stein on Hannity & Colmes, and engage in discussion over it. But since their positions are indefensible and they know it, all they can do is whine like a four-year-old girl. And I love watching every minute of it.

In a post earlier this month, I wrote about a court case in California that effectively outlawed homeschooling. Naturally, that put homeschoolers across the nation up in arms.

Fortunately, homeschoolers have some big advantages in this matter. There’s a lot of them, they’re well-organized, and they make a lot of noise. They also have HSLDA on their side. Now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is on their side too. In a statement earlier this month, the Governator blasted the court’s decision, saying that it penalized parents for acting in the best interests of their children.

“If the courts don’t protect parents’ rights,” Schwarzenegger said, “then as elected officials, we will.”

While I’ll admit to having enjoyed a few (all right, more than a few) Arnie movies in my day. I’ve never been too fond of most of his policies. But I’m quite fond of this one. California homeschoolers may be squirming right now, but they’ve got some very powerful allies: HSLDA, their governor, and most importantly the truth. Nearly everywhere homeschool rights have been attacked in this country, they have prevailed.

It is not likely that a hard and fast decision in this case until June, as American society hasn’t yet gotten rid of lawyers and sped up the justice system as revealed in Back to the Future Part II. Even after the case is decided,this is likely to be a long and anxiety-ridden battle, but I am confident that homeschoolers will emerge victorious with one more tally mark on the Government vs. Homeschoolers scoreboard.

An 8th-grader at a Connecticut middle school was suspended for three days for buying something from a classmate. What did he buy, you want to know? It was terrible, certainly. Something illegal? Immoral? Cocaine, alcohol, angel dust, Playboy?Oh no, much worse than that. Michael Sheridan bought…Skittles.

Yes, your monitor is working. All candy sales were banned at Sheridan Communication and Technologies Middle School. For buying a bag of Skittles, Michael—who is an honors student, class vice president, and has never even had a detention—has been suspended, stripped of his title as class VP, and barred from attending all honors classes.

I personally think it’s a dumb idea to ban all candy sales in schools. Having once been a school-age kid myself, I can vouch for their ability to find candy anywhere if they want to badly enough. But this school did suspend candy sales, and Michael Sheridan transgressed those bounds. But honestly, isn’t all this hoopla just a small overreaction?

I’m not saying Michael shouldn’t have been reprimanded. But the school staff should consider what they would do if a kid actually did buy something harmful. For buying Skittles, they came down on this kid like a ton of bricks. If he’d committed a more serious offense, what else could they have done to him?

Homeschoolers really deserve a break. I mean, they’re stereotyped as unsociable loners with no friends who’ve never seen another human being in their life and just sit around watching Star Trek all the time (OK, so maybe the last one’s partially true). And on top of all that, they’ve got the government hanging over their shoulder watching their every move.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that all homeschooling parents, regardless of how long they’ve been homeschooling, have to go back to school and get teaching credentials if they wish to educate their children at home. If upheld, the ruling would wipe nearly all homeschoolers off the map.

And that’s exactly the point. You think they’ll stop here? Have you ever seen a government stop unless forced to by its citizens? The government will start with homeschoolers. Then it will go to Christian schools, other religious schools, private schools, and everything else until a government-run public school is the only way to educate (and I use the term loosely) your children.

Even if you’re not a homeschooler, ask yourself: Should the government have this kind of power? Should it be able to dictate how you raise your kids? Unless you’re a liberal, the answer, is probably no. Mark Twain once advised not to let classes interfere with your education. I’d advise not letting the government anywhere near it, either.