A judge in North Carolina is ordering three children to go to public school rather than continue with their homeschooling. According to the news report, Judge Ned Mangum is presiding over divorce proceedings. The husband wants his children exposed to mainstream science and the wife wants to raise the children from a religious perspective.
In an oral ruling, Mangum said the children should go to public school.
“He was upfront and said that, ‘It’s not about religion.’ But yet when it came down to his ruling and reasons why, ‘He said this would be a good opportunity for the children to be tested in the beliefs that I have taught them,’” Venessa Mills said.
Just why children between the ages of 10 and 12 need to be tested in the beliefs they learn from their parents . . . well, the judge apparently didn’t say.
The wife says her children have scored two years above their grade level. The public schools can probably fix that as well.
Unless there are many unreported facts here, I suspect this judge is on a collision course with the court of appeals, and maybe he will have enough trouble writing a coherent opinion that he will think better of his initial ruling. He would need to find that the children are being harmed by the homeschooling, not by the constitutionally protected religious content of the homeschooling. That finding would be difficult to justify if the children test higher than their public-school peers.
And yes, a husband should have some say in how his children are educated, so if this husband is so intent on having his kids learn mainstream science, he should use some of his time with them to hit the science books. That way the husband can test his kids’ beliefs all he wants instead of relying on the state to do it for him.
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