Palmdale and Resort to the Courts

In response to my earlier post on Palmdale and parental authority, Oglethorpe Univ. politics prof Joseph Knippenberg sent me his essay on the case; here's his conclusion:

[I]n allowing school officials to sometimes get away with insensitive and offensive behavior, the courts are reminding us that they are not our primary protector of rights. Rather, our rights are primarily protected by individual responsibility and vigilance. The Palmdale parents shouldn’t have sued; they should have burned up the phone, FAX, and Internet lines to the school board; they should have held school officials accountable for rectifying their shoddy research oversight in the next school board elections; and, if all else failed, they should have pulled their children out of the public schools, sending them to private schools or educating them at home.

The lesson here, then, is not that we parents have no right to choose how and what our children will learn, but that we parents are responsible for exercising that right through the choices we make regarding the education of our children. At the very least, we should actively demand school choice, and not just between various public options. And at most, we should bring our children back home, where strangers are much less likely to inquire into whether they “can’t stop thinking about sex.”

This case can, in other words, be a victory for parental control, if only we act like parents, and not like wards and clients of the state.

I agree that courts should be the refuge of last resort in a pluralist democracy.  But in an educational system that does not meaningfully acknowledge our pluralism, the last resort may be the only resort.  Grass-roots action means little where there is no viable exit option.  Unless the school's practices offend enough parents to pose a realistic threat to school board members at the next election, administrators have little incentive to take the perspective of dissenting parents seriously.  In this regard, Knippenberg is correct to call for school choice.  I've always been a bit uncomfortable with the home schooling option, as it seems akin to responding to the surrounding culture by waving the white flag.  But if I encountered school officials with the same degree of sensitivity displayed by those in Palmdale, I might reconsider.

Rob