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is mandatory school for kids constitutional?


RamonAtila
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Do you like your children unsupervised running around the place you live marking their territory?

 

Historically kids were exempted for farming duties and in some rural communities still are.

 

Is higher education a right though? Not everyone is meant for college.

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that doesn't really answer my question, but based on your last comment i wonder why there even is a higher education, why the material taught in college isnt taught to minors in school. whos to say that kids cant grasp that level of knowledge if you don't try.

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I don't know much about the constitution. please enlighten me. where does it say minors must go to school? isnt this infringing on a kids freedom to not want an education?

 

educate me please.

Compulsory education is a state issue. There need not be anything in the Constitution that allows it, but merely nothing in the Constitution that forbids it.

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And, to spell it out, there's nothing that forbids it.

 

If there was, it would've been fought decades ago. But there is A HUGE benefit to society from compulsory education.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I don't know much about the constitution. please enlighten me. where does it say minors must go to school? isnt this infringing on a kids freedom to not want an education?

 

educate me please.

I'm no constitutional scholar or anything, but I would have to say that:

 

1. Nothing in the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom from education

2. The 10th Amendment essentially says that any power not given to the federal government, is granted to states

 

Therefore, if a state wishes to pass a law requiring children to go to school, it is constitutional. At least that is my take, anyway.

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It's not in the Constitution, but it is law. The courts over the years though have had to make concessions to home schooling, private schools, and other forms of schooling not govt run.

 

People don't think about it but you don't have a lot of rights until you turn 18.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

It's not in the Constitution, but it is law. The courts over the years though have had to make concessions to home schooling, private schools, and other forms of schooling not govt run.

 

People don't think about it but you don't have a lot of rights until you turn 18.

Agreed, and I meant that I include those options as forms of schooling and education, just in case I wasn't clear. They all have to comply with certain standards to ensure minors receive an education, just like schools have to. I probably should have phrased it as children don't have the constitutional right to choose not to receive an education, and I don't see anything constitutionally that prohibits states from making education mandatory. If I am not mistaken, most states make it mandatory up until at least the age of 14, and I think some all the way up to 18.

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Back then part of the law was to have educated kids entering the work force. Then it became a way help child labor laws by keeping kids in school and out of the factories. Today it would be a way to keep the little fockers occupied for 8 hours a day.

 

Like I said, minors don't have full rights afforded to adults. So legally they couldn't even go to court because because of labor laws most jobs are out of the question. You can't legally drive until you're 16. The burden then falls to the parents, and lord knows today some parents couldn't be bothered with that extra responsibly.

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What rights are you referring to? Their political rights?

 

What I was referring to are their inalienable rights, which are frequently trampled on. The biggest example there being the fact that spanking is still legal all over the country. Children are literally the only demographic of people who can legally be physically assaulted without penalty. Just in general their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness are constantly being limited, by government, parents, and other adults in the child's life.

 

While the US Constitution doesn't offer a right to education for all, unlike many other countries. We do have federal laws concerning the education of students with disabilities. They're also given the right to a "free and appropriate education" but I can guarantee you that governmental agencies across the country throw this one right out the window. Hell, Texas is still in deep after the Houston Chronicle did an expose on the TEA and individual districts denying special needs students their "appropriate education" on arbitrary grounds. (Which, honestly, wasn't a surprise. I'd guess that 40-60% of the people we know who home school do so because the public schools refused to meet the needs of their students.)

 

Anyway, my point was that children have many rights and many of the same basic, human rights as adults, but very few protections for them that are actually enforced. Or, at the very least, children's rights are near the bottom of the bucket of concern when it comes to human rights, because a lot of people (most people?) prefer to just assume that "children have no rights".

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How has government interfered with children's liberty and pursuits of happiness? Did someone take their Happy Meal away?

 

Do you have any stats on the rates of infliction of corporal punishment over the years? I'd expect that they've gone down significantly over the last couple of decades, but I don't expect it to be zero. Would making it illegal achieve that?

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What rights are you referring to? Their political rights?

 

What I was referring to are their inalienable rights, which are frequently trampled on. The biggest example there being the fact that spanking is still legal all over the country. Children are literally the only demographic of people who can legally be physically assaulted without penalty. Just in general their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness are constantly being limited, by government, parents, and other adults in the child's life.

 

While the US Constitution doesn't offer a right to education for all, unlike many other countries. We do have federal laws concerning the education of students with disabilities. They're also given the right to a "free and appropriate education" but I can guarantee you that governmental agencies across the country throw this one right out the window. Hell, Texas is still in deep after the Houston Chronicle did an expose on the TEA and individual districts denying special needs students their "appropriate education" on arbitrary grounds. (Which, honestly, wasn't a surprise. I'd guess that 40-60% of the people we know who home school do so because the public schools refused to meet the needs of their students.)

 

Anyway, my point was that children have many rights and many of the same basic, human rights as adults, but very few protections for them that are actually enforced. Or, at the very least, children's rights are near the bottom of the bucket of concern when it comes to human rights, because a lot of people (most people?) prefer to just assume that "children have no rights".

I don't know how those are rights that are being trampled on. Spankings? Come on now. Corporal punishment has been been almost outlawed since I was a kid back in the 80s. I was in 3rd grade when schools were denied the ability to physically punish a child. As far as what goes on at home anything more than a simple spanking gets the law involved. I believe in being able to spank a child. I don't however believe in beating a child. How you discipline your child is up to you as long as you don't cross the boundaries of the law.

 

As far as special needs kids deserving a fair education, that unfortunately has a lot to do with numbers. In most areas there just aren't enough trained and qualified people to handle these kids. And that's even when school budgets allow for more than one or two of those teachers. Yes there are instances where the money doesn't afford a school to staff for special needs and other programs like esol. That is unfortunate. Here in Tampa I can tell you that there aren't enough trained teachers to handle these kids. My wife is a 7th grade teachers and she laments that these kids get lost in regular classes.

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I started here when I was 24. I'll be 42 next month. I've always been a registered Republican with some liberal views. Hell I still have liberal views on some things. Looking back my mother was a staunch Democrat. Most black women are/were. When I got older I noticed that a lot of her views were actually conservative. I never said anything to her about it. She voted for and loved Obama, but she told people in the 80s to go to hell when they said she should vote for Jessie Jackson because he was black. She went to her grave despising that man.

 

I guess the older I get the more my conservative side comes out. I can be hard to gauge though. I'm a black male in his forties that's a metal head, conservative, sports loving(even hockey), that likes sci-fi fantasy, and 80s comedies.

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I know exactly who you are! I guess that's why your conservative leanings really have thrown me in the Trump era. Demographically you should totally be on my team....

 

But for reals, this speaks to what I've come to think is the real problem. Politicians and the media have utterly destroyed the middle ground. Like Fozzie said in the healthcare thread, you either agree, or are 100% antithetical to the message and should die!

 

There's no room for centrists or people who identify with one party, but aren't afraid to lean toward the other. Both the GOP and the DEMs are too bust hating each other and playing the vote getting game that it's forcing normal people with varying views to fall into opposing sides.

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RamonAtila

 

Depends on what constitution you're referring to. State or federal? Laws making education mandatory are done at the state level. There is no federal mandatory education law.

 

Whether these laws are constitutional at the state level depends on that state's constitution. Do you have a particular state in mind? I know some states' constitutions better than others.

 

At the federal level, no, a law requiring mandatory education would probably be unconstitutional. I'm not sure under what clause it could be enacted... even under the commerce clause, which has been vastly broadened over the last century to the point where Congress can do damn near anything, it probably still couldn't come in. That is, assuming today's Supreme Court. If, on the other hand, we had a 9 (or maybe even 7) liberal justice court, they would probably find it constitutional. I think the current composition of the 9th circuit would probably find it constitutional also.

 

Now, the more interesting/thorny constitutional question is whether the federal government could effectively make education mandatory, by say, conditioning federal education funds (or other funds) on education requirements. There is a whole line of cases on this subject, beginning with South Dakota v Dole, in 1987. That was the case where Congress was conditioning federal highway funds on states raising their drinking ages to 21. The court said they could do that under the spending clause, by a 7-2 vote.

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