Restricting teens’ rights is causing massive mental health issues and the likely cause of the surge in teen suicide

A woman is facing 30 days in jail because her son missed too many days of school. His 82% attendance record wasn’t enough to keep her out of court.

Just let it sink in that you can be put in a cage if the state doesn’t have control over your child for a certain number of days each year.

Originally the mom got the case dismissed using an apparent technicality in the law.

Public education in that district was once only mandatory for 7 to 16-year-olds. Later a line was added saying that compulsory education was mandatory for 5 to 7-year-olds. But on appeal, the judge ruled that the new law did not overwrite the old one, it added to it.

But why use these silly loopholes to try to fight off the state? If you are going to waste your time on futile efforts, you might as well challenge the entire system.

Where does the state get the authority to throw a parent in jail for not sending her kid to school? Or in this case, only sending her kid to 147 out of 180 required days…

Parents used to keep their kids home from school to help with the harvest or the family business. With the state of public education today, kids would learn more staying home and surfing the internet. And chances are whatever peaks their interest will benefit them more than the factory-school system.

But now the state forces kids and teens into the school system to “educate” them.

So what happens when the state fails to educate them?
A group of Detroit schoolchildren tried to sue the government for denying them access to literacy.

But a judge said the lawsuit cannot proceed because access to literacy is not a fundamental right.

And this is true in the ultimate sense of what a right is. Rights are “negative.” They are concepts that assert that is it wrong to stop behavior which does not hurt anyone. Every action is a right, unless it harms another person. So if someone intervenes in any peaceful action, they are wrong.

You can’t say people have a natural right to something that someone else must provide. What if no one agrees to provide it? Someone’s rights would have to be violated to provide that “right” to someone else.

But the problem here is that the government forces kids to go to school, and then does not provide what they were promised. So the government didn’t hold up it’s end of the bargain.

Of course, when things are done by force, there is no agreement. How long would you send your kid to a school that can’t even teach them to read?

If you could voluntarily withdraw, it wouldn’t be a problem.

But schoolkids in Detroit are forced to spend six hours a day, 180 days a year in a school that doesn’t teach them anything. They have been imprisoned without due process. They have been denied their rights to freedom of association, and freedom of expression.

Hell, they are denied the basic human rights use the bathroom, eat, and talk without permission. That is insanely oppressive when you look at from outside the indoctrinated perspective.

So these Detroit teens haven’t been denied their “right” to literacy, because there is no right to literacy.

But why not challenge the actual injustice from which this stems: mandatory schooling?

They have been denied the right to teach themselves, or seek out some other form of education, for whatever time the state says is mandatory to spend in the dangerous and terrible Detroit school system.

We All Know Something is Wrong…
We see people searching for a way to challenge the injustices they see in the public school system. But they aren’t thinking big enough.

They should be challenging the fundamental violation of rights in mandatory schooling.

Why can a government force children into their institution?

The fact that it is allegedly for a good cause does not justify the violation. This holds especially true as the state fails to protect and educate the kids in its care.

Of course, you can homeschool or send your child to private school. But these options must still be state and often district approved.

In fact, in the 1970’s and 80’s, it was illegal in many states to even homeschool your kids! It is now legal in all 50 states, though some regulate it strictly.

While Christians led the homeschool charge, the demographics of the growing movement are now much more diverse.

Recent statistics indicate that 1.5 million children were homeschooled in the United States in 2007. This is up significantly from 1.1 million children in 2003 and 850,000 children in 1999.

…the homeschool population does not significantly differ from the general U.S. population. Put another way, it is not really possible to assume anything about the religious beliefs, political affiliations or financial status of homeschooling families anymore.

But the state doesn’t make it easy.

An Oppressive Philosophy
Unfortunately, some people share the philosophy of Jim Dwyer, a law professor at the College of William and Mary who claims:

The state needs to be the ultimate guarantor of a child’s wellbeing, there’s just no alternative to that. The reason parent-child relationships exist is because the state confers legal parenthood on people through its paternity and maternity laws. It is the state that is empowering parents to do anything with them, to take them home, to have custody, and to make any kinds of decisions about that.

This is, of course, an insane and inaccurate statement. It is terrifying to know this man teaches. The fact that an educated person would make a statement like that is mind-boggling.

Parents actually existed before the state, believe it or not. It is the natural right of every peaceful parent to be free from outside intervention in how they choose to raise their children.

Of course, there are nuances in how to look at the parent-child relationship and the rights of each.

But he is not talking about the philosophy of parenting. He is claiming the state owns your kid. He is claiming the state has more of a right to direct your child’s life than you do. He is saying custody of your children is a privilege the state has granted to you. How kind of them.

And as insane as this man sounds, this is the exact philosophy that the state takes into education. Somehow they think a cold government institution has the right to dictate how parents and children interact.

It is sad that professors of law are preaching such asinine beliefs. He clearly doesn’t have the most basic understanding of natural rights. Everything he said the state does is actually a violation of the rights of the parents and the children. The parent-child relationship is quite literally the most natural thing about the human species.

Parents and Children Have Natural Rights
But it isn’t just the parents’ rights being violated. The kids too have rights. Yet somehow due process goes out the window when it comes to keeping anyone under 18 captives in a government institution.

I’ve written before about how the public education system is destroying society.

It creates a “teen culture” which destroys the natural way children grow up learning from adults and peers of all ages. This makes it harder to transition from childhood to adulthood.

And that transition, a continuum from childhood to adulthood, makes for a healthier individual and society. That means parents and kids working together to determine when a teen is responsible enough for various rights and privileges. Not some arbitrary and random age the state dictates.

Restricting teens’ rights is causing massive mental health issues and the likely cause of the surge in teen suicide.

People are literally going insane from the state’s coercion.

And while it was all done “for the children,” the true motivations were not so noble. In the end, children lost their rights to work, to due process, and to determine their own destiny.

Written by Joe Jarvis and published by The Daily Bell ~ August 2, 2018

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