Living in a state like Texas, the chances of school getting canceled because of snow are slim to none. Luckily for Texas kids, there is an alternative to beating the system – Jesus. If parents tell the principal their children can’t go to school because Jesus is coming to take them with him to heaven, it’s apparently a good enough reason to stay home.
The 100% Republican Texas Supreme Court ruled 6-to-3 that a family could abstain from teaching their kids any of that useless book learnin’, because God was going to take them away from the wretched hell hole the world is at any second.
Texas has seen fit to not require parents who opt to home-school their kids to waste their time registering with state authorities. Families must only meet “basic educational goals” in reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and citizenship, but they are not required to show any proof that children are making progress, as opposed to students in public schools who adhere to standardized testing. Texas currently has the largest state population of homeschooled children – nearly 300,000.
Laura and Michael MacIntyre are amongst those many parents who decided to homeschool their kids. They converted the family motorcycle shop into a classroom for their nine kids. The only problem is, the kids were not learning anything. One of the children’s uncles reported the issue to authorities when he noticed the children were not being homeschooled, and overheard one of them saying “they did not need to do schoolwork because they were going to be raptured.” What, no books in heaven?
When the school district’s truancy officer asked the parents if their children were receiving “proper education”, the McIntyres sued the “anti-Christian” school district for violating their 14th Amendment rights. The family lost the appeal, but didn’t stop there. They fought to ensure their children would continue to be uneducated, taking the case to the Texas Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court went full Texas and decided the McIntyres’ 14th Amendment rights weren’t violated, but ruled in their favor on a technicality anyways. Cause why cause fuss over something as insignificant as education, right? It bounced around like a pinball, going back to the El Paso court of appeals, which would then bounce it back to the trial court.
The case had been dragging on for so long time up to last week’s ruling, that some of the McIntyre children are now adults. In 2006, the McIntyres’ oldest daughter who was 17 at the time, ran away so that she could finally attend school. While the girl should have been in the 11th grade, her education was so poor she had to be placed in 9th grade.
According to the high court, the 14th Amendment claims were not for Texas’ educational code to question. It all seems like a lot of trouble for the parents to go through, just to avoid help their kids with algebra homework.