Mills Case An Example of Bad Law

Delma Blinson of The Beaufort Observer, an online news publication in Washington, N.C., uses the Mills case as an example of problems with state family law:

North Carolina has a compulsory education law. Parents are required by law to see that their children get a basic education up to the age of sixteen. They may comply with this duty either by sending them to a public school, a private school or by homeschooling them. The homeschooling option has certain stipulations that safeguard whether the child's interest is being met in the home schooling environment, such as testing, attendance etc..

We're not talking about the general merits of home schooling vs. public schooling. We're talking about a process the state has established to verify whether an individual child is being educated. Given that provision, it would seem obvious to us that the standard (of whether the mother was meeting the state's homeschooling requirements) should have been applied by this judge and "findings of fact" entered to validate a conclusion (order) that this mother was not adequately educating these particular children as required by the state's homeschooling standards. No such order was issued according to the advocates supporting the mother. Indeed, it is reported that what little evidence that was presented tended to show that the students were doing just fine ("thriving" was the description at the hearing) with their homeschooling. The judge just felt "they need to be exposed to the real world." Say what?

Who is a judge to decide what the "real world" is and more particularly what in the "real world" a child is required by law to be exposed to?