People v. Levisen

Mr. Justice Simpson, dissenting:

I cannot agree with the majority opinion. To hold that the appellants were conducting a private school for the instruction of their daughter in a manner which does not violate the applicable statute, may be construed by many parents as a license to keep their children at home instead of sending them to school. This will do violence to the letter and spirit of the law. True, the opinion says in substance that parents may not, under a pretext of instruction by a private tutor or by themselves, evade their responsibility to educate their children. But each case will necessarily depend upon its own peculiar facts. The school law will be no guide or rule to be followed. Who will be the judge of the facts? What will be the position of the truant officer when he is told by parents that their child is receiving proper instruction at home ?

If the compulsory'attendance school law is not enforced, may not parents withdraw their children from school at any time desired, even in the middle of a term or semester so as to teach them at home ? Thereafter, should they change their minds, could they not again, under the law, return their children to the same school ? Schools may thereby be disrupted and certainly will lose the power, prestige and jurisdiction which is now theirs. In my opinion the appellants were properly found guilty, even though it be conceded that they are qualified instructors. We should not permit so salutory a statute to be thwarted by the whim and caprice of the many who, I fear, will take advantage of the situation under authority of this case.

Under a statute similar to the one under consideration and under like facts, parents were convicted in the State of Washington for failure to comply with the statute. In an opinion upholding the conviction the court said in part: “We have no doubt many parents are capable of instructing their own children, but to permit such parents to withdraw their children from the public schools, without permission from the superintendent of schools, and to instruct them at home, would be to disrupt our common school system, and destroy its value to the state * * *. We do not think that the giving of instruction by a parent to a child, conceding the competency of the parent to fully instruct the child in all that is taught in the public schools, is within the meaning of the law 'to attend a private school.’ Such a requirement means more than home instruction.” (State of Washington v. F. B. Connort, 69 Wash. 361, 124, p. 910 .) This case seems to me to be more in point and to be sounder and better law than the authority cited in the main opinion.