New Hampshire Senate passes bill to end compulsory education

With Iowa down, the GOP presidential campaign turns to next Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire. What better week, then, to look at what lawmakers are focused on in the Granite State?

Specifically of interest is HB 542, an education bill passed by the State Senate Thursday which will let legal guardians pull their children out of any subject with a curriculum they oppose — for any reason — and force the school to formulate an alternative lesson plan that suits the parent’s concerns. Somewhat ironically, the guardian will have to submit their complaint in writing.

From the legislation itself:

[This bill will] require school districts to adopt a policy allowing an exception to specific course material based on a parent’s or legal guardian’s determination that the material is objectionable. Such policy shall include a provision requiring the parent or legal guardian to notify the school principal or designee in writing of the specific material to which they object and a provision requiring an alternative agreed upon by the school district and the parent, at the parent’s expense, sufficient to enable the child to meet state requirements for education in the particular subject area. The name of the parent or legal guardian and any specific reasons disclosed to school officials for the objection to the material shall not be public information and shall be excluded from access under RSA 91-A.

The bill, so unspecific and unrestricted, gives parents the power to demand that schools—already low on money and manpower—create personalized curricula based on their individual, even arbitrary needs. As supporters of the bill wrote last spring on New Hampshire Parents First, “it would recognize parents rights of conscience to oppose any textbook, program or even school. It also restricts the school district from approving or disapproving the parent’s program.”

It seems unlikely parents will use this bill to interfere with their children learning multiplication tables, and more likely that it will be used to interfere with lessons on evolution, health, literature deemed heretical, and even history. The controversial move calls to mind last year’s struggle in California over Senate Bill 48 which required “instruction in social sciences to include a study of the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and members of other cultural groups, to the development of California and the United States,” and faced predictable backlash from social conservatives.

Though HB 542 passed New Hampshire’s conservative House last spring and now the state Senate, Think Progress points out that it swings so far right (and is so illogical) that even some NH conservatives have reproached it. TP quoted the conservative Union-Leader editorial board which said, “Though [the bill] sounds appealing at first blush, it is so broad that it would make public education essentially an a la carte menu.”

Governor John Lynch (D) is expected to veto the bill, as he did an earlier version for, as Think Progress put it, failing “to clearly define what material would be objectionable — allowing any parent to withdraw their child for almost any reason.”

It’s hard to say whether this legislative wrangling will have an impact on next Tuesday’s primary, but one thing is for sure: New Hampshire voters elect lawmakers who take a lot of license with their “Live Free or Die” motto. Ron Paul anyone?