The World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling, Part 1

I think the examples you’ve given are more to do with what a bad idea it is not to buy the teacher’s edition of the book, rather than anything to do with conservatism or Christianity.

It’s obvious she’s severely damaging her child’s education though.

“underline the plural possessive noun in each sentence.” She pauses, then repeats the direction to herself, trying to figure out just how much should be underlined. Without the teacher’s edition as a reference, she is left to make her best guess.

plural possesive nouns… really? BLARRRG!
That’s wicked easy. What is this, an episode of Who’s Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Seems like part of this lady’s problem is that she is too cheep or couldn’t afford to spring for the teacher’s edition. If she knew what the answers were she might be able to help her daughter explain out these things.

This is odd to me. If her kid’s education is so important that she is willing to pull her from public school in favor of home schooling, one would think she would go the extra mile and have the teacher’s edition books. Instead, not having the books makes it look like she’s cutting corners and half assing it. She has created a situation of confusion for herself and her kids.

In other words… WTF!?

Buying the teacher’s edition of the book only provides a guide to the material and correct answers to the problems in the book. It is best if the teacher actually knows the material. Teaching grammar or math by regurgitating material from a textbook without understanding it is not a good idea.

But think about how this mother’s motivation for homeschooling plays into the situation. Someone who homeschools because he thinks he can do a better job teaching the material I would expect to know at least some of the material well. Someone who homeschools to keep his child out of the evil immoral environment of the local schools has other priorities, and may not know the material well.

I work as a writing tutor at my university, and — completely aside from the grammatical competency of the parent and child — I had a student whom I believed to be homeschooled. She was writing a paper with the thesis that homosexuality was wrong, using only the bible as support for that claim. I had the fortunate obligation to inform her that that’s not good enough to convince anybody else, which is the purpose of any position paper. The other evidence I have in support of my claim that she was homeschooled was 1. she was extremely meek and nervous, probably unused to dealing with large populations of different people; and 2. after the tutoring session, I received an angry email from her father. I assembled a calm and rational reply, but to this day (years later) I have yet to receive his response. All of that doesn’t necessarily mean she was homeschooled, but it implies that kind of mindset: conservative beliefs, undeveloped social skills, and the need to report back to parents even while attending college.

With the internet able to provide any information anyone could ever want, there’s really no excuse for not knowing 1st grade material even without the teacher’s edition. Does this family believe that computers are evil?

With the internet able to provide any information anyone could ever want, there’s really no excuse for not knowing 1st grade material even without the teacher’s edition. Does this family believe that computers are evil?

Not surprisingly, a family that considers $25 a significant outlay is, in many cases, likewise unable to afford a computer.

@Shawn – Amy G. suggested the internet, which does consist of more than Twitter!

As long as they eventually end up with the right answer, the kids who explore along with their teacher (or mother) to arrive at that answer are more likely to fully understand and remember the lesson than kids who just get the instructions from the teacher.

I tutor kids from 5th grade through high school in math, and even though that’s my field, sometimes I just don’t know what their book is asking them to do. I truly am as baffled as they are at the beginning of the lesson. On those occasions, I let the student be the teacher. I don’t spend the money for teachers editions either – I’ve got five clients right now from four different schools. I don’t get paid enough to afford teachers editions for every possibility.

However, if I were homeschooling, I would try to find other parents in the same situation and share the expense with them. You wouldn’t actually need the teachers edition every day for every assignment. It could rotate among a few families and save everyone some money.

When I was in school (private, not public) and I asked a question the teacher didn’t know the answer to, she usually either made it up or otherwise pretended that she did know the answer…and I was in BIG trouble if I actually corrected her wrong answer.

As I homeschool, if I don’t know the answer, I say so, and we go look it up together, thus teaching intellectual honesty and researching skills, plus the bonus of being able to admit when one is wrong or unsure and to ask for help. And my kid is encouraged to question and even prove me wrong! Those critical thinking skills are some of the more important things we can teach our children–something rarely modelled in school.

As far as costs, when one parent has choosen to not bring in an income in order to teach their children, money usually does play a role. One $25 book may not seem like much, but add up each teacher edition for each subject for each child and it can get crazy expensive.

Plus, consider how much kids are taught in schools that have no bearing on real life. Science and maths are skimmed over while soft subjects are made boring by watering them down to accomodate the bottom half of the class and by repetition and rote learning.

I do some advocacy for gifted kids, and what I see is that many parents eventually get frustrated with a public (and often private) school system that is unable to make school challenging or interesting enough to captivate their child, and they end up homeschooling. (Parents of kids with disabilities often end up in the same situation.)

They often discover that almost 6 years of math can be taught–effectively–in about 18 months. That one can get very involved in science without losing the kids attention, and that–in general–kids are capable of much deeper learning then most schools allow.

That said, each child is different, and if we work to meet the needs of an individual rather then broad strokes to meet generalized needs of sterotyped kids we’d all be better off.

But that’s just me.

Hemant, could you write a review when you’re done with the book? I’d be very interested to read what you think; the subject looks really interesting.

As to the topic generally, I’m torn. I think, in the abstract, in a free country like the United States, we should err on the side of letting parents educate their own children how they see fit.

This obviously comes with its own set of reasonable limitations. All children should receive an adequate education, both because a) children should not be shackled by their parent’s prejudices, beliefs, lack of knowledge, etc, and b) because society benefits when its members are educated.

Public schools fail at achieving this goal all the time. No doubt parents who homeschool their children sometimes do too. But in both cases, it’s reasonable that we as a society have some interest in making sure that our youngest members have some competency in important subjects, even if the parents find this objectionable.

It doesn’t seem to me that, merely because some parents choose to homeschool, they are exempt from the expectation that their children not be mentally crippled (Go Go Gadget Straw Man!). I leave it to stronger minds than mine to figure out how we ensure that this doesn’t happen.

[Now time for a personal anecdote]: I work for a marketing company. One of my coworkers was homeschooled, then went to JMU for business. My guess is her experience models that of the children in the movie Jesus Camp. From the conversations we’ve had, her exposure to science was non-existent; her entire world is the Bible.

I have no personal right to tell her how to raise her own children (don’t worry, they’re coming). Maybe society doesn’t either. But it makes me sad to imagine her having two or three small children of her own who will forever have large areas of human inquiry closed off to them, or at least made hard to access.

I’m all for homeschooling kids if that’s what parents think is best. Parents should have the liberty to choose how their children are educated. However, all children, homeschooled or not, should submit to regular standardized testing that covers not only math and reading/writing, but also history, biology etc. as appropriate for age. Children shown to be sufficiently deficient in the subjects should be taken to school (if homeschooled) and schools failing to teach kids (it’s not only parents who fail, after all) should be sanctioned or helped, depending on what the cause of the failure is.

if you spend enough time reading well written materials you’ll probably be able to write competently yourself. Math, however, is a totally different matter.

Really? Are you sure that if you spend enough time looking at equations, you won’t be able to write them competently yourself?

Being able to mimic what you’ve seen before has nothing to do with actually understanding the subject. Understanding proper grammar is incredibly important to anybody who interacts professionally via writing. If somebody doesn’t even understand what a plural possessive noun is, it’s unlikely they’re going to know what prepositional phrases or comma splices are, and it will be painfully obvious to anybody to does understand.

This is an example of the extreme harm that Atheists are doing to society. Because they insist on indoctrinating children with immorality in public schools, parents who want to protect their children are forced to homeschool without the real capability to do so adequately. If this continues, we will be forced to use a system where parents are taxed based on whether they have a child in school or not, so that people that homeschool have the resources to educate their children. This will just continue to degrade the educational system as the funding will be substantially decreased.

The solution would be for radical atheists like Hemant to stop pushing their immorality on others.

This is an example of the extreme harm that Atheists are doing to society. Because they insist on indoctrinating children with immorality in public schools, parents who want to protect their children are forced to homeschool without the real capability to do so adequately.

LOLLERCOASTER!

Jon, you wrote:

“This is an example of the extreme harm that Atheists are doing to society. Because they insist on indoctrinating children with immorality in public schools, parents who want to protect their children are forced to homeschool without the real capability to do so adequately. If this continues, we will be forced to use a system where parents are taxed based on whether they have a child in school or not, so that people that homeschool have the resources to educate their children. This will just continue to degrade the educational system as the funding will be substantially decreased.

The solution would be for radical atheists like Hemant to stop pushing their immorality on others.”

And how exactly are atheists indoctrinating children in public schools? This charge is absolute nonsense – it’s a naked assertion. Do you have any evidence?

And what exactly do you suggest that parents protect their children from? What are you complaining about, specifically, that you believe is immoral?

And you know what? Hemant is not a “radical atheist”. Hey, have you seen the name of this blog? He’s the Friendly Atheist! He’s one of the most patient atheist voices on the web, and you think he’s a radical? Something is wrong here.

And why do you think Hemant is pushing his beliefs on children? You have absolutely no evidence for this accusation.

Hey, remember the Commandments? Whatever happened to thou shalt not bear false witness, huh? You better take that mote out of your own eye first, Jon, before you try to remove the plank from your neighbor’s.

The mother reported on, coming from her generation, more likely than not was a graduate of high school (is this reported in the book?) and a graduate of a public school. So why isn’t her grasp of elementary subjects as an adult better than what’s reported in the book? Could it be that a lot of Americans complete their public schooling without a firm grasp on what they are supposed to know?

Those kids are going to come out so messed up.

How the mom graduated from elementary school without knowing what a possessive noun is anyway? I didn’t even start learning English until I was a teenager, and I know what a plural possessive noun is…

There’s a good reason why some countries outlawed homeschooling. Quality control.

Jon, I wish there was a way to embed this in my comment:

http://3harpiesltd.us/images/troll.gif

oh, and PS, both me and my other adult sibling are atheists, so homeschooling doesn’t ensure adherence to religious doctrine any more than public school. I, who went to the “immoral” public school, was much more well behaved during my teenage years than my brother, who was dying to get out of the house and assert his own personality and opinions and did so by rebelling. So nope, it doesn’t ensure well behaved children, either.

That said, I think parents have the right to homeschool as long as their children are performing up to their grade level on standardized tests, which they are required to take.

And you know what? Hemant is not a “radical atheist”. Hey, have you seen the name of this blog? He’s the Friendly Atheist! He’s one of the most patient atheist voices on the web, and you think he’s a radical? Something is wrong here

.

The ‘Friendly Atheist’ is a misnomer. Just because he labels himself as friendly does not mean that he is friendly and not radical. Just look at the situation with the IFI and Laurie Higgins. Hemant was hardly friendly there. Look at his intolerance for others who disagree with him — he’s not friendly, as much as he would like to label himself that way.

Laura:

I think parents have the right to homeschool as long as their children are performing up to their grade level on standardized tests, which they are required to take.

They shouldn’t be required to take any tests. It’s about liberty. The government has no business telling you what your kids should learn, or requiring your kids to do … well, anything at all.

Who decides what is “up to a grade level”? Let’s say my kid is way “ahead” at math and reading, but is a bit “behind” on science because we decided it is best to hold off for another year, because the kid is uninterested or somesuch. Whose business is it to tell us that we’re wrong to make that choice? It is OUR CHOICE to make, period.

I am not against public schooling. I believe we should provide it, as a service of society. It’s one of the very few services I think government should provide. But it should never be required, in any form. Government serves us; we do not serve them or subject ourselves to what they think is best for us. Get this subservient attitude toward government out of your head!

Such attitudes are especially mind-boggling to me coming from atheists, where there’s such a history of governments forcing religion on people. Why is it OK to force government’s vision of education on the people, but not its vision of religion? The arguments are the same: the people might make the wrong choices, the children might not get the proper upbringing, and so on. We’re doing it for THEIR benefit, after all! Whether it’s forcing certain religion or education, it’s all about not trusting the people to do what is best for themselves.

Jon is joking, right? Right?

Because I learned remarkably little immorality in my public school education and I’m mad. Where was my immorality??? Why did I have dry boring classes talking about Shakespeare and calculus and American history when I could have had, uh, I’m not sure what. But it was probably more fun!

Don’t you know that plural possessive nouns are the work of the devil? Don’t even get me started on the idea that pi is a transcendental number.

Hmmmm… Does anyone have any questions now about why states require a basic amount of education/training before allowing someone into a classroom to teach?

If you don’t give a fly any shit, it will starve to death in a few days.

As a survivor of conservative christian homeschooling, I’m very interested to hear the rest of your review, Hemant. I don’t think I’ll be buying the book… I’m not much into horror novels *shudder*

If there were ever a venue that cried out for the use of standardized annual testing, it’s home-schooling.

Though the home-schoolers that I knew of actually had year-end celebrations and mini-science fairs and stuff, for all the families in the area that were home-schooling using the same curriculum. They had a community and could interact with each other for support. The year my brother was home-schooled we used some international curriculum with tests that had to be sent somewhere to be graded regularly and such things, so that he got credit for the 7th grade and could go into the 8th grade the next year. The idea of home-schooling completely on your own, with no external references or standards, is mind-boggling.

To be honest, how often is it relevant in the adult world to know what a plural possessive noun is?

A plural possessive noun is a form such as “men’s”, “boys’”, “girls’”. They are part of everyday language. If you can’t identify them in your head, then you can’t write English. Identifying them by means of this terminology is a way of checking the pupil’s understanding of the issue.

@Claudia

challenging religion makes you “radical” by definition, and any school that doesn’t teach his version of Christianity (homosexuality is evil, abstinence only, “teach the controversy” in evolution) is immoral.

Your getting warmer with the above statement.

In the sheltered world they inhabit, challenges to their worldview are so rare that they seem very radical when they are confronted with them. Which is not to say to stop, just to not expect to reason him into understanding.

Actually, I’m not at all sheltered. Most of the atheists on this blog live far more sheltered lives than I do, and I would be willing to wager that I understand far more about atheism than you do about Christianity.

@RichardWade

If you don’t give a fly any shit, it will starve to death in a few days.

I wouldn’t worry. Hemant gives us a fresh load of BS multiple times a day usually, so I think we will all have plenty to eat.

Miko says: Seeing as homeschooled children do better on average, I suggest we turn it around: a parent wanting to send their children to a public school should first have to fail a basic competency test more severely than that the local public school teachers do.

I think you may be confusing cause and effect here. To put it another way, those who tend to score the worst on standardized testing are those who live in poverty. Homeschooling is expensive, so those who do it are almost never poor (they may not be rich, but they are almost always at least middle class).

pudge Says: They shouldn’t be required to take any tests. It’s about liberty. The government has no business telling you what your kids should learn, or requiring your kids to do … well, anything at all.

Perhaps… But where do the parents’ rights end and the child’s rights begin? What rights does the child have anyway? Is there a right to an education at all? If you answer no to this last question, what right do the rest of us have to expect that contracts and laws be honoured if basic education is not a right?

Second, if there are no standards for what constitutes a high school education, what would a “high school diploma” mean? Even working for McDonald’s, you need to know how to read, write, and do simple math. It’s almost impossible to function in modern society without these skills, and these days you can add skills like typing since computers have become ubiquitous.

Then there are the indirect benefits to standardized testing. It can show when the parents are completely neglecting their children, and haven’t taught them anything. Poor results on one test doesn’t mean neglect, but poor results on all of them often does.

and I would be willing to wager that I understand far more about atheism than you do about Christianity.

I’d wager that most of what you “know” about atheism is tired stereotypes about us pushed by evangelists.

@Jeff

We just take it one monotheistic God (and one religion) further

I’ve never heard that one before – totally changes my whole perspective.

@Justinjm

I’d wager that most of what you “know” about atheism is tired stereotypes about us pushed by evangelists.

Just like everything you know is tired stereotypes pushed by atheists?

Why is anyone bothering to waste time and space talking to Jon? He’s not actually making arguments, just talking. Ignore him.

My suspicion of homeschooling comes from my belief that society has a duty to protect children from those that would do them harm, even if this harm takes the form of brainwashing. This is for two reasons: one, society benefits when its members are educated. Two, and far more importantly, children are not in a position to defend themselves. Society should provide education regardless of whether or not it is a right.

In fact, I am not of the opinion that education is a human right — such a right would confer on individuals a claim to other people’s knowledge, time, resources, etc. Nobody has a rights claim to education because nobody ought to be required to teach another against their will.

People do have the right, however, to not have their paths to education unduly burdened by other individuals. This includes, most importantly, children, and as I said, children are least able to exercise these rights. Children do have liberty rights against their parents that society should defend.

There isn’t, unfortunately, an easy bright line to be drawn, but parents do not, in my mind, have an unmitigated right to teach their children anything they want to (or a right to fail to provide education at all). Channeling Dawkins, the crucial question for me is: what would the children want if they were in possession of all the facts and had the capability to asses these facts?

Andrew Morgan:

My suspicion of homeschooling comes from my belief that society has a duty to protect children from those that would do them harm, even if this harm takes the form of brainwashing.

OK. So — Devil’s Advocate here, obviously — what are we going to do about all those parents brainwashing their kids into believing there is no God?

Can you see the problem here? What is brainwashing to me can be normal to you, or vice versa. And government must recognize and respect our pluralism and not force us into homogeneity.

Of course, there’s some things that almost everyone would agree is actual abuse, but we must, in a free society, give a very broad latitude to parents to make their own decisions for their children.

society benefits when its members are educated

Your desire for society to so benefit creates no obligation on me and my family. Sorry.

children are not in a position to defend themselves

Why do you think the government is better suited to defending my children than I am?

Society should provide education regardless of whether or not it is a right.

That is not the issue. I am a very conservative/libertarian Republican, and yet I am strongly in favor of society providing public education to the children. That doesn’t mean it — or its standards — should be mandatory.

In fact, I am not of the opinion that education is a human right — such a right would confer on individuals a claim to other people’s knowledge, time, resources, etc. Nobody has a rights claim to education because nobody ought to be required to teach another against their will.

I agree that it is not a right to get education from “society.” I do, however, believe it is a right children can demand from their parents or legal guardians. Yes, it means claiming their time; that is what raising children is all about! But while children can claim a right to receive an education, they are, as you note, incapable of deciding what that education should be. The parents therefore get to do this.

People do have the right, however, to not have their paths to education unduly burdened by other individuals.

And I consider such government educational mandates to be undue burdens on me and my children. I am not the one burdening my children: government is.

There isn’t, unfortunately, an easy bright line to be drawn, but parents do not, in my mind, have an unmitigated right to teach their children anything they want to

Yes, in fact, they do have that right, with very few exceptions, such as criminal activities that are far too distasteful to mention or even think about. Short of such things, yes, parents can teach their kids anything they wish to. How else would you interpret the First Amendment right to free speech?

(or a right to fail to provide education at all).

No, but they have the right to decide what that education should be.

Channeling Dawkins, the crucial question for me is: what would the children want if they were in possession of all the facts and had the capability to asses these facts?

I don’t see how that question is even remotely interesting, let alone crucial. They aren’t so capable, and therefore their parents make the decisions on their behalf.

I am all for home schooling. Now that all of the illegal aliens are leaving the country, who is going to mow my lawn or pick my veggies?

Funny, I was nodding along to Pudge’s post and here I am, very much a left wing liberal to his conservative Republican 😉

Especially liked this part –

“OK. So — Devil’s Advocate here, obviously — what are we going to do about all those parents brainwashing their kids into believing there is no God?

Can you see the problem here? What is brainwashing to me can be normal to you, or vice versa. And government must recognize and respect our pluralism and not force us into homogeneity.

Of course, there’s some things that almost everyone would agree is actual abuse, but we must, in a free society, give a very broad latitude to parents to make their own decisions for their children.”

Channeling Dawkins, the crucial question for me is: what would the children want if they were in possession of all the facts and had the capability to asses these facts?

They would want atheists like Hemant to leave them alone.

It is child abuse to fail to give your child the basic skills and knowledge they need to function in society. It is therefore government’s job, as the enforcer of law against child abuse, to make certain that children receive a quality education, whether that be by running public schools or by evaluating homeschooling on a case-by-case basis.

The tricky part is defining what a “quality education” is. I’m sympathetic to pudge’s concern that government shouldn’t have the authority to define this for other people, because such an authority sets a bad precedent for government behavior.

However, I have some experiences with other countries where education is more “optional”. The end result is not good: homeschooling is very rare, and truancy rates at public schools are high. Many children fall far enough behind in their first few years that it is not feasible for them to ever catch up. At that point, they are essentially doomed forever to poverty.

I’m forced to conclude that requiring that children receive an education is an appropriate use of government power. Doing so may be violating the parents’ rights to determine how their children are raised, but that has less priority than the right of the child to have the tools they need to pursue their own happiness.

The way to do it is to establish educational guidelines in a representative and objective way, with protections against tyranny of the majority, the same way we establish laws. Yes, this doesn’t perfectly prevent bad laws or bad educational guidelines from going on the books, but it works pretty well, and it’s better than having no laws or no guidelines at all.

Perfect educational freedom is a bad idea for the same reason perfect freedom from the law is a bad idea: People get hurt.

Perfect educational freedom is guaranteed by the First Amendment…

I disagree. You certainly have a protected right to teach your children anything you want to teach them. However, your right to this kind of free speech doesn’t give you a right to shelter them from hearing what they need to hear in order to pursue their own happiness. Basically, yeah, tell your kids whatever you want to in addition to their basic educational requirements.

I’d argue that this even includes the right to teach them that what they learn in school is bullshit. They don’t have to agree with generally accepted science or history to be effective at pursuing happiness in our society, I’d say, but they do at least have to understand it.

No … that’s like saying that because it’s government’s job to enforce against child abuse, that all punishments against children may be overseen by the government. As I said above: we have Fourth and Fifth Amendments in this country. You have to actually have probable cause to suspect abuse in order to step in and see what a parent is doing.

Government should not personally oversee all punishments against children, but they certainly should regulate punishments, and to establish some kinds of punishments as unlawful. We agree on this, right?

I agree that we have good reason for having constitutional measures against unwarranted search. Are you arguing that mandatory standardized testing for students is such an unwarranted search? If so, do you then argue that major mis-education of children is or should be illegal, but that the government can only act against it given probable cause? I’m not sure what I’d say about this argument; I’d need some time to think about it.

Or, are you arguing that mis-education of children should not be illegal on the grounds that it is not the government’s job to define what is education or mis-education? If this is your argument, then my response is: well, don’t you think that giving a child a crappy education is child abuse? If so, should we not at least have some enforcement against it, given that it be correctly limited by due process? If not, why isn’t preventing your child from being able to pursue happiness in society child abuse?

The website “An Old-Fashioned Education” deals with using public domain materials as part of a conservative Christian home school curriculum. There are parts of it that make me want to scream, and parts that are actually well-argued philosophies of pedagogy.

http://oldfashionededucation.com/

I attended an American public school, K-12, from 1986-2000, and I’m sorry to say that most of my understanding of English grammar and punctuation happened on my own time, using outside materials. It wasn’t a priority–they just kept teaching the same barebones basics every year without expanding or explaining more complex ideas. I learned more about English grammar in GERMAN class than in any English class.

Some backgound: I was homeschooled for 5 years in middle school. Neither of my parents have degrees and we were very conservatively Christian. I recently graduated magna cum laude from university and am a proud atheist.

Home schooling tends to suffer from a number of problems, mostly poor science instruction and a smaller social sphere (although in my small town our homeschool association had about 50 students).

However, I think that in my experience these are acceptable trade offs for the skills that I learned. When I home schooled I very rarely stayed inside all day and looked at books. Instead I was learning how electricity works from my electrician father or learning about geometry by building birdhouses.

When I returned to public high school I was bored out of my mind, even though I took all accelerated courses. Learning had been hands-on and active before, in public school it was passive and rote.

Was I indoctrinated religiously? Yes, but I would have been if I had been in public school. It was from my parents teaching me how to ask questions and learn from everyday situations that I developed the skills to eventually reject that indoctrination. I tell my parents that they contributed to my atheism, but they don’t like that too much.

What I’m saying is, don’t judge home schooling by the crazies out there. Most of the home schoolers I know have had similar experiences as I did and they are all very intelligent, well-read, confident people who are very successful. Most of them are still Christians, but I don’t think that home schooling is a huge factor in that.

All-in-all, my experiences with home schooling are far more positive than negative.

Rachel: poor science instruction isn’t the problem per se, though it is a common symptom; the real problem is just that people tend not to be able to teach well if they themselves don’t at least appreciate a subject. As another poster said, you don’t have to understand it, you just have to be engaged and involved, and if you don’t really care for a subject, you won’t be.

As to socialization, personally, I prefer a much smaller social sphere to the Lord of the Flies, celebrity-worshipping, atmosphere of the public school system.

And you’re absolutely right, organized schooling is BORING. It wastes thousands of hours of a child’s time over his lifetime. My classes through most of Junior High and High School consisted of me reading ahead and doing that night’s homework in class while I watched the clock tick down. I had an A- average in high school while doing very little work. Meanwhile, my wife was sortof the opposite: she was also bored in school, because she doesn’t learn well in that environment, so she had to do all of her work on her own after class, spending hours in the basement trying to learn what a teacher should have taught her. (It was this drive and determination that got her degrees in pyschology and sociology in just four years.)

We both separately, and through different paths, concluded that organized schooling was a giant waste of time.

That is the biggest reason for me to homeschool. The second is control over the curriculum, not in regards to religion specifically (although that’s a part of it), but making sure they really understand history, and grammar, and science … not just a cursory overview they’ll forget over Christmas break.

pudge,

Neither does the state own children.

There’s a difference between giving tools like language and math, and indoctrinating whole sets of dogma.

And obviously you think this is important. And so do I. But why should we force OUR values on other people’s children? How can you justify this, and then say that the state can’t force other values … like religion?

Because parents don’t own children, they’re guardians. The state enforces our values onto other children when it comes to sex and violence. I think access to knowledge and freethinking is pretty important, nearly as much as keeping children safe from harm. You would also force your values on children, you just have different values.

And to many people, teaching children that God doesn’t exist is MUCH WORSE than breaking bones.

Many atheists don’t argue teaching God doesn’t exist. Also, arguments based on what an imaginary friend wants or will do should rightly be ignored by governments that operate on reason and evidence.

Similarly, it was Dawkins who said that teaching a child about hell could be worse than sexually molesting that child. I think that’s obviously stupid…

You think that is stupid? Dawkins and a woman who wrote a letter to him through experience thought that the type of molesting they experience was not as bad as thinking your Jewish friends were going to suffer eternal torment. Dawkins makes it clear he’s not talking about sexual assault.

Except that the parents — not you, and not the state — get to decide what “ignorant” and “crazy” mean. Your path leads to tyranny.

Your path leads to tyranny, on a smaller scale multiplied, by every parent who willfully keeps their child ignorant of reality. If you think requiring children to be educated to read, do math, and use the scientific method to obtain reliable knowledge is tyranny then you don’t know a lot of tyranny.

There’s a difference between giving tools like language and math, and indoctrinating whole sets of dogma.

No, there actually is no difference in the important detail that in both cases, someone has certain values they want to force on the children. The question is only who has the right to push those values, and the answer is, simply and obviously, the parents.

Because parents don’t own children

And neither does the state. So you can’t get anywhere with that argument. The state has no rights here.

The state enforces our values onto other children when it comes to sex and violence.

And you can’t take the gross exceptions where we all agree the state should step in, and turn it into a slippery slope whereby the government has total authority. You have to justify each level of intrusion by the state on its own merits.

I think access to knowledge and freethinking is pretty important

Good for you. But you’ve not justified pushing your values onto parents who disagree.

You would also force your values on children, you just have different values.

With the exception of punishing children from committing crimes against others, no, I absolutely would not. I would, rather, leave that to the parents.

You think that is stupid?

Yes. Absolutely stupid. Astronomically stupid.

Dawkins makes it clear he’s not talking about sexual assault.

I think redefining sexual molestation as not-sexual-assault is entirely awful. All sexual molestation is sexual assault, by definition. Sexual molestation is, in fact, one category of sexual assault.

Your path leads to tyranny, on a smaller scale multiplied, by every parent who willfully keeps their child ignorant of reality.

Only if you illogically beg the question. My claim of tyranny is simply based on the objective fact of government forcing things on parents. Yours is based on the subjective opinion that your values are superior to theirs.

While I share your values of the importance of freethinking and reading and math and science and so on, I reject the notion that I have the right to force those values on anyone else, except for — of course — my own children. I don’t own them, but I have the right to teach them as I choose to.

Have you never read 1984? Fahrenheit 451? If you give the state the power to control what values are forced on children, then that can swing AGAINST your values too. The way to protect against this is for the state to not have that power in the first place.

If you think requiring children to be educated to read, do math, and use the scientific method to obtain reliable knowledge is tyranny

Please don’t so blatantly misrepresent what I said. I never even came close to implying that. I never said those things are tyranny, I said FORCING them on people is tyranny, just as forcing almost ANYTHING on people is tyranny.

pudge,

The question is only who has the right to push those values, and the answer is, simply and obviously, the parents.

Obviously, no. And it’s not so much about pushing values as keeping people slaves in ignorance.

And you can’t take the gross exceptions where we all agree the state should step in, and turn it into a slippery slope whereby the government has total authority. You have to justify each level of intrusion by the state on its own merits.

A minimum standard of education is justified. I don’t see that as “total authority”, that’s paranoia as many slippery slope arguments are.

I think redefining sexual molestation as not-sexual-assault is entirely awful.

He can “redefine” whatever the hell he likes. If anyone is doing the redefining it’s you. Assault refers to violence, not all molestation is violence.

Only if you illogically beg the question. My claim of tyranny is simply based on the objective fact of government forcing things on parents. Yours is based on the subjective opinion that your values are superior to theirs.

Bullshit. My claim of tyranny is simply based on the objective fact of parents forcing things on children. Yours is based on the subjective opinion that parents values are superior to anyone else’s.

Have you never read 1984? Fahrenheit 451? If you give the state the power to control what values are forced on children, then that can swing AGAINST your values too. The way to protect against this is for the state to not have that power in the first place.

Paranoid. Equating fictional authoritarian regimes with a minimum standard of education requirements, or national curriculum. There’s a big difference between tools that allow us to gain knowledge about reality and others ideas and indoctrination.

I said FORCING them on people is tyranny, just as forcing almost ANYTHING on people is tyranny.

Like parents forcing Christian beliefs on children? I rest my case. Also, I don’t see how it’s productive to argue against belief in rights that aren’t mutually held. I just don’t think parents have the right to own their children.

pudge,

Shrug. You have utterly failed to describe what gives you to have government, on your behalf, force your values on anyone else.

You have utterly failed to describe what gives you to have parents, force their values on their children.

And “ignorance” is relative to your own personal values.

Reality isn’t relative, science works.

Utter nonsense. This means the government has the right to define what that standard is, which means the government has the right to force us to swallow whatever they want us to

Better let parents force children to swallow whatever they want them to.

The power to force us to be taught according to whatever they decide is damned close to total authority.

Like when parents do it?

And I can point out the fact that it’s utterly moronic for him to do so.

In fact, yes, all molestation is violence.

If you want to redefine the words to mean that’s fine. But don’t expect other people to use your strange conventions. Dawkins wasn’t specifically communicating to you, it’s moronic to expect him to use your dictionary instead of a common one to English speakers. If you want to find common meanings for molestation look it the fuck up.

So according to you, all parenting is tyranny. That’s … not sane.

Your definition of of tyranny is people forcing things on other people. I wouldn’t use that word, I don’t think your paranoia towards government is sane.

I never said they were better. I said the parents have the right. And the government obviously doesn’t.

Obviously, no. Fine, government obviously has the right to require a minimum standard of education.

Only in the same way our Founding Fathers were paranoid in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I am simply recognizing what government can do, and what government has done, and protecting against that by limiting the power (and scope of that power) of the government, through securing the rights of the people.

Children and Africans didn’t seem to have rights.

No. Like GOVERNMENT forcing religious beliefs on a population. Parents get to force things on children: that is what parenting IS. That is not what government is. On the contrary, the very reason government exists is to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That necessarily implies the right to educate our children as we see fit.

Ownership of children. Children don’t get the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness I guess. You have a funny view of what parenting is, 1984 is not a manual.

You, apparently an atheist, immediately after comparing forcing education to forcing religion, come down on the side of force. You just rested MY case.

I’m pretty sure I have written multiple times that a minimum standard of education including reading, maths, and the scientific method is clearly not like religion.

You keep saying that, but the argument — in order to make any sense and be relevant — requires you to claim that governments own children. I never stated or implied parents own their children. I stated they have a right to teach their children as they see fit. That doesn’t imply ownership, any moreso than your claim that government can enforce standards implies ownership.

There’s a difference between equipping children with the tools of knowledge and deliberately keeping them away from those tools and teaching them nonsense. You seem perfectly fine with parents forcing their children to believe crazy things and to be ignorant of reality. What’s worse is you take a relative stance of reality but still backhandedly imply you support the government forcing “values” on people in “extreme” (weasel word) cases.

pudge,

If that “right” includes infringing the right for children to have a minimal education then I don’t recognize it.

Science has objective value when in a world that can be predicted by past events. Is understanding of science subjective in the court of law? I think not.

You’re against force from a representative democracy to parent but clearly for it from a parent to child. Force is the primary object of objection? No.

pudge,

You’re confusing is and ought. Where do you think the right for parents to indoctrinate and make ignorant their children?

Warning: very long comment ahead. Brace for impact!

It’s just like in all other aspects of society: government can tell me not to rape and murder people, and it can tell me not to do terrible things of a similar sort to my children. It’s those essential liberties from direct harm we all have, that our common law and common values all dictate government should protect.

I’m very skeptical here of your use of the phrase “common values” as describing a self-apparent position. Certainly, nearly all Americans share as a value the idea that rape is morally wrong. But, not all Americans do. More practically, many Americans also differ on the definition of rape. For example, some people believe that it is not possible to rape a prostitute once their services have been paid for. Others believe that it is not possible for a husband to rape his wife. Should such actions be excluded from rape law because they’re not a part of everyone’s common values?

I’m not trying to drift off topic here; the point is that since we can’t even define a pretty obvious law like “rape is illegal” without lots of complications, we run into even more problems when defining more slippery concepts like “the degree of irresponsible parenting that can be considered child abuse”. Laws must be defined by compromise, and I’d say there’s no such thing as a law that does not contradict the values of at least one citizen governed by those laws.

Okay, now having said that, and assuming you agree (which you probably don’t 🙂 ), I now need to show why I believe that requiring education standards at the cost of some parental freedom is a reasonable compromise for maximum harm reduction.

Preventing a child from learning speech is, in my view, quite similar to sexual and physical abuse, both in methods used and in resulting harm done. But not teaching them about science? I don’t see a serious parallel.

Failing to teach speech and failing to teach basic educational concepts seem similar to me, differing in degree but not in the nature of their effect on the child’s life.

Let’s consider a pathological case of parents who deliberately teach their child only a language of their own invention; they’re perfectly capable of raising the child with their own values and communicating with them, but the child will be unable to interact with society. It’s very difficult to learn a new language once past childhood, especially without an existing one to compare to. We both would agree that this is child abuse.

Do you see how this is similar to failing to give a child at least a minimum education? Without the ability to, say, do simple arithmetic problems, or read classifieds in a newspaper, a child would be inescapably locked into poverty and ignorance. They would be able to interact with society at a minimal level (just as the child described above could communicate minimally with points and gestures), but would be unable to really participate in it, or to pursue their own happiness. I see this result (and others which are similar but slightly lesser in degree) as child abuse.

I think you mischaracterize my position when you say that I might make it illegal to fail to teach children biology. I’m not saying every child needs to know geology or genetics, but they should at least know what they are, to be able to learn about those things later on if they choose to. They also definitely need to know the common basics shared by effectively all knowledge in modern society; simple math, what science is with some examples, some history, how to work simple electronic devices, and literacy.

If parents fail to make sure their children learn these things, they will very likely never have a real opportunity to learn them. Basic foundations need to be learned at childhood to be particularly effective, as adult basic-ed programs are (though very noble) not AIUI very successful.

That outlines the (pretty obvious, but worth emphasizing) positive effects of requiring basic education, but what about the potential negative effects? Your primary concern seems to be that of creating a situation where government can tyrannically impose political ideas on children. There are two things which act against this:

1. Educational standards need to be defined by a legitimate political process. Though our political process creates some potential for government to be tyrannical in defining educational standards, that’s not an argument against having educational standards, any more than the possibility of tyrannical laws (which is very real indeed, as demonstrated by our history!) is an argument against law. Baby vs bath water and all that.

2. Educational standards are just, as I said in an earlier comment, ideas that need to be understood to allow interaction with society at large. One doesn’t have to believe them, and if a parent wants to raise their child to think that the Earth is really flat or whatever, I’d tentatively say that’s okay, provided the child understands what the opposing viewpoint is. Swearing allegiance to an idea is an avenue for tyranny, but I don’t think having to write a paragraph about where the idea came from is.

*Phew*. Alright, I’m interested in reading whatever you might reply with, but I don’t think I have the time to continue responding at anything like this length. It’ll just be short little responses from here on out, if anything at all.

Swearing allegiance to an idea is an avenue for tyranny, but I don’t think having to write a paragraph about where the idea came from is.

I agree. This is called basic education.