Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Saturday, August 27, 2005

The Guardian had a good story today about the cancer of home schooling in Britain. Home schooling and fundamentalist schools are bad for democracy all over the world. They brainwash children and make them unable to function in a free society. While most of the world has focused on Muslim hate schools, we also need to look at the way right wing Christian programs destroy harmony and civility. Sadly, those in the United Kingdom leading the home schooling movement turn to the U.S. for moral support.

The future is likely to see more of this debate, since most of the people I interviewed believed that independent fundamentalist education is set to spread in the UK, partly because of the inspiration evangelical Christians seem to take from what's happening across the Atlantic. Ben Pike talked wistfully to me at Maranatha School about the way that evangelical churches in the US have managed to bring so many children into their independent schools and home-schooling networks. "America provides us with a vision for the future," he says.

Remember the days when America used to export liberty? Now, we are looked at as an exporter of fundamentalism, just like Saudi Arabia. It is important that we have a larger debate on the deleterious side effects of home schooling. As the U.S. gets more diverse, scientific knowledge grows and the world gets smaller, the last thing we need are new hordes of brainwashed bigots undermining free and civil society.

5 Comments:

As a public school teacher, my views of home-schooled versus public education are mixed. Though the public system claims to educate my observations are pessimistic. My school graduates many kids who cannot read at even a middle-school level nor able do simple arithmetic without a calculator. Home-schoolers seem to able to do more, but many are locked into a certain worldview.

The choice seems to be indoctrination (home-school) or systematic ignorance (public). Pick your poison...
posted by Anonymous, at 8/27/2005 4:01 PM

Wow- I used to buy into the home school thing- Wayne is absolutly right in saying the kids that get roped into it are taken to a training/orientation that makes it almost impossible to function in society. It is time to say it- beating kids into the closet makes for mental health problems.
posted by Anonymous, at 8/27/2005 6:14 PM

I attended an evangelical school, and the education was superior to what I would have received at a public school. I am glad that it insulated me from much of what is wrong in society, although I no longer accept many of the conservative values it promoted.

I think, Wayne, that in this article you approach the line of being as bigoted as those you are criticizing. Americans enjoy the freedom of raising their children with their own values. Whether or not you agree with those values, this liberty should not be despised.

Any argument for breaking the bonds between parents and their children is wide open to a charge of propaganda. Perhaps you should find more creative and convincing ways of arguing for gay rights than by suggesting that Christian parents shouldn't be allowed to control their children's education. I hope -- as do other gay evangelicals -- that change is occurring in the evangelical world. But this kind of rhetoric is not helpful to our situation.
posted by Anonymous, at 8/27/2005 9:07 PM

Anonymous, while I can respect that you uphold your christian values, I do not understand how you can suggest that Wayne and others not provide criticism to christian practices. The evangelical christian movement it seems is about nothing other than criticising others and I am in the camp that is extremely fed up with this crap. There is no harm in despising liberty, but look at the liberty that the evangelical christian movement seeks to destroy. If you want to convince me of the merits of the evangelical movement, show me instances of them showing respect for those who differ in opinion or philosophies because I have not seen anything remotely close from anyone in that camp. Tim W.
posted by Anonymous, at 8/28/2005 12:32 AM

Anonymous, while I can respect that you uphold your christian values, I do not understand how you can suggest that Wayne and others not provide criticism to christian practices. The evangelical christian movement it seems is about nothing other than criticising others and I am in the camp that is extremely fed up with this crap. If there is no harm in despising liberty, take a look at the liberty that the evangelical christian movement seeks to destroy. If you want to convince me of the merits of the evangelical movement, show me instances of them showing respect for those who differ in opinion or philosophies because I have not seen anything remotely close from anyone in that camp. Tim W.
posted by Anonymous, at 8/28/2005 12:34 AM