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iak8god isn't bigoted. Hardcore Christians do an incredible disservice to their children when the homeschool. My friend grew up in a Christian household and, w

iak8god isn't bigoted. Hardcore Christians do an incredible disservice to their children when the homeschool. My friend grew up in a Christian household and, while he wasn't homeschooled, he was told that "science is bullshit propaganda and we don't care if you don't do well in public school science". At this point he's an atheist and he's pissed at his parents for it. Yeah, they might be decent and kind people. But being kind and decent is not a replacement for being effective. > I don't see many Lutherans or Baptists running around blowing up planes or burning down villages, Lutherans do get a mostly free pass, but you should listen to this: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophets-of-doom/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophet... I suspect that there's a correlation between the amount of secular education given to (or forced upon) a religious population and how peaceful they are.

WillPostForFood 12y ago
The history of the 20th century would disagree. Cambodian killing field, Soviet gulag, cultural revolution. The most rabid secular governments were among the most brutal. Look at what's been happening in North Korea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
- cauterized 12y ago
  GP said secular education, not secular government.
- alasdair_ 12y ago
  Did Pol Pot, Stalin etc. Commit these acts BECAUSE they were nonreligious, or was this simply another aspect of their character? If the latter, one could equally point out that these people were male or non-American, or under six feet tall or liked three sugars in their tea or any other attribute and would be equally meaningful.
- jarin 12y ago
  I'd argue North Korea isn't a secular government. The Kims are portrayed to their people as a lineage of gods under the divine authority of Kim Il-Sung, and their people are forced to literally worship them. Stalin's government was also very anti-religion, but it was based on portraying him as a secular divine figure, "infallible sage, 'the greatest leader', 'sublime strategist of all times and nations'", etc.
jauer 12y ago
The good thing is that flavor of homeschooling is fairly rare. Growing up my parent were involved in a fairly rare/fringe homeschooling movement (IBLP/ATI) that espoused all the things that ika8god mentioned. Out of the ~30 families in our area homeschool coop I think only 4 were that far out.
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  Oh my gosh, ATI. I had some friends who were into that, and I even borrowed their Sacred Texts that showed with diagrams how boys and girls should dress. I was homeschooled but those guys were out there. Made it hard to make friends though, since a good portion of our group was ATI. I was kind of an outcast because I listened to music that had drums in it.
  - harkyns_castle 12y ago
    I find it hard to believe there are still people getting brought up under this kind of stuff. http://store.iblp.org/product/ZHABE.html http://store.iblp.org/product/ZHABE.html Edit: I believe it, just find it really sad.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Extremists might be rare, but over 80% of families who choose homeschooling do so for religious reasons. Based on the quality of this curriculum that I've seen, those children are being done a disservice. They might be able to score well on a GED or other standardized test, but they are not being given a real education.
  - walljm 12y ago
    most of my knowledge of this area is anecdotal (and personal). but it feels like, comparatively, that homeschooling as a methodology isn't doing a worse job than public institutions, as I've met people educated on both sides, some who have turned out great and some who have turned out not as great. also, i was homeschooled (all 12 grades) and have a lot of homeschooled friends and general acquaintances. sure, some hold beliefs about origins that differ from the mainstream (i in fact, hold beliefs that differ from the main stream), and some decided to pursue careers and paths in life that did not require intense scientific inquiry, but many chose very scientific fields (doctorates in chemistry, biology, graduate degrees in math and engineering). nearly all of them are productive members of society who can read, write and to varying degrees reason and think and act responsibly. i say all that because, it feels like you're using "a real education" as a pejorative. but my experience has shown that most of the time, these people do get a "real education". what a person chooses to do with the knowledge he/she is given is entirely up to them. my friends aren't unaware of the arguments for/against origins, global warming, etc... and they may be wrong, but that isn't because they weren't educated.
threatofrain 12y ago
I also wouldn't say that these are hardcore Christians. A lot of the beliefs people think are hardcore are stereotypical apologetic stock arguments found on many Christian websites, popular Christian literature, or churches. And those Christians who do believe otherwise tend to not speak up. One can just look at polling organizations who look at Christian opinions on the trustworthiness of science, age of the earth, climate change and ecological responsibility, evolution, vaccination, secularism, gay marriage, and so on. You're going to find that these Christians have been exaggerated as fringe, when they are in fact a substantial minority, and sometimes a fair majority. That's why politicians still talk about this stuff. That's why during election season, this stuff shows up on multi-million dollar advertising campaigns, sometimes in the form of sinister but subtle implications of things to fear, like gay people molesting kids, or public schools as centers for secularist brainwashing (the place where you're going to lose control of your kid's religiosity). People know that these issues cannot be explicitly talked about, so they talk in code.
rayiner 12y ago
> he was told that "science is bullshit propaganda and we don't care if you don't do well in public school science" To be fair, public school science is mostly bullshit. I don't think you can teach science to young children as anything other than a rote memorization of facts, and that actively holds them back when they study "real science" in college. Personally, I'd ditch science from the curriculum and replace it with courses in logic and statistics.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Can you study "real science" without knowing the basic facts about atoms, elements/compounds and cells?
  - hga 12y ago
    There's a strong argument you can't really learn it without first learning the math, and it really needs to be in the order of math, physics, chemistry and biology. If you can't reason about it, don't have the foundation of that order of topics, can't do problem sets, is it really anything more than "a rote memorization of facts"? Really, in the normal US curriculum biology is exactly that, because it doesn't require any math to speak of, then comes general chemistry because you can get by with algebra, but you don't have any real understanding of atoms etc. because you haven't done physics, critically E&M, but also classical mechanics. Then normally algebra based physics, since the US math track is so slow calculus comes too late. But that's cargo cult physics, no one in the real world does it without the calculus. Heck, Newton invented his calculus to do the physics for which he's even more famous for, right? As I mention in my other comment in this sub-thread, I consider myself lucky that my high school physics class was an automatic A class where the teacher just talked with us for the whole period. I learned a lot of useful things without doing stuff I'd have to unlearn in college.
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      A cargo cult understanding is probably superior to no understanding because science operates at different levels of abstraction. Most programmers have a cargo cult understanding of hardware for example.

WillPostForFood 12y ago

The history of the 20th century would disagree. Cambodian killing field, Soviet gulag, cultural revolution. The most rabid secular governments were among the most brutal. Look at what's been happening in North Korea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

cauterized 12y ago
GP said secular education, not secular government.
alasdair_ 12y ago
Did Pol Pot, Stalin etc. Commit these acts BECAUSE they were nonreligious, or was this simply another aspect of their character? If the latter, one could equally point out that these people were male or non-American, or under six feet tall or liked three sugars in their tea or any other attribute and would be equally meaningful.
jarin 12y ago
I'd argue North Korea isn't a secular government. The Kims are portrayed to their people as a lineage of gods under the divine authority of Kim Il-Sung, and their people are forced to literally worship them. Stalin's government was also very anti-religion, but it was based on portraying him as a secular divine figure, "infallible sage, 'the greatest leader', 'sublime strategist of all times and nations'", etc.

jauer 12y ago

The good thing is that flavor of homeschooling is fairly rare. Growing up my parent were involved in a fairly rare/fringe homeschooling movement (IBLP/ATI) that espoused all the things that ika8god mentioned. Out of the ~30 families in our area homeschool coop I think only 4 were that far out.

Domenic_S 12y ago
Oh my gosh, ATI. I had some friends who were into that, and I even borrowed their Sacred Texts that showed with diagrams how boys and girls should dress. I was homeschooled but those guys were out there. Made it hard to make friends though, since a good portion of our group was ATI. I was kind of an outcast because I listened to music that had drums in it.
- harkyns_castle 12y ago
  I find it hard to believe there are still people getting brought up under this kind of stuff. http://store.iblp.org/product/ZHABE.html http://store.iblp.org/product/ZHABE.html Edit: I believe it, just find it really sad.
dublinben 12y ago
Extremists might be rare, but over 80% of families who choose homeschooling do so for religious reasons. Based on the quality of this curriculum that I've seen, those children are being done a disservice. They might be able to score well on a GED or other standardized test, but they are not being given a real education.
- walljm 12y ago
  most of my knowledge of this area is anecdotal (and personal). but it feels like, comparatively, that homeschooling as a methodology isn't doing a worse job than public institutions, as I've met people educated on both sides, some who have turned out great and some who have turned out not as great. also, i was homeschooled (all 12 grades) and have a lot of homeschooled friends and general acquaintances. sure, some hold beliefs about origins that differ from the mainstream (i in fact, hold beliefs that differ from the main stream), and some decided to pursue careers and paths in life that did not require intense scientific inquiry, but many chose very scientific fields (doctorates in chemistry, biology, graduate degrees in math and engineering). nearly all of them are productive members of society who can read, write and to varying degrees reason and think and act responsibly. i say all that because, it feels like you're using "a real education" as a pejorative. but my experience has shown that most of the time, these people do get a "real education". what a person chooses to do with the knowledge he/she is given is entirely up to them. my friends aren't unaware of the arguments for/against origins, global warming, etc... and they may be wrong, but that isn't because they weren't educated.

threatofrain 12y ago

I also wouldn't say that these are hardcore Christians. A lot of the beliefs people think are hardcore are stereotypical apologetic stock arguments found on many Christian websites, popular Christian literature, or churches. And those Christians who do believe otherwise tend to not speak up. One can just look at polling organizations who look at Christian opinions on the trustworthiness of science, age of the earth, climate change and ecological responsibility, evolution, vaccination, secularism, gay marriage, and so on. You're going to find that these Christians have been exaggerated as fringe, when they are in fact a substantial minority, and sometimes a fair majority. That's why politicians still talk about this stuff. That's why during election season, this stuff shows up on multi-million dollar advertising campaigns, sometimes in the form of sinister but subtle implications of things to fear, like gay people molesting kids, or public schools as centers for secularist brainwashing (the place where you're going to lose control of your kid's religiosity). People know that these issues cannot be explicitly talked about, so they talk in code.

rayiner 12y ago

> he was told that "science is bullshit propaganda and we don't care if you don't do well in public school science" To be fair, public school science is mostly bullshit. I don't think you can teach science to young children as anything other than a rote memorization of facts, and that actively holds them back when they study "real science" in college. Personally, I'd ditch science from the curriculum and replace it with courses in logic and statistics.

jiggy2011 12y ago
Can you study "real science" without knowing the basic facts about atoms, elements/compounds and cells?
- hga 12y ago
  There's a strong argument you can't really learn it without first learning the math, and it really needs to be in the order of math, physics, chemistry and biology. If you can't reason about it, don't have the foundation of that order of topics, can't do problem sets, is it really anything more than "a rote memorization of facts"? Really, in the normal US curriculum biology is exactly that, because it doesn't require any math to speak of, then comes general chemistry because you can get by with algebra, but you don't have any real understanding of atoms etc. because you haven't done physics, critically E&M, but also classical mechanics. Then normally algebra based physics, since the US math track is so slow calculus comes too late. But that's cargo cult physics, no one in the real world does it without the calculus. Heck, Newton invented his calculus to do the physics for which he's even more famous for, right? As I mention in my other comment in this sub-thread, I consider myself lucky that my high school physics class was an automatic A class where the teacher just talked with us for the whole period. I learned a lot of useful things without doing stuff I'd have to unlearn in college.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    A cargo cult understanding is probably superior to no understanding because science operates at different levels of abstraction. Most programmers have a cargo cult understanding of hardware for example.