Yikes!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/08/christian-home-schooling-dark-side

While Mormons do not usually home school their children (there are seminaries either next door to, or across the street from, most Utah public schools for indoctrination), I do think that at least a part of this article may hit home with some of you. To wit:

"Too frequently, Stollar says, the consequences of putting ideology over children include anxiety, depression, distrust of authority, and issues around sexuality. This is evident from the testimonials that appear on Home schoolers Anonymous, the website that Stollar established, along with several partners."

Sound familiar? Here's another quote from the article that is certainly disturbing to me:

"Smith is referring to the Calvinist movement, founded by Rousas John Rushdoony, that advocates a Christian takeover of the political system in order to "purify" the nation and cleanse it of the sin of secularism. Rushdoony taught that public schools – "statist education," in his words – promote chaos, primitivism, and "a vast disintegration into the void". He advocated home schooling as a way to rear a generation that could carry out the mission of retaking the nation for Christ."

Finally, here is one more quote from the article with a special emphasis on the teaching of girls:

"Much of fundamentalist home schooling is driven by deeply sexist and patriarchal ideology. The Quiverfull movement teaches that women need to submit to their husbands and have as many babies as they possibly can. The effects of these ideas on children are devastating, as a glance at HA's blogs show.

"The story of being home schooled was a story of being told to sit down and shut up. 'An ideal woman is quiet and submissive,' I was told time and time again," writes Phoebe. "The silence and submission I was pushed into was ultimately a place of loneliness, bitterness and almost crippling insecurity.""

The pushing of women into a submissive role? Now that is something the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints knows how to do all too well. The radicals in our midst!

I am deeply concerned that private schools and home-schooling are dumbing down science education in the US:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-03-08-home-school-christian_N.htm

Here is a link to a quiz purportedly given at a private school (widely circulated on Facebook):

http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/sciencetest.asp

The following two paragraphs from the 2010 AP article stick out at me:

"The textbook delivers a religious ultimatum to young readers and parents, warning in its History of Life chapter that a "Christian worldview ... is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is."

When the AP asked about that passage, university spokesman Brian Scoles said the sentence made it into the book because of an editing error and will be removed from future editions."

Is that like changing "white and delightsome" to "pure and delightsome" in the Book of Mormon? I can't help feeling that no matter how much lipstick you place upon it, a pig is still going to be a pig.

Ah, don't put all homeschoolers in the same box! I homeschooled my son from gr. 6 to gr. 12. Some of us home school to give our kids a better more focused education. (it also allows us to buy more books- guilt free :).

I am glad that there's a support group out there for Christian-home s holed kids who got a lousy education. And many Christians also want the best education possible for their children, too.

My son asked to be home schooled thru high school! He wanted to study certain things like economics and lots of math. I wanted him to study world history, languages and music/art appreciation. He was never going to be a scientist so that was less sequenced until the older grades when we studied cosmology thru a book 'the matter myth' and then he taught himself physics and calculus using Saxon text books.

He read books from all historical periods including the Odyssy??sp. Shakespeare, Frankenstein, 1984 to name a few.

He studied Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations- 2 volumes of economic theory over 21/2 yrs. or more.

Using a portfolio of his essays, math tests, book lists and a transcript he was accepted to Waterloo University for Economics. He later switched to the Math department and got himself a double major in math & economics.

Now as for the 'quiverful' groups, I feel sorry for them. As the oldest Mormon girl in my family, I got to do a lot of babysitting/ baby care-taking in my family too and liked it better than doing chores. I didn't have a teen life like most youth where you learn about yourself. I thot i'd love a lot of kids. Only as an adult have I figured out that while I like kids, i'm not really that keen on a quiverfull. I like my peace and quiet. I wanted more than 2, but I kind of like the small family life. We get dogs, dinners out, trips to places other than camping- we do that too. It's what I missed out on with 5 siblings. I can't imagine what I would have been llike with 18 siblings!!

It seems at least the Duggars can afford their children, but lots of Mormon families can't.

They give home schooling a bad name.

There's quite a large "dark side" to public education, as well. Talk about dumbed down...

Here in Hawaii, teachers are wrestling with this GW Bush education policy, it requires many onerous hours of extra paperwork, and delivers a diluted, cookie cutter curriculum and approach to student development.

.

I homeschooled my youngest for several years, as a TBM. It was because the local school system was so dumbed down. He is now a very successful young adult, and an ExMo. We still look back with fond memories on our time together.

Painting homeschooling as bad because of the few nuts is very unfair.

I agree. I think the option for home schooling can hold very high potential. Generalizing all home schoolers that way isn't realistic and isn't fair.

It showed many sides.

I didn't see any focus on more than one side: the religious fundamentalists. There are one or two sentences stating that "not all homeschoolers are like that," but the entirety of the article seemed to be about how horrible homeschooling was for the former students interviewed. I didn't see any balance. There was no discussion about or interviewing any number of happily homeschooled adults.

I've mentioned it on other threads, and I'll mention it again. All the homeschooling Mormon families I met on my mission were super cool! Great kids, dynamic moms, happy dads. I had never even thought of it before, but it really turned me on to the idea.

blindguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


> "Too frequently, Stollar says, the consequences of
> putting ideology over children include anxiety,
> depression, distrust of authority, and issues
> around sexuality. This is evident from the
> testimonials that appear on Home schoolers
> Anonymous, the website that Stollar established,
> along with several partners."
>
> Sound familiar?

"Familiar" ?

I lived it. My MORmON parents did not home school me, they were way too LAZY for that, but they did fully indoctrinate me, even though I went to public school, because they still maintained a very effective MORmON bubble that I was trapped in. There were enough MORmONS in the community to be able to do that very effectively. In fact, a substantial "non member" population helps maintain the MORmON favored "us versus them" mentality, that serves so well to keep MORmON kids indoctrinated.

Back when homeschooling was a hippie movement to avoid indoctrinating your kids with cold war propaganda and puritan ideas about art and literature, the standards required regular outside testing to ensure that the kids were getting their basics in science, math and reading.

But the Christian home school movement has destroyed those standards.

Trouble is there's no money to be made in homeschooling, so the real future in educational quackery is the charter school movement. In my neck of the woods conservative Mormons have Cleon Skousen and Stephen Covey inspired curriculums at the Heritage Academy and American Leadership Academy respectively.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2013 06:29PM by crom.

Information on the use of vouchers for charter schools teaching Creationism:

http://billmoyers.com/content/interactive-map-voucher-schools-teaching-creationism/

Egods that's awful.

Certainly not most people, but there are some who homeschool (and do it badly) 1) because their own education and/or intelligence is limited and they want to maintain control, 2) they need a babysitter for another child, 3) they want no one to be in a position to scrutinize what goes on in their home.

If you are forced to live in an area with extremely poor schools, if you are sailing around the world on a sailboat, or if you live on a ranch so far away from a school that your child would have to travel hours each way to attend school, then okay, I can see it. Otherwise, not so much.

Ask John Singer about home schooling in Utah.




.............. Oh ....... wait ......

Bwahahaha.