Cut and run

A few months back I posted an excerpt from E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful so that I would be able to link back to it from time to time.

This is one of those times. That excerpt concludes:

... if it is taken for granted that education is a passport to privilege, then the content of education will not primarily be something to serve the people, but something to serve ourselves, the educated. The privileged minority will wish to be educated in a manner that sets them apart and will inevitably learn and teach the wrong things, that is to say, things that do set them apart. ...

Bruce Shortt, of something called Exodus Mandate, believes that young Southern Baptists are not sufficiently set apart, so he's sponsoring a resolution urging all Southern Baptists to withdraw their children from public schools. Ethics Daily's Bob Allen has the story:

The call for an "exodus" from public schools continues to gain momentum in the Southern Baptist Convention, according to sponsors of a resolution being proposed at this summer's SBC annual meeting in San Antonio.

Bruce Shortt, a representative of Exodus Mandate, a Christian ministry that urges parents to remove their children from "government" schools and educate them either at home or in Christian schools, announced today plans for the fourth straight year to introduce a resolution encouraging the expansion of Christian alternatives to public education.
 
Shortt, an attorney from Houston, is co-sponsoring the resolution with Voddie Baucham, an African-American author and conference leader who worked together with Shortt in 2005 in convincing the convention to adopt a resolution on Christian education affirming that parents, and not the government, are primarily responsible for educating their children.
 
The 2007 resolution seeks to build momentum on a comment made by SBC president Frank Page shortly after his election last summer in Greensboro, N.C. Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., told Agape Press he is disturbed that many teenagers leave the church after graduating from high school and he hoped that more churches would begin offering Christian schools.
 
Bauchum said Page's call for more Christian schools reflects "an expanding debate" among Christians over public education. Seminary president Albert Mohler has called on Baptist parents to develop an "exit strategy" for their children from public schools. ...
 
This year's resolution says the majority of Southern Baptist children are being discipled by "an anti-Christian government school system," that undermines values taught in church and home.

The resolution also has the support of Wiley Drake who is the SBC's "second vice president" (and not, as his name would seem to suggest, a character in a Flannery O'Connor story). Drake said:

"Southern Baptists, and Christians generally, need to plan a Christian educational future for our children."

"First, Christian parents are obligated to provide their children with a Christ-centered education. ... Anyone who thinks that a few hours of youth group and church will have more influence on a child's faith and worldview than 40 to 50 hours a week of public school classes, activities and homework is simply not being honest with himself.

"Second, the open collaboration between homosexual activists and many school districts, together with the overall level of crime and violence in the public schools, make the public schools an unsafe place for our children."

Because, you know, crime and violence could never occur in a private Christian school.

I understand the idea here. Christians, St. Paul said, should not be "conformed to this world." Instead, St. Peter wrote, we are supposed to be "a peculiar people" and "a holy nation." That word "holy" means, literally, "set apart." But set apart for what? That's where Shortt, Baucham and Page, et. al., seem to lose the map. Their preoccupation with safety and purity and separateness-for-separateness' sake does not sound like the attitude of people who are called to be salt and light.

I also fear there's more to this agenda than its advocates are explicitly stating. I can't help but suspect that any group calling itself "Exodus Mandate" is planning to plunder the Egyptians. Step two of this plan, likely, would be for SBC families to argue that they are no longer obliged to pay school taxes, since their children are no longer in the public system. (And, despite Baucham's best Ward Connerly impression, I can't help but suspect that race is a massive, unspoken factor here.)

I would agree with the language of their preliminary resolution, stating that parents have the primary responsibility for the education of their children, except that I've seen these folks fumble the principle of subsidiarity too many times to trust them with its application here. Parents are responsible for their children's education. But so is the government and the rest of civil society. Turning this into an either/or is a dangerous kind of foolishness.

If their revolutionary zeal weren't so destructive, their confusion might be funny. For example:

"Christians and others find it increasingly difficult to avert their eyes from the metastasizing spiritual, moral and intellectual pathologies of the government school system," said Shortt, a homeschool father. "Southern Baptist churches and the SBC's institutions must get about the business of creating a new public school system -- one that is 'public' in the sense that it is open to anyone, but controlled by parents and churches, not bureaucrats and politicians."

So instead of bureaucrats and politicians, parents will decide directly how these schools will be run. Well, maybe not directly -- having a town-meeting every time you need to hire staff or purchase textbooks could be cumbersome and inefficient. But short of that they could ensure that parents had a say in such decisions by, say, electing representatives to a board that could oversee the schools. They could call it a "school board." This "school board" -- accountable to the parents -- could hire professionals to manage the day-to-day affairs of the schools. All of which would be so much better than the current system of politicians and bureaucrats.

I'll give the last word here to Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics:

"Rather than bearing false witness against public school teachers and the National Education Association, Christians need to speak up for the goal that great public schools ought to be a basic right for every child," Parham said. "We need to express gratitude for public school workers and to make sure that schools are fully funded."

"The anti-public education agenda fits nicely with the anti-women, anti-science, anti-Disney, anti-everything ideology within the SBC," Parham said. "That agenda runs counter to the best of the goodwill tradition within Baptist life that seeks the welfare of the public square."

Comments

[PepperjackCandy]

Because, you know, crime and violence could never occur in a private Christian school.

Never happens. Yep.

[Erick Oppeen]

The trouble with public education is that all too often it becomes a political football. I don't know if any of you have read my idol H.L. Mencken's accounts of the Scopes "Monkey Trial," but he was, legally at least, entirely on the side of the prosecution---his take was that the citizens and taxpayers of the state of Tennessee had every right to decide what would and would not be taught to their children on the public dime. Mencken (and I) thought that the anti-evolution position is inane and unscientific, but for most kids, it isn't going to make a big difference in their lives, and if you have publicly funded schools, you have to accept that the public wants the say-so about what will or will not be taught.

I could go into further rants about how the egalitarian mode of public schools is cruel to the dummies and even crueller to the gifted, or about how most parents seem to care far more about the sports teams' victories than the quality of the education (after all, the education is "free," isn't it? Just like everything else the Great Ghod Government dishes out!) but I'm kind of tired. I will say that a lot of children would do better with a lot less lockstep.

[MichaelR]

The angry, bitter, bile-filled part of me reads this and says: good. Get out. Stay out. Good riddance, you anti-science jerkoffs, because once you aren't wasting space in the schools, you're not allowed to throw another hysterical tantrum whenever someone suggests that, hey, maybe we should teach these kids about sex (what with things like "puberty" wreaking havoc with their minds and bodies) and contraception rather than just smacking them in the nose with a rolled up newspaper saying NO (which, as already covered, doesn't work). Or their usual song and dance where they trot out God in a labcoat and call it "Intelligent Design" and try to pretend like they understand the most basic principles of science every time evolution comes up.

The more rational part makes sure the bile-storm is over and points out that it's not really fair to take it out on the kids of the people who do the stupid crap like this, and that doing so increases the odds they'll grow up to be the next generation of people who do stupid crap like this.

[85% Duane]

Bruce Shortt, of something called Exodus Mandate, believes that young Southern Baptists are not sufficiently set apart, so he's sponsoring a resolution urging all Southern Baptists to withdraw their children from public schools.

Southern Baptists seem to be following the course set by Independent Fundamental Baptists starting in the 70s. Our church-school was founded in the early 70s by a local pastor who was outraged by some imagined threat from black school children to his own children.

At least Southern Baptists have enough historical shame not to play up racial angle too loudly.

Anyway, it can only be a good thing when marginal folks marginalize themselves. Maybe this will slow the efforts of the anti-evolution/anti-sex-education folks.

[Erick Oppeen]

As long as they're paying taxes, they get a voice. You don't like it? Well, "he who takes the king's shilling becomes the king's man," and as long as schools are publicly funded, these fights will continue. There is no guarantee that voting majorities will always be sufficiently enlightened for your exalted tastes.

[MichaelR]

While it's true that paying taxes gives them some voice, hopefully the fact that they aren't sending their children to these Satanism factories with their facts and logic, they'll be content to sit quietly with their heads firmly wedged so far up their own asses they're coming back out their mouths. (Mmm, Eschery!)

[coriolis]

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men."
In the time of Jesus, salt was how you prevented your meat from rotting. I am amazed at how this folks can read the red and not comprehend.
"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."
Fred, I sense within you the Spirit of the Lord and I am refreshed whenever I come here. Thank you for your ministry.

[Jill Smith]

I fear that another hidden angle to this agenda is sexism. If they're taking kids out of public schools and having them "home" schooled - who takes on that role? No special points for saying, "The mother, of course." Give her more work, fewer options, maybe even a few more kids to educate, and maybe she'll never get any ideas about having a life of her own.

After all, it worked for the Yates family, didn't it?

[inge]

Erik: Mencken (and I) thought that the anti-evolution position is inane and unscientific, but for most kids, it isn't going to make a big difference in their lives,

This basically puts into question the merits of schooling as such. If it doesn't matter if what children are taught is true or false, mainstream or crank, useful or destructive for this or that career choice, eductators won't have to bother deciding what is true or useful, and kids won't have to get up early in the morning. It would at least save a lot of bother.

I could go into further rants about how the egalitarian mode of public schools is cruel to the dummies and even crueller to the gifted,

This cruelty produces a good net result than the lack thereof. (And one might argue if it is really less cruel to damn everone who is in the lowest 30% of their age group at age nine to the life and career prospects of a high school dropout.)

[cjmr]

Congratulations! We got all of eight comments into the thread before someone posted a gratuitous comment conflating all women who homeschool with Andrea Yates.

[inge]

cmjr, not how I read Jill's comment...

[Raka]

inge: [cjmr], not how I read Jill's comment...

I'm normally the one who runs around aggressively assuming the most generous interpretation of any comment, but even I'm thinking that the Yates mention was a bit much. Many details of her situation share a common cause (a particularly unhealthy form of patriarchy, which isn't the healthiest system in the best of times), but that doesn't make those details (staying at home to raise children, home schooling, etc) inherently bad themselves. And implying a causal relationship between those details and Yates's serious mental illness is both mean-spirited and statistically spurious.

[Jill Smith]

Thanks, Inge - it's not how I meant it. It's also not what I said. My point was about choice and gender roles and subcultures who remove the former based on the latter. I said nothing about "all women," and did not conflate all of homeschooling with Andrea Yates' situation.

However, I agree that Raka has a point that mentioning her is spurious and statistically irrelevant, and I apologize for being unnecessarily inflammatory.

[Angelika]

Erick Oppeen: I could go into further rants about how the egalitarian mode of public schools is cruel to the dummies and even crueller to the gifted

I spend years of agonizing boredom, annoyed at class mates who seemed unable to understand a simple text, asked the same stupid question three times or even more often, and slowed down any intellectual persuit by their sheer stupidity and laziness. As a student I would have certainly welcomed an institution that would have been better tailored to my personal needs and abilities *.

Yet, looking back, I'm glad having been educated in a public school. For one thing, the world does not come tailored to fit for any of us. Having to respect the needs of others is just as important a lesson to learn as the high art of orthography, which I admittedly never completely mastered. Having to spend lots of time with children from different family backgrounds, who brought different opinions and view points into discussions, helped a lot to widen my world view, making me more tolerant and willing to question my own ideas (which is probably something certain groups don't want to happen to their children.) It also taught me the necessary skills how to hold up my own opinion against opposition, and not be overly surprised if somebody doubts what I would consider a fundamental truth (something the same certain groups would actually want their children to learn.)

I also don't think my parents, despite being well educated themselves, would have been able to teach me the same array of knowlegde and skills I was offered at school. (Both of them are physicians and could have taught me the basics in natural sciences very well. But neither of them is fluent in a foreign language.) Most of my class mates had less well educated parents and would have been even worse of without public education.

* Note, I was raised in Germany, where students are separated into three different kind of schools in grade five according to their ablitities shown during the four years of elementary school. So they actually did do some tailoring to accommodate different skills.

[Raka]

Jill Smith: I apologize for being unnecessarily inflammatory

What the... you do realize you're on the internet, right? Backing down from anything without using the opportunity to insult someone is just not done. I really have no idea how to react. I'm torn between thanking you, apologizing to you, and gazing fearfully out the window for more signs of the End Times.

[Jill Smith]

Raka - very funny! And thanks - you've made my day.

I don't generally try to write inflammatory things. I have no stomach for the flamewar. I admit to a weak, angry, precaffeinated moment this morning that temporarily overstepped my usual moderation and obscured my real point.

[histrogeek]

On the Yates tragedy: Andrea Yates is actually a decent model of what could happen if the SBC gets its way. It isn't that all women who home-school their kids or are otherwise stay-at-home moms are psychotic. It's that forcing all mothers, regardless of their actual interests and talents, to be home-schooling moms is a road to disaster. As a former teacher and now father, I can say that both jobs are astoundingly stressful and defintely not for everyone (it took me 6 years to realize I wasn't cut out for teaching). You force people by accident of chromosome to take on the two roles simultaneously and a handful will jump off the deep end. More, or course, will just to a bad job.
On the broader point: SBC is definitely following the well-trod path blazed by the White Citizen's Council and their ilk since Brown. I genuinely fear for public education in the South where these groups are strongest. The irony is that all of the rhetoric that SBC is spitting out is almost word-for-word the same as 19th century Catholics used to justify parochial education. The main difference is that the Catholic Church had a cadre of educators available in the form of the religious orders and a long scholastic tradition. As a result, their schools are still admired and attended by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. I seriously doubt the SBC schools will be so successful. Only in places where there is no competition are they likely to be successful.

[cjmr]

Jill,

I was pre-caffeinated this morning as well. And have the flu. I over-reacted.

histrogeek,

I agree that:
1. Andrea Yates is a good example of what might happen when a woman who has had demonstrably worse post-partum depression with each successive pregnancy is encouraged by her husband and an irresponsible religious leader to continue having children anyway.
2. Homeschooling is an extremely stressful life-style and parents (women or men) should not be homeschooling if they don't have the temperament and aptitude for it or if they don't want to homeschool.

But I don't think that anyone could prove that if Yates had not been homeschooling she wouldn't have killed her children. Only two of her children were old enough to have been in school.

[histrogeek]

cjmr,
True enough, it wasn't homeschooling per se but the Christian equivalent of purdah that caused the Yates tragedy. I think poor Andrea is going to be the poster girl for the truly desperate housewife for awhile yet.

[McJulie]

his take was that the citizens and taxpayers of the state of Tennessee had every right to decide what would and would not be taught to their children on the public dime.

This was a big anti-civil-rights argument and I don't buy it. Some of our government is set up assuming that 55 percent of the population gets their way (elections, for example) and some is set up to ensure that 55 percent doesn't get to simply vote, say, to incarcerate and take the stuff of the remaining 45 percent. Democracy doesn't mean "whatever the hell you want as long as a you have a plurality."

the anti-evolution position is inane and unscientific, but for most kids, it isn't going to make a big difference in their lives

Uh.... what? You don't think it makes a difference whether kids are taught science in a science class, or religion in a science class?

Does that mean you think a scientific education is useless? Or what?

[Raka]

histrogeek: it wasn't homeschooling per se but the Christian equivalent of purdah that caused the Yates tragedy

*groan* Can we agree that forcing people into roles (any people and any roles) is generally a bad thing? Going further than that is speculative at best.

Mental illness caused the Yates tragedy. Stress and repeated childbirth were very probably exacerbating / triggering elements in that illness, and I suppose the existence of the children in the first place was a necessary precondition to this particular tragedy. Saying that the exacerbating / triggering elements "caused" the murder, on the other hand, is just too much like saying that violent entertainment "causes" school shootings.

Knowing her circumstances helps us understand her actions. Knowing her actions doesn't really tell us anything about her circumstances.

[cjmr]

So what I had originally come on to comment about this morning was about elected school boards.

I came from a small mid-western school district. There were 7 members on the school board and ~3000 students in the district. Every parent either knew personally at least one of the school board members or knew someone who knew one personally. The school board was a part-time job, they were paid a nominal amount for serving, and they were really accountable to the parents and community. I can remember at least twice when a group of about 50 families managed to change the direction the school board wanted to go. (Kept recess in 4th-6th grades and kept the elementary instrumental music program.)

I now live in a large school district in the DC area. There are 10 members on the school board, plus a professional (hired) CEO of schools. We have individual high schools that have more students than my old school district. Most of the people who stood for school board in the last election were seeing it as a stepping stone into politics and some of them were 'associates' of the county executive. It is extremely top-heavy in bureaucracy and the school board is salaried. A group of 50 families advocating for a change would be swatted like a fly.

I think Fred is thinking of the first kind of school district and the SBC is thinking of the second sort.

[inge]

Angelika: Note, I was raised in Germany, where students are separated into three different kind of schools in grade 5

So was I. And while I, personally, can't complain of being sorted into the highest House, eh, school because I was from the educated middle class, spoke German as my native tongue and everyone knew I had to be intelligent (if lazy), I am enough of a child of the 70s to feel uneasy about the system. Even more so now, as the types of jobs where being 14 and literate was enough to get an apprenticeship have become nearly extinct, and the chances of switch to a higher type of school after you got sorted to a lower one at age 9 have diminished.

The PISA study seems to agree that sorting children early provides no benefit to any group, too...

[Raka]

Me: Knowing her actions doesn't really tell us anything about her circumstances.

I phrased this ambiguously. Obviously, knowing her actions can allow us to make some inferences about her what her circumstances were-- this is precisely what the field of criminal profiling is about. What it does not do is give us anything useful in evaluating the general value or nature of those circumstances, except in knowing that at least one person found them a significant source of stress.

If a significant number of people in similar circumstances act in a similar way AND it can be shown that the two do not share a common cause, then we have enough information to judge the circumstances in terms of their effects. Otherwise, we're just making unwarranted connections between two things that we don't like. In Yates's case, we have plenty of reasons (moral, political, pragmatic, etc) to judge her circumstances (the oppressive "christian purdah") without asserting unjustified causality.

[Angelika]

inge: the chances of switch to a higher type of school after you got sorted to a lower one at age 9 have diminished.
It is a while ago, that I left school, admittedly. By the time I finished (1993), it was well possible to add two or three years to Realschulabschluss in order to get access to an University. Several of my fellow students at the University have done just that. If that is really harder now, than it used to be, I'll have to take your word for it.

On the native language. I mentioned in a recent discussion in the US, that in Germany Turkish immigrant children sometimes have trouble succeeding in school, and getting a good employment, if they enter elementary school without being able to speak German. The general notion there was, 'but Chinese children enter American schools without speaking a word of English all the time and do just fine.'

[cjmr]

Does Germany offer the equivalent of English for Speakers of Other Languages and bi-lingual education to the Turkish immigrant children, or do they get sink-or-swim full-immersion instruction?

[histrogeek]

Raka,
I didn't mean to imply absolute causation between the maternal isolation and homicide (i.e. any woman isolated will become homicidal).
Andrea was clearly unusual both as an individual and in her circumstances, a kind of perfect storm for the tradegy. Take away either her mental illness and/or her patriarchal-religious isolation and it probably wouldn't have happen. More to the point it usually doesn't.
It hardly matters. As a matter of justice and equality no one should be forced into a role by their birth (that be so often are doesn't justify it).

[Angelika]

I'm not entirely sure. But I guess, sink-or-swim with maybe some additional classes to specially foster their language skills at the end of the day is the norm. At least that was what some of my Turkish fellow students in elementary school got. But well, that was more than twenty years ago.

[inge]

Anglika, I guess it depends strongly on the federal state you are in. When I went to school in the 80s in Niedersachsen, changing from Realschule zu Gymnasium was easy if you knew you wanted to do it by seventh grade (so you could start learning French). I'm in Bavaria now, where it is harder, I got the rest of my impression from overhearing discussions and from newpaper articles. I really should look up the numbers for myself some day.

cjmr: Depends on the federal state and even the school. Classes in "German as second language" and native language teaching cost money, and in the places I saw, even during the 90s it was not common, unless you had a bilingual teacher offering it for little or no compensation. New kids who didn't speak German were put next to a kid they shared a language with, and everyone hoped that immersion would work. It actually worked OK as long as the elementary school classes were reasonably mixed. As soon as you had more than three or four kids with the same non-German native language, it got difficult. Of course, even when it worked well, the kids were one year out of four behind and usually ended up in the seond-lowest rank of the schools system.

Lately there has been some discussion that there might be a problem, but the debate gets weighted down by ideology.

[Bugmaster]

the anti-evolution position is inane and unscientific, but for most kids, it isn't going to make a big difference in their lives

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon here, and claim that learning things that are most likely true, as opposed to false or unknown, is going to make a big difference in anyone's life. More importantly, though, a proper study of evolution would discuss Darwin's finches, and natural selection, and genetics, etc. I.e., it would not simply tell the children, "evolution is true", but, "evolution is probably true, and here's why we think that it is". Ultimately, yes, the mere knowledge of the fact of evolution is not practically useful for anyone but a biologist or a doctor. However, the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood is critically important for every individual, and the society in general; and this is what science is ultimately all about.

[forestwalker]

"...Wiley Drake who is the SBC's "second vice president" (and not, as his name would seem to suggest, a character in a Flannery O'Connor story)."

This made me laugh so hard. Due to a chance overlap between my work with the homeless and the shelter he runs on his church property I've had the pleasure of spending an evening speaking with Pastor Drake at his church in Buena Park. Stepping onto his compound and meeting the man is remarkably like walking into an O'Connor story. :)

[LL]

I don't understand what the religious nutjobs and the "libertarians" don't understand about the bottom line purpose of universal public education: it's so everyone's kid - not just the rich and not just yours - will be educated so that we don't have a bunch of illiterate adults running around (well, many more than we have now) in 20 years. If you want to argue that school funds are misspent and that some public schools really suck at their mandate, I won't disagree, but public education is one of the few things that the govt. actually does OK at, given the enormity of the task and the resources at hand. Could it be better? Sure. Does it often move at the pace of the slowest students, leaving the smarter, more motivated ones on their own? Yes, although I think it's worth pointing out that one reason the "dumb" kids are in with the "smart" ones is that not so long ago, shunting the "slow" ones into separate classes was often used as an excuse by school administrators to institute de facto segregation by putting all the black and Hispanic kids into classes separate from the white kids. There are about 49 million school age kids in the US (according to the feds), maybe if we took all the money we spend on sports, plastic surgery, gigantic cars, cell phones that can browse the internet and shitty Left Behind books, we could actually educate ALL of them well, instead of just the fortunate and motivated few. Just a thought.

[Bugmaster]

I think the problem with public education, as Fred and the writers of The Wire pointed out, is that it became just a matter of generating statistics. The goal of high school is to produce graduates who do reasonably well on tests, so that the school gets more financing. And that's it. This isn't education, it's not even vocational training, it's just a pointless game. Anything that gets in the way of winning the game -- such as actual education -- is a distraction at best, and must be eliminated.

I agree that public education is an absolute must, but what we have now is not it.

[cjmr's husband]

I like how the current system takes money from the underperforming schools that need it, and gives it to the white upperclass suburban schools.

How about instead we give every school in the state the money it needs to do the job, and instead cut the salary of the principal/school board/"CEO Of Schools" rather than punishing the kids?

The kids think school is punishment enough. Which of course is the real problem...

1. The way everybody is responding, one would assume that this resolution would cause all Southern Baptist parents everywhere to withdraw their children from public schools. How could that be? The Convention is not set up to hand down orders from a central authority to Southern Baptists, who must obey or be excommunicated.
2. If Southern Baptists want to encourage home-schooling or Christian private schools, that's their prerogative, isn't it?
3. Why shouldn't they stop paying taxes towards education if they disagree with the content of that education?
4. Speaking of content, in my experience, the problem is not that evolution is taught, but that the whole school system treats religion (especially Christianity) with such condescension and contempt that students often (I've seen it personally) either compromise or even ignore their beliefs in order to be taken seriously.
5. It is true that in a homeschooling family, it often (but not always) falls on the mother to stay home and educate the children. However, the sort of family that would choose home-schooling is often (again, not always) the sort of family where the mother would choose to stay home and raise children anyways. And I don't see what's wrong with that. Again, I have to mention that not every Southern Baptist family will withdraw its children from public schools, since the Southern Baptist Convention does not have authority in the private matters of a family.
6. cjmr: I think Fred is thinking of the first kind of school district and the SBC is thinking of the second sort.

When deciding whether or not to implement a gay tolerance program for teachers, the school board in my county voted in a closed-door session, not allowing those who opposed the program to voice that opposition. It's this attitude of "We know what's best for your children and we will do it regardless of what you think" that makes these sorts of movements seem so appealing.

[Problem of Leisure]

1. The way everybody is responding, one would assume that this resolution would cause all Southern Baptist parents everywhere to withdraw their children from public schools. How could that be? The Convention is not set up to hand down orders from a central authority to Southern Baptists, who must obey or be excommunicated.
2. If Southern Baptists want to encourage home-schooling or Christian private schools, that's their prerogative, isn't it?
3. Why shouldn't they stop paying taxes towards education if they disagree with the content of that education?
4. Speaking of content, in my experience, the problem is not that evolution is taught, but that the whole school system treats religion (especially Christianity) with such condescension and contempt that students often (and this was unfortunately the case with me) either compromise or even ignore their beliefs in order to be taken seriously.
5. It is true that in a homeschooling family, it often (but not always) falls on the mother to stay home and educate the children. However, the sort of family that would choose home-schooling is often (again, not always) the sort of family where the mother would choose to stay home and raise children anyways. And I don't see what's wrong with that. Again, I have to mention that not every Southern Baptist family will withdraw its children from public schools, since the Southern Baptist Convention does not have authority in the private matters of a family.
6. cjmr: I think Fred is thinking of the first kind of school district and the SBC is thinking of the second sort.

When deciding whether or not to implement a gay tolerance program for teachers, the school board in my county voted in a closed-door session, not allowing those who opposed the program to voice that opposition. It's this attitude of "We know what's best for your children and we will do it regardless of what you think" that makes these sorts of movements seem so appealing.

[Problem of Leisure]

Whoops, double-post.

[Scott]

This was a big anti-civil-rights argument and I don't buy it. Some of our government is set up assuming that 55 percent of the population gets their way (elections, for example) and some is set up to ensure that 55 percent doesn't get to simply vote, say, to incarcerate and take the stuff of the remaining 45 percent. Democracy doesn't mean "whatever the hell you want as long as a you have a plurality."

Basically, if 55% vote liberal, they get their way. If 55% vote conservative, that's another story.
Is being taught evolution a "civil right"?

[Veronica]

Heh. That's not happening in Texas. If all the Southern Baptists had been pulled from the public schools what would become of Football?

[MichaelR]

Being taught evolution isn't a civil right, but basing science classes on actual science as opposed to superstition should be pretty obvious.

Oh, but wait, that's the EVIL GOVERNMENT telling people that they can't do something, so they are by default wrong.

[burgundy]

Problem of Leisure: Why shouldn't they stop paying taxes towards education if they disagree with the content of that education?

People with kids in private school still pay property taxes; people without kids at all pay property taxes. This is because a) education is a public good that benefits even the people not directly receiving it and b) it's just not feasible to allow people to customize their taxes to what they'd like to pay for. That's what the democratic process is for - don't like the content of education? Be careful how you vote for the school board, let your voice be heard, etc. Don't like that your money is going to fund the war in Iraq? Vote well, speak out. If you really want to take a stand, you can refuse to pay taxes, but then we're into civil disobedience a la the guy who continued feeding the homeless in the park (see Fred's posts about him) and if you're going to do that, you have to expect to be caught and possibly punished.

[Jeff]

it's so everyone's kid - not just the rich and not just yours - will be educated so that we don't have a bunch of illiterate adults running around (well, many more than we have now) in 20 years.

Exactly. If Scott, Mabus and PoL want doctors, pharmacists, etc who were home-schooled by SBC or libertarian standards, more power to them. (In fact, they should only go to individuals who have not received state education.) The rest of us know that funding a good education for Johnny Smith means an engineer, an architect, a scientist we can trust.

[X]

Scott, I know you're just trolling, but let me tell you why your latest comment makes conservatives look so bad:

You say, essentially, that the constitutional protections we have built such that any given 55% of the population cannot lawfully democratically abuse the remaining 45% only apply to liberal values. These are the laws that guarantee freedom of speech, assembly, religion, protection against unreasonable discrimination (getting fired/lynched because you're Black), and so on. If you think that these are only liberal values, then that means that conservatives are cool with suppressing freedom, beating on niggers, and dictating what religion people have to believe. If that's the way the lines are drawn, then it would be quite reasonable to divide the population into conservatives and sane people, and to pass laws requiring that conservatives be put somewhere safe where they can't do anything too nasty. We wouldn't want that now, would we Scott?

[McJulie]

(...do not feed troll... do not feed troll... do not feed troll... aw, what the heck...)

Basically, if 55% vote liberal, they get their way. If 55% vote conservative, that's another story.

Sure, like in 2000, when the majority voted for Bush and Gore got installed as president anyway.

And I'm sure the Bill of Rights (which I obliquely referred to as one of the aspects preventing the 55% from abusing the 45% too egregiously) doesn't include that libertarian favorite about "bearing arms".

Is being taught evolution a "civil right"?

It is a civil right that my education (or that of my children) not be compromised by someone else's religious beliefs.

The goal of the public school system is to create neutral ground that does not appear to favor or disfavor Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Wiccans, Pastafarians, or any other religion or lack thereof. Yes, they approach that goal imperfectly. Mistakes are made.

But the mistakes aren't actually the problem. These are religious fanatics who can't deal with the fundamental principle of neutral ground -- they want their children to go to a school system that conforms explicitly to their religious beliefs and customs.

[the opoponax]

i think the bottom line about this whole thing is how preposterous it is that any significant proportion would actually be able to pull their kids out of public school. i would guess that the vast majority of Southern Baptists, just like most Americans, live in dual-earning families, where both parents work. these people are not going to pull their kids out of school. even in the few SAHM families, in most households where there is more than one child, the mother depends on school as a form of subsidized daycare for older children so that she can have time to properly care for the baby or toddler. this means that the only people for whom homeschooling will be practical are those with older children -- and it's rare that women in such families continue to stay home.

i imagine that even if the SBC does recommend home schooling, it will be about as effective as their boycott of Disney a few years back.

a small digression: ''but Chinese children enter American schools without speaking a word of English all the time and do just fine.''

huh? a Chinese child who enters an American school in kindergarten after having already been in the US for a year or so, maybe. or maybe a very well educated Chinese child who is ahead of the rest of the kids, and thus has time to catch up.

but bilingual education is and always has been a huge issue in American education, since there has been any such thing as "American education".

[the opoponax]

"the whole school system treats religion (especially Christianity) with such condescension and contempt..."

what kind of alternate universe are you living in, and can we switch?

seriously. really. maybe this is just because i grew up in the rural south, but i have as of yet not come across a primary/secondary school that exhibited this famous contempt of religion.

when i was in public elementary school, we began each day with the Lord's Prayer (ok, actually in 2nd grade they changed it to a mandatory moment of silence which we were made to understand was actually prayer time), made Christmas tree ornaments during the holidays, and read distilled bible stories like Noah's Ark and various New Testament parables at story time.

my high school had MULTIPLE christian clubs and christian-oriented afterschool activities, which met on campus and had faculty moderators (and counted towards things like National Honor Society eligibility). there was also a lunchtime bible study in the quad for anyone who felt like attending, and the evolution chapter in our biology text was skipped. i would say that 30% of my high school classmates wore crosses or other religious paraphernalia to school without rebuke from either the teachers or their fellow students.

in fact, i would venture to say that my middle school/jr. high years, which i spent in a Christian parochial school, were actually more secularist and accepting of children of other religions than either of my two public schools were!

[Nenya]

Opoponax: My sister surprised me when she told me that something like three-quarters of her American public high-school classmates were overtly Christian and randomly discussed theology (albeit in presumably not-very-rigorous terms) and where they went to church while walking down the hallways at school. I am not given to understand that this happened in her previous Canadian public high school (but it did in her Canadian Christian school).

It seems to be my experience that the less people are persecuted, the more they think they are. I lived in a town for 15 years where the "out" Christians were a large minority, or small majority. We didn't feel terribly persecuted, but we all knew one another and the various denominations would help each other out because they were all too small to go it alone. And there a limited amount of declaiming from Town Hall steps about Family Values. Then I moved to a place with quite literally a church on every other streetcorner, where I would guess 85% of the populace considers themselves actively Christian, and what do we have? Constant billboards telling people to "get saved!" It's weird, the place with more Christians seems more worried that if they don't propagandize, they'll go out of style.

"Rather than bearing false witness against public school teachers and the National Education Association, Christians need to speak up for the goal that great public schools ought to be a basic right for every child."

Amen. :D People have lots of reasons to home-school, including wanting to get away from "lock-step" and give their kids a chance to learn things at their own pace (I know people who do that), so you can't say whether someone's making a good or a bad choice for their kids without knowing a lot more information than just that they pulled their kids from public school. But I don't like all the fear-mongering in some quarters--worrying that the EvilLiberal Public Schools will corrupt our Innocent Offspring. I'm quite heartened to hear someone--Baptist no less! :P --say that "great public schools" is a worthwhile goal, and not write the whole enterprise off. Even if it were ideal for all kids to be homeschooled, you'd still have a lot of kids whose parents couldn't. And so it would only be fair to make public schools as good as they can be.

[Jesurgislac]

Problem of Leisure: When deciding whether or not to implement a gay tolerance program for teachers, the school board in my county voted in a closed-door session, not allowing those who opposed the program to voice that opposition. It's this attitude of "We know what's best for your children and we will do it regardless of what you think" that makes these sorts of movements seem so appealing.

"When deciding whether or not to implement an anti-racism program for teachers, the school board in my country voted in a closed-door session, not allowing people not on the school board who wanted the people teaching their children to be racist to voice their opinion about how racism in teachers is a good thing."

Is that a fair summary? You think that the parents who wanted the people who teach their children to be homophobic towards their children, ought to have been allowed to tell the school board how important it was that their GLBT children should receive no support or even tolerance from their teachers?

Well, maybe they should; parents who hate their children that much probably need to get it out of their system, and better the school board should hear it than their own GLBT children. But the notion that it's not good for children to have teachers who've had some kind of training not to be racist, or homophobic, or sexist, is just kind of... hateful.

That Southern Baptists may want their GLBT children to grow up miserable, self-hating, and twisted, just so long as they remain Southern Baptists, is another kettle of fish. Sadly, there are some forms of child abuse that are likely to remain legal, and homophobic parents teaching their children to hate themselves is one of them. But it's all the more important that children who are despised and rejected by their parents should be able to get support somewhere, and school is the obvious place to start.

[joseph duemer]

"Why shouldn't they stop paying taxes towards education if they disagree with the content of that education?"

When I get to deduct the taxes I pay to support the murderous miscalculation in Iraq, I'll feel all right about the SBC parents not paying school taxes. But as numerous folks have already pointed out, that is not how democracy works. I don't have children in the public schools, but Monday I'm going to go vote in the school budget election. And you know what? I'm going to vote to support a budget increase, because more resources means -- at least potentially -- better schools. And better schools might turn out better citizens.

As for the SBC movement to pull their kids out, let them go. I went to a Christian school in 7-9 grade & it took me a long time to catch up when I went back to public school. Christian schools are not even very good at teaching the wrong stuff, in fact. They're just not very good schools. And as a university prof, I have had a number of home schooled students in class. Spare me. Solipsistic narcissists lacking basic literacy.

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

[L]et me tell you why your latest comment makes conservatives look so bad....

Heh. Reminds me of another way in which conservatives/today's Republicans sometimes make themselves look bad.

So, run-up to 2004, I'm working hard against the re-election of Bush. I'm being a Delegate to the county and then the state Dem convention. I happen to mention this to my family. This elicits the following "joke" from several family members on several occasions: "Huh? But you've got a high paying programmer job! Haven't you started voting Republican now that you're rich?"

Each time I tried to respond to this with, "Why would you deliberately paint your party as one that only cares about preserving its riches?" No one would engage me on that level. They'd just start talking over me with, "It was a joke, Niki."

But jokes of this sort take their humor from being based on reality, or at least based on the joke-teller believing they are based on reality. Like, maybe a Bush-hating Democrat would make that joke, and I'd respond with, "D'oh! Right! Forgot about that. I'll get it right next election!" and there'd be much knee-slapping. The humor would come from a shared conviction that that's really how the conservative Republicans who support Bush think.

To hear a Republican make that joke--"what are you doing voting Democrat now that you've got money?"--I'd have to assume the joke-teller was either secretly ashamed of his party (in a sort of uneasy cognitive-dissonance way) or else an entirely amoral creep who thought there was nothing wrong with an "I've got mine, screw you" attitude. In the case of my family, I'll argue it was the former.

(In the case of Scott, I'll go for option three: pretending to be an amoral creep in order to get a rise out of everyone.)

(I guess there could also be a Republican who sees the humor in the joke coming from making fun of how Democrats see Republicans, but I'm tying my brain in knots hypothesizing the history between the two that would make that make that joke make any amount of sense to either of them. It would involve the joke communicating "Isn't that the way you Dems see us Republicans?" and "Surely you're a Republican now" at the same time.)

(Maybe sense of humor is just impaired? Many people who know me would say is absolutely the case.)