I hope that readers will forgive my dropping out of sight for a few days at a time when things get really busy on the writing front. I habitually write more than one book at a time theses days, which can make things pretty hairy as deadlines approach
I observed some rather virulent ant-Christian comments on a recent thread, which is interesting. Whenever a group like the Home School Legal Defense Association tries to get a foothold in this country, there are cries of protest from some British home educators. The general basis for those the objections is that the HSLDA are mad Christians who believe in Adam and Eve, hate gays and beat their children. Such people are contrasted unfavourably with our own liberal and progressive home education movement. Why, you only have to look at the terminology; home ‘school’, indeed!
I find all this curious, because of course home education in this country is also packed to the gunwales with Christians on all levels. This Christian influence is evident from top to bottom in the main organisations and is also pretty obvious at a local level too. To give a few random examples, the Chair of Education Otherwise is a very devout woman who is closely involved with her local Congregational chapel and Mike Fortune-Wood of HE-UK was until recently married to an Anglican priest. On a regional level, home educators in one southern English county have a strong and productive relationship with their local authority. Arrangements are made in this way for children to take GCSEs if their parents wish them to do so. All this is largely the work of two women; one of whom is a Jehovah’s Witness and the other a staunch Calvinist.
Not all Christians make a song and dance about their faith on the lists and forums and sometimes it only comes to light in passing that this person or that is religious. There are of course many home educating parents who have no dealings at all with the Internet groups and Christianity is often a strong feature there too. In my own county of Essex, for instance, there are probably more home educators who do not attend home educating groups or hang around on the net than those who do. Up near the port of Harwich there are many Witnesses who educate their own children and there is also a community of Hutterites living out in the sticks whose children never go to school.
I have a strong suspicion that Christianity is as powerful a motive for home education in this country as it is in the USA. Perhaps because church going is not as common in the United Kingdom, some of these parents do not make quite such a production of their faith as many Americans are apt to do. At any rate, I think it would be a mistake to assume that home education is mainly secular in this country and to contrast it in this way with the situation in the USA.
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I suspect you are right. When were started to HE there were two groups in our area of about the same size, one religious and the other secular, though there were no rules about membership. If anything, I suspect there were more home educators with a religion than without, since all of the regular attenders of the religious group meetings attended the same church whilst some secular group members attended other churches. We regularly attended each others activities and the two groups got on well. It's more difficult to tell how many were home educating for religious reasons though, at least for the secular group members.
ReplyDeleteYou may be right. I'm pretty sure that the majority of home educators in my town are not religious but I don't live in a very typical town. There is at least one group of Christian home educators but the secular and religious groups don't mix.
ReplyDelete' I'm pretty sure that the majority of home educators in my town are not religious but I don't live in a very typical town.'
ReplyDeleteTrue. Also, you are unlikely to be on chatty terms anyway with the type of Christian who spends a lot of time scouring Leviticus for some activity or other which the Lord apparently detests!
Indeed. I spent an hour at home ed drop-in with someone from the biggest Evangelical church in town. They have a group of home edding families but she was looking for new friends for her daughter. I did my best to be friendly and not too alarming but she never came back.
ReplyDeleteIt's horrible, that sort of things isn't it? I remember sitting in a big HE conference in the Quaker place on Euston Road, many years ago, when the person sat next to me asked a question of the panel in front of hundreds of people, 'How can we arrange things so that when I call people from the EO list looking for new HE friends, I don't end up calling some Christian?'
DeleteIt was a painful and humiliating experience to hear her disgust.
However, most of us get on well, most of the time, and that's important to remember.
It's painful and humiliating to have Christians attempt the put downs when you meet them..
DeleteDon't you find self righteous indignation vulgar and religious superiority ugly?
Oh, my chat with the lady from the church was all perfectly civil. Maybe it wasn't encountering a lesbian mum the minute she arrived that put her off the group. I did sort of feel that we'd never meet again though!
DeleteI'm all for integration and, of course, I meet people of faith all the time but I think there are some people who are partly motivated to home ed because they don't want their children to be taught about families like mine, for example, so they're hardly likely to want to be best buddies just because we home ed too.
There is quite a proportion of Christian home educators that don't want their children in school because of equal opportunities policies. They make it quite clear that they don't like their children being educated about homosexuality and that they don't like Islam.
DeleteYes, I think that is probably so - though I am sure there are others who don't hold those views. But when it comes to those who do, I can't really be bothered looking for common ground any more - whatever the govs plans for home education.
DeleteWell, assuming I am the staunch Calvinist mentioned above... (not exactly how I would label myself by choice but who cares)...there are lots of religious home educators in this country - and a lot of them are either non Internet users at all or rarely are found in secular groups. As J. says above, it isn't always clear whether they home educate for religious reasons though; I didn't -and the Muslim group I work for mostly educate as they feel it is the best way of ensuring their children get a first class education.
ReplyDeleteCalvinism....isn't that the Christian sect that was ultimately responsible for creating Apartheid?
DeleteAtheism, isn't that the thing that led to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust?
DeleteSee, just as silly, wasn't it?
'I am now, as before, a Catholic and will always remain so.'
Delete'By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.'
Adolf Hitler
Once he had gained power he had support of both the Protestant and Catholic Church and the Anti-Semitism on which the Nazi movement was built was fostered by the church.
So, those religious home educators who don't use the internet or attend secular groups..
DeleteWhat the hell are they teaching their children?
It wouldn't go down very well should a group of home educators turn out to be a terrorist cell.
What happens when the religiously rabid get hold of the right to educate/indoctrinate children with the words of Osama Bin Ladin or Fred Phelps?
'What happens when the religiously rabid get hold of the right to educate/indoctrinate children with the words of Osama Bin Ladin or Fred Phelps? '
DeleteThat right has always been there.
If it had been used, we probably would have experienced the consequences by now.
However, it's not necessary to home educate in order to condition children to adopt extreme views.
I don't think that any of the 7/7 bombers had been home educated. I think they went to school. I know that Khan, for eg, went to South Leeds High School.
One poor unfortunate child experienced the consequences of religious home education. She was abused and starved to death, her mother believed that her daughter was possessed by evil spirits....
DeleteThat mentality is the warped mentality that believes in acts of martyrdom and suicide bombings.
So You're
ReplyDeleteCofE
Catholic
Calvinist
Hutterite
Jehovah's Witness
or
Various shades of Evangelical
Here's what that means to me...
You're a believer in a god of war, one that urges genocide in his name, one that urges racial purity and endorses slavery.
And that makes me wonder....
DeleteShould your God ask you to kill all the men, women, children and livestock of any one particular race...
Whether you would obey.
As I recall in ancient times Yahweh did just that, and the Amalekites were wiped out.. the slaughter didn't stop there.
Massacres of Hittites, Canaannites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Ethiopians and more and the madness carried on through the ages. Then there's the sacrificial rites demanded by God..
Abraham was prepared to kill his son but didn't, how many more children were put to death upon the altar?
I don't think you understand the message of Jesus (the Prince of Peace), the point of the New Testament. But I don't plan on educating you. You can always find out for yourself if you can be bothered.
DeleteIt appears that you don't comprehend the syncretic heritage of the New Testament and Christianity. It seems you're blissfully ignorant of the history, geography and politics of the era.
DeleteI don't plan on educating you, you couldn't handle it.
You don't have the intellectual capacity to evaluate the documentary evidence, you're too damaged by the dogma and rhetotic of indoctrination to see through the lies. You wallow in your zealotry, you're the dangerous type. You would participate in genocide...you're programmed to.
DeleteUmm...ok.
DeleteRemote IQ testing? LOL! This has to be the amateur psychologist who used to comment here during the last lot of school holidays. Welcome back! Absurd as ever, I see. How's the AS Psychology course going, by the way?
DeleteSee what you're missing now...
DeleteI told you that you should have enroled onto a college course instead of sitting at home surfing the internet looking for porn.
Before we were interupted by the troll...
DeleteI was going to add that I don't think that you have ever read the NT.
The 'prince of peace' as you call him, makes a clear statement that contradicts such a title. In Mark 7:9, Jesus criticizes the Jews for not killing their disobedient children according to OT law.
Execution by Stoning wasn't it?
John 8 tells us what Jesus thought about stoning.
DeleteOnly in the instance of adultery, and he never called for the law to be abolished.
DeleteIt appears that you totally misunderstand the term 'prince of peace'. That title has it's foundations in messianic tradition and politics, messiahs were not as squeaky clean as you would like us to believe.
DeleteYour ignorance is rooted in disinformation and indoctrination.
"Atheism, isn't that the thing that led to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust?
ReplyDeleteSee, just as silly, wasn't it?"
As this is a home ed blog, perhaps it would be good to introduction some education into it (despite Godwin's law already being activated)
Hitler was not an atheist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler
And the Afrikaans were a group bound together by a form of Calvinist religion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaner_Calvinism
Maybe we need a new law in addition to Godwin's Law?
Yes, we all know about Godwin's Law. Simon has educated us about it many times ;-) I didn't say that Hitler was an atheist.
DeleteOur local home ed networks include atheists, Jewish people, Muslims, Christians (yes, one or two), agnostics, buddhists and pagans. If you're looking for secular ideologies, there are all shades from anarchist to high Tory. The thing they have in common is wanting to educate their children at home. At least among these people, religion plays very little, if any, part in the decision.
ReplyDeleteAren't you so very fortunate that your local HE networks are so diverse. It sounds as if they're very tolerant of each other too. It doesn't always workout like that and a lot of 'Christians' are so full of religious zeal that they're very intolerant and cliquey... they're rather quick to take offence and totally insensitive to how they can cause offence. There is a rise of the Christian Right/fundementalist and home education/homeschooling one of their methods of indoctrination.
DeleteIn the U.S, homeschooling and white supremacy is inextricably connected in some states.
That kind of integration for most activities has been our experience too.
Delete