The Christian connection

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.

A final word about the Johansson case

I think that I should say a few final words about this business, because I have now been in touch with the Friends of Domenic Johansson group. I asked what the inaccuracies were in what I had previously written and it seems to amount to this. I wrote in the first piece which I posted:

'They were harassed by the authorities and tried to leave the country so that they could home educate their son in peace somewhere else.'

Apparently this is not true and the Johanssons did not intend to home educate their son at all. In fact, all along they wanted him to attend school; they just wanted him to start at eight rather than seven. This is very puzzling, because of course those connected with the family thought that they were hoping to home educate the boy in India. Mats Tunehaga, for example, is President of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance. He knows the Johanssons and says,

'Annie is from a Christian family in India, and they had planned for some time to move there to live, work and to homeschool Dominic.'

This is quoted on the HSLDA site. On the Dominic Johansson Blog, there is this,

'Swedish officials removed this boy from an international flight solely to prevent his parents from moving to another nation and from educating him in a manner that is lawful in India, in Sweden, and in a majority of nations.'

And yet now I am told that this is all untrue. I know that most people who have signed petitions and contacted the Swedish authorities to protest about this were under the impression that the Johanssons were home educators and I am sure that many will be surprised to discover that their intention has always been to send their son to school. This after all was an integral aprt of the whole story, that the Johanssons were leaving Sweden so that they could follow the educational methods of their choice. It makes it very puzzling too that the founder of the HSLDA, Michael Farris, is named as the Johanssons' representative on the documents for the European Court of Human Rights. Why is he involved if the Johanssons are not home educators?

Another possibility is that the Friends of Dominic Johansson are mistaken about this. In the same message they told me that home education is illegal in India, which is absolutely untrue. I would be curious to hear other people's views about this. Was I the only one who believed that the Johanssons are home educators who were leaving Sweden so that they could home educate their child in India? If this is untrue, why is it on so many sites connected with the case? Why have so many people signed petitions based upon this belief? Very odd. It is clear to me that the more questions I ask about this case, the stranger it becomes!

It is unlikely that we will ever know fully the facts of this case. What has become very obvious though is that it is being used as a stalking horse by certain American groups who have an agenda of their own, concerned with matters such as America's possible ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. From the moment I began looking into this case, it was pretty plain that there was a strong American connection. Two of the people named as the Johanssons' representatives on the application to the European Court of Human Rights are Michael Farris and Roger Kiska. Michael Farris is an American Baptist Minister who founded the Home School Legal Defense Association. Roger Kiska works for the right wing American Christian organisation, the Alliance Defense Fund. Even the Friends of Dominic Johansson group is in the USA.

Now of course if left wing, Humanist home educators in this country wish to climb into bed metaphorically with right wing American Christians, that is really none of my business. For that reason, I shall not be making any more posts about this. I originally did so because various people in Sweden had been named and their motives criticised and condemned. School teachers, government officials, social workers and so on have all been written about and denounced by people who evidently take everything they read at face value. If a home educator says something; it must be true. If a teacher or social worker says something; that must be a lie. I just wanted to put the case that there may be a little more to all this than meets the eye. Since making my initial post on the subject, this has been strongly confirmed. Those who wish to delve deeper into the matter could do worse than follow some of the leads which I have mentioned here. I have an idea, for instance, that many home educating parents in this country would be horrified to read about some of the activities of people like the Alliance Defense Fund. Anyway, I have published a correction to what I first wrote, even though the correction itself raises more questions than it answers! I shall be watching with interest how this affair develops over the coming months.

Home educating the Biblical way

Quite a few home educating parents in this country are Christians who have chosen to educate their own children for religious reasons. They are probably a minority. In the USA though, this may well be the main strand of home education. The big homeschooling groups such as the HSLDA are firmly Christian in character. Parents who home educate because they are Christians often tend to look to the Bible for advice on how they should raise their children. I have no problem at all with this; it is pretty much what I did myself. There is a bit of a difficulty though, one I touched upon when responding to a comment yesterday from a guy in the States.

To begin with, I think it fair to say that many Christian parents, particularly in the USA, believe that physical punishment of children is a good form of discipline. The Bible backs them up in this. Proverbs 13:24 tells us ' He that spareth his rod hateth his son. There are many similar passages. Christian parents are also often opposed to sex education lessons in schools which teach that homosexuality and sex before marriage are OK. Again, there are a number of places in the Bible where such practices are condemned. As it happens, I also disapprove of homosexuality and premarital sex and so I can go along with these passages of scripture quite easily. Now for the difficulty.

There are two ways of looking at the Bible. One can view it as a collection of sayings, myths, historical anecdotes and genuine prophecy which must be sifted through carefully in order to find out what the Lord was really driving at. Or one can regard it as inerrant, the inspired word of God which must be taken pretty literally. Both options are fraught with pitfalls if we are going to use the Bible as our guide for day to day life, whether about home education or anything else.

I am obliged to my daughter here for some of what follows. She is a God-fearing young woman with strong views backed by a formidable command of scripture. Let us imagine first that we believe the Bible to be a collection of writings produced by fallible men. In this case, we cannot be sure that even a requirement to love our neighbour is the authentic word of God. We could hardly use writings from the bronze Age to justify either our condemnation of homosexuality, the practice of corporal punishment or our decision to home educate. Times change and much of what is contained in the Bible must be outdated by now.

Suppose though that we assume that the Bible is actually the inerrant word of God. This is better, because if it is all true then an injunction to punish our children physically must be an instruction from the Lord. Sounds reasonable, we can spank our children because the Bible tells us so. But hang on a minute, what's this? Deuteronomy 21:18 says that, 'If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother...' It goes on to tell us that we must take the boy to the city elders and that he will then be stoned to death. I am sure that even the most dedicated Christian home educator would not want to apply the death penalty to cheeky and uncooperative kids! Yet there it is, just as clear and specific as the injunctions to take a rod to our children. We fare no better when we use the Bible as an infallible guide to sexual morality. Many Christian home educators do not want their children exposed to the notion that homosexuality is normal and acceptable. The Bible forbids the practice strongly in both old and new testaments. 'A man shall not lie with other men as though they were women, it is an abomination'. Again, this is very clear. Wait though, I have just seen Deuteronomy 22:23. 'Suppose a man is caught in a town having intercourse with a woman who is engaged to someone else. You are to take them outside the town and stone them to death. the woman is to die because she did not cry out for help, although she was in a town where she could have been heard'. This also seems quite clear. If a man rapes some guy's fiancee, then the victim is to be executed. Sounds fair enough. After all, if I can spank my kid because the Bible tells me so, then surely the rules about rape victims should also be applied?

The Bible is a vast book containing a huge amount of information and sayings which cover practically everything one can imagine. We approach it with our own prejudices and preconceptions though. If I feel a distaste for homosexuality and look in the Bible, then lo and behold I can find a verse which conforms my views. If I were the sort of man who wished to hit his kid, I can find justification for that too. My daughter has drawn my attention to the fact that the New Testament specifically endorses Kosher slaughter and instructs all Christians to follow this tradition. At a meeting in Jerusalem, the apostles, including Peter and Paul, decided to tell new converts who were not Jews how they should live. Acts 15:29 says that Christians should, 'eat no blood, eat no animal which has been strangled'. How many Christians today follow this explicit commandment form the apostles? Any Christians reading this who insist on Kosher meat?

I believe that the Bible was inspired by God and written by men. We must search carefully for the true message. To use it as justification for corporal punishment and the prohibition of homosexuality, as many Christian home educators do is very dangerous indeed. It can be a wonderful guide, but not if taken literally. I am aware that most English home educators will find all this pretty irrelevant, but while we were discussing Christian home education apropos of the Johansson case, I thought it worth going over this topic a little. Normal business will be resumed tommorow.

Parents' rights, children's rights

I have remarked before on some of the ways that typical home educators in America differ from many of those in this country. I want to look today at this in the light of a fundamental difference in viewpoint, a difference which I find a little disturbing. This is the emphasis place in the USA on the rights of parents, as though these rights were somehow different from and in some ways opposed to the rights of children. I have been thinking about this because of the names on the application to the European Court of Human Rights which is being made in connection with Dominic Johansson. The representatives named are Ruby Harrold-Claesson, Roger Kiska and Michael Farris. All three of these people are strong advocates of parental rights.

Perhaps the main strand in American home education is that of Christians who choose not to send their children to school. They tend to achieve excellent academic results because the main motivation for educating their own children is in fact education. There is another reason that they choose this lifestyle and that is that they often feel that schools are attacking the family and taking away or diminishing the rights of parents. The perception here is that the family should be the basic unit of society and that the state should not be involved except as a last resort. The Bible of course sets out the family as the ideal way for people to live and this means one man and one woman raising their children together. They are answerable to God, but nobody else. I tend to agree with this view in many ways: certainly one of the motivations for educating my own child was religious.

In Europe, the trend is for the emphasis to be on the rights of the child. This means that from the modern European perspective, if a parent wishes to spank a child or take her to church, for example, these things must only happen with the consent of the child. many feel that this is harming the structure of the family, that it means that the state is intruding into the family and getting between the parent and child. This is a big issue for American home educators at the moment, because they are worried about the implications of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child. This would, if ratified in the USA, outlaw corporal punishment and allow children to refuse to follow their parents' religion. It is also bound up with the idea of sex education and gun ownership in the USA, both very hot topics.

I was surprised to see that people who are very active in this campaign against implementing the UNCRC on the papers for the European Court of Human Rights. Obviously, one connection is that both they and the Johanssons are Christians. This would give a powerful motive for helping a Christian family who are fighting state interference in their family life. I wonder though if this case is also being used by the American groups as a way of fighting against the idea of the erosion of Parents' rights as they see them? Again, there would be nothing wrong with this as such, but it is something which I would like to know a little more about.

The problem which I have with the American perspective on all this is the same that many have in Europe. Children have rights. They have a right not to be beaten or starved, they have a right not to be sexually abused, they have a right to their own religious beliefs. This is the legal situation in Europe, not some abstract principle. If I were to compel my child to follow my own religion or wished to hit her, then I would be on dubious ground from several points of view. Not the least of these is that I do not believe for a moment that the Bible enjoins me to ride roughshod over my child's rights. In other words, the idea that my daughter's rights could ever have been opposed to mine is absurd, both from a legal and religious point of view. Proverbs 22:6 says, 'raise up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it'. I took this instruction quite literally and felt it my duty to teach my own child. My duty, by the way, not my right. I also believed that as Proverbs 1:7 says, 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom'. For that reason, I felt that I had a duty to teach my child about God and to help her to become familiar with the Bible. Again, this was a duty. I did not have a right to impose my own belief upon her or force her to attend church.

It is this distinction between duties and rights that seems to be so very hard for many people to grasp. In the USA home educators are pretty sure of the matter: parents have rights and these take precedence over the supposed rights of the state when it comes to their children. Have a look at a group founded by Michael Farris called parentalrights.org and you will find that even the right of parents to allow their children access to firearms if being firmly defended!

I never supposed for a moment when my daughter was small that I had any rights at all over her. She is a human being; nobody owns another person. I had instead duties which I was required to fulfil. Some of those duties were laid upon me by the state, but other and greater duties had been given to me by the Lord. Among these duties were to teach her right from wrong and try to help her become wise. It was a pretty raw deal really, because all I had was a big bunch of duties and no rights. When she was little, my daughter had many rights but no duties. Things change though as a child grows and she also gradually acquired duties. The idea that parents' 'rights' should have any role at all in the debate on home education is a very strange one and I hope that the Johansson case is not the start of some sort of campaign of this sort. It is because of the implications of this case and due to the fact that people like the Alliance Defense Fund and the HSLDA are becoming involved in the affair that I felt that I had a right to express an opinion about this . I feel pretty strongly about this distinction between rights and duties and if there is going to be any debate about the rival merits of parents' rights and children's rights then I would like to see it take place openly.