On the 'sin' of sending kids to public school

[ckramer]

Author shares harsh campus realities, urges parents to pull children

The man who helped push the issue of public education onto the national agenda of the Southern Baptist Convention has written a new book that blows the lid off government schools, showing parents the kind of worldview and values their children are influenced by 180 days a year.

Bruce Shortt, author of "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools," presents myriad reasons why government institutions are failing America's children and thumbing their noses at parents with a religious worldview.

"Contrary to what many Christians have been led to believe, there is no such thing as a 'neutral' education," Shortt writes. "All education is religious and conveys a worldview, and there is no more important decision that we make as parents than how we educate our children."

wnd

[rkc3]

1. "Religious worldview"

This is a great term used to represent the narrow-minded, homophobic and xenophobic ideals held by these idiots.

If nothing else, these guys have great sound bites.

[kazoo35]

2. Crazy.

It's hard for me to understand their mindset. Why should school and religion have anything to do with each other? Granted, the kids should be able to give each other any kind of presents they like and shouldn't be restrained from practicing their religion, but it's a school. It's not a church. It's a school. THe kids should be learning math, science, reading, spelling, history... not religion.

If they want their kids indoctrinated with religious stuff, that's fine, they should provide that education to their kids anywhere they like, any time they like, after school or on the weekends. Sunday school, evenings at the church, whatever.

Why turn school into their particular church? I'm assuming they don't want to give the Hindu kids equal time. Hey, maybe they do.

[liberal N proud]

4. It is the science and history that they fear

Theses subjects threaten the grip religion has on people the most.
Science would prove creationism and other explanations for otherwise supernatural phenomenon and History will expose the cruelties of religions involvement with governments.
Additionally if you kill the public school system, then you can access some the money used by government to fund said schools to support the religious education institutions.

[MostlyLurks]

7. Religion/The Bible = Education

Kazoo,

I have a hard time with this too, and I have considerable experience dealing with because my mom and step-dad are fundamentalist Christians. I've spent years trying to "get it" so I can debate them effectively (that's still an on-going project ;)). Understanding their worldview is one of the most problematic aspects of dealing with a fundamentalist. For a fundamentalist Christian, Bible = Absolute, Unquestionable Reality. Everything flows from that and there is nothing real that lies beyond, outside or "in addition to" the Bible. It is the first, last and final word on everything as Fundamentalists see it. And it's not a "false" Christianity. I know many very good and very earnest people that beleive wholeheartedly in this idea of religion.

In part, the previous poster's point about education leading away from religion is correct. But I think it's larger than that.

For them, religion is education: all knowledge comes from God. That's really the heart of the matter. In a sense, they do not beleive that one man can teach any other man anything because all things flow from God and the Bible. Therefore, education is corrupt, because it comes from man, unless that education is fundamentally tied to the religious decrees of God. From that comes the idea, central to the excerpt above, that there is no "truth" in anything man touches, only in the Bible and the word of God (For whatever reason, this concept is never applied to religious leaders, which is why shills like Robertson and Falwell seem to escape this trap). They don't express it like that, but that's the gist of the concept: human knowledge is apocrypha.

Therefore, almost all facets of academia are to be viewed with suspicion. Some are tolerated for their utility - reading, math, some history - but most are given short shrift because they either conflict with the Bible outright or because they cannot be interpreted in a Biblical context.

Even Biblical study is suspect because for a fundamentalist (and that's almost exclusively who we're talking about here) the Bible is literal, so any "study" that attempts to interpret the Bible is putting words in the Almighty's mouth. If you were to ever drop in at a fundamentalist Bible study, you'd find that it's not about studying the Bible so much as using Biblical stories to create a backdrop for reality. In other words, fundamentalist "Bible study" groups are not usually about interpreting the Bible in the face of a modern world. Instead, the reverse is true: they are about interpreting the modern world through the Bible. And that's largely what Fundamentalist home schooling is about too.

To conclude, here's a short story about how rigidly a fundamentalist feels compelled to view the world through Biblical glasses.

A few years ago, I was reading "The Bible Code". My mom, a fundamentalist, asked me what the book was about. I told her: the theory (since discredited) that the Bible contains encoded messages that reveal future events. She was very excited by this and told me that the author was doing "God's work" in revealing the Almighty's omnipotence and guiding hand in the world. So, given that she felt the book was upholding the Biblical mythology, she was 100% in favor of the book. I went on to tell her that the author was an atheist who believed that the "Bible Code" was implanted by aliens who had visited earth and left the Bible behind as a "rule book". She instantly declared the book blasphemous. That's what we're talking about here: material is ONLY trustworthy if it serves and upholds the vision of God set forth in the Bible.

Mostly

[elehhhhna]

3. What an asshat.

Here near Houston our gals attend an elementary school in which they have friends who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, etc., and no problem-o...I think they're better for it, in fact. But it's the Baptist brats who tell everyone they're going to hell on the playground. Constantly.

[FreedomAngel82]

8. I think it's a bunch of nonsense

I went to public school and it was great. I had a lot of mixture friends as well. I had one friend who was foreign and she was brilliant and we were good friends. Public school is great to attend because of all the diversity and you can learn so much. I had a ton of really smart friends in high school and some of them were religious.

[ckramer]

9. Agree.

there is no place like public school that offers student diversity in all backgrounds.

Private schools probably have diversity too. The problem is that most parents are rich. That gives a distorted world view to students. Harmful to students.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

5. a handmaids tale

[wtbymark]

6. world net daily

is a conservative rag puking out the propoganda- read some of the other articles there