The homeschooling trap

Only conservative Christians can publish an article in which this opening paragraph is actually meant as an endorsement:

One flustered parent who was disillusioned with public school systems and what she believed to be lack of personal attention and creeping propaganda has chosen an alternative, where she may opt out of lessons on evolution, sex education and teaching that goes against her Christian beliefs – and her tax dollars pay for it all.

But then, the WorldNetDaily is a bastion of inanity. Notice that when conservatives agree with some use of taxes, they will say "her tax dollars pay for it all," but when they condemn it (as is most often the case - in fact this is a first that I see in print such a an endorsement of spending), they will say "my tax dollars pay for it all."

Opting out of any lessons is opting out of education. Most likely Susan Lockhart has trouble with letting her children learn about evolution.

"We had reached a point where the indoctrination in the schools was just untenable," said Susan Lockhart, a homeschooling mother. "I was going down there and complaining on a nearly daily basis about things. It got to the point where I had to do something. I had to get them out of there."

I wonder what things she felt she had to complain about all the time. They don't teach evolution every day of school. What else is did she find so disagreeable? The article does not say.

When the subject of evolution was addressed in Kristin Lockhart's marine science course, she was given an assignment to create a marine life that would evolve and adapt to its environment over time.

"I spoke to the teacher and told her we don't believe in evolution. We believe in creation," Lockhart explained. "I told her my daughter was going to do this assignment in terms of creationism, which she did. The teacher had no problem with it, and she got an 'A.'"

They've got to be kidding! That's an awesome assignment. I wonder how any teachers expect school children to do what professional researchers have a hard time doing. If she could really shown marine organisms adapting, she could publish in Nature overnight. But, appallingly, it is possible to reject the assignment and make another based of ideology rather then evidence.

"My kids don't have to put up with bullying. They don't have to put up with indoctrination. They don't have to have sex education. We're allowed to pray all we want at home," she said. "It's really a lifesaver for Christian parents."

Bullying is bad, but if you avoid it by staying home then the children are missing out on what I consider to be very important social lessons with other kids. I seriously have doubts that children who don't go to school with other kids are as capable socially as the rest of them, and that would be a real handicap. As for indoctrination, that's apparently also dependent on your point of view. I don't actually know what kind of it Susan Lockhart is referring to, but in my book indoctrinate means to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view (my book is a dictionary). Christianity is of course a doctrine, and barring your children from arguments against it is indoctrination. Why, why, why would any parents prevent their children from getting sex education? Studies have shown that the better educated children are about sex, the better they know how to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Besides, learning about something does not necessarily mean that you condone it. I have learned about ideas and theories that I dislike and that have been proven wrong (Maoism, Intelligent Design), but learning about them is still a good thing. It's like refusing to learn about the Holocaust. It was a bad thing, and exactly because of that it is so important that we all learn about it.

Lastly, I would very much like to see some statistics comparing the education of homeschooled vs. properly schooled children in the US. I predict that homeschoolers will choose science in college less often, will do worse in science, and those that do well in science start doubting their homeschooled ways. I predict that homeschoolers stay closer to home when they grow up, are more unhappy in their relationships, and have lower incomes. I predict that homeschoolers are more likely to accept the religious beliefs of their parents (which is not an endorsement, though I suspect that this is the main reason why some prefer to homeschool their kids), and I predict that homeschoolers are more ignorant as well as less tolerant of different cultures and ways of living.

Please, please do not homeschool your children. Give them the best chances in life by sending them to a real school. If the schools in your city are all bad, move or pay for a private school. When they get home, tell them that YOU don't believe in evolution, but let them make up their own minds. Anything else is indoctrination.