Consider the area covered by secular (note: secular=”faith neutral”, not “atheist”) public schools, and the same area covered by a religious school. For the area that they overlap, there’s no difference. For the area they differ, nothing is taught that the children wouldn’t learn in church anyway. (It may not be part of the sermon, but in nearly all churches, it’s covered nonetheless).

I disagree. (Note: I am a Christian, but rabidly passionate about making high-quality secular public school education available to the masses. I actually believe that it is our best hope for the future. I am also rabidly passionate about the separation of church and state. I can quote Jefferson in support of it, and I can quote Jesus in support of it. Only evil results from church and state being together. But I digress.)

A good religious school should teach the tenets of its religion. This is far more than can be taught in a once-weekly half hour lecture (also known as a “sermon”), or even a once-weekly half hour lecture plus 45 minutes or maybe 1.5 hours weekly of religious instruction for nine months of the year until the kid turns 15 or so. There’s a reason a recent study found that atheists knew more about various faiths than religious people did — it’s because the religious people generally suffer under the delusion that they already know it and don’t need to study. (This tends to carry over into other areas, and I suspect is why many religious folks are apathetic at best when it comes to public school — more concerned with making sure it doesn’t teach the wrong things than with what it actually should teach.)

Sometimes, I really think the Jews and Muslims have it right — they require all adherents to undergo extensive religious instruction. In theory, so do Christians, but even the fundies don’t take it far enough.

Wavefunction:

If teaching evolution (”facts”) is indoctrination, then indoctrination it is. Parents who think this way probably need to save their kids from themselves. I do agree by the way that parents who have objections to government education have every right to home-school their kids. But the last time I checked I did not see home-schooled kids being more successful in any major profession than ‘indoctrinated’ kids. Seems indoctrination at least gets you a job and brings home the bacon.

A lot of religious people don’t seem to grasp that nobody ever said faith would be *easy*. If they want to believe something different than the majority, that’s their choice and their responsibility. But they don’t like that.

But what do they offer to people who want to find high-quality education for their kids so that the kids have a wide-outlook, practical knowledge and the ability to think critically? “Just keep your kids in government schools!” as if learning about evolution somehow makes everything all work out.

To start: There is nothing similar about education and fire and police protection. Nothing at all. The reason the government is involved in police protection is to provide an objectification of force. If police services were privatized, we would suffer under the problem that private police would be like “Judge Dread” and act as police, judge and executioner (more than they do now, that is). Fire protection is provided by the government in order to prevent situations like the one that has been in the news. If a person doesn’t pay their VFD fee, then their home should rightly burn, but that creates a physical, immediate risk to the neighborhood. That is why, in higher-population areas, the citizens have opted for government-run fire services, rather than VFDs (which work perfectly well except for the poor saps who refuse to pay their VFD dues).

Liberal always act as if homeschooling was only about evolution. It has very little to do with that. It has to do with the fact that in a free society a parent should be able to teach their kids WHATEVER the parents want. The consequences come from how those children behave in society. If a parent wants to teach their kids to “love the sinner, hate the sin” then it ain’t nobody’s business but their own – UNLESS the kid acts violently in public and such acts can be shown to be directly caused by the way the kids are taught at home.

When it comes to homeschooling, liberals make some amazingly tenuous connections that are about as logical as the chalk-marks on Glenn Becks blackboard.

Liberals really hate the idea that someone could think differently from them and still be happy, materially successful, loving, forward-thinking and actually care about the future of their kids (which makes liberals not really different from fundy right-wingers, in that respect).

In a free society, parents would be able to educate their kids as they see fit, and not be forced to pay for the perceived mis-education of their kids or anyone else’s. But liberals only like freedom for others when others use their freedom only the way the liberals want.

@Wavefunction: All the kids of the owners of the biggest fortunes in America are certainly NOT going to public schools, are they – Which proves the point: Anyone who can afford to send their kids to private schools, does so. The only folks who keep their kids in government schools are those who cannot afford to escape. Why do you liberals hate the poor so much you won’t even let them keep their money and try to find a better opportunity for their kids?

To start: There is nothing similar about education and fire and police protection. Nothing at all. The reason the government is involved in police protection is to provide an objectification of force. If police services were privatized, we would suffer under the problem that private police would be like “Judge Dread” and act as police, judge and executioner (more than they do now, that is). Fire protection is provided by the government in order to prevent situations like the one that has been in the news. If a person doesn’t pay their VFD fee, then their home should rightly burn, but that creates a physical, immediate risk to the neighborhood. That is why, in higher-population areas, the citizens have opted for government-run fire services, rather than VFDs (which work perfectly well except for the poor saps who refuse to pay their VFD dues).

Liberal always act as if homeschooling was only about evolution. It has very little to do with that. It has to do with the fact that in a free society a parent should be able to teach their kids WHATEVER the parents want. The consequences come from how those children behave in society. If a parent wants to teach their kids to “love the sinner, hate the sin” then it ain’t nobody’s business but their own – UNLESS the kid acts violently in public and such acts can be shown to be directly caused by the way the kids are taught at home.

When it comes to homeschooling, liberals make some amazingly tenuous connections that are about as logical as the chalk-marks on Glenn Becks blackboard.

Liberals really hate the idea that someone could think differently from them and still be happy, materially successful, loving, forward-thinking and actually care about the future of their kids (which makes liberals not really different from fundy right-wingers, in that respect).

In a free society, parents would be able to educate their kids as they see fit, and not be forced to pay for the perceived mis-education of their kids or anyone else’s. But liberals only like freedom for others when others use their freedom only the way the liberals want.

@Wavefunction: All the kids of the owners of the biggest fortunes in America are certainly NOT going to public schools. – Which proves the point: Anyone who can afford to send their kids to private schools, does so. The only folks who keep their kids in government schools are those who cannot afford to escape. Why do you liberals hate the poor so much you won’t even let them keep their money and try to find a better opportunity for their kids?

If teaching evolution (“facts”) is indoctrination, then indoctrination it is. Parents who think this way probably need to save their kids from themselves. I do agree by the way that parents who have objections to government education have every right to home-school their kids. But the last time I checked I did not see home-schooled kids being more successful in any major profession than ‘indoctrinated’ kids. Seems indoctrination at least gets you a job and brings home the bacon.

2. I don’t want the gov’t teaching my children at all. I want to choose a non-government entity to teach my children. Gov’t – like with almost everything else – does a truly terrible job educating children.