[extropy-chat] I keep asking myself...

[kevinfreels.com]

I wouldn;t be so sure about that. The main reason there was a lot of shift to private education had to do with silly things they were starting to do in school - especially the propensity for teachers to automatically assign an unfocused child the label of ADHD and send them to a doctor to get them on ritalin. There was also the "whole word" method of reading being taught (which my daughter was subject to and is just now pulling out of). 

My daughters still attend a public school and recently my daughter joined the school choir. Shortly after joining she came home to tell me that she felt uncomfortable because they were making them sing all these religious songs. I spoke with the music teacher and the principal and found that of 12 songs, 10 were clearly christian and two were "prouod to be American" type songs. I was told that if she didn;t like it, she didn't have to be in the choir because choir was an optional activity.

I think something else is at work here besides private education. Something far bigger, yet more subtle. My thought is that over the last 20 years, christians who were feeling isolated and alarmed by the pace of scientific discovery decided to move into the public education system so that they could directly affect the education of children in that direction. Sometimes I feel I missed my calling and I should be there on the front lines as well because that is where the battle is. Changing the curriculum will have less of an effect than increasing the number of secular leaning teachers. 




With respect to the discussion involving "public" education, Dennett's perspective was interesting.  He thought a public education about "religions" in the broadest sense -- i.e. one has to learn about *all* religions (sufficiently well to pass 'standardized' test about them) was the solution to current paradigm of religious brain washing.  I know that for myself it was an education in science that forced a direct confrontation between evidence-based reasoning (science) and Catholic indoctrination around the time I was 13-14 years old.  An education in a variety of religions at an earlier age would quite likely have facilitated the realization that one set of beliefs that I had been taught had some major problems.  I would suspect that I would have stopped believing in a "savior" around the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus. 

It seems that the removal of ones children from public education is perhaps  playing a major role in the revival of Christan fundamentalism (in the U.S.).  It is the ability to brainwash children and limit their exposure to other "realities" which allows the manufacture of irrational mind-clones.  It is easy to say that one (as a list member) would educate ones children "properly" (in rational thinking, etc.) -- but what is to guarantee that everyone else will do that? 

Robert

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