This American Prospect piece on homeschoolers uses the phrase “Generation Joshua”. Here’s a description of what that means from the Homeschoolers Anonymous project:
To my subculture, Generation Joshua means two things. First, it is a Christian youth organization founded in 2003 by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), created to train children to be activists for conservative candidates who support pro-life and otherwise socially conservative platforms. But more importantly, Generation Joshua is a metaphor. It is a rallying cry based on a jumbled amalgam of biblical stories with the purpose of inspiring conservative parents and their kids.
In the Old Testament, the Egyptians held the Israelites in captivity. The Hebrew God chose Moses to lead the Israelites out of captivity and into the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. But the Israelites and Moses disobeyed God on numerous occasions, so God made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, banning them from ever entering the Promised Land. But God had compassion on them, and chose a member of the next generation, Joshua, to lead the Israelites’ children into that land of milk and honey.
While this story is considered by academics and exegetes to be a straightforward historical narrative, conservative Christians have transformed it into a metaphor for the United States. In this metaphor, the Israelites are U.S. citizens. The U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, but the forces of secularism have held us in captivity as the U.S. progressed. So God — now the God of Republican, conservative Christians — chose homeschooling parents to lead the U.S. away from its godlessness and back to its Christian roots. But the parents were once part of that secularism, so God will not allow them to see the fruits of their labor. God has nonetheless shown compassion towards their efforts, so the parents’ children are the new Joshuas. These children are to be trained in God’s original plan for the U.S. to be a Christian nation, and they will grow up to invade all levels of the U.S. government and society and reclaim the U.S. for Republican, conservative Christianity.
I don’t know much about homeschooling, and certainly there must be a number of homeschooled kids who aren’t taught this way, but this sounds like a Wonder Bread Madrassa.
Villago Delenda Est
You know, it’s when I read stuff like this that I believe that these people want the oppression they claim they’re suffering.
They’re wired wrong. They don’t read their own sacred book, in which their Messiah preaches things that they denounce as ungodly.
They NEED to be victims. They crave it.
These are the people utterly unworthy of what Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and so many others struggled to create.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, my ass.
Betty Cracker
“Wonder Bread Madrassa” — LMAO!
Betty
So much of what these people profess to believe is nothing like the Christianity I was taught. Their references to the Old Testament seem to miss the point of the teachings of Jesus. Pope Francis I must be a thorn in their sides.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, the irony…Google Ads give us a pitch for Liberty University Online.
Only the Online part has the slightest truth to it.
cleek
Wonder Bread Madrassa’s first album was pretty good.
El Cid
Hilarious! Apt!
FlipYrWhig
@cleek: Didn’t they tour with Neutral Milk Hotel?
c u n d gulag
Wonder Bread Madrassa – helps build weak minds, 10 Commandment ways.
“Idiocracy” was a future documentary.
Schlemizel
“The evil men do lives after them”
This is a cancer that will injure America for years to come, generations if it were not for the fact their parent have done such a great job of preventing anything being done about the climate that we are a dead planet walking.
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig:
I believe they put out a joint live album, entitled, misleadingly, to be sure, “The Dead Kennedys Come Alive!”
Higgs Boson's Mate
Turning the U.S. into a theocracy led by ignorant people who’ve been educated by other ignorant people sounds like a grand idea. I’ll bet that they’ll do the same bang up job as the Liberty University grads that infested the Bush administration.
No wonder at the affinity between fundies and Republicans; neither can get the rest of the country to freely embrace their ideas so they just plot ways to force them on us.
Mike in NC
In the workplace I’ve encountered a few people who “homeschooled” their kids. Extremely creepy folks.
Cacti
What academics are they talking about?
Mainstream biblical scholars consider the story of the exodus and wandering in the wilderness for 40 years to be mostly a founding myth with little historical basis.
BGinCHI
Fat kids
skinny kids
kids who climb on rocks;
tough kids
sissy kids
even kids who think evolution is a scam and that Jesus wears a cape with an American flag on it
love a sociopathic education.
/the rhyme needs some work
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
“Mainstream”.
There’s your problem, right there. These “mainstream” guys actually want facts, try to verify them, and when they discover the facts do not support the theory, they modify the theory.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
Well we’ve got no class
And we’ve got no principles
And we’ve got no innocence
We can’t even think of a word that rhymes
Elizabelle
Why stop there?
We should encourage these folks to perform their own surgeries and dental work as well.
Good times.
Duane
I have actually dealt with these vile vermin otherwise known as the zombies of Generation Joshua….. and let me tell you these kids are just the little punks you would expect them to be. It is mind blowing to come across 11 12 13 year olds who are experts about everything and will tell you so….. they all view themselves as special and the “chosen ones” and they are not afraid to do un-christian like things to promote the agenda they have been shoveled. Of course they have all this courage living in a rural uber majority Republican area….not sure how brazen they are in places where they are outnumbered.
BGinCHI
@Elizabelle: Next thing you know you’ve got a hit reality show on your hands.
Baud
“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor… unless thy neighbor is a Democrat.”
/wingnutcommandments
Omnes Omnibus
I have some second cousins in Indiana who are home schooling their kids to keep them from contact with gays. They also do missionary work in Bulgaria – I am sure the Bulgarians are thrilled. Their mom is my mom’s first cousin, and she joined some evangelical church back in the 70s. Their dad is one of those guys who goes into every get rich quick scheme that comes along – including one that landed him in federal prison for a while. We don’t see a whole lot of them.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
Meter needs some work, too, methinks.
Splitting Image
By the time the next generation is ready to enter politics, the Republican party will be actively opposed to the Christianists. The alliance between the money men and the godbotherers will not last for very long when the godbotherers can no longer provide enough footsoldiers to further the interests of the financial elite. The future of the GOP lies in an atheist form of IGMFY. (i.e. Randian libertarianism)
Homeschooling is going to become one of those things that companies screen for when they are whittling down their resume piles. Who wants one of those creeps in their workplace?
BGinCHI
@Duane: Many of these kids are going to rebel big time once they get out into the world and discover sex, drugs, and Nickleback.
The Joshua Generation is a keg away from destruction.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Those Godless Bulgarians, right next to the heathen Romanians. Don’t even get me started on the Magyars.
El Cid
Also, FWIW, the Egyptians never held the Israelites / Jews in captivity, they sure as hell didn’t build the fucking pyramids (a Hollywood / pop thing not a Biblical claim), and there was never any Exodus of Jews out of Egypt.
It’s possible (according to some arguments I’ve come across) that Jewish religious leaders decided to rewrite tales of a group of people known as the Hyksos who apparently came from somewhere farther east (possibly Indo-European or Assyrian origins) and then rose up to be rulers of Egypt and were later overthrown and expelled, choosing to see the cultural similarities (non-Egyptian origins, mass migrations, different language background, semi-nomadic lifestyles) as being literally the same as themselves.
Or maybe a recontextualization of some earlier movement of peoples even before the founding of Jericho (a small settlement but still one of the first urban settlements ever discovered) from somewhere, and to the storytellers of around 3,000 years ago Egypt was pretty damn ancient, since Egyptian civilization was ancient by the time Judaism was just getting started.
Hell, for that matter, there’s little serious evidence that Abram / Abraham existed, but if he did, it would have been around 1,800 BC, and that is anything but ancient. The pyramids were built waaaaaay before the putative founder of Judaism existed.
Somehow Egyptians managed to get by building stuff without depending upon expeditions to enslave pastoralist nomads from a tiny corner of the eastern Mediterranean.
I get it, every oral tradition wants to place one’s tribe at the center of the universe, but please, make them stop with the ‘Exodus’ bullshit.
And then on top of that to construct a narrative where these asshole would-be Talibangelicals have been imprisonated by the damn sekyoolars, ugh.
Pen
You know the worst thing about homeschooling? My wife and I live in a decent are with ok schools. Nothing great, but they cover the basics. My wife (who has a Masters in both sociology and education) and and I can’t stand the “learn your grade and then take a 3 month summer break” schedule that only exists because it’s an artifact of our agricultural past. It screws up the learning process and we’d love to spend the summers teaching transitional work to our son once he’s in school.
I’ve looked into homeschooling as a source of age-appropriate material I could use to accomplish this, only to find that the vast majority of available material is little better than Christian Dominionist dogma. No critical thinking lessons. No at-home science experiments. No creative writing or literature analysis. No day-trip guides. Pretty much all I find is “we’re persecuted”, bible lessons, and creationism or creationist apologetics.
I don’t know if these nuts have always been in charge but, after having delved into the ‘homeschooling’ culture, I’ll never respect anyone’s education if they tell me they were homeschooled.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
The Italians are REALLY fucked up, Jesuswise.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: I agree–the “wonder bread Madrassah” comment deserves a rotating tag. Its that good.
I also misread “amalgam” in the original post as “anagram” and given all the numerology and backwards hermeneutics that go on in christian bibilical exigesis thats not wrong either.
Duane
@BGinCHI:
I have no doubt that they will do all that…as a matter of fact the leader of the group of zombie from back in the late 2000s…is now in his early 20s living in sin with his GF…but it doesnt matter….. they are the chosen ones, of course we have gotten lucky in that he is not near as clever or smart as what he thinks he is, and the town kinda sees it. He ran for city council in our 20,000 population county seat a few years back as an 18 year old and came in 4th in a top 3 win scenario.. tried again 2 years later, and messed up his petitions and got kicked off the ballot. So a genius he aint…. but he is a nasty little jerk.
Pen
They’re just as bad. Actually no, scratch that, they’re even worse. Add in ever-present persecution complex to their dickishness and you’ve just about got it.
Elizabelle
@BGinCHI:
That true.
Generation Joshua.
As ignorant as the Lord and Our Parents allow.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t think Sicily was ever converted.
I’d volunteer to be a missionary to Emilia-Romagna, just to eat and drink between being bossy about Jesus.
BGinCHI
@Duane: As a famous philosopher once said:
Whiskey bottle,
brand new car,
oak tree you’re in my way.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I hear Amsterdam is really, really heathen. It will be my cross to bear.
Duane
@Pen:
And here I hoped there was some places safe from them. At our county fair, they will come up to our Democratic booth and pick up literature and tear it up right in front of the volunteers, but you know they are the ones with the “good values”
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I shall convert the models of Paris or die trying.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
I hear that Firenze has all sorts of statues that need to be made decent.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I can certainly think of worse ways to go.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: Exorcism instructions here, just in case.
http://www.wikihow.com/Perform-a-Christian-Exorcism
moonbat
@El Cid: Couldn’t have said it better myself and I’m an Egyptologist.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I think I might have trouble with step 3.
ETA: Also too:
Well, it looks like I have my next week planned out.
ETA2:
This thing just keeps giving.
aimai
@El Cid: Speaking qua jew I agree with you. There’s zero historical backing for the Exodus story. Nonetheless, there are interesting Jewish interpretations of this foundational myth and one of them is, generally speaking, that a people can’t go from slavery or urban centered subjecthood to being a free people in a free land without a lot of wandering, mistakes, and struggle to learn how to handle freedom itself. Rather than celebrating a hypothetical “new generation” which is free from sin and ready to rule I think a more Jewish attitude is that everybody has to learn from suffering (wandering in the wilderness) to ASK FOR DIRECTIONS ALREADY and be able to work together for the good of the group.
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai:
Sorry, men have all sorts of biological mechanisms that prevent the asking for directions part.
Frankensteinbeck
Their culture is dying, and they’re freaking out and trying to apply the breaks. It’s a big reason why Obama is causing so much frothing insanity, because a black man as president could never have happened if they still had power. We may not fight it as a war, but to them this is an existential culture war and they’re losing so badly they’ve gone into scorched earth mode.
Homeschooling is and has been a part of this, raising children so they won’t know there are any alternatives to their repressive version of Christianity. Kay, this is a big reason why the conservative base eats up grifting rich people’s attacks on public education. They hate public education. It makes their children abandon their culture – in droves.
@Cacti:
It’s not a true historical narrative, but it’s a historical narrative. It’s telling a (false) history, not a prophetic allegory like these people believe.
@BGinCHI:
Hell, yeah. I got to watch that really up close in college in bible thumping Kentucky. Make sure your daughters only know about sex in vague ‘it’s evil’ terms, and the first time their hormones start pumping restraint goes out the window. (Your sons aren’t special snowflakes who can be ruined and get just enough education about sex to already know they want as much as possible.)
@Splitting Image:
Not going to happen. Yes, the Christianists are losing numbers and power, but the wealthy elite don’t have enough numbers to elect a dog catcher. A Republican Party without the Christianists is No Labels, and just as powerless.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think we’ve identified some problems with modern fundamentalist “Christianity”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Jesus invented cartography for a reason.
Amir Khalid
@Cacti:
RL Stollar might have — no, almost certainly has — his homeschooling so deeply ingrained that he isn’t done unlearning the crap he was taught. In fact, it could take him a lifetime to discover which parts of it were crap, which is of course a necessary first step towards unlearning it.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
Man, those don’t include sending a love offering (in the form of cash, a check, or a VISA/MC number) to Benny Hinn.
I cal shenanigans.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: But it has useful warnings like “Do not converse with the demons” and “Do not taunt happy fun ball.”
maya
Still livin’ the Exodus
Mr Stagger Lee
Some of the writings in Genesis was based on some Babylonian legends IIRC. That aside what is scary about these nuts, is that they want Genesis to be a science book, and the Book of Revelations to be a foreign policy manual especially in the Middle East.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
And GPS.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mr Stagger Lee:
I still don’t know, and can’t imagine why, Revelations was included in the canon, other than someone in the fourth century CE was channeling Stephen Colbert from the future.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Fabulously funny, and soon to be appropriated (with credit).
El Cid
@aimai: Founding myths always have uses — if you’re seeking, for example, to unite your tribe into a coherent group justified by the authority granted by a particular deity, it’s not helpful for there to be plentiful rival myths throughout the region which are less rooted in pastoralism and more associated with female deities related to harvests.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Ergot.
aimai
@Villago Delenda Est: Heh. I’d just read Deborah Tannen’s first book about male/female language, when it first came out about 20 years ago, when Mr. Aimai and I were driving around, lost, looking for a botanical garden. I (naively) asked him to pull over so I could ask for directions and he said, simply “Its not time to PANIC yet.” To which I replied “I’m not panicking–its not panic to ask for directions. Its just asking for directions.” But I realized then that asking a stranger for help stands for panic and fear to (some people) and there’s just no point asking them to violate their own boundaries. Its a foundational issue for some people. Just as its just “asking directions” for some others.
aimai
@El Cid: I can’t speak to ur Jewish, or proto Jewish interpreations of the myth, just to post Talmudic and modern interpretations which, of course, don’t have anything to do with whatever was going on 5000 years ago and have to do with modern ideas about modern slavery, modern democracy, modern assimilation into non jewish polities.
Smiling Mortician
I get some of these Wonder Bread Madrassa kids in my (college) classes. They always sit front and center, right in my face, because that’s what they’re used to. JesusMom always focused all of her attention on them, so that’s what they expect in my class. They blurt shit out whenever it occurs to them, and they expect to be rewarded for saying the most ridiculously wrong-headed stuff you can imagine. They positively beam while waiting for the praise. Because of where they’re sitting and where their attention is focused, they have no idea that there are 24 students behind them, rolling their eyes and looking at me with great empathy. And all of that is just the beginning of the problem.
Bubba Dave
@Villago Delenda Est:
If it’s a legitimate asking for directions, their body just shuts that thing down.
Thor Heyerdahl
A Canuck that I know lives in Pennsyltucky and homeschools her kids…not for any reason like the reliious zealots in the Wonderbread Madrassa, but rather since she wants her kids education to be more comprehensive and globally focused than the PA education curriculum.
Kay
Oh, I get that. That’s always been true. What I don’t get is why supposed “liberals” would attack public education, broadly and indiscriminately, and plenty of them do. Public education as a concept, as an idea, needs advocates. There’s now an entire industry lobbying against it.
I’m now running into teen parents who are using Ohio’s booming for-profit industry of “online academies” because they don’t want to vaccinate their kids, they want to avoid even the small hassle of claiming one of the exemptions to the vaccine rules in public schools. It’s like a toxic combo of the anti-vaccination grifters and ed reform con artists.
It’s also a joke. These parents are low wage workers if they’re working at all. The idea that they are actually sitting with these little kids walking them thru the online academy is ridiculous, and everyone in the court system and public school system here knows it. No one does anything, but everyone knows it’s a scam and a lie. They can barely feed and clothe and care for their kids with their crazy erratic work schedules. They’re also doing online school? When?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bubba Dave: Ha!
mellowjohn
@Duane:
and they’ll all grow up to be ted cruz.
Woodrowfan
@Smiling Mortician: Oh yes, I have one of those in my class this term. Old Testament name, always wears a tie (often a bowtie). Has a republican logo pin on his suit label. As swarmy as a used car salesman in an old SNL sketch. He does well on tests so he can rote learn, but I dread grading his term paper. And my Lord, is he an ass-kisser. He also cheers for stuff like Hiroshima in a “we’re number one” kind of way. very creepy kid. But I’m his “favorite professor!” (shudder)
Baud
@Woodrowfan:
Jesus. And liberals are supposed to be the ones that are too political.
Woodrowfan
@Thor Heyerdahl: The problem I have with that is that it’s not as if kids can only learn from 8-3. What? They can’t add to their kid’s education and still have the kids attend school with their peers? Unless their local school is really awful, or dangerous I don’t get it.
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s funny. They have churches in Bulgaria already. Have had, since the days of Cyril and Methodius. The godless Commies might have shut them down at one point, but they’re open again, I take it.
Damn Bulgars must be doin’ it wrong.
Woodrowfan
@Baud: I have rightwing students. Some of them are good kids, I suspect they just grew up sheltered. I try to give them another perspective and gently guide them into opening their minds just a teeny bit. (and some are, yes, bigoted asses) But this guy is the only one who looks like he’s trying to be an 18 year old Hill staffer. I just know he’ll run for office by the time he hits his late 20s.
Frankensteinbeck
@Davis X. Machina:
Eastern Orthodox churches. Heretics and heathens who need to be shepherded into accepting JAYzus and being born again.
EthylEster
Joshua was a military guy who killed lots of heathens.
Just sayin’.
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus:
Be sure Jerusalem is at the center of the map.
aimai
@Smiling Mortician: Fascinating! Talk about the evils of the self esteem/everybody gets a trophy generation!
Davis X. Machina
@Frankensteinbeck
Oh, you mean ‘Protestants’…
Villago Delenda Est
@Woodrowfan:
The problem is that they’re exposed to kids who have parents who encourage them to learn, to think critically, to embrace the scientific method.
Also, those kids may introduce them to sandwiches on whole wheat or rye, the Devil’s grain.
Smiling Mortician
@aimai: Seriously. Don’t get me started on the standing-ovation-for-breathing attitude they bring with them when they come to my office to discuss their grades.
WereBear
I believe this is why beer was invented.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
Only the right takes “Political Correctness” seriously, and are adamant about enforcing it.
Pen
All of you who teach these kids have my sympathies. My wife ran into a lot of them while attending college. In her words many of the women she encountered were “majoring in wife” and didn’t tend to make it past the 300 level courses. They got in expecting to learn how to be a good wife and mother, and by their junior year they were either out of college or on the rocks with their families. Not a good place to be and, after reading through the linked article, they sound like they were the lucky ones.
My heart goes out to these kids. I grew up in rural Wisconsin and there’s a large Amish community fairly close to where I grew up. The Amish insular nature is bad enough; these families take it to a whole new level.
If it weren’t entirely unethical and probably grounds for termination I’d ask you to install a camera so you could share some video. I hate to admit, but that sounds pretty funny.
Omnes Omnibus
@Woodrowfan: As I mentioned above, they might be avoiding teh gheys.
Paul in KY
Read the Book of Joshua sometime. Whole lot of smiting of the ‘and lo the children of Israel cameth upon the Malachites and their city of Zog and took it for the glory of God, slaying all 9,000 inhabitants therein’.
IMO, they didn’t pick ‘Joshua’ by chance.
Baud
@Woodrowfan:
From your description, I was envisioning a future Bob McDonnell.
Chris
@El Cid:
Ah, interesting. I knew about the Hyksos but had never made the connection.
Honestly, I never take the Bible pre-Canaan as any kind of history anyway. I always figured much of the Old Testament was basically the Lord of the Rings of its day, some nerd looking around at everyone else’s mythologies and going “hey, our country should have one too!” and that the earlier in the book(s) it is, the more likely it is to be pure mythology with no basis in fact.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Seriously. I’m as loyal a Democrat as they come, but I don’t make a fashion statement out of it.
balconesfault
In some locales charter schools are making pretty good coin from adding some of these home schooled kids to their rolls because they provide specific classes for them even while the kids spend most of their time at home. Of course, traditional schools – even Catholic Schools – tell said home school parents to go pound sand when they approach with the idea of letting little Joshua come to school just for the math class, but charter schools can be much more creative, don’t you know …
Ash Can
@El Cid: That’s fascinating. Cool link!
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is more than ordinarily fantastic.
“Legal rights?” You’re telling me that there are supernatural entities out there that are beyond the laws of physics and have the capacity and intention (in fact, it’s kind of their thing) to take over a human body, but they won’t do it without the appropriate legal waivers?
Poopyman
@Baud: That’s why it’s nice to have one of these to wear in response.
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul in KY: Come on, they are fans of Gary Busey’s character from the first Lethal Weapon movie.
WereBear
@Smiling Mortician: There is nothing, nothing, as crushing as finding out one is NOT the center of the Universe.
In a kind scenario, we discover this at 18 months, and have another 16 1/2 years to adjust.
In a cruel one, we discover it in college, and never, ever, recover.
Chris
@aimai:
What I always found fascinating about the Exodus story was the assumed right of one people to settle on another people’s lands without asking permission, as the resolution to sins that had been committed against them in an entirely different land.
Not to read too much into it, but…
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: Satan is a lawyer. Obviously.
some guy
@balconesfault:
here they don’t want to come to the public school only for the math class, they want to come only for the football program, and have the lawyers waiting to sue if you don’t allow young Jebediah to play ball.
and the front-and-center, smiling and cheerful and clueless about the rest of the students, and always first in line at office hours, describes almost every homeschooler I have ever taught here. they scare me
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Hey, the Nazis made sure, before they shipped “undesirables” east for “resettlement”, to dot the is, cross the ts, and to properly align all the umlauts.
The whole thing was scrupulously legal.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus:
There was a movie about that, wasn’t there? Scratch and Associates?
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
Oh yes. This is one of my pet peeves about fundiegelical missionary work; the vast bulk of it is done in places that are already Christian, and preached towards people who are already Christian. Latin American Catholics, East European Orthodox, African Christians of all stripes, etc. And your average “convert” seems to be (in my anecdotal experience at least) someone who “converted” from Church A to Church B (or at most a “lapsed” Christian who was raised that way, forgot about it in adulthood, and then came back) – certainly not a Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist who came over from a “false” religion to the One True God.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
And here I thought this was obvious. Professional respect and all.
Skippy-san
Whenever someone tells me they home school their kids, its a warning flag to me to tread very carefully. Chances are you are dealing with a full blown lunatic.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Davis X. Machina:
They have churches in Bulgaria already.
They’re not the right kind of Christian churches.
My wife’s classmate’s family are Southern Baptist missionaries in Greece. Considering the original language of the New Testament, I wonder what they hope to teach them…
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
The only home schoolers I know are staunch liberals (liberal libertarians) She is a cardiology fellow I work with, he dropped out of residency to home school their two biological and two adopted kids. They attend the UU church simply for socialization (and he teaches the adult sexuality classes there.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Good old American English was good enough for Jesus.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
No they’re not. They might claim to be, but unless they’re “Christian” in exactly the same sense as fundigelicals, they’re obviously heathens or pagans or something.
Just look at that Pope feller, criticizing dog-eat-puppies capitalism. Obviously NOT a Christian.
Or that damn Judean hippie guy.
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
He’s a man of wealth and taste, after all.
Villago Delenda Est
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Obviously, the part about sending “love offerings” (operators are standing by! Have your VISA/MC ready!) to Benny Hinn and Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham and…
Thor Heyerdahl
@Woodrowfan: She tried to have her kids in the public system, but it was really that awful. She decided that unfortunately she had to step in and do something.
Citizen_X
@EthylEster: @Paul in KY: Go see Jesus Camp again. There’s a whole lot of that “training soldiers for Jesus” aspect.
schrodinger's cat
What happens to homeschoolers when it comes to taking science classes and sports? What about other extra curricular activities
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
What does that even mean?
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Does he comment on Balloon Juice?
dedc79
@Chris: people settling on other people’s land describes most of human history, not just the exodus story.
What made that other people’s land theirs in some more legitimate way than the people who took it from them?
Smiling Mortician
@Pen: It is funny. And sad. Like all good comedy.
And it is much on my mind today, as I am reading students’ final writing portfolios — which include a self-evaluation essay. If I have to read just one more iteration of “This class was really hard because I never learned this stuff before,” I swear I’ll do something more than just scream “That’s what school is, you little twit!” at my computer, which is pretty much what I’ve been doing so far. It’s much too early to start drinking.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Genealogy?
@schrodinger’s cat: Probably.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@schrodinger’s cat:
Some school districts are required to open up their extracurricular activities to home schoolers…
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh, my mind reels with sarcastic replies to that one!
Davis X. Machina
@dedc79:
Lawyers. Apply topically to the affected location PRN.
Villago Delenda Est
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Which is fucking INSANE.
If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime!
Certified Mutant Enemy
@schrodinger’s cat:
Silly, all the science a real American needs to know can be found in the book of Genesis.
Bobby Thomson
At least 90% of home schooled kids have parents who are fundies, stone cold racists, or both. The kids turn out socially inept, but they will be able to vote regardless – and they are programmed not to value society.
Mike in NC
@Davis X. Machina:
Churches and cathedrals in Eastern Europe are popular with the tourists who enjoy the architecture and history, but tour guides generally told us that very few local people attend for religious purposes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smiling Mortician:
It’s after 7pm in Bulgaria.
dedc79
@El Cid: Have just been reading on this same topic. I think one question to ask is whether the Egyptian texts themselves should be taken at face value. Might they have, as one example, attributed the acts/events of other peoples over time to the hyxos because the hyxos were then commonly viewed as the “bad guys”.
Pen
@Smiling Mortician: Heresy! It’s never too early to start drinking. I don’t have a cinnamon-oatmeal stout on tap in my kitchen for nothing…. though that may say more about the consequences of my homebrewing than anything else.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Villago Delenda Est:
Considering the same is not done for students who attend private schools.
Davis X. Machina
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Second-fastest way to maintain eligibility for an athlete. Fastest way is to sign ’em up for something like PLATO, call it credit recovery, and have someone else do their work,
Just win, baby.
Davis X. Machina
@Mike in NC: Suggests that those missionaries aren’t exactly dropping their lines where the fish are…
Jewish Steel
One of my pious home schooled guitar students, I notice lately, has blossomed into a smoking, drinking party girl. I’m cautiously glad for her. Bonus: her father is a local GOP capo.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay:
IFTFY.
schrodinger's cat
One of my friends who has been homeschooling her daughter is becoming increasingly crazy. She is not doing this for religious reasons, but because she is protective of her daughter, in my opinion, over protective.
schrodinger's cat
@Certified Mutant Enemy: True. I was just thinking of the fun one can have doing chemistry lab in one’s basement.
Visceral
@El Cid:
The Egyptians ruled the Levant (modern Israel and Lebanon), either directly or through local vassals, for centuries. So did the Babylonians and the Assyrians after them. While the biblical narrative says the Hebrews journeyed to these places or were taken there by force and then escaped, it’s also entirely possible for them to have stayed put – the Hebrews were an indigenous people like the archaeological record suggests – and for Pharaoh and Babylon to have come to them. The Hebrew kingdom(s) fit into the gap between Egyptian rule and Babylonian/Assyrian rule … several hundred years later than when they and their Canaanite rivals were supposed to have existed.
Abstract geopolitical trends that happened to the Hebrews transformed into simple narratives of escape and conquest that the Hebrews were active participants in or outright instigators of?
Baud
@Jewish Steel:
You are a bad influence.
Smiling Mortician
@Pen: Sounds excellent. I’ll be over shortly.
Woodrowfan
@Thor Heyerdahl: Ah, OK. that’s sad.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC:
Well, to be fair, that’s true in Western Europe, as well.
It seems that religion has acquired a nasty reputation what with hundreds of years of bloody wars fought over it.
Tehanu
@some guy:
And I will bet, from my own college experience (a thousand years ago or so), that the only thing they want to talk to you about is, “Do I have to read ALL the books on the reading list to get a B?” or “If I get a C on the midterm, can I still get an A in the class?” My professors used to greet me with astonished smiles because I would ask them to clarify something they’d said in class, or if they could recommend a book that would go into something more extensively. So since then I’ve believed that college is wasted on the time-serving credentials seekers; they ought to set up a whole separate system for that.
Gretchen
@Chris: I worked with a guy who quit his job and took his family to Italy – I think Florence – to do missionary work. I said “I thought Italy was already Catholic?” He was some kind of homeschooling evangelical, and said a lot of Italians had lost religion and he wanted to share the Good News with them. I worried the Italians would be mean to him – he was a sweet guy who meant well, just clueless. It only lasted a year and now he’s working at a school in Germany.
WereBear
Well, me too, but I suspect this is how Santorum’s wife made her character arc… becoming aware of how they have been lied to, becoming a libertine without guidance or restraint, going too far, fleeing back into repression when they make a mistake.
And there you have it.
Elizabelle
We can haz cold snap open thread?
I tired of home schoolers and other fools.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jewish Steel:
She needs to drop the smoking bit, moderate the drinking bit, and make sure her health plan covers contraception.
Otherwise, the girl goes!
Elizabelle
@WereBear:
But some conservatively Christianist-raised kids have escape velocity, and completely escape the traditionalist orbit.
Not enough, but enough to worry the Christianists. Youth retention is a big deal for them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle:
The thermometer outside my home in Tracktown, USA, read -5 this morning at sunrise.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tehanu:
I believe there are numerous online options for that now…you’ll see the ads on blogs like this one!
Baud
@Elizabelle:
I think “fools” is a little harsh. We may not be Einstein, but we do our best.
Jewish Steel
@Baud: She blossomed into a reader first. When she started taking lit classes at the local community college I coulda told her parents the jig was up. Nothing breeds malcontents like good books.
Citizen_X
@Smiling Mortician:
I’ve had plenty of lab classes where students whined, “But we’ve never done this before!” When I answered, “Why do you think they call it ‘lab?’ You’re supposed to learn new techniques!” at least some of the students would laugh along with me.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle:
If they don’t retain them, they’ll have to go out and recruit!
Like the gheys!
Mike in NC
@Davis X. Machina: Well, dear old Mitt Romney spent close to three years trying to convert those pesky French people to Mormonism. One wonders what his success rate was.
WereBear
I am living proof.
aimai
@Tehanu: They call it Congress.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Mike in NC:
A religion requiring one to give up alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, and extramarital sex sounds like a real winner in France…
martian
The homeschoolers in college may be assholish, but they are by far the lucky ones from the more liberal families of the subculture. There’s a growing trend for the Christianist homeschoolers to discourage higher education all together, especially for daughters. Thus the growing Stay At Home Daughter movement. The girls are supposed to go from the authority of their fathers to the authority of their husbands – after carefully supervised courtship – and immediately commence with producing their quiverfull of kids. It’s horrifying. And if you want to really ruin your day, look into biblical discipline or google the book “To Train Up A Child” and discover how beating the rebellious spirit out of your infants is the only truly loving thing to do.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: “So, in zees church, it is not permitted to ‘ave un p’tit verre? Monsieur Romney, your mother was an ‘amster and your father stank of elderberries. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.”
Villago Delenda Est
OT: Noisemax fun on a Sunday morning (RIP, John Lennon, this date in 1980.)
Gingrich Takes Heat for Praising Mandela
He’s a witch! Burn him!
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
My sister used to homeschool her kids and I always made sure to let the entire fundamentalist family know all the hideous ways she was failing her kids just to ensure they’d be correctly indoctrinated with their backwards and heretical beliefs. They’d always make the usual excuses that it wasn’t about religion, it was because one kid was being picked on or because the other kid had behavioral problems.
They attend school now but those dinky little Christian schools are only marginally better than being trapped in the homeschool. Those are your real madrassas – and they are more ubiquitous than home schools.
It sucks being the only secular progressive in the family.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
My sister used to homeschool her kids and I always made sure to let the entire fundamentalist family know all the hideous ways she was failing her kids just to ensure they’d be correctly indoctrinated with their backwards and heretical beliefs. They’d always make the usual excuses that it wasn’t about religion, it was because one kid was being picked on or because the other kid had behavioral problems.
They attend school now but those dinky little Christian schools are only marginally better than being trapped in the homeschool. Those are your real madrassas – and they are more ubiquitous than home schools.
It sucks being the only secular progressive in the family.
Jewish Steel
@WereBear:
@Villago Delenda Est:
She’s at a great age to explore the darker side of American life. Peer into that abyss. Just don’t take up residence there.
aimai
@Chris: Actually the bible is full of bargains and trades for people to be able to “settle on someone else’s land.” Land wasn’t really that hard to come by, in that era–rather labor and trade relations were what was important. Lots of proto kings and emperors invited people to settle in order to have a taxable population. and conquest was aimed at conquering and absorbing peoples, rather than empty lands. Its silly to read our modern fixation with private property and citizenship and specifically with the modern state of Israel, which is no more than the last gasp of ordinary colonialism, back into the bible which describes a different world entirely.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
You got us beat. In Northern Virginia, we have light snow and 28 degrees. Which is very low for us.
WereBear
And I thought my cultural conditioning via the Southern Baptists, in the 1970’s, in Florida, was oppressive.
They were pikers!
Davis X. Machina
@martian:
Let’s not blame this just on the Christians. Under Roman law you could be a Stay at Home Daughter even after you married and moved out.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
Sort of the difference between dealing with Umbridge and dealing with the Carrows.
JPL
@martian: This is a 5 star review from Amazon
Wonderful book. So glad somebody is finally brave enough to stand up for the pro-beating-up-babies movement. For too long, those little bald bastards have been walking (or crawling) all over us decent grown folk, and I for one am sick of it. These authors give such good advice it’s insane! I could sing the praises of these amazing, God-fearing baby-beaters all day, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to recommend a few other titles sure to be right up the alley of anyone who enjoys this book.
Cooking for Company – Jeffrey Dahmer
Best Christmas Ever: A Couple’s Guide to the Holidays – Scott Peterson
Dog Bathing Made Easy – Michael Vick
And last but not least,
All Aboard: A Final Solution for Train Enthusiasts – Adolph Hitler
Happy reading, everybody!
Elizabelle
@Baud:
I never tire of [the vast majority] of you guys. You iz not the fools of which I whined.
Citizen_X
@Elizabelle:
Actually, it is enough. Fundies may be gaining new converts more than anyone else, but they’re also losing more members than anyone else, and it’s all their kids. And what are the reasons typically given? Homophobia, anti-science/anti-environmentalism, and sucking up to the rich.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: There’s no way Gingrich could be a witch. He clearly weighs much more than a duck.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL:
I and my keyboard are thankful that I did not just take a sip of coffee before reading this.
Davis X. Machina
@Citizen_X:
You just cut and pasted from the Liberty University course catalog, you slack bastard.
Smiling Mortician
@Citizen_X: I actually like when it happens in class because it opens the door to an organic conversation about the nature of learning. Most kids (not just the home-schoolers) come to college not really knowing how to study — and more important, not understanding why we study. Watching a sometimes small but still significant number of them grok the value of a real education right before my very eyes is always nice.
schrodinger's cat
@martian: All said and done isn’t all fundamentalist religion, from the Taliban to these Christian fundies and everyone in between, about controlling women and their sexuality?
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen_X: How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm? It’s not a new problem.
Walker
Having seen quite a few homeschoolers in reading admissions, home schooling is very bimodal. You have the children of disenfranchised intellectuals (e.g. professors at some small college in the middle of nowhere), and then you have the religious types. The general rule of thumb when evaluating home schooled students is “do the parents have graduate degrees?”
There are exceptions to this rule, but not many.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, so much for the Mormons.
Chris
@dedc79:
Not just the practice, the right, as preached by the same Objective, Morally Perfect God who would go on to tell the very same people (literally: the Hebrews from the time of Moses, through Moses) that stealing was wrong.
I suppose it’s the basic difference between my vision of morality and theirs. To me, moral laws have to be universal, otherwise they’re not morality, just convenience (“this is not okay, except when it is”) whereas to them, moral laws are whatever the Authority Figure says it is and can be changed at a moment’s notice on the Authority Figure’s whim (God, in theory; whoever manages to corner the market on speaking for him, in reality). I don’t even have a beef with the notion of God per se, but I do with the existence of a God who doesn’t follow his own laws (or encourages the followers he gives those laws to to break them whenever).
If settling in Canaan doesn’t do it for you, a far more egregious example would be giving “thou shalt not kill” as a law after what you just did in the Plagues of Egypt (with Moses being at the very least an accomplice), especially that last one with the children.
Ruckus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Damn discovered again!
Omnes Omnibus
@Walker: John Stuart Mill was home schooled.
Pen
My first thought: Yep, pretty much.
My second thought: Wait…
Third thought: What does it say that I understood that reference like it was common knowledge?
Lawrence
My brother’s kids were homeschooled. Their daughter simply had a bad experience in kindergarten, and they got into homeschooling. They are a tolerant, liberal, barely religious family. The daughter is about to graduate from ASU and her brother is a senior right now. Two of the nicest young people I know. But they were absolutely surrounded by the Joshua types in that world. Bonus point: most of my niece’s friends from high school were pregnant before turning 20. With that in mind, I still believe that at whatever point in time we liberals concentrate enough Federal power to undertake what I propose we call the Second Reconstruction, It will be necessary to put the screws to the homeschooling movement. Hard.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Visceral:
IMO, there are two different narratives that make up the history: That of the pastoral Semites and that of the sedentary Canaanites. The Semites brought the anti-agriculturist parts (the Fall, the Cain and Abel myth), the Canaanites brought the stories of the collapse of their city-states (Sodom and Gomorrah, Jericho). Someone who escaped Egypt made a stop in the city of Yhw, received good treatment, and adopted that city’s god once they settled and started rebuilding in Canaan.
Mike Jones
@Bobby Thomson: No. It’s over 50%, but nowhere near 90%. And it’s really annoying to those of us who homeschool for non-religious reasons to have to deal with this bigotry. The problem is that the “Christian homeschoolers” are organized, they’re noisy, and they want you to believe that they’re the huge majority of homeschoolers. But they’re not.
I have one son who started taking classes at a local community college at 14 and entered RIT as a math major at 18 with enough transfer credits to be considered a second semester sophomore. His brother is 15 and currently taking classes at the same community college. Both of them have been consistently mistaken for being several years older than they actually are because of their general knowledge and their demeanor.
There are a lot of us out here who homeschool for a variety of reasons. The “Christian homeschoolers” would for the most part prefer to pretend we don’t exist. Don’t fall for it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Cacti: Heck most Israeli archeologists maintain the Exodus is utter mythology.
Elizabelle
@Jewish Steel:
What is this transformative “good book” of which you speak?
It is not THE Good Book, I suspect.
Heliopause
Somebody needs to put up a football open thread. Anybody watching the game in Philadelphia? Hilarious.
Pogonip
@Thor Heyerdahl: My nephew and his wife resorted to home schooling for the same reason. Kids seem fine. I think there’s a difference between indoctrination and genuine home schooling.
JPL
@Elizabelle: If there is an open thread, is it possible to combine the weather and football? It’s fun to watch games played on ice and snow.
Jewish Steel
@Elizabelle: Bog standard community college intro to lit stuff, I suspect. Plus the heady fumes of being surrounded by the unchurched for once.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Heliopause:
Please tell me that the Eagles scheduled a Santa Claus appearance today. Please, please, please!
Chris
@Visceral:
Is there anything to the notion that monotheism might’ve been passed onto those occupied areas by the Egyptians (who switched over from their traditional religion briefly to that under Akhenaten?)
aimai
@Chris: I don’t even know where to start with this–look: the Hebrews and their struggles to define their god and their morality seem to loom way too large in your imagination as the ur hypocrites. They were just one small tribal group wrestling with how to live with each other and with other communities in their immiediate area. They and their god don’t owe you anything–not a universal morality and not perfect application of their own rules to non tribal members.
As for what you think you would or would not do–if you are living in the US you are living on land expropriated from Native Americans, land and its benefits what were literally given to white settlers in exchange for settlement. Both injunctions like “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal” require a polity to define and enforce the limits of of the communal and legal boundaries that make it possible to distinguish between murder (say) and manslaughter or accident, theft from purchase, or even the concept of ownership.
Its nice that you spend time imagining that your morality is better than that of the Hebrews, or the modern Israelis, but its not. Its a convenient fiction.
martian
@JPL: Ha! Now who says commenting on the Interwebs isn’t the same as activism. People impervious to reason can still be influenced by mockery. If only all the five star reviews were that funny. Children have actually died because of that book, and who even knows how many have had their lives warped by it.
@WereBear: Regular Southern Baptists are practically unchurched heathens compared to the hardcore fundies at this point. Actually, weren’t there still liberal Southern Baptists in the 70’s? My understanding is that Quiverfull didn’t really get going until the 80’s and homeschooling has really exploded since the 90’s. Honestly, I think the Internet has played a huge part in the growth and radicalization of these movements. The adherents can almost completely enclose themselves in bubbles of believers and the crazy brew gets more and more potent.
JPL
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): The Falcons are in Green Bay. The field is pretty clear but the temperature was 8 degrees at game time.
Elizabelle
It’s snowing loudly out there now.
Ice storm incoming.
Elizabelle
@JPL:
And anyone rooting for injuries starts out with such a betting advantage.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@JPL:
Yeah, I’m listening to it- which is weird, because it’s streaming on WTMJ’s site. It should be blacked out there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Nice nine minute TD drive by GB.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I can’t really get too angry with the kids — who among us wasn’t a self-important snot at age 13 or 14?
Fred Clark’s blog always leads me to good reads, and one of them is a blog by Libby Anne called Love Joy Feminism. She was homeschooled by parents who were early Quiverfull believers but managed to break away when she was allowed to go to (secular!) college. She knows how lucky she was to even be allowed to go to college — girls from other families were kept at home until they went through “courtship” and were married. And it seems to becoming more common for those home-schooled girls to be married off to adults at the lowest age of consent allowed.
Svensker
@martian:
They’re going the way of the Amish without the charm, the special life, and the warm community of the Amish. And, in general, the Amish don’t participate in political life and don’t pay into the tax system and are pacifists.
Botsplainer
I’ve been scoping the Homeschool Anonymous site for the past couple of hours and find myself profoundly affected by those stories. My wife’s brother is big on this stuff, has a bunch of kids that he and his wife stifled through these quiverful cults, and I always hurt a little for them. They finally got put into local Christian schools a couple of years ago, a major step up from the homeschool bullshit they were suffering – this was done due to the medical needs of one child making any instruction an impossibility.
Interestingly, his oldest son (17 yrs old) does follow my facebook feed (while I’m an apostate Eastern Orthodox heathen, I’m also an accomplished male uncle and the exposure must be therefore somehow allowable), and I went ahead and put up the Prospect article so that he might share with his sisters.
These kids were not allowed Harry Potter, the boys were read some bunch of early 1900s racist “adventure” books instead. They wigged out on a family gathering when my younger daughters explained to their then 10 year old female cousin that our then 13 year old daughter wasn’t participating in swim activities because she was having a period – they canceled a sleepover because of it. My brother in law actually sent a letter to his mom and dad saying that they were going to burn in hell because my father in law refused to apply patriarchy and allowed my mother in law (his own mother) too much decisionmaking authority.
When you see it happening close up, it is horrifying.
Bob In Portland
Wow! What a great day for sitting around and watching all these great snow games on TV.
I like how the bloggers here use lines from old rock songs as headlines. How about someone use this one from “Along Comes Mary”. This is mondegreen territory, but I think the line goes:
“…desire is the fire in the eyes of kids whose sickness is the games they play.”
Chris
@aimai:
Um, dude. The Bible is not ancient history. It’s a source of morality as taught today to millions, not just the property of “the Hebrews and their struggles.” The stories in it are used as justification and moral foundations for actions and, in some cases, policy right now, not just as the history of some tribe several thousand years old, and specifically in my part of the world. If it “looms largely in my imagination” as opposed to whatever moral lessons you might learn from Greek or Egyptian mythology, it’s because it’s still relevant. Now. Forgive me for noticing.
Roger Moore
@Mike in NC:
Romney’s success rate was 100%. Of course that’s measured in drafts dodged.
Botsplainer
@Visceral:
My theory is that the whole Moses tale is probably a collection of stories involving a more localized rule by a provincial governor.
aimai
@Chris: Uh, “dude”, there are literally thousands of Jewish and Christian and even Muslim interpretations of the significance of every single passage in both the Jewish and Christian versions of the bibles. This is not news. Conflicting interpretations of the meaning of something like “settled in Caanan” is the nature of biblical scholarship. There’s nothing else but argument about what this all means, or has meant. “Discovering” that there is some disjuncture between the specific tribal morality of the original Hebrews and later, post Christian or post Diaspora, Jewish morality is like discovering that water is wet. Furthermore it has nothing to do with specifically Jewish or Christian hypocrisy–its just human nature to offer both moral codes and then practices which violate them. You should try reading a little more widely.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Wow. That blog (Love Joy Feminism) is well written, and horrifying as a peek into a subculture. Closed societal regression, not spiritual progress.
@Svensker: Insightful re parallels with the Amish.
dmbeaster
@Frankensteinbeck:
Fixed.
I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Woah. As a father of a smartass 13-year girl who is just starting to notice boys, that story fills me with disgust and sadness. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to her about manipulative assholes and how to trust her own mind (and to understand that the mind of a teenager isn’t all that trustworthy all the time ;-)
Stay at home Daughter. What. the. (*&#*$&(@*.
CarolDuhart2
@Svensker: And, unlike the Amish, they don’t have a sustainable economic model that provides employment and a place to stay. These kids are going to be competing with their ethnic and often religious opposites- Asian, Middle Eastern, Near Eastern kids (Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever)
who have had a broad and deep education from some of the top colleges and prep schools in the country and who have attended school with all kids of people and made all sorts of friends, who are familiar with the culture and have social skills.
I worry even more about the girls discouraged from higher education. The world around them won’t accommodate that-neither will the welfare system. If you husband doesn’t make enough to support you and the kids, or is somehow unable to do so, or is absent-such teaching leaves you unable to make a living at anything close to a sustainable income.
So I’m not worried about the Joshua Generation. They don’t have the skills or contacts to really take over.
Chris
@aimai:
Yes, there are. Much of it is that it’s allegory/mythology, as we’ve already discussed. And then there’s the fudamentalist point of view, also what we’re discussing and ripping apart, which is that it’s all literally true, and a guide to morality in the present. Stealing land is okay, because God says steal the land. Killing X people is okay, because God says it’s okay. Etc, etc, etc.
No one ever said that it did. Noticing that something appears in the Jewish/Christian holy book that is followed by some modern day Jews/Christians which seems to the reader like a messed up view of morality does not mean that there aren’t plenty of examples outside of Biblical culture of similar hypocrisy. Then again, 1) Bible-based morality and culture looms much larger in the United States than many of those other cultures, and 2) was the subject of this thread in the first place.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Chris:
You ain’t gonna’ last long here.
Chris
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Another thing that blows my mind – the mindset according to which there’s little or no room between “single” and “married” for the romance learning curve that dating is.
Not that it can’t work out, but it’s a heck of a thing to teach it to your kids as the only valid form of relationship.
Bex
@Villago Delenda Est “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” introduction to Revelation says in part, “The earliest uses of Revelation understood it as unrelated to any particular historical context. In second-century Asia Minor and third-century upper Egypt, for example, the book was read as sanction for an imminent millennium on earth. It is only with the fourth-century author Eusebius of Caesarea that Revelation came to be linked with the putative sufferings of John of Patmos himself, and thus interpreted in relation to a developing martyrological tradition in Christianity that elevated blood and suffering as instructive spectacles.”
PhoenixRising
@martian:
Yup.
The Home School Legal Defense Assn is a fundamentalist group–they won’t allow families that lack a patriarch to pay dues and join, just for one example. These people are crazy nutzo and have created a MMOG in which it’s the whole world for their kids. So my kid wins the spelling bee for the region, every year, and they are puzzled because she doesn’t even go to their church so how can she be home schooled?
Seriously.
Botsplainer
@CarolDuhart2:
That part stuck out at me – that the kids that were being trained to triumphantly engage in the culture wars flipped positions when they actually examined the causes that they were expecting to champion. Those are the brightest lights of the group, and they’re not sticking.
The only thing left for the lesser lights is a closed loop economy of small trades or manual labor, working for the like-minded. They’re really dysfunctional in the wider outside world.
pouncy house
Test
KG
@WereBear: beer was a gift from the aliens, the pyramids were actually astronomically aligned breweries. I saw it once on History Channel, so it must be true
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Chris:
The kids are told that dating is “practicing for divorce” and that courtship is the only way to ensure they’ll never get divorced. Which, of course, only leads to confusion and heartbreak if, say, the kid ends up married to someone who’s abusive or a drug addict since marrying via courtship was supposed to magically protect them from any bad results.
opiejeanne
@Mike Jones: our neighbors are like that, and their kids are nice, bright children who are involved in a lot of social activities like children’s theater and youth sports. The home school network here just outside Seattle is a little different I think than the ones in more conservative areas.
Elizabelle
An antidote to the God-bothering set:
Director John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray) is touring with his Christmas show.
Jeebus, I wish I was on his Christmas card list. I would not put mine on eBay.
West of the Rockies
@Walker:
I fall into that category, Walker… My wife and I home-schooled our daughter for the first half of first grade and a portion of 4th grade after her math skills really began to erode along with her self-confidence. She’s now in an open-structure charter school and blossoming.
I, too, see a lot of home-schooled students; some are self-motivated and mature; others do seem a tiny bit… feral amost. The students in the latter category have a fairly thin perspective on world events and such.
I think home schooling can be effective or can be disastrous, but isn’t this what one might say about public schools, private schools, charter schools, etc.?
JPL
Anyone watch the Falcons interception and score?
Chris
@Botsplainer:
The true value of these guys to the conservative movement is as voters. Fundiegelical church groups organized and networked in the seventies and once the GOP and its paymasters had allied with the preachers running those networks, they provided a nice base of easily energized voters. The main shift is that in the modern era, they’re getting pushback. As recently as ten years ago you could use gay marriage as the pet issue to fire up all these voters to march to the polls and push the R button, and not get too much backlash for it. Now it’s become a double edged sword in a lot of places.
Elizabelle
@Botsplainer:
It’s like they’re training Christian soldiers to go live in that Iowa (Idaho? who knows …) “guns all the time” compound. Good luck with that.
I feel for these kids, if and when they wake up and realize what their parents’ “love” has wrought for them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Or if they’re just not emotionally, intellectually, or sexually compatible.
This is not medieval Europe. It’s not even contemporary India. Arranged marriages may not work out so hot. That’s why they’re no longer in vogue in this culture.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Arranged marriage seems not to be working out so great in India either. The divorce rate among the affluent and the educated is increasing from my anecdata.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
People don’t die young enough either.
If a 20- or 23-year old bride was unhappy in the 1700s, childbirth, an infection, or epidemic could carry her off early enough.
An accident or illness could rid her of an unsuitable husband.
Less likely today.
Joel
@Pen: Mars Hill in Seattle stands as testament to that.
Another Holocene Human
@El Cid: El Cid, the most persuasive argument I’ve seen on the subject is looking at the Egyptian invasion of the Palestinian region, including a stela that brags that a certain Pharoah has wiped out all the Hebrews (more likely, they were hiding up in the hills with their goats). The 1960s was not the first time that Egypt invaded Israel, in other words, and in so doing they left their cultural stamp. That’s why you have distinctly Egyptian legends and tales in that portion of the Torah. (Potipher’s wife is a corruption of a popular Egyptian novel, and the plagues are also distinctly Egyptian.)
Israel in Egypt is like the Palatine in Bavaria… it’s not that the Pfalzers traveled southwest, it’s that the King of Bavaria gained control of that region… same thing here.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Villago Delenda Est:
There are certain aspects of arranged marriages that can be helpful — usually people are much more blunt about what they want and expect than they can be in a dating situation. One of the episodes of the new show with Karl Pilkington, “The Moaning of Life,” had him visiting a matchmaking service in India and the woman’s parents were asking very sharp questions about his income, his job, etc.
But you can also have problems because the repressive Christian upbringing that some people had doesn’t allow them to really discover themselves until after they’re married. I was reading the Our Love Story series on the Permission to Live blog, which then became the Our Coming Out Story. The couple is still married and are still happy together, but it was one hell of a transition for a couple of home-schooled conservative Christians and they’re lucky they managed to work through it.
Elizabelle
The Redskins need a hug today.
Green Bay up 38-7. Skins finally got a touchdown, and not even a minute or two to celebrate. There went GB with a 95-yard touchdown play.
WaPost website story on coach Shanahan and owner Snyder having “irreparable” relationship. (As much as I care. Only read the title.)
tick tock tick tock
Botsplainer
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
More often than not, those marriages blow up over cheating and/or porn.
As Libby Anne says on her blog, all that purity weirdness leads to sexual dysfunction in women, and real oddities among the patriarchs.
JPL
@Elizabelle: The RedSkins definitely need a hug if they think they are playing Green Bay.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): In the arranged marriages in India, from what I have seen, is that the boy’s* family holds all the cards.
The man and the woman who are getting married are referred to as a “the boy and the girl” and are treated as children. Instead of bridezilla you have a milzilla (groom’s mother) to contend with.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@BGinCHI:
I have a friend who is a pastor and otherwise a sane and nice guy who moving to Europe next year to bring Christianity to the Belgium.
Steve in the ATL
I got a resume from a guy with a JD from liberty university. Oh how I laughed!
MaryRC
@aimai: The term “wandering” tends to imply that Moses and his people just couldn’t find the land of Canaan (Israel, Palestine and Lebanon) for decades.
The Israelites actually came to Canaan early in their journey but were (not unreasonably) afraid to enter the region in case they were attacked by the people already living there.
God, peeved at their disobedience, told them “OK, you can stay right here in the desert for the next 40 years, because that’s the kind of vindictive SOB I am.”
It’s one of the many Old Testament passages where God is the classic abuser, punishing people so that when he stops, they’re all “Oh thank you, Lord! You’re so merciful! We’re so grateful! We’ll never step out of line and provoke you again!”
And of course these modern-day home-schoolers buy into the same abuser-victim narrative. God is hurting them but they deserve it for making him angry.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I saw a Bollywood film a few years back about an upper-middle-class Indian couple in an arranged marriage situation (sorry, can’t recall the title) that explored some of the issues. She thought she was in love with someone else, but liked him well enough, he had just come back from America and had some American notions of love and marriage. The parents, of course, were enthused about the coming union, but the kids…well, it was a bit rough.
This being Bollywood, which, like Hollywood, loves a happy ending, everything worked out in the end. Real life not so forgiving most of the time.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Monsoon wedding?
ETA: I wouldn’t classify Monsoon wedding as a Bollywood though.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, that’s it!
Well, it wasn’t Bollywood in the “time to break into song and dance” sense, similar to some Marx Brothers films I’ve seen where a musical number is inserted into the film because it’s time for a musical number, the formula says so, right here!
But it was an Indian film, and I thought was pretty forthright in depicting how India is struggling with the impact of cultural changes resulting from contact with the rest of the world and modern technology’s effect on traditional cultural values.
Zippity
@Elizabelle: I think you mean Kansas City. And this game is making me very happy!
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Villago Delenda Est:
Monsoon wedding? If so, not really a Bollywood movie (it lacks the obligatory elaborate musical numbers, for example).
smedley the uncertain
@Chris: That right of settlement is still in play today.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Its a Mira Nair movie. Nair is of Indian origin but based in NYC. She makes movies for international audiences in English, true Bollywood fare is in Hindi and with more cheese than Kraft has produced in its lifetime. Think Moulin Rouge raised to the power n.
BTW if you haven’t checked them out, some other Mira Nair movies worth watching are Mississippi Masala with a very young Denzel Washington and The Namesake based on a book by the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Botsplainer
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Back in the early ’90s, there was a big religious conference that occurred here in Louisville, sponsored by the Presbyterian Church USA (the nice liberal ones, not the psychos). One of the attendees/presenters was the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Alma Ata and all Kazakhstan. He did not expect to find an Orthodox parish (much less a large multiethnic Orthodox parish with a lot of Russian speaking immigrants), and was pleasantly surprised to find us. At the time, lots of fundies were running to the former Soviet Union and trying to buy influence and gain members among people who had secretly and quietly been practicing their faith under genuine oppression and hardship.
The efforts of the fundies were not appreciated. Particularly the redneck hymnography.
Villago Delenda Est
The IMPORTANT game is the Seahawks kicking the 40ers all over Candlestick Park this afternoon.
Daulnay
@Pen:
We live in a prosperous, liberal school district, with what’s a reputedly good school system. My oldest is out of school, but I have ended up homeschooling every one of my three children, for 1-4 years each. I’m an agnostic/atheist/pagan humanist; our goal was to keep our children interested in learning.
The school system is typical of — if not better than — most American schools, as far as I’ve been able to determine. But my children all found it boring, frustrating, and intellectually deadening. It didn’t help that two of them were odd, creative, active children. One’s got Asperger’s — many of the parents of Asperger’s that I’ve encountered have seriously considered homeschooling, because the school systems would rather label their kids rebellious/defiant than deal with Asperger’s helpfully.
Please, avoid the mistake of thinking that all homeschoolers are Christian nuts (even if many are), because many of us are not. Some of us are simply trying to give our children an education that preserves their sense of curiosity and interest in learning. For yet another take on home-schooling, look at the ‘unschooling’ movement, which is on the other end of the spectrum from the authoritarian Christian homeschoolers.
Botsplainer
@Steve in the ATL:
Send him a note back saying you have a perfect job available, but simply don’t trust anybody with a degree from there.
The Other Chuck
Seeing’s how the topic keeps coming up, I’ll let you in on one of the secrets of the male species: We don’t ask for directions because other peoples’ directions invariably suck.
“You go down that ways a block or is it four and right, no left, no u-turn, no right, at the old store that used to be there and now it’s a gas station, then you turn at the light and that’ll take you to the opposite of town to where you’re going, so to get there …”
That’s why we used to carry maps and now use GPS. It’s not male ego keeping us from asking, it’s the stress of suppressing the urge to club the damn prattling fool over the head.
schrodinger's cat
@The Other Chuck: What you say is true. I once got lost at night in Quebec City the signs were in French and there are a lot of one way streets, so I kept going round and round the same few blocks because of the crappy directions people gave, this trip was in the pre-GPS days. I am not a man and am not averse to asking for directions, but I have found this time and again that many people give extremely confusing directions.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Botsplainer:
Send him a note back saying you have a perfect job available, but simply don’t trust anybody with a degree from there.
Then sit back and wait for the screams claiming religious persecution…
Citizen_X
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
While he’s at it, he should also try to introduce the natives to the brewing of beer.
Teddy Salad
@Omnes Omnibus: You ain’t kidding. Like the image of Father Anthony Hopkins in Step 2.
doug r
@Heliopause: I’m just marking time ’til the ‘hawks/’9ers game.
rikyrah
@Kay:
tell the truth, Kay.
Tell the truth.
jheartney
@schrodinger’s cat: I’ve been the source of sucky directions. I don’t carry a map to all the local destinations in my head; that’s what maps are for.
Part of the male aversion to asking directions is also the fact that we’re used to figuring it out for ourselves; who are these bozo’s asking us to solve their problems for them is our attitude to directions-askers, and so we instinctively feel it’s an imposition to do the asking ourselves.
But mostly it’s having experienced the cluelessness of the average direction-giver that puts us off it.
gene108
@jheartney:
Is cultural.
Males from other countries will look to ask for directions immediately upon getting lost.
Elizabelle
@JPL:
Oh. You’re right. I was just listening to the game from another room.
My sportscasting skills are exceeded only by my broad understanding of chemistry, physics, and computer programming.
Elizabelle
@Citizen_X:
Chocolate. They need chocolate too.
And someone from Hershey Country is just the one to teach them that skill.
rikyrah
@schrodinger’s cat:
Loved Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala.
Elizabelle
@Zippity:
Kansas City it is. Happy for you. Not a football fan (do like RGIII, though).
LauraPDX
@rikyrah: Me too. I use both films in my ESL classes not only for the language, but to get y students talking about culture, immigration, racism and other issues. Another good one is The Milagro Beanfield War.
LauraPDX
My major gripe with homeschoolers comes from the ones who talk about all the “sacrifices” they make so they can stay home with their children. And how much work it is.
Please. Both parents don’t have to work two or three jobs to put a roof over your family’s head or food on the table? Your children don’t need to learn English? Or need additional help because they are developmentally disabled? Good for you.
I just wish some of these people would recognize how privileged they are.
SiubhanDuinne
I can’t help wondering whether the school’s name was chosen in homage to Patrick Henry University in Atlas Shrugged, alma mater of John Galt, Francisco d’Anconia and Ragnar Djanneskold.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: At least Regent produces good moot court teams.
KS in MA
@aimai:
This.
El Cid
@Another Holocene Human: The problem that presents is that it would then make the tale meaningless, as it would be a tale of overthrowing foreign tyranny in one’s own land–which certainly happened a bunch throughout the region. (And this was pre-Bronze Age Mediterranean collapse around 1190 BC.) Which is fine, but completely opposite the narrative.
This is a tiny, tiny part of the Mediterranean, and was subject to areal control by many different states over thousands of years.
JoyfulA
@Svensker: Amish pay into the tax system except for social security, and they pay into social security if they are employees (which most are not).
El Cid
@aimai:
Not to mention that at the time the religious tales are being gathered & propagated originally, it’s always happening contemporaneously and with an eye to the past — they didn’t know the vastly greater significance globally their particular beliefs were going to have.
We know about how it grew and then Christians, Rome, Empire, the whole lot, but they didn’t.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris:
The Perfect God(tm) is something added in by Paul of Tauruses from Greek philosophy. As others have mentioned the Jews saw their god as THEIR god, not the universal god.
Starlit
@BGinCHI: “Hot gods,
armored hot gods,
the gods kids love to cite!”
Nah, I got nothin’.
Starlit
@Jewish Steel: That’s only obvious to the uninvolved spectator. Your local capo will be wheezing “Not my little girl,” with his trigger finger cocked and a crook of lawyers to deal away any issues when the illusion of reality becomes a little too persistent.
John M. Burt
Anti-Semites resent the imaginary Jewish conspiracy for world domination when it is they who are entitled to rule the world (hence anti-Semitism has traditionally been strongest in Britain, France and Russia).
Dominionists resent Islamists for wanting to impose their religion upon all humanity when it is they who ought to do so.
See also the insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, who believes that his ancient lineage and up-to-date education entitle him to rule the world through the subversion of foreign governments by secret societies and the use of the latest technology. In other words, Dr. Fu Manchu is an Englishman . . . .
OGLiberal
Most homeschoolers are lunatics….but you can do it. We homeschool – mostly because our local school is just terrible and I can’t see paying thousands of dollars for a Catholic school education that’s mediocre at best. On some fronts, my kids are well ahead of where I was at their age. Socializing is an issue, especially since we live in a town mostly populated by old folks and older gay folks without kids. I’m a flaming liberal atheist and my wife is pretty close to that but can’t completely let go due to the New Orleans Catholic upbringing she experienced. Kids are Catholic because like most kids (including me), the religion stuff is kind of fun. Our biggest problem has been finding like-minded parents/support groups. The first was a group of Catholic homeschoolers who were nothing like the Catholics I grew up with in NJ. My wife went to Catholic schools almost all her life and she couldn’t relate to them at all – they were way out there. The next group we tried were hippy unschoolers. They were bad from a different perspective – let kids run wild by busy streets, letting kids focus on cool stuff while ignoring math, etc. So it’s hard. We struggle but we try. And we’re not weird, just trying to do best by my kids. I am a huge public school advocate but our local public school is just really, really bad (academically, the facility is top class) and in a very bad area.
But, yeah, speaking from personal experience, most homeschoolers are goofballs.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Guessing his name was ‘Joshua’ ;-)
Paul in KY
@Jewish Steel: Good job!
Paul in KY
@martian: Damn, that’s depressing.
FooBar
It’s hilarious to laugh at these folks, but there’s a serious long-term problem that comes with them – at some point, the lunatic crotch-droppings are going to be old enough to VOTE. That means another generation or two of “GLOBAL WARMING? JEEBUS DIDN’T SAY NUTHIN BOUT NO GLOBAL WARMING” assclowns in Congress, and that’s assuming the fundies don’t decide that this whole “democracy” thing is no longer GAWD’S WILL (what with all the “non-Christians have rights too” business) and start actually using the gunz they’ve been collecting over the years.
If fascism comes to America, it will be waving a flag and a cross – and the vanguard will be the sort of ruthlessly over-pious sociopaths that you can only get from Generation Joshua.
Chris
@FooBar:
Yep. Like I said at 222, the main value of these guys is as voters. No one expects them to invent the wheel – just go out every two years and press the button the Master wants them to. (And show up at town hall rallies carrying AR-15s every now and then, and so on and so forth).
My hope is that they finally begin to see pushback. That the very fact of having these people show up and vote for you, in itself, is an incentive for an equal or greater number of other people to show up and vote against you. It’s already happening on gay marriage; hopefully that’ll spread to include other issues, too.