When does HE become concerning?

[namechangingnora]

I am really really not looking for a fight on this, but I am genuinely concerned for the children of a (once) close friend of mine who I have been speaking to this morning.

Maybe this is more a parenting ssue than HS< if it is , please tell me nicely and I'll take it elsewhere. I've namechanged as the Mum knows I use MN.

SHe has 3 dc, aged 9, 7, 5, none of whom have ever been to school. I have no bother with this - I am happy with the school-based education my own dc receive, but am quite at home and happy with the concept that school is not for everyone and am delighted that we have the choice to HE if we want to.

However, the parents, especially the Dad, started out as fairly strict Evangelicals and it has just got more extreme over the last few years. One of the main reasons they give for homeschooling is that their children are not exposed to "spurious" science (like Gelology, Geography, any history going back more than 6000 years, archaeology, physics and especially biological evolutionary theory). They are outspoken 6-day young earth creationists and genuinely believe the earth was created in 4004 bc, sometime in October I think!

The children go to no home school groups, live in an isolated house in an isolated area, go to no after school type clubs, either sports or cubs/brownies etc, they go to church but there are only 3 other children in the church. From Monday to Friday they never leave their house except to play in the garden, they are only "allowed" to go out when Dad is there to go with them.

They follow a strict HS curriculum from the US which spends more time on RE and learning bible verses off by heart than maths or English.

The final straw is I think that we had asked to pop in and visit them when we are going to be in their part of the country during the Easter holidays. THey have said that they would love to see me and dh but feel it would be too "disturbing" and "upsetting" for their dc to see ours, as they might talk about school and, as she put it "the things you believe in, like fossils and dinosaurs". And during the conversation she dropped in that they had told their children that the earthquake in Japan was a punishment to the country for rejecting Christianity!!

Flipping heck, I sound like a troll. Its just all the worst excesses you could think of, rolled into one. And it makes me cross cos I am a CHristian as well but somehow it doesn't count to her.

I've said I'll speak to dh, but its unlikely we could do an evening with them as we don't know anyone else locally so will be stuck for childcare.

Do you think it is reasonable or unreasonable that I am concerned for her children - and is there anything I can do about it?

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Nora I would be quite a lot in too. Terribly sad as far as I'm concerned but they wouldn't see it that way I'm sure it's all reasonable and the only way to them.

Also don't think there's much you can do about it. Hopefully someone else will have something more useful to add.

BTW yes sounds very trolly! But I believe it and didn't want you to think you were being ingnored!

Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Home education shouldn't be about isolating your child from the world but guiding them through it.

Thanks - I really did wonder about posting as it does sound so extreme! I think the about what she said about Japan was the last straw for me.

I think it's a lot easier to say "ah yes, I support the right of parents to bring their children up as they see fit" when one shares values with the parents.

The views of these parents may be controlling, and they may be distasteful to you, and illogical, but they are not illegal. People are allowed to hold lunatic views about how old the world is, and what the role of natural disasters is in God's Grand Plan, and whether there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, and they are allowed to impose the same beliefs on their children.

The alternative is state-sanctioned belief systems, where we are all only allowed to believe things from a limited set of state-sanctioned choices (soft Christianity is ok; creationism is wrong; environmentalism is ok; climate change scepticism is wrong - take your pick). And the problem with that is that it is totalitarian.

Sorry - I totally don't agree with the views your exfriends hold, but I will fight for their right to hold them, and to indoctrinate their children, because of the importance of family autonomy.

Afraid I have to agree with ommmward. Who would you report them to and what for?

It really is each to there own, as long as the kids are happy and heathy. there are "main stream" parents that dress littel grils as escorts and put them in beauty pagents, give me strenth, but its not my DD and who am i to say it is wrong for them. there are many religions and they all have branches of extremists. Iam an atheist but i think everyone has the wright to belive what they like.

What ommward said. I couldn't have put it better.

You have my sympathies, Nora. It must be very hard to stand by and watch the children being brought up in a way which is so different to what you would do. I'm not sure I could continue to associate with the family under the circumstances.

But there really isn't anything you can do about it.

I agree with Ommmward. They are not damaging or harming their children in anyway. As soon as the children are old enough, they'll soon enough decide whether to rebel or not and make up their own minds about what they believe in.

I agree with you, too, though, OP, in that it must be very hard to see children being indoctrinated like that, but they're not being indoctrinated in hatred towards other people, or violence, or sexual abuse or anything - it's not illegal...it's just not what you (and most people, I think) would agree with.

But from their point of view, the idea of children being indoctrinated by the state is as abhorrent as what they're doing is to us. Ultimately, so long as it's not harmful, it must IMO be up to the parents.

Nora, I can understand your concern and I think I would be concerned too. I'm sure other posters are right about there being not a lot you can do really.

The reason I am posting is that my parents belonged to a rather narrow evangelical home group when I was a child and I was told a lot of similar things (although I was also in mainstream education). I believed wholeheartedly that the world was created in 6 days and that the story in Genesis was completely literal. When my primary-school teacher gave a lesson about evolution, my mum marched up to the school to complain.

As I grew into adulthood, it took me a while to 'unpick' and re-evaluate what I had been told, but this has been a very interesting process for me. The comment about the earthquake in Japan is - but presumably these children are reading the Bible for themselves and will be able to make up their own minds about whether or not they believe that sort of punishment is likely.

I would be very concerned about people deliberately isolating their children in this way. Not allowing their children to have a one off visit from your children, is a very bizarre stance. And I can't help but think that they know that by saying that, that you and your dh will also not visit them as you will be away from home and have noone to leave your dc with.

It rings alarm bells for me really. Reason being, if there is anything untoward happening in that home, those children have noone to tell and noone to notice.

I disagree deeply with Ommmward and most of the posters above. I would say situations like this are borderline child abuse.

The children are being deliberately fed bullshit instead of education, which will massively compromise their ability to participate as constructive and engaged members of society in the future. They are being kept at home 24/7 and prevented from having ANY contact with ANYONE outside family and church.

Although your post doesn't describe this area, if they are getting the full on fundy treatment then they are presumeably getting the full on original sin you-will-burn-in-hell-if-you-so-much-as-think-about-sex thing too, which IS child abuse. And as for if any of them turn out to be gay...

I simply don't buy that the family unit is so sacrosanct that malevolent deranged idiot parents have the right to fuck up their children as thoroughly as they can work out how. And I don't buy the false dichotomy about the only alternative being totalitarianism. It's perfectly possible to respect parents' rights to bring up children in a wide variety of ways while recognising damaging extremism for what it is and being prepared to draw a line.

We as a society have certain obligations to all children, too. And in some circumstances these obligations overrule the "rights" of lunatics to screw them over just because they happen to share their DNA.

How close a friend is she? If she wants to see you at Easter she'll have to prepare her kids for your crazy dinosaur beliefs. Why does she think the subject would even come up? Doesn't she have the strength of her own convictions/indoctrination? Don't be provocative, but in the nicest possible way if you want to see her it shouldn't be at the exclusion of your children.
All other arguments aside I would want to express my puzzlement at how meeting your lovely children would possibly upset her children. They'll have to meet people outside of the family and church one day, so why not start with your kids who are obviously lovely?
You can't change her crazy ideas, but is there a way to point out that not allowing her kids to be with yours is quite offensive.

Confidence, there already is a line drawn with respect to the most extreme forms of upbringing. That's what the child abuse and neglect laws are all about. You want to redraw that line around a much smaller area.

OK, can I play too? I imagine that I could take exception to some of your parenting practices and maybe the way you educate your children. Let's outlaw your methods.

Or am I not allowed to decide whose views are extreme; do we have to go with what the majority find acceptable?

Therefore in Catholic countries, the teaching of all other religions (and atheism) should be banned as too extreme, because the majority disagree with them. The views to which you take exception were once mainstream here.

It just doesn't work to say that we must ban something because you and I find it distasteful. Why are we the ones who get to decide? (And don't say "because we are right and the family described by the OP is wrong"!)

"The views of these parents may be controlling, and they may be distasteful to you, and illogical, but they are not illegal. People are allowed to hold lunatic views about how old the world is, and what the role of natural disasters is in God's Grand Plan, and whether there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, and they are allowed to impose the same beliefs on their children."

I'd agree with that if the child was also given a chance to find out about other beliefs, other concepts and therefore when they got older to be in a position to decide which they wished to adhere to. In the OP's situation (or rather her friends' situation), this isn't the case. By isolating the children to the extent that they are, they aren't being taught, but rather indoctrinated.

Saracen,

Confidence, there already is a line drawn with respect to the most extreme forms of upbringing. That's what the child abuse and neglect laws are all about. You want to redraw that line around a much smaller area.

Somewhat smaller, yes. I think children have the right to a decent education based on exploring the actual, proven knowledge that mankind has amassed and not having it deliberately hidden from them in the name of superstition. When they are prevented from exercising that right, they are prevented from learning to participate properly in the society of the future. That's unacceptable and society should step in over the heads of the parents.

OK, can I play too? I imagine that I could take exception to some of your parenting practices and maybe the way you educate your children. Let's outlaw your methods.

This is nothing but abstract theorising. You know absolutely nothing about the way I educate my children. I'm happy for any aspect of my childrearing to be open to public debate and to answer to any substantiated claims that I'm harming my children, just as I'm happy to substantiate (see above) my problems with the family in the OP. It's not an abstract question of whether parents should have absolute power or none - it's a pragmatic question of dealing with specific things that harm children.

*Or am I not allowed to decide whose views are extreme; do we have to go with what the majority find acceptable? Therefore in Catholic countries, the teaching of all other religions (and atheism) should be banned as too extreme, because the majority disagree with them. The views to which you take exception were once mainstream here.

It just doesn't work to say that we must ban something because you and I find it distasteful. Why are we the ones who get to decide? (And don't say "because we are right and the family described by the OP is wrong"!)*

It's nothing to do with any of that. I'm not advocating stepping in on behalf of these kids because I personally find the education they are receiving distasteful. I'm advocating it because they are being taught things that are factually incorrect, having access to correct facts deliberately hidden from them, and being indoctrinated instead of educated.

If a family want to let their kids learn about the scientific knowledge that exists, while at the same time believing in God and taking the kids with them to worship God on a Sunday, I have no problem with that.

"a decent education based on exploring the actual, proven knowledge that mankind has amassed"

I'm not actually sure about this. My girls are doing Physics GCSE at the moment and one of the very interesting discussions that came up was how lots of what I learnt for Physics O Level (dating myself!) has now been changed or refuted. A couple of weeks ago the girls studied from the course a whole lot on models of atoms, different people's theories - and at the end of it, DD1 said, "so what this is all actually saying is, no one knows but we have to present it as fact in the exam." Very astute, I thought

The thing is, your decent education that every state school child is receiving is just the indoctrination of the times - just that we don't usually view it like that. So many subjects, English, History, Science, are drawn from what somebody currently thinks is a broad and relevant education, but when you scratch the surface is anything but. If you looked at some of what was presented to my parents in school (the superiority of the British race/ empire, the enforcement of class distinctions etc), you'd be shocked it could be taught to children and presented as fact. Future generations will doubtless view our curriculum in the same way.

Home educating has made me think a lot about these sort of issues. And, I'm afraid, confidence, that if we go down your route, we end up with a totally state controlled society where no one is allowed independent thought. So whilst this family's ethos wouldn't be mine, I defend their right to hold it because the alternative is unthinkable.

But the fact of scientific knowledge being changed or refuted is completely different. In fact, in a sense it proves my point.

Scientific knowledge CAN be changed and refuted for the very reason that scientists give paramount importance to integrity of process, reasoning and evidence - NOT to dogmatic attachment to one particular conclusion. These changes and refutations are not just a question of fads or people deciding "ooh, it would be nice for physics to say this". They are a result of scientists making and recording rigorously controlled experiments, deriving logical conclusions from those experiments and the scientific community being forced to change because of those conclusions.

The same goes for humanities subjects where, for example, we are no longer taught history based on the presumption of white superiority. That change has occured out of several generations of thought and debate, challenging the idea that white races and cultures must be superior to others, and ultimately discrediting it.

This is the opposite of what the home ed fundies in the OP are doing. They are saying: "There was this book compiled 2000 years ago: everything in it is absolute truth and therefore you can't tell us or show us anything that will make us revise any of it. What's more, if you try we'll make damn sure our kids aren't exposed to such possibility of revision."

And your last paragraph just repeats the slippery slope fallacy from earlier on. Insisting that all children get an actual education, as a opposed to an indocrination, is not the same thing as "not allowing independent thought", and doesn't mean we will end up that way. Giving fundamentalist morons the power to manipulate the innocence of youth, and depriving that youth of access to the information that might challenge that manipulation, is far more likely to do that.

You are raising the bar quite considerably, confidence. Most state-provided education would fail your test, not only because of "indoctrination" but because of incompetence. (I'm not having a dig at teachers: HE parents don't always get it right either!) I was taught countless things at school which weren't true; often I even knew at the time that they weren't true.

I think you have a very rosy view of how science and other academic subjects progress over time. There are fads; things don't always move forward inexorably in what I would consider the "right" direction; debate does not always lead us toward truth.

Religious fundamentalism doesn't float my boat, but I nevertheless indoctrinate my children in many beliefs which I cannot substantiate, but which I want them to share. How can I justify teaching them that they deserve to be happy, or that all people have value and should be treated respectfully? I can't justify it. There is no demonstrable truth behind my values. I can only teach them what I feel they ought to know.

I would even go so far as to say that if my kids were spending a lot of time with people who didn't share those values, and if this seemed to be preventing them from absorbing my indoctrination, I would keep them away from these people and get them to mix with people who shared my values. For example, if my kids spent most of their time with people who behaved in nasty thuggish ways and my children started to behave similarly, I'd limit their association with these people. Indoctrinating children in my values is part of my responsibility as a parent.