I had a very interesting conversation with someone at the park yesterday. Someone who found it simply fascinating, if not backwards that we home school. As usual, when someone finds out we home school, I stood their answering a dozen and half questions like how will they socialize, what will we do about high school, is this legal, etc. Then came the clencher: Do you teach religion in your home school?
The answer to that is technically no. Although we are Christians, time doing devotions, reading the Bible, and similar activities are family time and not technically school time. But in reality, we’re always teaching our values and our religion and certainly we teach our subjects with a conservative Christian world view. That is really what they were asking about so I answered, ‘yes’.
Nodding and perplexed the person I was talking to stoutly proclaimed. . .well I’m against it. If you can teach religion in your home school then you are brainwashing your kids. I’m sure you’re all good, but what about other religions that brain wash their kids to thinking dangerous things–should they be allowed to home school?
I’m choosing to overlook the ignorance in that statement but rather focus on an argument I’ve heard against home schooling: that without state approved curriculum homeschoolers are being brainwashed into ‘backward’ ways. This usually refers to the Christian evangelical right. . .but it’s certainly not limited to this group.
What we’re missing is that any value or conviction you communicate to your children is ‘brainwashing.’ That includes state curriculum. Take for example our own district’s public school curriculum on tolerance. The idea is to teach students that any path be it gay or straight, Muslim or Christian, geeky or cool–everything is okay. The idea that everything is all hunky dory regardless of what you believe is a belief system as well, and if it is what is being taught in school it is brainwashing. Valuing a lack of religion is just as much a belief system as is Christianity.
So by that definition, I’d have to say I ‘brainwash’ my kids. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just homeschoolers that are communicating values to their children.