Dividing Lines

While reading my favorite guilty pleasure, the Economist, I came across an article on the growth of home-schooling in America. The article, "Kitchen-classroom Conservatives", discusses some of the reasons that home-schooling has doubled in the last decade to an estimated 1.5 million (which is considered a low estimate according to some sources). Not surprisingly, religion is one of the leading motivators.

As I finished the article and started thinking about some of the points that were made, I started to feel uneasy. It took me a while to pinpoint what it was that bothered me so much, and after mulling it over for a few days, I finally figured it out. It wasn't the article or any particular slant paid to either side of the home-schooling issue, but rather the implications stemming from the fact that so many religious families feel their beliefs are not respected or even have a place in the public school system.

I don't believe that when the Founding Fathers felt inspired to separate church from state that what they intended was to squelch religion in any form from our public schools, and more broadly all our government institutions. It seems that efforts to foster diversity and acceptance have, instead, turned into a refusal to even imply that there is a right and wrong. Everything Goes is the only religious dogma that seems to permeate the public schools generally.

Believing in anything is seen as "close-minded". That concerns me. I would much rather my children attend schools with others of any faith, be it Jewish, Muslim, Baptist, Catholic, Mormon, or Protestant, than in an environment where religion of any sort is marginalized. I found it interesting as well that the article suggested that with such a liberal president in the White House, homeschooling was only expected to grow. I find it disturbing that the lines dividing us politically or religiously are also being drawn in the classroom, to the point that parents feel the need to take children out of the school system altogether.