One of our newsletter readers recently unsubscribed and left the following comments regarding our last post: ” I am interested in home schooling and happen to be a liberal. I found your comments today offensive. I don’t think that home schooling should be political or CHRISTIAN. I am neither a Christian nor a conservative. You get more allies when you stop alienating and start opening to all people regardless of their religion or political views”.
She was apparently referring to our comment we made that the liberal social indoctrination of the public schools was a detrimental waste of time, and that the Biblical worldview had been replaced by the Humanist worldview. She didn’t specify exactly what it was that offended her, other than the fact that we hold opposing viewpoints.
Our response: We don’t write with the intent to offend, but since we are both unabashedly Christian and conservative, we will neither hide nor deny our Christian conservative viewpoint. However, we’re puzzled as to why this individual was offended, as we’re not offended by those who hold a liberal viewpoint, even though we strongly disagree with them.
We don’t feel the need to apologize for our views, nor do we feel that it’s necessary to ‘warn’ our readers that we are conservative Christians. This would imply that the ‘default’ position is liberal and secular, which we don’t believe is correct.
Homeschooling is what YOU make it. If you’re a liberal and you firmly believe that’s the correct viewpoint, then your home school program will likely reflect that, and vice versa for conservatives or Christians or whoever.
This former subscriber apparently is either home schooling already or considering it, and we’re sure there are many reasons why someone would choose to homeschool rather than send their children to public schools. But for us, one of the main reasons for our decision to homeschool was for the above-mentioned liberal, anti-Christian indoctrination that is occurring in the public schools.
It becomes more shocking by the day, as grade-school children are taught the ‘virtues’ of the homosexual lifestyle as early as kindergarten, and evolution is presented as ’settled science’ even thought this is far from the truth.
We doubt that even liberals would deny that this is indeed occurring. So we have a question for anyone of the liberal persuasion: Do you believe these changes have IMPROVED public schools? If so, could you please provide some proof?
Actually, we see just the opposite from our perspective. Test scores have fallen precipitiously over the years since these changes started, and morality among public school-educated children has taken a serious dive as well.
So if this person is offended because she thinks that the introduction of these liberal ideas was a POSITIVE move for the public schools, she has a long, uphill battle to convince us that it’s so.
This also brings up another interesting question: Is there such thing as a ‘neutral’ position that public schools, or homeschoolers, or anyone for that matter, should follow?
Think about this before you answer. Every person has a ‘worldview’ whether they realize it or not. If you believe that God created the universe and everything in it, then your perspective and mindset will be much different than someone who believes that everything in the universe is the result of a ‘big bang’ and that there is no God and no purpose to life.
Since the public schools have discarded the idea that God is the supreme being in control of the universe, they have (perhaps) unwittingly adopted the tenents of Humanism. Humanism rejects anything supernatural and places man in the position of determining what is right or wrong by his own volition.
But wait. Isn’t Humanism religiously neutral? No, Humanism functions as a religion. “As Humanism encompasses intellectual currents running through a wide variety of philosophical and religious thought, several strains of Humanism allow it to fulfill, supplement or supplant the role of religions, and in particular, to be embraced as a complete life stance”. (Wikipedia).
Evolutionists, for example, believe that you cannot understand biology unless you embrace the evolutionary doctrines, and this has been firmly engrained into the public school curriculum.
So there is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ position, contrary to what some may want us to believe. Your own worldview has a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Atheist, Humanist, Evolutionist, etc. foundation and ultimately affects how you interpret information and the decisions you make. EVERYONE, regardless of how unbiased they may see themselves, has a set of beliefs that determines how they interact with the world around them.
We don’t expect all homeschoolers to totally agree with our worldview, and we’re not offended if they happen to hold a slightly, or vastly, different view. However, as conservative Christians, we firmly believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God and that the ideas of men that run counter to the Bible are bankrupt.
Our goal isn’t to “alienate” other home schoolers, and we’re sorry that someone would feel alienated simply because of opposing viewpoints. But we will continue to proclaim what we believe to be true regardless of whether anyone feels ‘offended’ or not.
“Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!” (Luke 6:26).