Easily the most idiotic, moronic, imbecilic, and inane thing I've read today

Christina, a regular reader who is a lawyer in the Philippines, sent me the link to a column in The Manila Times that would downright hilarious if it weren't so, well, unfunny. It's not just that the column—written by another lawyer, by the way—is overtly anti-homeschooling, it is overly anti-reality. I don't have time to take it apart piece by piece, so will just post the conclusion (but be sure to read the entire piece):

To be fair, if we’re talking about formal educational standards in the strict sense, most of these homeschooled kids are not maleducated. In fact, if we look at the curricula that home-schooling parents prepare for their children, we would realize that a lot of the home-schooled kids are getting better education that most kids who attend public and private schools.

The inevitable question is whether it is in the best interest of the child to be insulated from beliefs, ideas and values outside of what his parents allow. To say it more accurately, should the state stand by and allow children to be raised in accordance with their parents‘ biases and prejudices? Or does the state, in accordance with its own right to preserve itself, have the right to intervene, even to the point of infringing on parental authority, in order to provide the child with a more holistic view of the world and humanity?

One curious aspect of the debate—and this really nags at me—is whether this is really about parental authority or the freedom of religion. I respect freedom of religion but I draw the line when the freedom encroaches on the right of children to find out for themselves if there are other faiths that they might feel more attuned to or if religious faith is necessary at all. Children aren’t chattels, they are not our personal property and they are not extensions of ourselves. I do not agree that the concept of parental authority includes the right of parents to make sure that their children embrace only the faith they have chosen, whether directly or indrectly by consciously not exposing them to ideas contrary to that faith.

It’s something like a microcosm of society at large. Parents question laws and principles that they deem too dictatorial like disallowing home schooling based on religious beliefs. Yet, they do not often see how dictatorial they can be in their relationship with their own children when they insist on their absolute right to raise them according to their faith of choice.

You know, if we accept that the state has the right to impose sanctions on parents that inflict abusive physical punishment on their children—and most of us do accept that—then, we accept a limitation on our parental authority. Why does such a limitation seem more reasonable, and easier to accept, that one that says we cannot impose our religious beliefs on our children?

Un. Be. Lievable.

Comments

[Jackson]

Scary. She literally advocates a dictatorship of relativism.

[Christian]

Thank you for your blog, God Bless you :)

[Mary]

Not the first case of this argument I've run across about this decision, actually.

[Kanakaberaka]

The thing that bothers me about the lawyer who wrote the column is that she thinks young children should be given as much freedom as teenagers. Teens revolt against parental authority on their own, but pre-adolecents should have the protection of whatever beliefs their parents want to inculcate in them.

[Matt Bettag]

I am raising children in the wrong generation.

[Teófilo]

"Easily the most idiotic, moronic, imbecilic, and inane thing I've read today"

Really? Then you haven't read this: Religion in schools – long overdue for a radical rethink.

I commented on it on my blog, Vivificat!

In Christ,
-Theo

[Pax]

"Easily the most idiotic, moronic, imbecilic..."

Please include "agnostic".

[Kevin Cary]

Stupid. Would she send her children (scary thought) to a public school teaching the benefits of racism? Or how about the benefits of genocide (after the person is born, of course)? Or slavery? Or, would she say these things are clearly and unequivocally wrong? In some ways, I fear that she wouldn't say that they are wrong, intrinsically so.

[fr richard]

"Children aren’t chattels, they are not our personal property and they are not extensions of ourselves."

Of course not. They are the property, and extensions of the state.

[Telemachus]

Clearly the choice is between The State and God. I'll choose God over State-slavery any day. He's got much better plans for us.

[Raphael]

A non-theist friend of mine recently noticed that the "not imposing your religious beliefs on your kids" is also an imposition, there is no true neutral, as the author here would like to pretend.

You will know them by their fruits