homeschooling

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Podcast: Attention Gray Lady folks! Latter-day Saints are not the only skilled fantasy scribes

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Podcast: Attention Gray Lady folks! Latter-day Saints are not the only skilled fantasy scribes

Two decades ago, I attended Nimbus 2003, the first global Harry Potter studies convention.

This colorful event, at a Disney hotel in Orlando, drew a capacity crowd of about 600 participants — about 90% of which were female — from the United States, England and Australia.

What kinds of people showed up and what does this flashback have to do with this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in)? Hold that thought. Here’s a bite of the “On Religion” column that I wrote about that event, one of many Harry Potter-related columns I have written over the years.

In hotel hallways, witch wannabes raised their expensive, professionally carved wands and fought imaginary duels with tickling spells and other incantations. In the lecture halls, others heard papers on everything from Harry Potter and the First Amendment to "Greenhouses are for Girls, Beasts are for Boys? Gender Characterizations in Harry Potter." …

Organizers also dedicated an entire track of lectures and panels to spiritual issues, addressing topics such as "Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Heavenly Virtues: Moral Development in Harry Potter" and "Can Any Wisdom Come From Wizardry?"

I was not surprised that a large number of the participants mentioned, in registration, that they were Wiccans or interested in other forms of neo-paganism. However, it was clear that at least half of the crowd of readers with marked-up Harry Potter books were mothers — often homeschool enthusiasts — who were Catholics, evangelical Protestants or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was important, some said, that author J.K. Rowling had outed herself, early on, as a communicant in the progressive Scottish Episcopal Church. She told a Canadian newspaper: "Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said, 'yes,' because I do. … If I talk too freely about that, I think the intelligent reader — whether 10 or 60 — will be able to guess what is coming in the books."

Now, this brings us to that fascinating New York Times feature that ran with this double-decker headline:

An Unexpected Hotbed of Y.A. Authors: Utah

A tight-knit community of young-adult writers who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has yielded smashes like “Twilight.” But religious doctrine can clash with creative freedoms

Yes, it’s interesting that Mormons play a major role in the world of fantasy fiction for children, teenagers and family-reading circles. I also thought it was interesting that editors at the world’s most prestigious newspaper have never heard of some other religious believers who have excelled as fantasy stars.

Can you say “Narnia”? How about “The Hobbit”? How about “A Wrinkle in Time”?


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Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

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Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

Gentle readers, please allow me to start with a short anecdote from about 15 years ago, during the years when I was teaching journalism a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

I attended a typical off-the-record think tank forum in which lawyers from church-state groups were talking about rising tensions in public, taxpayer funded, institutions. At one point, someone asked a question that sounded something like this: What should public-schools leaders do when approached by parents who want opt-out choices for their children when faced with class activities that clash with the teachings of their faith?

The question, of course, was linked to tensions between public-school leaders and evangelicals, and maybe traditional Catholics (“traditional” in the FBI meaning of the word).

One lawyer gave an answer that was way ahead of its time: School administrators should look at these people and do everything they can to pretend that these parents are Muslims. In other words, pretend these parents are part of a minority faith that public officials respect (Muslims), as opposed to part of a larger faith group that administrators distrust, fear and possibly even loathe (evangelicals).

This was one of two Beltway anecdotes I shared during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focused on a Washington Post story that I have been thinking about during the past week or two. That headline: “Hundreds of Md. parents protest lessons they say offend their faiths.” The Post team appears to have worked hard to keep the main news hook out of that headline and even the lede.

Hundreds of parents demonstrated outside the Montgomery County Board of Education’s meeting … demanding that Maryland’s largest school district allow them to shield their children from books and lessons that contain LGBTQ+ characters.

Still in the dark, right? Keep reading:

The crowd was filled largely with Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents, who say the school system is violating their religious rights protected under the First Amendment by not providing an opt-out. Three families have filed a lawsuit against the school system.


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Why is Amazon Prime trashing the Duggar parents and the wide world of homeschooling?

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Why is Amazon Prime trashing the Duggar parents and the wide world of homeschooling?

This past week or so has been a bad media moment for homeschooling. First there was a Washington Post expose on “the revolt of the Christian homeschoolers” that ran May 30.

Mind you, this is a time when homeschooling in America is at all-time highs. Then, starting last Friday, Amazon Prime premiered “Shiny Happy People,” its four-part series on the woes of the Duggar family, the stars of the long-running reality TV special “19 Kids and Counting.”

The latter is one of the more bizarre examples of circumstantial evidence, imputed (but not proven) guilt and overkill that I’ve seen in a long time. I’ll get to the Post piece in a moment, but the pile-on @AmazonPrime simply must be addressed.

For starters, not only does the series go after the Duggar parents Jim Bob and Michelle, but it also trashes the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) or what a lot of us who attended it in the 1970s used to call Basic Youth Conflicts. Bill Gothard, its founder, resigned in 2014 after being accused by multiple women of sexual abuse.

The series starts with a number of unidentified people (we learn their names later in the series but still) accusing IBLP of “spiritual, emotional, physical, psychological abuse” and essentially being the spiritual engine that fed the Duggar family empire. That and the fact that the Discovery TLC Network became a multi-billion-dollar company partly due to them.

“Homeschooling is the linchpin of this whole project,” said one woman.

Does that include all the homeschoolers who made it into Harvard and other forms of elite education? There are many facets to this nondenominational, multiracial movement.

“World domination is their goal,” intoned another man.

The series (I’ve watched two of the episodes so far) careens back and forth from homeschooling to the Duggars to conservative politics to the IBLP, trying to throw as much dirt as possible on them all. Is everyone who was ever involved with the IBLP and homeschooling a wacko?


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Podcast: AP fails to connect religion dots in latest surge in homeschooling statistics

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Podcast: AP fails to connect religion dots in latest surge in homeschooling statistics

If you know anything about the history of homeschooling, you know that battles about parental rights, morality, religious motivations and faith-centered school content have been a big part of this drama since Day 1.

Connect a few dots in almost any trend linked to homeschooling and, sooner and later, you will hit religion.

It doesn’t matter if you are talking about mainstream groups such as the National Home School Association or aggressive activist groups such as the Home School Legal Defence Association. Needless to say, when you see a headline like this one — “The Frightening Power of the Home-Schooling Lobby” — or this one from Europe — “Home education: Court rules against German Christian family “ — you will almost always run into lots of content about religious fundamentalism (of various kinds), big families and other signs of countercultural behavior.

As I noted 20+ years ago in an “On Religion” column about a homeschooling convention inside the D.C. Beltway:

These are not business-as-usual families, cookie-cut into the sizes and shapes on display in shopping malls, mail-order catalogues and, especially, prime-time television. They have unique priorities when they budget their time and money. They have radically different family values that often defy simple political labels.

In a strange way, home-schoolers are creating a new counter-culture outside the American mainstream. It's the Anti-Woodstock Generation.

All of these issues came up for discussion during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on a recent Associated Press feature with this headline: “Homeschooling surge continues despite schools reopening.” Here is the overture for that story:

The coronavirus pandemic ushered in what may be the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen. Two years later, even after schools reopened and vaccines became widely available, many parents have chosen to continue directing their children’s educations themselves.

Homeschooling numbers this year dipped from last year’s all-time high, but are still significantly above pre-pandemic levels, according to data obtained and analyzed by The Associated Press.

Families that may have turned to homeschooling as an alternative to hastily assembled remote learning plans have stuck with it — reasons include health concerns, disagreement with school policies and a desire to keep what has worked for their children.

Now, there’s no doubt that what parents saw on Zoom screens during the COVID-tide played a big role in these numbers. But what did they see and hear?


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New podcast: Spot any 'ghosts' in New York Times story about aid for (large) U.S. families?

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New podcast: Spot any 'ghosts' in New York Times story about aid for (large) U.S. families?

At first glance, it looks like another New York Times story about all those public policy debates between the entrenched Republicans and White House, along with the narrow Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill.

But if you look carefully, there is a reason that this Gray Lady update about the arrival of the expanded Child Tax Credit was, to use a turn of phrase from “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken, a “haunted house” of religion-news ghosts. He was riffing on a term your GetReligionistas have used since Day 1 at this blog. (Click here to tune in this week’s GetReligion podcast.)

OK, let’s play “spot the religion ghost.” First, here is the double-decker headline on this report:

Monthly Payments to Families With Children to Begin

The Biden administration will send up to $300 per child a month to most American families thanks to a temporary increase in the child tax credit that advocates hope to extend.

Nine out of 10 children in the United States will be eligible for these payments, which are linked to the COVID-19 crisis, but call back memories of policies from the old War on Poverty. The program will expire in a year, at which point the debates over its effectiveness will crank into a higher gear. Here’s the Times overture:

WASHINGTON — If all goes as planned, the Treasury Department will begin making a series of monthly payments in coming days to families with children, setting a milestone in social policy and intensifying a debate over whether to make the subsidies a permanent part of the American safety net.

With all but the most affluent families eligible to receive up to $300 a month per child, the United States will join many other rich countries that provide a guaranteed income for children, a goal that has long animated progressives. Experts estimate the payments will cut child poverty by nearly half, an achievement with no precedent. …

While the government has increased many aid programs during the coronavirus pandemic, supporters say the payments from an expanded Child Tax Credit, at a one-year cost of about $105 billion, are unique in their potential to stabilize both poor and middle-class families.

As you would expect, many Republicans oppose what they consider a return to old-style “welfare” payments of this kind.

That’s many Republicans, but not all.


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Thinking about forced marriages (with the Forward), but also happy Catholic moms with lots of kids

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Thinking about forced marriages (with the Forward), but also happy Catholic moms with lots of kids

At first glance, this weekend’s two “think pieces” appear to clash.

But readers (and viewers) who dig deeper will find two radically different looks at important and valid stories linked to marriage and family life in very different traditional religious communities — Jewish, fundamentalist Protestant and Islamic.

There is much here for religion-news professionals, and news consumers, to ponder.

One story is dark and hellish, looking at the reality of forced marriages in a few religious groups. The other glows with positive images and voices, as mothers in the United Kingdom share stories from their lives in large, traditional, Catholic families.

First, let’s look at this piece from Simi Horwitz at the Forward: “In 21st century America, where arranged child marriages remain a scourge.” The overture:

Kate Ryan Brewer’s “Knots: A Forced Marriage Story” is one disturbing, though important, documentary, one that grows increasingly unsettling as three articulate and intelligent young women matter-of-factly recount their belittling, exploitive, and ultimately dehumanizing experiences in forced marriages. Mercifully each has escaped and forged successful, independent lives; one has become a recognized outspoken activist on behalf of victims.

The filmmakers assert that the practice of arranged marriages, often involving brides who are 15 or younger, continues almost unchecked and unchallenged. In fact, the only states that require the marrying parties to be at least 18 are Delaware, New Jersey, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Between 2000 and 2010, nearly 250,000 children in the U.S. were married, and 77 per cent were young girls wedded off to much older men. In some cases they were forced to marry their rapists in order to salvage their reputations and the family’s honor.


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New podcast: Should religious leaders and the cultural right applaud lousy Oscar ratings?

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New podcast: Should religious leaders and the cultural right applaud lousy Oscar ratings?

Pick a headline, just about any Oscar headline.

The ratings for the 2021 Academy Awards were bad. How bad? Here’s the take from the world-weary folks at Entertainment Weekly: “Oscars hit another historic low in ratings.”

The New York Post has been known to produce blunt headlines. Thus: “Oscar ratings drop to an all-time low with unwatchable show.”

But what matters, of course, is what runs in prestige settings such as The New York Times. The big business-desk headline there provided some extra, rather acidic, context:

Oscars Ratings Plummet, With Fewer Than 10 Million Tuning In

Sunday night’s pandemic-restricted telecast drew 58 percent fewer viewers than last year’s record low.

Wait, there’s more bad news:

Among adults 18 to 49, the demographic that many advertisers pay a premium to reach, the Oscars suffered an even steeper 64 percent decline, according to preliminary data from Nielsen. …

[The] Oscars have been on a slide since 1998, when 57.2 million people tuned in to see “Titanic” sweep to best-picture victory.

What’s the religion-news hook in this story, other than the semi-religious role that the Oscar rites play in the cult of Hollywood? That was the subject of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here to tune that in or head over to Apple Podcasts to sign up for a weekly feed.

Let’s walk through this.


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Journalists have to ask familiar questions, when 'religious' people turn to violence

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There are so many questions to ask, and all of them need asking as journalists probe the "why" question in the "who," "what," "when," "where," "why" and "how" of the Austin bombings.

First things first. As Bobby Ross Jr. noted earlier (please see that post), 23-year-old Mark Anthony Conditt grew up in an intensely Christian home and he has expressed views that can -- in some sense of this vague word -- be called "conservative." He was active in a small, racially diverse church and then in a popular megachurch.

Well, the prodigal Texan in me wants to note that quite a few people in Texas go to church, even in the Austin area. Lots of them go to megachurches, since many things in Texas -- as you may have heard -- tend to be big.

Also, lots of people in Texas are committed to home-schooling their children. As with any form of intense education, some children like that more than others.

I say all of this to make one point: Journalists need to investigate all of these religion angles because this young man's faith -- or his loss of faith --  may turn out to be crucial. Most of all, law officials seem to be focusing on finding the source of the pain, anger and "darkness" that seized Conditt's life in the days, weeks or months leading up to the bombings.

Where would you start, reading between the lines in this passage from the main Associated Press report?

Conditt’s family said in a statement they had “no idea of the darkness that Mark must have been in.” ...

Jeff Reeb, a neighbor of Conditt’s parents in Pflugerville for about 17 years, said he watched Conditt grow up and that he always seemed “smart” and “polite.” Reeb, 75, said Conditt and his grandson played together into middle school and that Conditt regularly visited his parents, whom Reeb described as good neighbors.


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Why was DeVos fight so bitter? In this case the cultural warfare was totally logical

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Why was DeVos fight so bitter? In this case the cultural warfare was totally logical

So how did Betsy DeVos end up being the wicked witch of the Calvinist Midwest?

That's one way of stating the main topic of this past week's "Crossroads" podcast, which was recorded a day later than normal for technical reasons. Click here to tune that in, please.

In addition to talking about the hammer and tongs warfare over the DeVos nomination to serve as Secretary of Education, host Todd Wilken and I also talked about the fact that the whole subject of alternative forms of education in America -- think charter schools, homeschooling, etc. -- is not something that breaks down into easy left vs. right categories, when it comes to politics and religion. Click here to see my earlier post on that.

But the key to the DeVos war was that there was really nothing unusual about it, for reasons that Ross Douthat explained in a column for The New York Times. The bottom line was the bottom line: It is hard to name a culture wars army that provides more muscle and campaign funding to the modern Democratic Party than the public educational elites and the unions that serve them. We are talking about millions and millions of dollars, year after year after year.

Here is Douthat, who as always is guilty of linear, logical thinking:

... Somehow it was DeVos who became, in the parlance of cable-news crawls, Trump’s “most controversial nominee.” Never mind that Trump’s logorrheic nationalism barely has time for education. Never mind that local control of schools makes the Education Department a pretty weak player. Never mind that Republican views on education policy are much closer to the expert consensus than they are on, say, climate change. Never mind that the bulk of DeVos’s school-choice work places her only somewhat to the right of the Obama administration’s pro-charter-school positioning, close to centrist Democrats like Senator Cory Booker. None of that mattered: Against her and (so far) only her, Democrats went to the barricades, and even dragged a couple of wavering Republicans along with them.
DeVos did look unprepared and even foolish at times during her confirmation hearings, and she lacks the usual government experience. But officially the opposition claimed to be all about hardheaded policy empiricism. A limited and heavily regulated charter school program is one thing, the argument went, but DeVos’s zeal for free markets would gut public education and turn kids over to the not-so-tender mercies of unqualified bottom-liners.

DeVos is the living symbol of everything the educational establishment hates, a woman with zero personal ties to public schools and years of experience in fighting for alternatives -- especially for the poor and those caught in substandard urban school zones. As I noted in the podcast, of course Democrats went to the mattresses to stop her from becoming secretary of education. Her nomination was something like proposing Elton John as the next leader of Focus on the Family.


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