Mom Is Teaching

I like to concider myself a life long learner. Meaning that when I come face to face with new information or new ideas I enjoy learning more about them. I’ll go all out and admit my nerd factor: I enjoy writing reports. No, it’s true. Years after high school I still write short research papers on topics that interest me for no purpose other than to have for my own reference. Yes, I’m that one.

So when digging through Google looking for topics on homeschooling to write about here I can across this intersting, and very not about homeschooling, article on a man named Frank Schaeffer. Google seemed to have picked it up because of one sentance

When he was in his early teens, it was discovered that after years of casual homeschooling, he could do little more than read.

So I braved in, ready to defend the homeschooling postition yet again. Instead I found something much more interesting. Schaeffer, whom I’m ashamed to admitthat I had never heard of before, was the son of two Calvenists in Switzerland. His parents had created a place that became “a resort for more intellectually self-conscious believers as well as for certain religious leaders”.

Schaeffer grew up among the biggest of the big in the religious world, and it wasn’t a beautiful life. From the article alone it seems like his memoirs, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, would be quite a story to read. Learning more about his family and the religious bigwigs they dealt with would certainly be intreresting. One particular quote makes me interested in reading the book.

Frank Schaeffer quickly lost all respect for the religious leaders he was meeting, and for himself as the hard-driving, America-hating preacher’s son that had become his public persona. As he points out, it’s no good to be a member of the elect if the rest of the nation is doing just fine, so of course the religious right must root against America, must hope and pray for the End Times slaughter of most of their fellow citizens. The best title for a movie about the past twenty-five years in religious America would be Elmer Gantry Returns, and Frank is here to tell you its cast of holy rollers is worse than you think: “In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement.”

OK, so the article turned out to be nothing at all about homeschooling, despite what the misleading Google News would like me to believe. But it was still fascinating and worth reading if for nothing else than to learn something new. And, not to think I’m advocating losing your religion I’ll direct you to a much friendly article on What to do when you Hate your Religion