Keep your freakish home-schooled kids away from my kids

I know that title sounds a little weird -- you might ask, "well, home-schooled kids are kept at home anyway, so why would you, Steve, have to worry about them coming near your kids, who go to public school in an all-white suburb?"

I'll tell you why. Because I read this article: Parents want to control influences; critics see need for wide exposure, which suggests, toward the end, that parents of home-schooled children are trying to get their kids into music, art, lab science, and sports classes and activities in the public schools.

In other words, these parents, who've created little Frankenstein monsters over all the years they've kept them at home, away from different kids and any outside influences, now want to foist their monstrous offspring back onto the culture they've derided and isolated them from. Even if it's just for a few hours a week. Perhaps they worry that their children might become so freakish in those secluded little secret societies of people who home-school their kids, they'd never have a chance of getting a job when inevitably confronted with the world as it actually exists. The world in which everyone else lives. The world that they -- these parents, themselves -- were involved in for some span of time. The world that they have excluded their children from out of some misguided notion that the world can, in fact, be excluded.

Madness. Selfishness. Delusion.

And it's not just about them being obnoxious and imposing themselves upon us, just at the point in the day when we're trying to enjoy our culture and achievements and creativity through music, art, laboratory sciences and sports. No. That's annoying, but television advertisements serve similar ends.

The real question is: Do you really want your kids socializing with their kids?

To illustrate my concern (emphasis mine):

"Steve and Kerry Beck acknowledge that it is what many evangelicals call their "Christian worldview'' that drives them. The phrase means that all aspects of the universe owe their existence to a Christian God.

They said they pulled their children from private religious schools because teachers were stressing academics rather than building a religious foundation.

"We really want our kids to rule and reign for Christ. We couldn't do that on a haphazard basis,'' said Steve Beck. "The whole idea is we're training battle-hardened soldiers for Christ. The private Christian school wasn't going to do that.'' ... The influence has been profound. The family moved to Idaho in August so that Steve can study at a seminary run by Douglas Wilson, an outspoken critic of big government and especially public education. Wilson co-authored a book that argues that Civil War abolitionists ignored the teachings of the Bible, which recognizes slavery. Beck said Wilson's "main goal is to get people to think.'' The Bible urges good relationships between slaves and masters, and that's what prevailed in the prewar South, Beck said.

The South was fighting for states' rights, not for slavery, Beck said. Because the South lost, we now have the ``leviathan'' government intruding on all aspects of our lives. Public schools are an example, he said. Before public education was created in the 1800s, anyone who wanted an education could find one for free, and the literacy rate was much higher than it is today, he said.
Beck said that people coming out of Wilson's school are ``changing the culture from the inside out,'' and that Christians need to infiltrate the world.

``We're in the New Covenant. We're not using swords. We're using the Spirit,'' Beck said.
In his book, A Father's Stew, Beck writes that Christians must reject the notions that women need work to be fulfilled, parents should pursue careers by dumping their children in day-care centers (disparagingly referred to as ``concentration camps'') and education can be provided only by so-called experts.
The Becks want their children to go to college, but they have different aspirations for the three, depending on the gender. Steve Beck would like his son to become an engineer and wants the girls to get liberal arts degrees so they are able to ``have sons and daughters and teach them to think.'' ``I'm not keen on a daughter becoming a doctor and working 90 hours a week,'' he said.

There was so much to emphasize in that passage, I could hardly keep from underlining the whole thing.

Look, these people can isolate themselves as much as they want -- I'm happy to see them go. But bottom line is this: I don't want the progeny of such people to come anywhere near my children. My kids are messed up enough as it is.