Good news, bad news from the Southern Baptists
Published by punkass marc June 15th, 2006 in Edumakashun, GodbaggeryComing into yesterday, there was a big stink about Southern Baptists considering the abandonment of public schools. Fortunately, they came to their senses:
The Southern Baptist Convention yesterday refused to support a resolution urging the denomination to form a plan to remove children from public schools.
Smart move, folks. The megachurches might have been able to provide considerable subsidy towards private school, but certainly not every SB church is as loaded as the ones in the ‘burbs. The education gap that would have developed between the haves and have-nots in Southern Baptism would’ve gotten out of hand pretty quickly. Maybe the SBs are anti-science, but they know that without jobs, their sheep won’t have much to put in the coffers. They need them to obtain _some_ kind of basic education, and not every Mom can afford (or is educated enough) to homeschool, either.
I’m happy about this news because I don’t like it when any large group pulls all of its kids out of the social blender of the school system. Going out on a limb here [har har], but if a fundie child’s exposed to kids with different backgrounds and teachers who may not share the same views as mommy and daddy on everything, I’d wager s/he stands a much better chance of waking up to the real world.
Oh, that’s the bad news part. The Southern Baptists don’t like that idea very much:
The resolution committee instead urged members to endorse a policy of exerting “godly influence” on public schools. That includes running for seats on school boards.
Before the annual meeting ended last night, delegates overwhelmingly adopted the committee’s resolution.
Le sigh.
Grass roots fundie-ism has a pretty successful track record, and I couldn’t be less thrilled at the notion of them targeting school boards as a top priority. I thought they already had, but if their growing educational influence hasn’t even been well organized yet, I think it’s time to go from fundie alert level lavender to fundie alert level electric blue. If you believe in responsible science in the classroom, you’re probably pretty uncomfortable with the phrase “godly influence.” Gay educators are also going to have quite a fight on their hands. Those who support teaching kids there’s a safe way and an unsafe way to have the sex they’re going to have anyway should probably be alarmed, as well.
I’d say we should organize a way to fight back, but here we bump up against the problem of the uber-organized religious wingnuttery. Our loose coalition of cool kids and hip parents doesn’t seem to stand much of a chance, does it? Curse our taste for individuality!
They also adopted a resolution urging school districts to accommodate parents and churches wishing to provide off-campus Bible instruction during the school day.
If any school system allows this, you just know they’ll make sure to pull the kids during any science class, and offer candy and oodles of “religious play-time” to entice as many as possible to come along. Hell, they’ve already got the lollipop.
This is another way that the religious wingnuts and the non-religious wingnuts who just want to cut social spending have goals that dovetail neatly. Religious wingnuts don’t like having their kids educated because this increases the chance that they will grow up to question authority, but they don’t want their kids to be have-nots either. Non-religious wingnuts are mostly looking to destroy public education and make education something only the very wealthy can afford. They’re using each other–the non-religious ones are hoping the wingnuts keep attacking the schools until they fold and the religious ones figure that if the schools collapse, their ignorant kids won’t have to compete with as many educated people for jobs.
Make no mistake, the end goal of wingnuts who attack public education is to get rid of it. It’s one more reason to be suspicious of them stocking the school boards. I think it’s fundamentally wrong for people to accept a job that they think shouldn’t exist.