If Biologists Believed in Evolution . . . Maybe They Could Fly

Larry Arnhart, an honest evolutionist, gives us this:

Oddly enough, it really is true that many biologists have no great interest in evolution, and they certainly don’t see evolution as a bridge across all of the intellectual disciplines.

This point comes up in the first issue of the EvoS Journal: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium. One of the articles is by Neil Blackstone. Neil is a colleague of mine at Northern Illinois University. He’s an evolutionary biologist in the biology department. We have team-taught a course on evolutionary topics that is cross-listed in the political science and biology departments. He has complained to me that his fellow biologists often show little interest in evolutionary reasoning.

Why don’t more biologists believe that evolution is important for their research? Have they been bought off by the creationist Illuminati? Blackstone notes the following:

As one of the most cited scientific journals in the world, the contents of Science thus provide an excellent barometer for the role of evolutionary theory in modern biology. Certainly, first inspection of this celebration of Darwin suggests a large role: the cover, the editorial, book reviews, and a special section of scientific reviews all suggest a congratulatory “Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin.” Closer examination, however, reveals that the articles focusing on evolution primarily deal with only a limited range of the biological hierarchy—particularly organisms and genes. Here as elsewhere, articles that describe the intricate workings of molecular cell biology rarely mention evolution. Two explanations are possible: either evolutionary theory has no relevance to molecular cell biology, or this relevance is being ignored.

Blackstone goes on to survey recent research in a particular area of molecular biology, concluding as follows:

All of this groundbreaking work on STAT3 was apparently carried out and reported without any reference to the evolutionary history of eukaryotic cells. One might surmise from reading this literature that such an evolutionary view could not possibly add any insight to the still on-going investigation of the curious case of STAT3.

Then Blackstone presents his argument for why evolutionary theory should be considered in this area of research. However, he only gives an outline for how to think about the issue, rather than a research program, noting that his objective was “merely to point out that there is a robust evolutionary context for the molecular crosstalk between modern mitochondria and the cell nucleus.” Too bad all the folks doing the actual research never figured this out. Blackstone is quite frustrated by their ignorance and insensitivity, so he whines:

Rather than being ignored by molecular cell biology, this context can and should be the starting point of any investigation.

It should be, not because the other approach was unsuccessful, but just because it is really mean to ignore evolutionary theory. This is apparently a common complaint:

Biology departments are often divided (e.g., ecology and evolutionary biology [EEB] and molecular cell biology [MCB]). Members of EEB and MCB typically apply for support to different funding agencies, publish in different journals, and teach different courses. Evolutionary biology is typically taught by EEB faculty, and such a course tends to reflect evolutionary research, i.e., organisms and genes. Most other biology courses might never mention the possibility of using evolutionary theory as a predictive tool to explore the particular subject matter.

Huh! Imagine that! Biologists who don’t think they should waste time teaching their students about evolution, since they don’t believe it has predictive value! Yet, Blackstone goes on to criticize molecular cell biology for lacking “predictive direction,” even while he admits that it has (without any help from evolutionary theory) had “many outstanding successes.”

Blackstone finishes up with this astounding admission about the unscientific approach of evolutionary theory:

Ultimately, a complete evolutionary synthesis will balance the value of both holistic evolutionary thinking and reductionist molecular approaches.

Darn those reductionists! They’re always so focused on observable “empirical results” and analytical methods! Is this part of a creationist plot to entice scientists to focus on definable, specific, material causes instead of doing holistic thinking?

Blackstone is merely echoing part of the editorial statement for the EvoS Journal:

Another important objective of EvoS Journal is to provide an outlet for poetry, fiction, photographs, graphic art, cartoons, music, videos and other arts productions inspired by evolution. A strong argument can be made that evolution will never become accepted by the general public until it is communicated in ways that go beyond dry intellectual discourse. While we’re at it, even intellectuals should go beyond dry intellectual discourse in their exploration and celebration of evolutionary themes!

Oh my, it’s a celebration of evolutionary themes! Who knew that the observance  of Darwin’s birthday could lead to such exciting cultural expressions of piety and rapture!

Well, there was another time when evolutionists were very excited about cultural expressions of evolutionary theory and they went far beyond dry intellectual discourse in their attempts to communicate with the general public. How did that work out?

It was obvious to everyone in Darwin’s day that, if true, his theory would have momentous consequences for our understanding of humanity. Yet, by the early 20th century, evolutionary theory was largely restricted to the biological sciences and avoided for most human-related subjects. The use of evolutionary theory to justify social inequality, which became labeled Social Darwinism, was part of the problem (Dickens, 2000). Another problem was the allure of minimalistic theories, such as behaviorism in psychology (Lemov, 2005). As a result of this legacy, it is possible and even likely that college students in human-related subjects will not receive any evolutionary training whatsoever during their higher education.

So, the whole Social Darwinism experiment was a public relations disaster, even though it was wildly popular with liberals and Nazis in the twentieth century.  Behaviorism never really caught on with anyone who had a moral conscience, and will probably be remembered mostly as the theoretical background for A Clockwork Orange. The key is to identify some popular superstitions and show how they are supported by evolutionary “science.”

The other article cited by Arnhart describes the trials of some young evolutionary psychologists. One, Aaron Goetz, had long had a “passion for evolution.” Unfortunately, he didn’t like science:

Evolution grabbed my interest in high school, but the “particulate” nature of most of the biology courses I had taken discouraged me from pursuing evolutionary biology. I was (and still am) fascinated by whole organism biology and absorbed in macroevolution but turned off when zooming in to the cellular level. Golgi bodies and ATP transport systems (whatever those are) never excited me.

All those big words are scary! But salvation awaited Goetz from a predictably nonscientific  source:

In the summer of 1999, I borrowed from the bookshelf of my friend’s grandparents a copy of Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. While reading about skyhooks, cranes, and natural selection as universal acid, I was introduced to EP. It immediately made sense to me.

Another EP convert was Sarah Hill. She assumed early on that all scientific inquiry was tied to evolution, and so was shocked to find out that some academics are not convinced:

I quickly came to the painful realization that cultural anthropology is not the study of the evolutionary foundations of cultural variation. In fact, the mere mention of “evolution” or “biology” was met with hostility and suspicion by my fellow graduate students and professors. I was accused of being racist, misogynist, and nothing more than another fool brainwashed by the patriarchy. This experience can be neatly summarized in the succinct reply given to me by my advisor to a teary-eyed inquiry about why others were responding to me the way that they were in class. He said “But, Sarah, those are all just-so stories.” I was devastated.

What’s going on here? More crypto-creationists, even in the hallowed halls of liberal academia? What a massive conspiracy against The One True Faith!

Karol Osipowicz was also blindsided:

I decided to pursue a graduate degree in neuroscience, a field based in biology, where I assumed evolutionary theory is rigorously adhered to. Unfortunately, even though most of my colleagues are well versed in Darwin, Dawkins, etc. and happy to apply the principles of evolution to any biological problem, most of them still refuse to apply it to cognition.

Steven Platek encountered even more prejudice from real scientists:

While I initially was enthused about working in a biology department, I soon came to realize (to my surprise) that many biologists do not accept the tenets of an evolutionary psychology. It was an eye opener for me.

The sufferings of the EP crowd are summed up as follows:

Common in each of our accounts is some experience with others’ hostility toward EP. Whether coming from a colleague, a reviewer, or student, those who take an evolutionary perspective will likely experience hostility, sometimes spilling into belligerence. Space limits us from articulating and responding to all of the sources of this hostility (see Confer et al., 2009 for a full discussion), so we will just mention one general source here. EP is truly iconoclastic.

They’re just rebels challenging the entrenched powers of creationism, which are bafflingly disguised as liberal humanities departments and experimental science departments. However, there is hope for their salvation:

The illumination of evolutionary theory will foster growth in those who seek the light, as well as attract those who fumble like moths against brilliance beyond their comprehension.

Seek the light, even as some fumble like moths against brilliance beyond their comprehension! Oh rapture! Oh joy! Oh Darwin!

If only we could extend evolutionary reasoning across all areas of biology, maybe then we could start making advances in biotechnology. We could stumble forth from the dark ages of the twentieth century, that sad legacy of stagnation in technological and scientific progress. All this time, since the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws and the development of genetics in the twentieth century, we could have been making wondrous advances in genomics, bioengineering, bioinformatics, gene splicing, genetically modified crops, molecular biology, and numerous other life sciences, if only more biologists had believed really really hard in evolutionary theory and sprinkled lots of fairy dust on their lab coats.

One Nation Under Which God?

Previously, I noted how some Anglicans and Roman Catholics are moving even closer together, mostly due to their common political positions (Why Politics Matters). Likewise, there is evidence of evangelical Protestants and Mormons moving closer together:

[S]ince 2000, small scholarly teams of Mormons led by Millet and evangelical teams led by Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw have managed to hold 17 intense, closed-door dialogue sessions.

Christianity Today, “Most Improbable Dialogue”

That sounds reasonable enough, as an effort to clarify how they stand on various issues. However, the article goes on to detail how Mouw believes Mormons might be changing to a more “Christian” theology. Furthermore:

One undoubted factor in the search for better relations is that evangelicals and Mormons today unite on various moral issues and feel on the defensive, especially in shared opposition to same-sex marriage.

So, again, a political alliance is leading to some feeling that doctrinal differences are insignificant. I first noted this trend in Tim LaHaye’s book Mind Siege, in which he proposes a political coalition among conservative Christians, Jews, and Moslems. Because, you know, they really all believe in the same thing, as the New Atheists also tell us. Isn’t it funny how both kinds of political animals agree that all conservative religious types are the same?

On the whole, I favor conservative political positions and I think discussion among different groups is good. I also think it’s polite to not ascribe bad motives to someone just because of a doctrinal or political disagreement. However, I think that these sorts of religious coalitions are a mistake. The first mistake is identifying religious beliefs with political causes, and that leads inevitably to dilution of doctrine.

Finally, here are the results of a Christianity Today survey that give further evidence of impending religious unity:

Are Mormons Christian?

All Americans
No 31%
Don’t know 17%
Yes 52%

Evangelical Protestants
No 45%
Don’t know 15%
Yes 40%

Mainline Protestants
No 23%
Don’t know 15%
Yes 62%

Black Protestants
No 30%
Don’t know 27%
Yes 43%

Catholics
No 29%
Don’t know 19%
Yes 52%

 

Kindle the Book Fires

Recently my mother gave me her old Kindle, the first model, saying that she didn’t use it much. Partly that might have been because she lives in an area without the Sprint 3G access, but mostly she seemed to miss the “book” feel.

I finished one book on it already, and I didn’t miss the paper. That may be because it was a philosophy book, and I mostly read nonfiction that calls for a no-nonsense, literal reading. I certainly will not read Stephen R. Donaldson’s next book on the Kindle, however. I’ll pay the full price of $25 – $30 and revel in the full-page, ink-on-paper typography in a solid, full-size hardcover volume. I also probably won’t get an ebook version of any nonfiction book from the 1940s on that I can get in a cheap paperback trade edition. I have a peculiar attraction to mid-twentieth-century paperback editions of philosophy, sociology, psychology, physics, and literature.

On the other hand, there are lots of books I want to read that I can barely pay attention to for more than 15 minutes, so it is convenient to have a selection of them available in one place as ebooks.  I appreciate the fact that I can carry a whole bunch of unfinished ebooks around and read little bits of them whenever I have the time. Generally these are books or articles that I am not willing to pay for, so I would only read them as free ebooks anyway. I could imagine someday paying a small price for a newspaper subscription on the Kindle, if I was taking public transportation every day; I would never pay again for a hardcopy newspaper subscription.

I know plenty of literature and newspaper fans who would be aghast. However, every time I walk into a Barnes & Noble, all I can think is, “What a waste of paper!” There is so much printed material that is worthless. I can’t give a critical assessment of how much; all I can say is that a lot of it doesn’t need to be on a long-lasting medium, and I’m not going to mourn a contraction of the newspaper, magazine, or book publishing industry that results in fewer hardcopy products. I may regret that point of view someday when I want to look something up and the digital archive is corrupted, but right now I’d say that society will not suffer if the bottom 25% of the market disappears permanently from the paper format.

The Importance of Public School Socialization

[I]f one considers how TV shows such as “Law and Order” see fit to preach that homeschooled children are malnourished and abused little freaks, it seems only reasonable to point out in like manner that public schooled children are brainwashed, quasi-illiterate savages, with targets painted on their chests to boot.

Homeschool or Die!

Two arrests have been made in a homecoming night rape of a 15-year-old high school student that was witnessed by as many as 15 do-nothing bystanders. Some may have even participated in the two-hour attack in a San Francisco suburb while others apparently filmed the assault with cell phones, according to police. No one called police or helped the victim. “As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated,” said a police official.

Do-Nothing Bystanders Watched, Filmed Calif. Rape

What makes this crime so shocking is that police say at least 20 people were involved in the rape or stood and watched the crime without going for help. …

Richmond High School has a 69 percent truancy rate and is in a school district that had 19 student murders last year. Fights at Richmond have been posted on YouTube, and a van was set on fire on the football field’s new artificial turf. An investigation by CBS station KPIX-TV last year found only a handful of the 16 security cameras in the school were working.

Police Look for More Suspects in Gang Rape

The victim drank a large amount of brandy in a short period of time while socializing, police said, then collapsed. Someone dragged her to a bench, where several people stripped her, beat her, stole her jewelry and other belongings, and raped her.

The sexual assault continued for about two hours, detectives estimate, with several young men and boys taking part, possibly including some who arrived after the attack began, as word spread. …

“We’re not animals. We’re not savages. We’re students and we’re trying to achieve,” Richmond High student Maritza Morales told the audience. …

“I’m devastated” about the rape, Richmond High senior Norma Bautista said. “We are not criminals. We are the future leaders. We are going to make a change. Everything they say about us — that we’re animals, that we’re not a community — we are a community. Why are they focusing on the negativity?”

Four charged in Richmond High rape case

If we do absolutely nothing more than we’ve done already — if Leslie packs up the whole project next week, next month or next year and ships Nini and Des off to whatever school will take them (and believe me, we have those days) — she’ll have done something amazing. She’ll have implanted in them a ferocious appetite for learning, and the idea that it’s full of wondrous discoveries. They have absolutely no idea that some children experience schoolwork as thankless drudgery, or human history as a tedious assortment of facts, dates and dusty objects in vitrines.

Home schooling: How we do it

 

Does the gang rape case have anything to do with Richmond, California in particular? No. People who obsess over geographical trivia are superstitious and overly concerned with shifting blame away from themselves. This sort of thing has happened in all kinds of different places.

What interests me is how this story exemplifies the stupidity of the claim that public school is the ideal environment, if not the only acceptable environment, for children to learn the proper ways to relate to others. This claim is the most outrageous and plainly false type of statement used to justify the attacks on homeschoolers. The average citizen brings it up as if this is their primary concern with regard to childhood development and their primary hope for the future of civilization. I would not entrust such a person with the care of a child, much less any kind of governing authority.

Anyone who brings up “socialization” in the context of a complaint about homeschooling is either a proponent of vicious totalitarian oppression or an absolute moron. I can’t tell you how much I loathe the self-righteous arrogance exhibited by this argument.

Why Politics Matters

I read in this article, “Rome goes fishing in Anglican pond“, that

The Roman Catholic Church was going to extraordinary lengths to make it easy for disenchanted Anglicans to convert to Catholicism.

They could join the Roman Catholic Church as full members, but hang on to many of their Anglican traditions and practices – and indeed preserve much of their “Anglican identity”.

I would say that there was never much distance between them, and this should elicit a big “ho-hum” from most US Protestants. That is confirmed here:

Since the Protestant Reformation, when the Church of England broke away from Rome, it has been a sometimes uneasy coalition between its Catholic and Protestant members.

Sorry about that whole “Protest” thing! They’re ready to kiss and make up. Nietzsche writes in The Antichrist that Luther saved the Roman Catholic Church by reforming it just when it was about to become fully pagan and, in his eyes, finally legitimate.

In a related article, “Faith Diary: Changing loyalties“, we find this:

In the United States, 10 nuns at an Anglican convent near Baltimore have taken the extraordinary step of converting to Roman Catholicism, citing the Episcopal Church’s liberal approach to homosexuality as a reason.

However, further on in the article we find this alarming news from the African missionaries to the pagan Americas:

The Anglican enclave planted in the United States by the Nigerian Church has accused the Episcopal Church of unintentionally encouraging conversions to Islam by moving away from a simple message and liturgy.

The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (Cana) cites research by bodies such as the Pew Institute to show that Islam is growing rapidly, and attracting Protestant women in particular.

It says they are marrying Muslim men partly because of the dearth of marriageable men in their own churches.

Cana says the women are attracted by “the apparent order and simplicity of the Islamic faith and its ability to successfully manipulate governments and public policy”.

Why would Protestant women be marrying Muslim men? Is it because they crave the old-fashioned order and simplicity of being legally subordinate to men?

This quotation goes behind and beneath the trite “culture wars” reporting to identify the crucial threat to American Protestantism:  “the apparent order and simplicity of the Islamic faith and its ability to successfully manipulate governments and public policy.” The Republican political animals are surely trembling now at the thought that their god, the federal government, might be stolen from them.

That is coincidentally confirmed by this article, “Republican men hormonally emasculated by US election“:

American neuroscientists say that men who voted for Republican candidate John McCain in the recent presidential elections suffered a serious loss of testosterone as a result of the Obama victory. The hormone, produced by one’s wedding-tackle, is considered essential for basic manliness….

Men who had voted for McCain – or the libertarian candidate Robert Barr – experienced a 28 per cent loss of testosterone almost as soon as the contest was over. LaBar notes that levels of testosterone, produced by both male and female gonads but in much larger amounts in men, are directly linked to important masculine behaviours such as “aggression, risk-taking and response to threats”.

Apparently the male GOP and Barr voters reported feelings of “unhappiness” and “submissiveness” following the crushing defeat of their chosen national leaders.

How can this be? What is going on in their tiny little brains? The study itself provides a possible answer:

The findings indicate that male voters exhibit biological responses to the realignment of a country’s dominance hierarchy as if they participated in an interpersonal dominance contest.

Finally, a resolution to the problem of why some people, at least, are so tied to political contests that actually have nothing to do with their personal lives. My faith in the stupidity of the crowd is confirmed.

Starving Lawyers in the UK

I suppose there’s something about the UK that I don’t know, that might explain this:

LONDON (Reuters) – A school in eastern England was ordered to pay 19,000 pounds ($30,140) Monday after a 16-year-old girl lost nearly all her fingers when she put her hands in a bucket of plaster of Paris during an art lesson….

The court was told that temperatures up to 60C can be generated in large quantities of plaster and the girl, who was not named in court, suffered terrible burns.

After a series of 12 operations, she was left with no fingers on one hand and just two on the other….

The school was fined a total of 16,500 pounds and ordered to pay 2,500 pounds in legal costs, the Press Association reported.

As an American, the strange part to me is that the judgment was for about $26,000 in fines and about $4,000 in  legal costs. Of course, there is no judgment for medical costs, since the UK National Health Service covers that anyway. In the US, this would have ended up with an award of millions of dollars, including a percentage for the lawyers.

Bow Down

Does the belief in evolution by natural selection lead to atheism? No.

Does the belief in evolution by natural selection lead to pure, rational contemplation of scientific truth? No.

It leads to ecstatic festivals in honor of The Great One:

The ‘man’ effigy is the centre of the festival, both figuratively and literally. This year, the 12-metre human shape hovered over a thorny forest — a tangled bank — atop a giant double helix. The DNA molecule provided a powerful artistic meme, representing both life’s capacity to evolve through genetics, and perhaps something that needs to be overcome through non-genetic evolutionary paths. Viewed from a different angle, the man seemed to float above a field of sea lilies, placing this celebration of human consciousness in an ancient evolutionary context.

The most striking image at this year’s Burning Man, expressed in various ways across the city, was the famous “ascent of man” progression from great ape through to modern human, with the Burning Man icon representing the next step. This sequence resonated with the advance in human culture realized in Burning Man. One vision was the Fishbug, Chimera sententia, a creature rising out of the playa with an arthropod tail, amphibian body, mammalian trunk and oversized primate brain.

FFQF: Public Duties of Religion and Morality

My Opinion of the Duties of Religion and Morality, comprehends a very extensive Connection with society at large, and the great Interest of the public. Does not natural Morality, and much more Christian Benevolence, make it our indispensible Duty to lay ourselves out, to serve our fellow Creatures to the Utmost of our Power, in promoting and supporting those great Political systems, and general Regulations upon which the Happiness of Multitudes depends. The Benevolence, Charity, Capacity and Industry which exerted in private Life, would make a family, a Parish or a Town Happy, employed upon a larger Scale, in Support of the great Principles of Virtue and Freedom of political Regulations might secure whole Nations and Generations from Misery, Want and Contempt. Public Virtues, and political Qualities therefore should be incessantly cherished in our Children.

John Adams to Abigail Adams, 29 October 1775

Adams Papers Digital Edition

This quote is referring to Abigail’s mother, who had recently died. It challenges my prejudice against public service as inherently corrupting.

It also challenges the modern, secularist notion of how religion influences public life, since Adams thinks it means to benefit the general public with “Benevolence, Charity, Capacity and Industry.” That is generally known as a “Christian witness,” and was formerly expected to be true of anyone claiming to be a Christian. Quakers, in particular, became known in the 17th century for deliberately exemplifying such behavior in public life, which should indicate how rare it actually was at the time.

Nowadays, everyone is expected to be hypocritical and self-serving, cynically pursuing a narrow political agenda. That is precisely why I despise the belief that “everything is political” and “ideas have consequences.” Behavior has consequences, and ideas are merely the window-dressing that people choose for themselves.

Die Quickly or Get Rich

Apparently, some congressman named Grayson has mouthed off about how the Republicans’ health reform strategy is to let the sick “die quickly.” Sad, but true.

I may try to formulate a rational approach to health care policy, but the bottom line is that it is not some kind of idealistic crusade for me. The bottom line is that if I run out of rationalizations, I’m not going to argue about it.

In my experience, all it takes is one spell of unemployment, coupled with an intractable, expensive health condition, in order to become radicalized about the issue. Twenty years ago, I used to care about libertarian and conservative principles in all things; not any more. After adding to personal health problems with expensive health conditions for my wife and daughter, along with other periods of unemployment, I no longer have any sympathy for people trying desperately to keep their income tax bills down to four figures.

It’s not that I think that I “deserve” free health care, or that people have a “right” to health care of any kind, or that I think everything would be done better by some gigantic central government entity. It’s a simple case of self-defense.

On certain issues, like this one, it’s personal. I may try to be rational about it, but I’m on a slippery slope to becoming feral and thoroughly unprincipled.

Crisis in the Education Cathedral

John J. Reilly, my favorite Roman Catholic writer,* points to an article called A Just War Theory of Homeschooling, which proposes the following:

The common approach to homeschooling today is inherently dangerous, because it may go against what our entire Western tradition and the Catholic Church herself teach about the education of the young – that education should not be done in the home, at least not for long, except during a time and place of crisis.

We will put aside the question of whether anyone, including Catholics, should be concerned with what the Catholic Church seems to teach about the education of the young. I’ve never been to a Catholic school, but I’ve known a few Catholics, atheists, and Protestants who have, and I’ve watched The Blues Brothers several times. Apparently they are effective at teaching certain things, but they also set the standard for authoritarianism with scary floating nuns.

Anyway, it is naive to frame this article as “an indictment of the Libertarian Right,” as if the author had teased out a commentary about American third parties from a papal encyclical. Fahey actually concludes that homeschooling is not inherently anticlerical and that the crisis justifying it will not soon pass; however, he does fret over “a rising individualism that is worming its way into our literature on homeschooling,” as well as the alarming fact that “homeschooling has risen alongside home-churching.” Darn that Luther! If only the people weren’t able to read the New Testament in their native language!

On the other side of the spectrum, the public will finally get a coherent picture of some present-day left-wing homeschoolers:

Home schooling sneaked up on us, or at least on me — Leslie has been mulling it over far longer. About three years ago, she started to burn out on her low-paid, high-stress job as a political organizer for a lefty nonprofit that was working to end the war in Iraq. At the time, we were in the not-so-unusual New York position of spending her entire income, and then some, on paying a nanny to spend far more waking hours with our children than we did.

Leslie decided to untangle this conundrum by quitting her job, ditching the nanny [...] and handling the childcare herself, at least for a little while. [...] She started hosting a weekly playgroup in our Brooklyn backyard and writing a blog, and before our kids were even 4 years old she’d gotten hooked into the New York “home preschool” network, a bunch of smart, high-powered, Type A women who’ve taken on their kids’ education as a challenge.

This struck a chord with Leslie in several different ways. She’s a hardcore nonconformist — yeah, she’s a lifelong lefty, but one closer to anarchism than socialism ….

Seriously, I don’t understand why anyone who claims to be a “liberal” or “conservative” even bothers with public schools. They don’t succeed at doing anything on either agenda, actually. Their main function is to subordinate the child’s curiousity and creativity to institutional mediocrity and boredom.

We’re not ready to surrender our kids, and ourselves, to a 10-month-a-year, all-day institution whose primary goal, at least at this age, seems to be teaching kids how to function within a 10-month-a-year, all-day institution.

The liberals who promote mandatory universal public education claim that it is necessary to sacrifice one’s own children for the sake of the greater society, and the conservatives who promote mandatory universal public education claim that it is necessary to sacrifice one’s own children as an example to the others. Both are really bad reasons to treat your children like dirty laundry.

O’Hehir describes the hilarious stupidity of the conventional attachment to public schooling:

Some people seem genuinely disturbed by our decision, on philosophical or political grounds, as if by keeping a couple of 5-year-olds out of kindergarten we have violated the social contract. Specifically, we have rejected the mainstream consensus that since education is a good thing, more of it — more formal, more “academic,” reaching ever deeper into early childhood and filling up more of the day and more of the year — is better for society and better for all children. This is almost an article of faith in contemporary America, but it’s also one that’s debatable at best and remains largely unsupported by research data….

The real purpose of all this formal schooling is to get the kids out of the house and train them to stand in line and follow instructions while mommy and daddy get back to their ultra-important lives as economic production units….

Do we regret not exposing our kids to the intense cultural melting pot of New York’s school system? Sometimes, sure. But we’re also not exposing them to bullying, arbitrary systems of order and discipline, age-inappropriate standards of behavior, and the hegemony of corporatized kid culture.

Go, go, liberal anarchists! O’Hehir goes even further when describing the writings of an unschooling mother: “the breezy, dry English wit was akin to sticking a fork in the haunches of the angry and puritanical razorback hog that is the American Internet-reading public.”

Despite the high-pitched squealing of frantic public school defenders, I doubt that homeschooling will take over more than 10% of the population. It just isn’t practical for a lot of people, and there are many middle-class rewards for child-herding. In some towns, the only public gathering places are Walmart and the public school gymnasium, and the only newspaper content comes from high school sports.

Nevertheless, if you are a true believer in the Enlightenment Project, it seems very dangerous to have a “parallel society” consisting of the smartest, most independent parents and their children, apparently in league with the freaks and the paranoid hilljacks. It undermines the whole logic behind modern democracy to suggest that society may not come together in blessed political unity after a fractious debate, that a minority could split off and follow their own paths while claiming to still be a part of society. Yet, since modern public education does not emerge organically from local communities, it can hardly be said to be intrinsic to them; and the ahistorical, anti-intellectual mythos surrounding American public education will not survive a dramatic upheaval.

*John J. Reilly is currently my favorite Roman Catholic writer that I’ve actually read. I haven’t yet finished G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man,  and I listened to Thomas Cahill’s books on CD.