. . .then you need to read this first, from last spring right here in my capital city hometown where we’ve unschooled for almost 20 years. THIS is why homeschooling has problems, the kind of escalating problems that Unity-N-Diversity is broaching. If you can’t quite grasp what I’m saying here, do your homework, then maybe rejoin the conversation in a few years when you’ve earned your spot and some battle scars online. OTOH if you grasp it all too well but resent the hell out of it, hey! We’re finally communicating.
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Not sure when it happened, that the Trinity of God, Government and Guns took over again. I have been slow to notice, with all this gentle, loving, respectful and mannerly pretense that religious education is a private non-governmental realm of the spirit, not the State.
National Day of Prayer State Capitol Rally Thursday, May 3, 2007
Homeschoolers are invited to take part in this important day of prayer for our state and nation and participate in the children’s prayer walk. If older youth would like to help stamp prayer passports, please email — Volunteer time is from 10:30 am – Noon, report to the tent in the courtyard
Children’s Prayer Walk
Location: Capitol Courtyard
Time: 11:00 am-Noon
Emergency Response & Military Vehicles will be on display in the Courtyard as part of the Prayer Walk.
Each child will be issued a prayer passport to take to each stations and pray for the personnel. They can tour the vehicles as well.
National Day of Prayer Rally
Location: Capitol Courtyard
Praise & Worship: 11:30 am
Prayer Rally: Noon-1:15 pm
Governor Crist, Lt. Governor Kottkamp and other leaders will be taking part in the service.
We did have Easter at the Governor’s Mansion this spring– a very important holiday, said Governor Crist — but at least in the newspaper, his Easter Bunny gig played as a secular hospitality for a few Florida kids who might or might not have been Christian, a ceremonial family occasion and photo op, not associated with the state sausage-making of the Legislature down the street nor with public prayer walks on the Capitol Plaza.
And nothing to do with home education at all.
But now comes a special day for masses of children where the Governor himself will stamp prayer indelibly onto home education “passports”, and not on a weekend at his home but on a legislative workday at the Capitol, in front of all the lawmakers, not in a bunny suit but in his official governing suit and tie. Prayer flanked with tanks and guns for real action, followed by ambulances to mop up all the blood and waste, the way elephants are followed in parades. Talk about Power of Story!
God, government and guns. No wait, that’s not the sponsors’ exact slogan, let me get it just right, oh here it is: Governing Florida with Prayer and Action” which isn’t tricky to translate — “governing Florida” is plainly the dominion that their version of god’s will (prayer) commands them to exercise over the secular State and all our laws. And how will this be accomplished? ACTION. The spiritual realm translated into physical reality, warfare on every front in this world and time.
Resistance is futile?
I personally prefer this version but I digress . . .
The point is I get the meaning of the purpose and method. Dominion through warfare. But when it comes to the education this all represents, I have knotty translation problems.
Does mixing home education with military might — bringing the kiddos along to get their draft cards stamped, whoops I mean “prayer passports”, the better to learn how God wants them to govern Florida — just chill me to the bone? You betcha, particularly the same week as the much more directly child-protective lessons of National Spank Out Day! (which needs prayer and action too, but these folks had no Capitol rally for THAT, didn’t even acknowledge its existence. I doubt the Governor noticed either, or prayed for the kids against whom god is being invoked as commanding their punishment.)
Does this mean child beating has become both corporal and capital punishment?
Whatever happened to peace vigils and humble candlelight, praying for strength to endure, for guiding hands to heal, not hurt? This sounds like state-sponsored prayer for the strength to fight and win and take over!
And what about teaching citizenship and constitutional separation of powers as important, in the system these kids will someday operate and defend (hopefullly with their good minds, not just their gods and guns!) Do we not have that rule any more?
This isn’t a Sunday church prayer picnic and it’s not a school or state holiday of any kind, please note. It’s a lobbying show of strength on the steps of MY state capitol, at the high-drama, high-stakes end of session, while real laws with real force are being passed and everyone’s life, liberty and private pursuits (not to mention money and identity) are at major risk.
Never mind school reform and the protection from school conquest we homeschoolers thought we were fighting for; these lessons have nothing to do with “school and state.” What will this teach kids about CHURCH and state, prayer and government? And what will this teach lawmakers about homeschooling?
Is there really nothing wrong with this, not even a little off-sounding, to these conservative Christian homeschool parents? If it’s really a prayer day then it doesn’t belong in the middle of the secular government identified with legal “home education” and conversely if it’s a home education lobby, for the legislative presence and show of strength and solidarity, then it isn’t about prayer and religion; those are constitutionally separated for good reason.
All the other Christian kids are still in school this time of year, folks, so this rally will be rightly (pun intended) perceived as primarily homeschooling kids.
Wonder if “we” will be sponsoring a State Purity Ball to follow? The warfare weaponry will already be all polished up and onsite, kinda silly to waste it once we have the girls and dads all rounded up to put on a show and the lawmakers paying attention. . .
Well, I’m still trying to figure out what the point is over at the Unity blog. Is it a HEM outlet? An NHELD effort? I asked. We’ll see if we can figure out who is really running the show over there or if anyone speaks up and tells us who the man behind the curtain is this time.
In the meantime, it seems to be the usual baggage of vehement anti-HSLDA venting, some sort of libertarian “remember we’re a republic” line (I liked the phrasing “democratic republic” we came across recently) and “be afraid, be very afraid” because there’s going to be more regulation of hsing (or there already is or just you wait and see or some such).
All in the name of “unity,” while of course drawing fire from the vehement pro-statement-of-faith type hsers. . .
Maybe there’s more to all of this than I am seeing. . . hoping so. . .
Nance
Oh, I’m willing to be afraid, very afraid all right, but not of the State so much as of the Sacred, the Untouchable, Untaxable, Ungovernable Trust working to rule every aspect of all our lives, like the Taliban or worse.
If the Christofascist wackos riding through home education like the horses of the Apocalypse haven’t got your attention yet, check out a biblical principles home education site called CLASS. Don’t let the welcoming smile and talk of independence and tolerance lull you as a real independent. These folks are unified in yoke together already, they don’t need you and they are relentless. Here’s what they are taught to teach and it’s not “education” at all but indocrination morning, noon and night, no matter what it seems like they are saying oh so sweetly and reasonably about the classics or test scores:
Your hair should be on fire by the time you read down to:
The Kingdom of Darkness, that’s any Thinking Parent who dares think about anything academic other than what the bible tells them to think, as interpreted by the men who write all this power of story in god’s name, I suppose.
Aggressive yet humble? Battling against the spirit of this age? Huh? Which age are we glorifying then? (Doc had a post about the modest dress considered more godly for homeschool moms in this age. It wasn’t sandals and sackcloth but fifties stuff. Were the 1950s mentioned in the bible somewhere I never noticed before as a glory-to-god age of spiritual enlightenment, with the little woman in the kitchen with helmet hair in high heels and a frilly apron, beating children and cookie dough alternately with her worshipful, aggressive yet humble wooden spoon. . .?)
LOL . . . . sorry. . . not PC, I know. . . but the image of the alternating use of the wooden spoon got me.
My objection to thinking any of this is suddenly scary is that it has been scary — for a long time. It isn’t a new scary thing. It is the same old ignorant scary thing. Unevolved in every sense.
And now that this administration is a laughing stock — has been for a while if not for the entire past 7 years — is it time to be brave enough to call out the religious child-beaters for their garbage? For a while, it wasn’t safe to be against the Iraq war. And now it is. And is it now safe to be against religious insanity?
But this must, of course, never mean that we shouldn’t buy services and magazines from the people selling them. Oh no, if things were really safe, if hsing was just steadily growing in popularity and acceptance why would we need the likes of HEM and NHELD? No, there still must be a bogey man. We can now see the religious wackos and HSLDA dashed on the rocks of reason. But who should we be afraid of next? The Dems? The big bad public school folks?
I’m not even sure who runs the Unity site but it has a commercial feel to me. One way or another. If someone over there would speak up about the agenda and ownership of the blog, maybe I would see that I am wrong to feel this icky feeling.
Nance
Good point, that it’s not new or sudden. MisEducation wrote Large Dogs Welcome in June 2004, and by then “inclusivity” was already a tired old battle.
Remember, you and I first met online almost 10 years ago on the state law list?! — when we had little kids and nothing in common with our state full of conservative Christians who ran home education conversations and conventions and support, and were speaking to power as “the” voice for all of us whether we liked it or not, and interpreting the law back to us the same way.
Everything was in church lady code all the time, and it was exhausting just to ask or answer the simplest newbie question! Also it was pretty humorless, and they would scold us in tag teams for not being “nice” when we challenged legal information or political strategy — we’re generally better informed and more relaxed (and funnier) as a community now, I think.
And I think things in Florida at least are better now, not worse — less rigid and exclusive, less fraught with “issues” and grassroots alerts and agitation, or maybe our cohort of moms is just older and not sweating the small stuff so much?
But the really funny thing is that you and I have no problems with most of that leadership. As it turned out I like and respect the FL HS policy leaders I’ve met and worked with, and they don’t seem to view me as demon seed or some pagan force of darkness. (maybe you, Nance!)
These particular conservative Christian leaders here in our state, weren’t operating under theocratic commandments to exclude and then conquer, nor would they bow politically or strategically to HSLDA or the We Stand movement. Like Kay Brooks in TN and many hardworking, long-suffering, genuine homeschool leaders who define themselves as conservative and Christian, they don’t buy into literalist One Book brinksmanship or paternalistic principles dictating to secular governance of education.
many hardworking, long-suffering, genuine homeschool leaders who define themselves as conservative and Christian,
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Right. There are many good people doing good things even if they do sit in some strange pews — or think I do.
Maybe the Unity effort can find them and . . . who knows?
Nance
Someone over there alluded to “unity in diversity” being an established phrase, shoot, I can’t find it — but it gave me the notion that maybe we just stumbled cluelessly onto another community’s insider baseball field, without the context? Is it some Christian effort?
Hmm – well, wikipedia says it’s a “socio-ecological philosophy” referring to a “sense of oneness” in a”unique eclectic culture” despite physical or psychological barriers. The phrase is widely used for India — hello, hardly a Christian theocracy– and other multicultural nations like South Africa, and it’s the official motto for of the strange new animal called the European Union (peoples not unified culturally or religiously, who literally don’t speak the same language or follow the same laws)
Somehow I missed ever hearing this phrase before.
Ah, and it’s got UN overtones, no wonder it gripes conservative Christians who are so suspicious of the UN. And this write-up seems to explain why a Unity N Diversity blog for homeschool religious healing would appear online right now — maybe it’s behind that organizational feel you were sensing, Nance?
Members of Kwanzaa?? WTF??
Nance
LOL – can’t help with that! But maybe this will ease your mind?
It started to but then I read it all and realized she’s caught up in the HEM fear cycle. I advised her to read other things.
Nance
The Natl. Day of Prayer is a non-sectarian event with speakers representing many different faiths. I’ve been to NDOP’s with speeches from Jewish rabbis, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox priests, and the full range of Protestant ministers from liberal to fundamentalist churches. I’ve heard speeches about not just conservative issues like abortion and traditional marriage but also liberal issues such as ending the Iraq war and fighting global warming. The NDOP is about putting aside theological and political differences in coming together to pray for our country.
If you do not believe in a higher power, that’s your prerogative. But I fail to see how the NDOP is so offensive to you and other militant atheists. It’s like when the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door. I simply tell them politely that I’m not interested, and then get back to whatever it is that I was doing. I don’t get all in a huff and go off on some big diatribe about how offensive I find their proselytizing, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Public prayer days belong at church, not capitols.
My saying that and explaining why I think so, is hardly proselytizing – ?! — but to assume my so doing makes me “militant” or even an “atheist” might well be (proselytizing) — and that’s not only not nice and not necessarily true, but nonsensical.
I Googled proselytize though, and found a pithy blogpost that applies to both the personal and political layers of this:
Well, that’s nice because the Mormoms and Jehovah’s Witnesses are, after all, fellow Christians and I would hope you would be polite to them.
But, as JJ explained, none of this belongs in the Capitol.
Nance
And especially not in the name of “home education!”
This is weird though — I found this as I was looking through the message archives of our local eclectic list for a long disagreement over a legal fine point here (ought we be “polite and respectful” and give our phone numbers to the official home education office at the school board when we register, even though the statute does not mandate it?)
It was all there, right out in the open. It’s from 2002, a nearly identical National Day of Prayer announcement to homeschoolers, complete with the military vehicles etc, sent from the same woman even. Apparently I wasn’t tuned into it then, so focused was I on what I knew best, the law. I thought and believed five years ago, that homeschooling’s struggle against conservative christian dominance of homeschooling, was a matter of bringing more knowledgeable political and legislative perspectives to the table.
I would laugh at my own earnestness back then, if my fears hadn’t been seriously awakened post-Terri Schiavo — and if they were not escalating as I watch a presidential campaign that looks more like a fringe-church preaching competition to see who can exploit pulpit charisma most effectively to wrest away control of the people’s secular government.
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