The Culture Wars Curriculum
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Homeschooling is more popular than ever — and for decades, it’s been seen as a haven by a movement of conservative Christians. But isolating children from the world doesn’t just mean tribalism and fear of “government schools” — the lack of regulation can also lead to abuse. We talk to one former home school student about the conservative Christian world that raised him, and how some of its tenets have now gone mainstream.
Guests:
Peter Jamison, enterprise reporter with the Washington Post.
Aaron Bealls, former homeschooler and public-school parent in Loudoun County, Virginia
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Growing up, Aaron Beale's parents didn't call the local schools public schools. |
| 0:13.0 | Not often, anyway. |
| 0:14.0 | Uh, actually no. |
| 0:15.0 | They like to call them government schools. |
| 0:18.0 | They call them public schools sometimes, but there was a point to be made that. |
| 0:23.9 | These are government schools. |
| 0:27.0 | They were dangerous. |
| 0:29.5 | Which is why Aaron didn't set foot in them. |
| 0:32.3 | He and his three siblings were homeschooled by their mom. |
| 0:34.5 | She had big desk like a traditional teacher. |
| 0:37.9 | Staying home meant she could leave them in Bible study before they got on with the academics. |
| 0:42.5 | But for Aaron, there was something darker happening too. |
| 0:46.2 | There was the corporal punishment. |
| 0:48.0 | The isolation he felt. |
| 0:50.5 | All part of a movement designed to keep him far away from a place that now seems so benign. |
| 0:57.6 | There was definitely a narrative that public schools were not just different for other people, |
| 1:02.3 | but that they were evil. |
| 1:03.3 | That they were places where kids go to be indoctrinated by the state. |
| 1:08.8 | I mean, that word indoctrination was frequently used to describe actual education. |
| 1:16.1 | That word indoctrination. |
| 1:18.8 | Aaron's been thinking about it a lot these days. |
| 1:21.8 | Not by choice, not really. |
... |
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