THE BAPTIST COOKBOOK THEORY OF PARENTING

James Joyner, riffing on Richard Mouw and Matthew Yglesias, is today pondering the limits of society’s rights with regards to how far parents can go in passing their religious beliefs on to their children:

Surely, parents should be allowed to teach their kids whatever they want, whether motivated by religion or not. And they should have a reasonable expectation that the public schools don’t work against them. Schools shouldn’t, for example, undermine parental teaching that sex should wait until marriage, regardless of how silly most of us think that is in practice.

But, again, where to draw the line? If the parents literally believe that God created the world three thousand years ago out of nothing, that the entire process took six days, and that woman was created from a rib, to what extent should school protect that belief system? Or, if parents want to raise their kids as if it were still the 1600s and make them quit school at the age of 12 so they don’t get overly modernized, should society permit that? How about snake handling? Religions who teach that getting medical care is wrong?

Many parents are solving this problem by putting their children into private schools that reinforce their religious indoctrination. And an increasing number are simply home schooling the kids, sheltering them from the world even more substantially. Both of these trends disturb me on some level. The early evidence, however, seems to indicate that my fears are unwarranted. Home-schooled kids are doing quite well on standardized tests as compared to their public-schooled cohort, for example.

On the main, parents should be trusted to raise their children. Surely, they have a much greater interest in how the kids turn out than does the school board or the state legislature. But what to do with the whackos? And who gets to say who is a whacko?

First of all, without the unfettered right to call anybody a whacko, where would the blogosphere be?

Speaking as one who is a parent and also acts in loco parentis when I teach confirmation classes, I can tell you that the problems James discusses are quite real. I have known home-schooled children who certainly weren’t whackos, and neither were their parents; the parents simply didn’t believe that teaching the three Rs could (or should) be separated from teaching faith and values. (Bear in mind, these were Lutherans, so Catholic and the invariably-Baptist “Christian” schools were dead options.)

I am quite convinced that the universe is billions of years old. I am quite convinced, also, that woman was not created out of a rib. Yet, if you asked me whether I thought the first 2 chapters of Genesis were true, I’d tell you “yes.” (The reason I would is because I recognize their mythic aspects. That’s a hard thing to say, because most people equate “myth” to “a made-up, false story.” But, if you stop and think about it, you’ll realize that a myth has to be true–if it’s any good at all. The value of a good myth does not depend on the literal occurence of the events it describes.)

But the question remains: To what extent does society have the right to insist on one particular interpretation of the universe? We correctly excoriate Christian Scientists who withhold medical treatment from their children, but for adult Christian Scientists, we reserve the right to choose whether to pursue medical treatment for themselves. What is being preserved is the right to choose–if young Christian Scientists don’t live to adulthood, they’ll never really have the freedom to practice their religion, after all. So we can all see the value in social restriction here.

If you want to believe that, say, cancer can be cured solely through prayer, you’re free to do so–for yourself. If you want to believe that your child’s cancer can be thusly cured, you’re out of luck; the state says you’ve got to give the medical establishment a chance as well.

(Interestingly, if you substitute “Laetrile” for “prayer” in the above paragraph, you suddenly lose the right to choose for yourself.)

As is so often the case in religious/secular conflicts, children become the battleground for the ideological conflicts of adults. You can’t simultaneously teach that the world is 4,000 years old and 12 billion years old. You can’t simultaneously teach that nonmarital sex is and is not acceptable. You can’t simultaneously teach that nothing matters more than faith and nothing matters more than empirical verifiability. So who decides which of these gets taught?

Children don’t belong to their parents, but they don’t belong to the state either. They belong to themselves. Neither parents nor the state have the right to determine what a child will believe upon reaching adulthood. (Of course, that’s largely because, despite their best efforts, neither parents nor the state have the ability to determine thusly.) But, until they reach adulthood, both parents and the state have joint responsibility to look out for a child’s best interests.

However, joint responsibility and equal responsibility are two very different things, aren’t they? If you don’t think so, try asking your local superintendent of schools to come over and read your kids a bedtime story. Parents bear the overwhelming majority of responsibility; consequently, they must be given the right to attempt to install within their children whatever value system they see fit, even if that value system causes consequences for the child later in life. This right ends when that particular value system puts the child in true physical jeopardy–after all, we’ve never held that the free practice of religion includes the right to engage in human sacrifice. But it must be physical jeopardy, not mere intellectual, social, or economic jeopardy.

A child who goes off to college believing the universe is but 4,000 years old is in for a rude awakening at most schools–but can you really say the child was harmed by having that particular belief inculcated in him or her? I don’t think you can make that move. None of us has the right to go through life without ever being presented with conflicting opinions. But children must be given some lens through which to interpret reality–and parents should be given the right to choose which lens.

I found this in a Baptist church cookbook my grandmother gave me. I am uncertain as to the veracity of the story, although I’m sure in Coleridge’s time, there were plenty of opium-smoking, moralizing poets.

The following story is told of the poet Coleridge. Mr. Coleridge had listened to quite a vehement argument given by a visitor against religious instruction of the young. His caller had concluded with the statement of his determination not to “prejudice his children in favor of any form of religion, but to allow them, at maturity, to choose for themselves.” Coleridge made no immediate comment, but shortly afterward asked this same visitor if he would like to see his garden. Receiving a reply in the affirmative, he led his guest to a strip of lawn over-grown with weeds.

“Why, this is no garden. It is nothing but a weed patch,” cried the guest.

“Oh,” replied Coleridge, “that is because it has not come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds you see have taken the opportunity to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.”

Again, I don’t know if Coleridge actually said anything like that, but the point is certainly true: You cannot educate children in a value-free environment. Sooner or later, you’re going to “prejudice the soil” somehow. I say, let parents plant their gardens however they see fit–but keep the weeds in check, because you don’t have the right to ruin somebody else’s garden.