A very insightful Home Educator takes the evil and violent Richard Dawkins to task on his faulty logic and flawed thinking and application of the scientific method.

Did anyone catch that documentary last night called ‘Faith Schools Menace’ in which Richard Dawkins put the boot into faith schools? At the climax of the program Dawkins authoritatively states his main point in an extremely self-assured and almost God like tone which is that “our greatest responsibility in education is to unleash children’s curiosity and never limit their questions.” No one would disagree with that as an honourable aspiration but the means by which he proposes to achieve it falls way short of its aim. For someone who claims to be an EVIDENCE-based rational thinker how come he hasn’t looked at the EVIDENCE, which, if he had bothered to do so, would have enabled him to delete the first word of the documentary’s title. All the irrefutable and reproducible research findings, arrived at through the logical, reasoned and scientific methods that Dawkins is so fond of (as am I), strongly indicate that there is practically no place on earth that suppresses children’s curiosity and limits their questions more than school. If anyone can show me convincing evidence to the contrary my kids will be sent to school forthwith (assuming they would want to go after critically evaluating the new EVIDENCE). Earlier on in the documentary he expresses his disgust for the way children are labelled as Catholic, Protestant, Muslim etc but completely misses the most common label attached to children which is ‘schoolchildren’; which by his reasoning is surely equally repugnant since it labels children as belonging to the state (in most cases) before they have the cognitive ability to understand and critically evaluate the EVIDENCE offered by the likes of Gatto, Meighan, Holt, and their many international associates, showing that school-based learning produces significantly lower levels of academic attainment, social skills and, most importantly, emotional and psychological well being than learning by other means. The EVIDENCE also explains how schooling came about, what its real purpose is and how it impedes natural learning processes (I liked the history of British schooling put forward in ‘Overschooled but Undereducated’ which parallels Gatto’s in many ways). It has been said that schooling is the only true world religion and many of the arguments Dawkins applies to religion have exact equivalents that can be applied to schooling, some of which are probably best illustrated in Illich’s ‘Deschooling Society’. How can someone as astute, observant and insightful as Dawkins completely miss the elephant in the room?
An EVIDENCE-based solution that follows Dawkins’ logic would not just be to abolish faith schools, it would be to abolish schooling altogether and replace it with a learning framework fit for a democracy, a large part of which, of course, would be home education.

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http://www.home-education.biz/

Mostly makes sense doesn’t it?

We already know about Richard Dawkins and his irrational attitudes to people’s liberties. No one should have their money stolen from them to pay for the education of children. This would eliminate the ‘problem’ of ‘Faith Schools’; if you want to send your children to a Koran chain school or a Catholic school or any other type of school, that is entirely your affair, your right, and no one has the right to tell you how to educate your children (and I literally mean your children).

People like Richard Dawkins, who believe that religious teaching is indoctrination and child abuse, are in fact, violent statists who want to own your children and force them to be taught what they believe is the truth. This is immoral, unacceptable and totally evil, and it can be deduced as immoral without invoking any religious argument.

His collectivist ideology is clearly expressed in this line:

“our greatest responsibility in education is to unleash children’s curiosity and never limit their questions.”

Who is this ‘our’ that he is talking about? He surely cannot be talking about your children, for whom you have absolute authority and responsibility? I fear that this is exactly what he is talking about, and it is in fact, a completely dishonourable aspiration; using violence to make people into slaves and property is dishonourable full stop.

He labels children as ‘schoolchildren’ because his ilk refer to people as property in the same way that water is wet; it is in the statist’s nature to refer to people as property, and all of the arguments between the various statist factions are in fact battles over who gets the power to control property, meaning you and your children. The fact that Home Education is better in every way than schooling is actually anathema to Dawkins, because it is only through regimented brainwashing that he and his violent atheists can ever hope to rid the population of ‘the scourge of religion’.

The writer asks how can someone as astute, observant and insightful as Dawkins completely miss the elephant in the room. The fact of the matter is that he is not astute, observant and insightful; if he were, he could not be a violent atheist. Insightful people refrain from violence of the kind he is calling for. Observant people base their thinking only on observations instead of using what they viscerally hate, are repulsed by, and refuse to believe as the basis of their philosophy.

Richard Dawkins is not a scientist; he is a man fully consumed by atheism and Darwinism. His mind is completely closed to anything outside of his world view – and for the record, I have no problem with people like that. What I do have a problem with is people who think like Dawkins, and who then want to control me and my property. They are no different to the people who want Sharia to engulf the entire world, or Catholics in the Cabinet. They are diametrically opposed to Liberty and the truth, and are your mortal enemies.

An evidence based solution to the problems of education in any country would result in the state removing itself completely from education, since education, like healthcare, is a good and not a right. There should be no state ‘framework’ replacing state schools, as any such thing would be financed by immoral theft, and certainly any evidence based solution could only conclude that democracy is bad for education, bad for your rights and should be rejected, based once again, purely on the evidence.

People who live and think like scientists do not pick and choose when to apply evidence. You cannot on the one hand call for evidence based living and then say that democracy is legitimate way of organising a country or supplying services. It is therefore irrational to ask for anything that would be ‘fit for a democracy’. Democracy is what almost got Home Education banned in the UK. It is what has caused it to be banned in Sweden.

Libertarianism is the best solution to the problem of organising groups of people, because it is based only on the evidence, is free from contradictions, free from violence, free from coercion, embraces everyone and their peculiar beliefs, absolutely guarantees your rights and does not allow anyone to lord it over anyone else.

In a Libertarian society there would be no one to create false rights (right to education, right to internet access etc. etc.) and no one to take away the very real natural rights that you are born with.

If you refuse to accept the truth of it, that is not derived from anything other than pure logic, then you are irrational, not thinking based on evidence alone, and if you claim to be a scientist, are not one.

While we are at it, take a look at this:

That man, eating noodles bought from a street seller in Malaysia (note how there are no regulations stopping people from cooking food and selling it to anyone who wants it. We have been over that before) is basing his financial choices on the evidence. He is smarter than most people in the UK and the USA when it comes to this. After watching it, will you go out and convert at least some of your worthless paper money to gold coins? Perhaps you need a different face put on the facts to help push you along.

That is what it looks like when people are living by evidence; they change their behaviour when something is not working correctly. Home Educators remove their children from school because school does not work. That is rational, logical behaviour where people are thinking and living by the evidence.

Sadly, there are many people who only apply evidence based thinking to some parts of their thoughts and behavior. For example, you can have people who, whilst behaving rationally in one area, will cling to socialist ideas like wealth redistribution and taxation. These same people call for the licensing of restaurants ‘because someone might get poisoned’. These same people think that it is totally proper for drivers of cars to be licensed, and of course, cars and the fuel that goes in them to be taxed. They believe that it is perfectly moral and acceptable for them to apply for ‘grant money’ (stealing) so that they can carry on their particular way of life or activities. They think its a ‘good idea’ that there should be a minimum price set on alcohol by the state. They believe in the state. They believe in democracy, ‘fairness’ and all of that other demonstrably irrational, dangerous and illogical nonsense, despite it being demonstrated to them again and again that these things are immoral, wrong and harmful to them directly.

This is ‘the big problem’ that free people face. The legions of sheep who are wilfully ignorant, who cling on to their violent beliefs and who continue to finance them despite having been shown that what they are thinking and doing is wrong.

If it were as easy as saying, “they will get what they deserve in the end” it could be said and left at that, but sadly, the free people get what the stupid people deserve because the stupid drag everyone down with them.

And that really is a big problem.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 11:49 am and is filed under Science, Someone Clever Said.