"How you educate your kids isn’t a matter of hiding them away from everything in the world you don’t like, because eventually they’ll grow up and look around (unless you’ve done a really good job of stunting their minds) and discover it all anyway. Expose them to it all, fearlessly. Teach them how to think, not what to think."
I would rather have my daughter honestly come to very different conclusions and beliefs about the world through her own thinking and research and intellect, than to have her slavishly mimic my own solely on my "authority" and those other "authorities" I would teach her to obey.
I want a thinking human being as a daughter, not an ideological slave.
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What Ken Ham fears | Pharyngula
Libby Anne did a Why I am an atheist post a little while ago, and in it she mentioned how she'd been brought up to believe Ken Ham and his creationist
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I was raised by a single mother of three who did not reinforce any particular world views. I went to school on weekdays and to Sunday school (mostly, I think, to get us kids out of the house form a couple of hours). It was left to me to reconcile what I was taught with what I observed. I read copiously and taught myself to ask questions about what I read and was told. In essence, I taught myself the basics of critical thinking without ever having heard the term.
I think the lack of critical thinking is one of our society’s most serious flaws. Too many people respond emotionally to issues that could be solved through reasoning, and that means those problems persist and may worsen. We see this in the anti-science tack taken by many politicians today.
Can we change this? I do not see how when so many people are unwilling to listen to anything that conflicts with their beliefs.
@Avo – The conflict between reason and emotional disposition is one of the roots of much of human suffering.
Ken Ham is an idiot.
Me, I raised three children in the Episcopal Church. My oldest now attends some non-denominational strange church in FL with his daughters. My middle doesn’t go to church but wanted a member of the Episcopal clergy to officiate at his wedding, and did. My youngest is an Atheist. I’d like them all to be church-going Episcopalians, but I raised them to think for themselves. Therefore, I can hardly complain that they did so.
Hambo wants to raise little robots who will make him happy by mistaking him for God.
@Ellie – “Ken Ham is an idiot.” You are being redundant.
Our daughter is being raised Episcopalian … but so long as she doesn’t change over later to something that brainwashes her thinking and makes her unhappy, I am content to let her find her own path.
Some Pagans worry their children will become fundamentalist Christians in an attempt to assert their own identity.
Dave, I too desire a thinking child rather than an ideological slave (love that phrase!). About the time he started wanting things in TV ads, we started teaching him to ask questions, such as what are they trying to sell, and is it good for you, or for them? Often, in politics, it’s follow the money as well as consider who’s saying what, and how much you trust them.
@Marina – Teaching critical thinking is, as has been recently mentioned here-abouts, a good thing. Even if it leads to thinking different from oneself.