Will the Watchtower ever turn against K-12 public education?

by cappytan 19 Replies latest jw friends

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  cappytan

  When I was in school, you never heard about critical thinking skills...not till you started taking college level courses.

  I work closely with the public education community. Now, the big rage in public education is instilling critical thinking skills from Kindergarten on up.

  And I'm in Texas! Imagine what it's like in more liberal areas.

  I would NOT be surprised if the Watchtower started denigrating and discouraging public education (K-12).

  It would likely start like this:

  "Some parents have seen the danger of having someone instruct their child that isn't a servant of Jehovah. They have taken advantage of home study courses."

  "Many of the families we talked to that took advantage of home study courses emphasized how it opened the door to spiritual opportunity that wasn't there before."

  "Jane (names have been changed), a mother of two, took her children out of public school while they were still in grade school. 'All the teachers wanted to do was talk about evolution, critical thinking, and push tolerance of immoral values. If I had not taken my children out of public school, our family would not have been able to attend pioneer school together. What a privilege!'"

  What do you think?

  Freemindfade thinks it would be funny if we could start a JW rumor about the society turning against K-12 education. lol
• 

  cappytan

  DANG IT...double post....I tried cancelling....

  SIMON, could you delete this post?
• 

  jws

  I remember reading on this board long ago about schools (I think in CA) run by JWs. They have always been against public education in some form. Not enough to emphasize home schooling as I recall. Just a warning about public schooling. Influence by worldly kids, teachings like evolution, etc. But they don't complain until college.

  But think they'd actually do it? I don't think it's their business model. In CA, I got the impression it was something local JWs did without the sanction of JW headquarters.

  But think about it. If you have a private JW school, it costs in one way or another. Even if a kindly JW provides facilities for free and others teach for free, they could have donated those resources and/or time to the society instead. If the JW school requires monetary help like a fee, that's money you could donate instead.

  And if you home school your children, you're spending lots of time doing that. You could easily pioneer instead. Not to mention money on supplies and books that could be donated.

  College is fair game because that's almost always a cost and is optional. Why spend your time/money on that instead of pioneering?
  

  It's kind of like anti-abortion people who don't give a hoot about the child after it is born. The WTBTS seems to only care about the recruitment. If you're already a JW kid, they don't want to spend time on a JW school to help ensure you stay a JW kid. Even if it might cut down on the rate young people leave.

  JW education has got to be more than things about the Bible. You can't base a semester on the Bible Stories book. So they have to get to other areas of life too. A school might be the way.

  I'm just saying... Honestly, I don't want to see a bunch of brain dead religious kids like some home-schoolers are churning out now.
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  freemindfade

  Distance learning is the way of the future, I am sure it would be a legit school that taught reading, writing, math, but absent would be the little worldly kids to make you question your beliefs, and the teaching of lies like "biology".

  Its not out of the question, who of us ever thought one of the core teaching tools would become saturday morning cartoons with caleb and sophia, I think the parents are more into that BS than the kids
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  Barrold Bonds

  I don't know. Whenever the WT discusses home schooling it usually doesn't view it in a super positive light. Most of the JWs I know that are into home schooling are pretty fucking weird as are most of the schools they setup to do it.
• 

  1Averagejoe

  Jws But think they'd actually do it? I don't think it's their business model.

  They just might. That was the hoola baloo they tried with jw youths going to boarding schools. That our kids would not be supervised in Jehovah's ways to remove the brain washing pressure from schools and educators.

  This too would prove a threat to their ice cream money since their drive now seems a lot focused on the little ones. They just might intervene.
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  Vidiot

  I've heard that a shit-ton of JW kids in the US are home-schooled.

  Not so much here in Canada, though.
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  freemindfade

  Not in Canada Eh?

  You guys are missing out
• 

  OneEyedJoe

  They already have, just indirectly. They talk constantly about how difficult an environment school is for children and how difficult it is to maintain integrity for youths under pressure. They talk about schools teaching evolution and other 'false knowledge' in school. They talk endlessly about how all children are drug addicts or gang members constantly putting pressure on kids to turn to crime. On and on and on. They may not have come out with a direct statement that JWs be home-schooled if allowed by law, but of the kids in my (former) congregation, 2/3rds were. And 100% of the homeschool kids were just weird and socially inept. Of the ones that weren't, they all seem to be sorta floating and going along with their parent's cult until they can escape.

  Pretty bad when your religion is undermined even by getting a "basic education" as they like to call it...
• 

  WingCommander

  Even the SDA's & Mormon's encourage higher education, albeit their own colleges. What do JW's offer? Nothing! Just keep 'em dumb and dependent. I'm 36, and live in Pennsylvania. Huge push around 1990 onward to get your kids in home schooling if at all possible.

  It was to:

  1.) isolate us from the "world" and it's influences

  2.) give us more time to spend in the Pioneer work, since the End was so-so close (and many did, at the expense of their own ignorance)

  3.) Keep us from even talking to Guidance Counselors about college or university.

  4.) We were to learn a trade if a boy, and if a girl, learn to be a secretary at most, and submissive Stepford wife at least.

  This isn't anything new. And yes, all of the home-schooled kids around here turned out to be morons and social retards. Ugh!