Thanks for the thoughtful answer. Those are good explanations why people want to do it—but I could use those same arguments to justify teaching children religion.
While I think the themes of religion are much more problematic, I cannot argue in good faith as we recently made the decision to not interfere with the religious education my kids are being taught at school. I think this is a moderate, ‘when in Rome’ position. (If anyone wishes to discuss this further, I can list our pragmatic reasons and share some boundaries and plans we’ve developed for their long-term sanity and well-being.)
Yes, I would be interested. I’m planning on having kids in about a year and very conflicted about the line between protecting them from nonsense and brainwashing them.
My comments, this one and the one below, explain why it took me so long to respond and why my first few drafts didn’t work. I’m sorry for the bloggy/confessional tone. Things were less sorted out than I thought.
the line between protecting them from nonsense and brainwashing them.
I think that whatever you do, you teach your children a culture; including your attitudes about information, edges of information and independent thinking. This happens on a daily basis, with everything you do, so I don’t think it matters so much what you tell them at the object level. In other words, you can tell them what you think about things and trust that they will keep thinking about it on their own terms (and not be brainwashed) if not being brainwashed is something that you value.
Religion wasn’t much of an issue until my daughter was about 5 or so. It just didn’t come up. My social experience with religion is that most people are religious and some people are not-so, and no one really cares except for the occasional religious aunt that everyone teases for being a fanatic because she gets all worked up at gatherings with the cynicism of the undeclared atheists.
With children in the family, this changes somewhat. I think this is because children are socialized by the whole community, not just the parents. You can strive for independence, but it’s kind of difficult to avoid completely (e.g., playground rules) and I think it can be very comforting to have the help. (Especially from other parents that may be more experienced, insightful or patient than you are feeling at the moment.)
All this to explain that my daughter spends a lot of time with her cousins. Since they are being socialized to be good little believers, they try to socialize my daughter with these new rules they are learning. (It is somewhat competitive, to see if my daughter is
learning these Very Important Things. My daughter just has to take the status hit of not having known these things, but she is younger so it just one instance of many.)
Regarding these Very Important Things, I can’t tell my daughter that they’re Not So Very Important, because she will report this back to the cousin and I will have undermined her mother’s authority and defaulted on the support network. What I do instead is confirm, ‘Yes, it’s true. That is important to your cousin and her family.’ Since that’s not how I usually talk about right and wrong, my daughter is beginning to learn about different tones and language that I use when we’re discussing other people’s rules. (She’s seen it before. I let the kids climb up the slide the wrong way until a parent tells their kid not to, and then I make my kids stop too.)
Things would be much easier again if she was going to a secular school, but we agreed that the advantages of the better teaching, safety and a pro-education culture outweigh the disadvantages of not being secular. So the weekly religion class is a challenge that I suppose will only grow from here on in as they discuss things that are not corroborated at home. I suspect this bothers her, because a couple weeks ago she asked about angels in a tone of voice that sounded like ’why is the teacher talking about angels anyway?”
I see this as a warning sign, because a kid spends lots of time at school and lots of time at home and should feel comfortable in both places. I think undermining the teacher’s authority here would be a mistake (something OK when she is 12, but not at 5). It makes me reconsider my decision to put her in this school, but then I think of the alternatives until my resolve returns. I asked her what she has learned about angels (I had no idea what they’re telling the kids about angels) and then told her to ask her teacher about some of the questions we had thought of together. With this, I felt pretty good that I had not undermined the teacher (I had communicated that the teacher was worth listening to and learning more from) and had distanced myself from the belief by not knowing the things anyone probably ought to know about angels. I hope I planted a seed that questions should be investigated, and it’s OK to ask people what they think in more detail.
I had been feeling pretty good about my progress on avoiding social religious conflict without compromising honesty but then recently I’ve gotten in over my head with this and I’m feeling somewhat conflicted. I’ll post about that in a separate comment.
I’m shameless when it comes to securing a good education for my kid. When looking for day cares, I was on several waiting lists at the same time and on my way to work I would alternate stopping at the different places to tell them I couldn’t wait to bring my kid there while I surreptitiously spied on them. So it didn’t seem like that big a deal to join the parish of the Catholic school I want my daughter to go to. According to the admissions lady (who also seemed rather shameless in her matter-of-factness about the facts of admission), I should start actually attending the church (how did she know I didn’t?) and tithing some small amount, to be increased substantially once admission occurs. (But the total tuition decreases, so.)
So last Sunday I went to church and brought the family, sans husband (who would not deign, even though he certainly won’t want the job of carpooling across town to the next best school).
I learned an amazing thing. All of my daughter’s friends were there and it was a HUGE social event for her. Really? Church? Important background information is that we had a birthday party a month ago and other than family, only one friend from school came. During the doughnuts and coffee hug-all-your-theist-friends-time, we secured a cookie decorating play date invitation at someone’s house for the first time.
So this is what I’ve been depriving my daughter of? And I was going to send her to this school, clueless, friendless? I’m afraid—I fear—that her religious education is about to begin in earnest. I want her to fit in. I think it would be unfair to send her to a school where she’s going to be weird.
I’ll just hide my cards, that as soon as she’s ready I’ll let her know she doesn’t have to believe any of it if she doesn’t want to. With me, she can absorb and reflect as much detached irony as she wants to, or be completely sincere about her religious beliefs if that’s what feels right with her friends.
Wow, what a turn-coat I’ve turned out to be. Hopefully this is just a momentary lapse, a brief flirtation with the could-that-I-didn’t. Because it is safely Tuesday and God needn’t come up again until Sunday. Wait—Christmas is on Saturday this year.
I think I’m joking. I think I just don’t have a pat solution yet about what I’m going to do about this social-school-religion thingy. I just hadn’t thought through what a religious school means.(Really? They go to mass on Fridays?) I thought French kids go to Catholic school, so it should be normal and ignorable. Or perhaps I should just pay the higher tuition. (How expensive are my principles, per month?) And then there is that sneaking worry there, if she’ll be treated the same, and not supported as well in her education.
I feel guilty, knowing this is a small problem compared to actually being committted to a different belief system. In the sense that I have the luxury of pretending to be Catholic, if I want to.
I went to Catholic grade school from Pre-K through 5th grade. This was a mistake, but only because the local public schools were of an extremely high quality and I probably could have gotten the same, or better education for free. I assume that isn’t the case for you though.
As it stands I don’t feel like the Catholic religious education hindered me intellectually- at least where I attended they didn’t actually try to give us evidence or arguments for why God existed: they just taught us what we were supposed to do. Stand, kneel, stand, kneel, sit, kneel, stand. Don’t use God’s name in vain. I did First Communion and First Confession. Don’t hit people or talk during class. I was very good at all of it. (I guess because I was such a good kid compared to my classmates I was pretty sure I was going to be canonized. I did think I might be like St. John and have the power to stare into the sun- which was almost certainly a risky thing to believe… end digression)
I don’t know if I wasn’t ‘talking’ to God enough or what, but as soon as someone presented me with the option of not believing in God I became an agnostic. I suspect if you instill her with rational, scientific values in addition to what she gets at school the Catholic thing won’t stick. But keep in mind that I got out just before 6th grade. I’m not sure how things would have proceeded had I stayed. I don’t know what exactly the Catholic church teaches adolescent girls but it can’t possibly be that healthy so you may have to work to counteract that. I left because the small class size became a negative—there were only 6 other boys and after my less popular friend left I was at the bottom of the pecking order.
As for the weekly mass, keep in mind that Bible verses are pretty much impenetrable to kids (at least they were for me). The only part of Mass I could understand was the Homily- and even then I usually drifted off. Most of religion class consisted of memorizing prayers and stories- Adam and Eve, Noah, the story of Christmas, the Stations of the Cross etc. Useless stuff but nothing really harmful. I never went to Sunday school so that might have undermined the indoctrination—only a few of my classmates attended that. Most of the outside-of-school socialization consisted of CYO sports, which the entire class signed up for.
Oh, and obviously if you have any boys coming up don’t let them be alter-boys or spend any significant period of time with priests. That’s not even a cheap shot.
I learned an amazing thing. All of my daughter’s friends were there and it was a HUGE social event for her. Really? Church?
An atheist friend’s younger sister is being drawn into a Christian youth-group for this exact reason. I felt conflicted because on epistemic grounds, believing whatever makes you friends isn’t a procedure for making truthful beliefs, but on consequentialist grounds I advised him not to talk her out of it, because her expected loss from believing in God did not outweigh the expected gain of a greatly increased social life. This sounded to him like “believing in God is good because you get friends”, which I agreed earlier was not a good reason to believe in God. I retracted my advice in confusion.
It really is a tough question. Which bastard attached social consequences to epistemic concerns?
An atheist friend’s younger sister is being drawn into a Christian youth-group for this exact reason.
Don’t miss out on youth-group just because they might teach you about God. At least, don’t if they are anything like the youth groups I used to engage in. It is amazing how much fun you can have once you eliminate consuming alcohol as a source of entertainment. For example, you can take the alcohol, pour it on a rag covered ball, ignite it and play some soccer in the paddock. Just go easy on the headbutting.
Consuming alcohol isn’t the source of entertainment per se; consuming alcohol near members of the desirable sex who are also consuming alcohol is lead-up to the source of enjoyment. I am given to understand that this is not an option within the rules she has picked up from youth group; she has a boyfriend from said group, and they have publicly agreed to stay off third base until they are married.
I am given to understand that this is not an option within the rules she has picked up from youth group; she has a boyfriend from said group, and they have publicly agreed to stay off third base until they are married.
Ewww. Now that is something you definitely don’t want to catch.
Why is “believing in God” a component of “going to youth group”? It’s a social outing. You’re right that it’s worth running the risk of conversion to Christianity in order to get friends; he’s wrong in declaring that hanging out with Christians is dangerous.
Why is “believing in God” a component of “going to youth group”?
It is not always the case, but it most definitely is the case in this specific situation. She is noticeably converting to belief in Christianity (and not belief in belief or belief in sports teams, as far as I can test).
Then, I was arguing it’s worth converting to Christianity in order to get friends. Which I do believe is the case for this particular young girl; I just ran into my deontological rule “don’t convert to Christianity” while discussing it.
It helped put my sister into a really terrible Born-Again phase. She was even telling me about Satanic messages backward-masked in records. She got over it, but her husband’s mother is an evangelical preacher (to a degree that disconcerts even other Born-Agains) and has inflicted Christian rock on their daughter. (That said, the husband is remarkably stoic and his mother has turned him into a passive-resistance agnostic.)
So, er, yeah: if you drop someone into an environment calculated to inculcate them with toxic memes, it might turn out to be as influential upon their thinking as it explicitly intends to be.
I am the son of a pastor, by the way. The issue may be what youth groups one goes to; not all of them are that virulently designed.
The best argument for Christianity is happy Christians and unhappy atheists; the best counterargument to that is not unhappier Christians but happier atheists. If you (and your children) already have what the youth group is selling, the danger should be seriously reduced.
I really don’t consider “only contains a small amount of virulent disease, you’ll hardly notice!” enough to make it seem in almost any way a good idea.
I’m not entirely pleased my daughter’s likely to go to the local C of E primary, but the alternatives were completely woeful state sink schools or a Catholic school. I believe I declared “There is NO FUCKING WAY I am throwing her to the Catholics.” She’d get an education, but I consider it appalling abuse to subject a small child to that emotional environment. I would home-school her first, and I have some idea how much work that would be.
I’m shameless when it comes to securing a good education for my kid.
No kidding. BTW, it’s been a while since I did any actual academic reading on the topic, but I came away with the distinct impression that the quality of the school didn’t matter even a small bit as much as how much effort the student/family put into it.
My own stint in a Catholic highschool reinforced this impression—for most of the kids there, it was just a big money & time sink (long commutes from all around, my own was roughly 3 hours a day).
I strongly suspect that there are greater marginal returns for your daughter in other strategies like buying lots of relevant books, prodding her to use effective study strategies like spaced repetition, or a foreign exchange program. (Actually, I think foreign exchange programs are fantastic for highschoolers.)
According to the admissions lady (who also seemed rather shameless in her matter-of-factness about the facts of admission), I should start actually attending the church (how did she know I didn’t?)
There are a few ways she can make this inference. She never sees you there herself; your name is not on the tithing roster (loyal parishioners sign up to get customized envelopes for their checks; I imagine names on envelope-less checks are also recorded*); none of the other moms talk about you; lack of documentation like baptismal certificates; and so on.
and tithing some small amount, to be increased substantially once admission occurs. (But the total tuition decreases, so.)
Practically speaking, once you’re in, it doesn’t much matter how much you tithe. Catholic highschools as far as I can tell operate much like public ones inasmuch as you have to do badly academically or screw up before they will actually expell you or not let you return the next year (same thing).
You should also ask whether your parish has a Catholic highschool scholarship. Mine did, and it helped a lot. (However, mere regular mass attendance is definitely not enough for a scholarship; they go to the kids who participate in a lot of church activities, unsurprisingly.)
I learned an amazing thing. All of my daughter’s friends were there and it was a HUGE social event for her. Really? Church?
Yup! This should perhaps not surprise you; you must have read of communities in the Midwest or the South where the church is the focus of an entire web of small groups and organizations and social connections, and teenagers need that sort of thing just as much.
Depends on the church, of course, but my church had quite a social circle or clique of teens who orbited around church activities. You’d usher on Saturday (volunteer work and service-hours you could use to fill requirements at the Catholic highschool), go to Boy Scouts meetings at the church, spend Friday night at Teen Night having snacks and watching religious movies etc, sometimes go to teen-focused Bible study sessions, bus off to NYC or DC for an anti-abortion protest, run the stereotypical fundraiser like baked goods or car wash so you and your friends could go to the big annual youth rally at where-ever**… you get the idea. One could easily spend all one’s time at the highschool or church.
During the doughnuts and coffee hug-all-your-theist-friends-time, we secured a cookie decorating play date invitation at someone’s house for the first time. So this is what I’ve been depriving my daughter of? And I was going to send her to this school, clueless, friendless?
‘Fraid so. You’re just seeing the attenuated edge of the close connection between religion and social networks. One doesn’t have to be Catholic to have entree into them—Catholicism is not as virulent and xenophobic as, say, Scientology’s treatment of defectors or the hardliner Amish ‘Meidung’ shunning. Quite a few of my classmates weren’t Catholic. But it’s definitely more difficult.
If Catholicism (and religion in general) were just about taking a 10% paycut, it wouldn’t be so popular.
I think I just don’t have a pat solution yet about what I’m going to do about this social-school-religion thingy.
I wouldn’t worry too much; if your church and highschool are very similar to mine, attendance will only exacerbate or polarize whatever tendency she has. Is she already irreverent, skeptical, and logical? Then the occasional school-wide mass or religion in class will only irritate her. I feel kind of foolish giving advice and trying to ‘other-optimize’ in a sense, but I would look at what does she do with her own money and in private; if she buys a crucifix and starts praying in the morning...
* I don’t know for a fact that my church—or yours, for that matter—kept track of donations and tithing suchly in either fashion, but I would be surprised if they didn’t.
** There was a specific one, but the location escapes my mind at the moment. ‘Attleboro, Massachusetts’ keeps coming to mind, but I don’t see any Google hits really fingering Attleboro.
How does it go again? “Yes, it’s true. Not undermining the teacher’s authority and credibility, independent of the actual quality of their teaching is Very Important to you.”
I think you are quite possibly making a good decision. I guess it depends what path you want your children to develop along, the degree of insanity to which they are exposed and the nature of their innate psychological makeup.
My husband and I are very much of the opinion that getting along in society and modern civilization is a game. And then there are things we care about, too.
Regarding the quality of the teaching, there’s a few things I would criticize about the quality of the teaching before her belief in angels! Given that this particular teacher and this particular school represent an optimal location in our set of possibilities, undermining the teacher’s authority would most likely lead to behavior I don’t want, like distrust and hostility. The teacher needs an environment with which to teach empathy, letters and shapes at this age. The religious training seems like a small thing?
undermining the teacher’s authority would most likely lead to behavior I don’t want, like distrust and hostility.
Unless, of course, the children learned to differentiate ‘respect’ of the social kind (the only important part for social success at school) from respect of the kind where actual merit is relevant. This is an invaluable lesson in its own right. (By my observation the social necessity of showing respect to an authority figure may actually have an inverse correlation with their merit—unless you actually wish to challenge them.)
Again, this isn’t a criticism of your decision, which I think is a practical one. Just a consideration some need to account for depending on psychological makeup of their children.
The religious training seems like a small thing?
Utterly trivial. Makes almost no difference. :)
This is actually a case where The Santa Deception may actually be a good thing. One approach I may consider would be to teach my kids the necessary religion myself, actively. I’d tell them all the right religious stories, and intersperse those stories with fairy tales and stories of Santa. All in the same tone and cheery enthusiasm.
I can still ace the religious questions when I go along to trivia nights at church with my Christian friends. There is no reason my kids can’t too. :)
By my observation the social necessity of showing respect to an authority figure may actually have an inverse correlation with their merit—unless you actually wish to challenge them.
Sometimes I get into trouble with this, and have to explain to somebody whom I respect that I didn’t show them as much respect as I showed another because I actually respect them more (and probably actually respected them too much, but I don’t say that). Mostly this is not authority figures, however.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. Those are good explanations why people want to do it—but I could use those same arguments to justify teaching children religion.
While I think the themes of religion are much more problematic, I cannot argue in good faith as we recently made the decision to not interfere with the religious education my kids are being taught at school. I think this is a moderate, ‘when in Rome’ position. (If anyone wishes to discuss this further, I can list our pragmatic reasons and share some boundaries and plans we’ve developed for their long-term sanity and well-being.)
Yes, I would be interested. I’m planning on having kids in about a year and very conflicted about the line between protecting them from nonsense and brainwashing them.
My comments, this one and the one below, explain why it took me so long to respond and why my first few drafts didn’t work. I’m sorry for the bloggy/confessional tone. Things were less sorted out than I thought.
I think that whatever you do, you teach your children a culture; including your attitudes about information, edges of information and independent thinking. This happens on a daily basis, with everything you do, so I don’t think it matters so much what you tell them at the object level. In other words, you can tell them what you think about things and trust that they will keep thinking about it on their own terms (and not be brainwashed) if not being brainwashed is something that you value.
Religion wasn’t much of an issue until my daughter was about 5 or so. It just didn’t come up. My social experience with religion is that most people are religious and some people are not-so, and no one really cares except for the occasional religious aunt that everyone teases for being a fanatic because she gets all worked up at gatherings with the cynicism of the undeclared atheists.
With children in the family, this changes somewhat. I think this is because children are socialized by the whole community, not just the parents. You can strive for independence, but it’s kind of difficult to avoid completely (e.g., playground rules) and I think it can be very comforting to have the help. (Especially from other parents that may be more experienced, insightful or patient than you are feeling at the moment.)
All this to explain that my daughter spends a lot of time with her cousins. Since they are being socialized to be good little believers, they try to socialize my daughter with these new rules they are learning. (It is somewhat competitive, to see if my daughter is learning these Very Important Things. My daughter just has to take the status hit of not having known these things, but she is younger so it just one instance of many.)
Regarding these Very Important Things, I can’t tell my daughter that they’re Not So Very Important, because she will report this back to the cousin and I will have undermined her mother’s authority and defaulted on the support network. What I do instead is confirm, ‘Yes, it’s true. That is important to your cousin and her family.’ Since that’s not how I usually talk about right and wrong, my daughter is beginning to learn about different tones and language that I use when we’re discussing other people’s rules. (She’s seen it before. I let the kids climb up the slide the wrong way until a parent tells their kid not to, and then I make my kids stop too.)
Things would be much easier again if she was going to a secular school, but we agreed that the advantages of the better teaching, safety and a pro-education culture outweigh the disadvantages of not being secular. So the weekly religion class is a challenge that I suppose will only grow from here on in as they discuss things that are not corroborated at home. I suspect this bothers her, because a couple weeks ago she asked about angels in a tone of voice that sounded like ’why is the teacher talking about angels anyway?”
I see this as a warning sign, because a kid spends lots of time at school and lots of time at home and should feel comfortable in both places. I think undermining the teacher’s authority here would be a mistake (something OK when she is 12, but not at 5). It makes me reconsider my decision to put her in this school, but then I think of the alternatives until my resolve returns. I asked her what she has learned about angels (I had no idea what they’re telling the kids about angels) and then told her to ask her teacher about some of the questions we had thought of together. With this, I felt pretty good that I had not undermined the teacher (I had communicated that the teacher was worth listening to and learning more from) and had distanced myself from the belief by not knowing the things anyone probably ought to know about angels. I hope I planted a seed that questions should be investigated, and it’s OK to ask people what they think in more detail.
I had been feeling pretty good about my progress on avoiding social religious conflict without compromising honesty but then recently I’ve gotten in over my head with this and I’m feeling somewhat conflicted. I’ll post about that in a separate comment.
I’m shameless when it comes to securing a good education for my kid. When looking for day cares, I was on several waiting lists at the same time and on my way to work I would alternate stopping at the different places to tell them I couldn’t wait to bring my kid there while I surreptitiously spied on them. So it didn’t seem like that big a deal to join the parish of the Catholic school I want my daughter to go to. According to the admissions lady (who also seemed rather shameless in her matter-of-factness about the facts of admission), I should start actually attending the church (how did she know I didn’t?) and tithing some small amount, to be increased substantially once admission occurs. (But the total tuition decreases, so.)
So last Sunday I went to church and brought the family, sans husband (who would not deign, even though he certainly won’t want the job of carpooling across town to the next best school).
I learned an amazing thing. All of my daughter’s friends were there and it was a HUGE social event for her. Really? Church? Important background information is that we had a birthday party a month ago and other than family, only one friend from school came. During the doughnuts and coffee hug-all-your-theist-friends-time, we secured a cookie decorating play date invitation at someone’s house for the first time.
So this is what I’ve been depriving my daughter of? And I was going to send her to this school, clueless, friendless? I’m afraid—I fear—that her religious education is about to begin in earnest. I want her to fit in. I think it would be unfair to send her to a school where she’s going to be weird.
I’ll just hide my cards, that as soon as she’s ready I’ll let her know she doesn’t have to believe any of it if she doesn’t want to. With me, she can absorb and reflect as much detached irony as she wants to, or be completely sincere about her religious beliefs if that’s what feels right with her friends.
Wow, what a turn-coat I’ve turned out to be. Hopefully this is just a momentary lapse, a brief flirtation with the could-that-I-didn’t. Because it is safely Tuesday and God needn’t come up again until Sunday. Wait—Christmas is on Saturday this year.
I think I’m joking. I think I just don’t have a pat solution yet about what I’m going to do about this social-school-religion thingy. I just hadn’t thought through what a religious school means.(Really? They go to mass on Fridays?) I thought French kids go to Catholic school, so it should be normal and ignorable. Or perhaps I should just pay the higher tuition. (How expensive are my principles, per month?) And then there is that sneaking worry there, if she’ll be treated the same, and not supported as well in her education.
I feel guilty, knowing this is a small problem compared to actually being committted to a different belief system. In the sense that I have the luxury of pretending to be Catholic, if I want to.
I went to Catholic grade school from Pre-K through 5th grade. This was a mistake, but only because the local public schools were of an extremely high quality and I probably could have gotten the same, or better education for free. I assume that isn’t the case for you though.
As it stands I don’t feel like the Catholic religious education hindered me intellectually- at least where I attended they didn’t actually try to give us evidence or arguments for why God existed: they just taught us what we were supposed to do. Stand, kneel, stand, kneel, sit, kneel, stand. Don’t use God’s name in vain. I did First Communion and First Confession. Don’t hit people or talk during class. I was very good at all of it. (I guess because I was such a good kid compared to my classmates I was pretty sure I was going to be canonized. I did think I might be like St. John and have the power to stare into the sun- which was almost certainly a risky thing to believe… end digression)
I don’t know if I wasn’t ‘talking’ to God enough or what, but as soon as someone presented me with the option of not believing in God I became an agnostic. I suspect if you instill her with rational, scientific values in addition to what she gets at school the Catholic thing won’t stick. But keep in mind that I got out just before 6th grade. I’m not sure how things would have proceeded had I stayed. I don’t know what exactly the Catholic church teaches adolescent girls but it can’t possibly be that healthy so you may have to work to counteract that. I left because the small class size became a negative—there were only 6 other boys and after my less popular friend left I was at the bottom of the pecking order.
As for the weekly mass, keep in mind that Bible verses are pretty much impenetrable to kids (at least they were for me). The only part of Mass I could understand was the Homily- and even then I usually drifted off. Most of religion class consisted of memorizing prayers and stories- Adam and Eve, Noah, the story of Christmas, the Stations of the Cross etc. Useless stuff but nothing really harmful. I never went to Sunday school so that might have undermined the indoctrination—only a few of my classmates attended that. Most of the outside-of-school socialization consisted of CYO sports, which the entire class signed up for.
Oh, and obviously if you have any boys coming up don’t let them be alter-boys or spend any significant period of time with priests. That’s not even a cheap shot.
An atheist friend’s younger sister is being drawn into a Christian youth-group for this exact reason. I felt conflicted because on epistemic grounds, believing whatever makes you friends isn’t a procedure for making truthful beliefs, but on consequentialist grounds I advised him not to talk her out of it, because her expected loss from believing in God did not outweigh the expected gain of a greatly increased social life. This sounded to him like “believing in God is good because you get friends”, which I agreed earlier was not a good reason to believe in God. I retracted my advice in confusion.
It really is a tough question. Which bastard attached social consequences to epistemic concerns?
Don’t miss out on youth-group just because they might teach you about God. At least, don’t if they are anything like the youth groups I used to engage in. It is amazing how much fun you can have once you eliminate consuming alcohol as a source of entertainment. For example, you can take the alcohol, pour it on a rag covered ball, ignite it and play some soccer in the paddock. Just go easy on the headbutting.
Consuming alcohol isn’t the source of entertainment per se; consuming alcohol near members of the desirable sex who are also consuming alcohol is lead-up to the source of enjoyment. I am given to understand that this is not an option within the rules she has picked up from youth group; she has a boyfriend from said group, and they have publicly agreed to stay off third base until they are married.
Ewww. Now that is something you definitely don’t want to catch.
Why is “believing in God” a component of “going to youth group”? It’s a social outing. You’re right that it’s worth running the risk of conversion to Christianity in order to get friends; he’s wrong in declaring that hanging out with Christians is dangerous.
It is not always the case, but it most definitely is the case in this specific situation. She is noticeably converting to belief in Christianity (and not belief in belief or belief in sports teams, as far as I can test).
Then, I was arguing it’s worth converting to Christianity in order to get friends. Which I do believe is the case for this particular young girl; I just ran into my deontological rule “don’t convert to Christianity” while discussing it.
It helped put my sister into a really terrible Born-Again phase. She was even telling me about Satanic messages backward-masked in records. She got over it, but her husband’s mother is an evangelical preacher (to a degree that disconcerts even other Born-Agains) and has inflicted Christian rock on their daughter. (That said, the husband is remarkably stoic and his mother has turned him into a passive-resistance agnostic.)
So, er, yeah: if you drop someone into an environment calculated to inculcate them with toxic memes, it might turn out to be as influential upon their thinking as it explicitly intends to be.
I am the son of a pastor, by the way. The issue may be what youth groups one goes to; not all of them are that virulently designed.
The best argument for Christianity is happy Christians and unhappy atheists; the best counterargument to that is not unhappier Christians but happier atheists. If you (and your children) already have what the youth group is selling, the danger should be seriously reduced.
I really don’t consider “only contains a small amount of virulent disease, you’ll hardly notice!” enough to make it seem in almost any way a good idea.
I’m not entirely pleased my daughter’s likely to go to the local C of E primary, but the alternatives were completely woeful state sink schools or a Catholic school. I believe I declared “There is NO FUCKING WAY I am throwing her to the Catholics.” She’d get an education, but I consider it appalling abuse to subject a small child to that emotional environment. I would home-school her first, and I have some idea how much work that would be.
No kidding. BTW, it’s been a while since I did any actual academic reading on the topic, but I came away with the distinct impression that the quality of the school didn’t matter even a small bit as much as how much effort the student/family put into it.
My own stint in a Catholic highschool reinforced this impression—for most of the kids there, it was just a big money & time sink (long commutes from all around, my own was roughly 3 hours a day).
I strongly suspect that there are greater marginal returns for your daughter in other strategies like buying lots of relevant books, prodding her to use effective study strategies like spaced repetition, or a foreign exchange program. (Actually, I think foreign exchange programs are fantastic for highschoolers.)
There are a few ways she can make this inference. She never sees you there herself; your name is not on the tithing roster (loyal parishioners sign up to get customized envelopes for their checks; I imagine names on envelope-less checks are also recorded*); none of the other moms talk about you; lack of documentation like baptismal certificates; and so on.
Practically speaking, once you’re in, it doesn’t much matter how much you tithe. Catholic highschools as far as I can tell operate much like public ones inasmuch as you have to do badly academically or screw up before they will actually expell you or not let you return the next year (same thing).
You should also ask whether your parish has a Catholic highschool scholarship. Mine did, and it helped a lot. (However, mere regular mass attendance is definitely not enough for a scholarship; they go to the kids who participate in a lot of church activities, unsurprisingly.)
Yup! This should perhaps not surprise you; you must have read of communities in the Midwest or the South where the church is the focus of an entire web of small groups and organizations and social connections, and teenagers need that sort of thing just as much.
Depends on the church, of course, but my church had quite a social circle or clique of teens who orbited around church activities. You’d usher on Saturday (volunteer work and service-hours you could use to fill requirements at the Catholic highschool), go to Boy Scouts meetings at the church, spend Friday night at Teen Night having snacks and watching religious movies etc, sometimes go to teen-focused Bible study sessions, bus off to NYC or DC for an anti-abortion protest, run the stereotypical fundraiser like baked goods or car wash so you and your friends could go to the big annual youth rally at where-ever**… you get the idea. One could easily spend all one’s time at the highschool or church.
‘Fraid so. You’re just seeing the attenuated edge of the close connection between religion and social networks. One doesn’t have to be Catholic to have entree into them—Catholicism is not as virulent and xenophobic as, say, Scientology’s treatment of defectors or the hardliner Amish ‘Meidung’ shunning. Quite a few of my classmates weren’t Catholic. But it’s definitely more difficult.
If Catholicism (and religion in general) were just about taking a 10% paycut, it wouldn’t be so popular.
I wouldn’t worry too much; if your church and highschool are very similar to mine, attendance will only exacerbate or polarize whatever tendency she has. Is she already irreverent, skeptical, and logical? Then the occasional school-wide mass or religion in class will only irritate her. I feel kind of foolish giving advice and trying to ‘other-optimize’ in a sense, but I would look at what does she do with her own money and in private; if she buys a crucifix and starts praying in the morning...
* I don’t know for a fact that my church—or yours, for that matter—kept track of donations and tithing suchly in either fashion, but I would be surprised if they didn’t. ** There was a specific one, but the location escapes my mind at the moment. ‘Attleboro, Massachusetts’ keeps coming to mind, but I don’t see any Google hits really fingering Attleboro.
How does it go again? “Yes, it’s true. Not undermining the teacher’s authority and credibility, independent of the actual quality of their teaching is Very Important to you.”
I think you are quite possibly making a good decision. I guess it depends what path you want your children to develop along, the degree of insanity to which they are exposed and the nature of their innate psychological makeup.
My husband and I are very much of the opinion that getting along in society and modern civilization is a game. And then there are things we care about, too.
Regarding the quality of the teaching, there’s a few things I would criticize about the quality of the teaching before her belief in angels! Given that this particular teacher and this particular school represent an optimal location in our set of possibilities, undermining the teacher’s authority would most likely lead to behavior I don’t want, like distrust and hostility. The teacher needs an environment with which to teach empathy, letters and shapes at this age. The religious training seems like a small thing?
Unless, of course, the children learned to differentiate ‘respect’ of the social kind (the only important part for social success at school) from respect of the kind where actual merit is relevant. This is an invaluable lesson in its own right. (By my observation the social necessity of showing respect to an authority figure may actually have an inverse correlation with their merit—unless you actually wish to challenge them.)
Again, this isn’t a criticism of your decision, which I think is a practical one. Just a consideration some need to account for depending on psychological makeup of their children.
Utterly trivial. Makes almost no difference. :)
This is actually a case where The Santa Deception may actually be a good thing. One approach I may consider would be to teach my kids the necessary religion myself, actively. I’d tell them all the right religious stories, and intersperse those stories with fairy tales and stories of Santa. All in the same tone and cheery enthusiasm.
I can still ace the religious questions when I go along to trivia nights at church with my Christian friends. There is no reason my kids can’t too. :)
Up-voted for this:
Sometimes I get into trouble with this, and have to explain to somebody whom I respect that I didn’t show them as much respect as I showed another because I actually respect them more (and probably actually respected them too much, but I don’t say that). Mostly this is not authority figures, however.
It seems easier to repair religious damage than social damage, but I am not an expert in child development.