activist parents who are reluctant to send their children to “normal schools” when they’re little often change their minds as the kids get bigger and the parents realize they’ve been paying all this extra money for alternative schooling and what they got for it is … weird kids
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Everything you say is true. I figured most here already know that, but those earlier videos (the “why do people laugh at creationists” stuff) I’m thinking of predated all that ugliness coming to light later (AFAIK). I’ve not seen others reference him on the BBS; I think I found his earlier work via BB wayyyy back or possibly some other blog (PZ Myers). People that mention him may not even know all that other stuff. I will say I saw some of his stuff destroying Elon on a leftist blog’s comments (I don’t think it was BBS?) and I ended up checking it out. I don’t know if there is a way to view content on YT w/o the content creator potentially getting rewarded, but if so, that could come in handy in instances like this - where I want to cherry pick materials without rewarding other things…
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Every time I listen to Douglas Coupland, I hear him drop references to Waldorf schools - and I often wonder about that weird part. We looked into it at one point - it was not a private school, but a charter school that was Waldorf-inspired as well as Montessori-inspired, as well as some private options, as well as some Waldorf materials. Especially for earlier education, I love the emphasis on NOT getting on computers, and NOT hammering on reading so much, and instead emphasizing creative play and mythic things, then introducing reading/computers later, hopefully to encourage a good kind of weird.
But then, in our adventures on this path, we’ve certainly come across some kids that you may be able to guess were home-schooled even if you did not know. Some are extremely intelligent, and seem to be socialized nearly like adults (vs. the trope of homeschooled kids having no emotional intelligence). But I don’t know which came first - often the parents tried to have their kids in public school, only to have to pull them for behavioral issues - specifically, trying to get boys to sit still in Prussian style schools can often be a real battle. In some cases, it’s about gender norms (i.e., the kids were trans and the public kids were already getting very violent in kindergarten and first grade) and less about any philosophy about schooling.
maybe only when they run directly counter to the values so obviously held by the rest of the people where you’re posting?
i don’t know, maybe you’re able to shrug because you’re not his target? in my view, it deserves deeper thought than that
his world view about other people doesn’t really seem to differ much from cameron’s. he’s just attempting to appeal to a different segment of a (largely) white male cis straight demographic.
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OK: answer me this (as someone from a place where home schooling is illegal and who is bewildered by the concept): how is it even possible for one or two parents to teach high school material to their kids? Teachers study for years just to be prepared to teach one or two subjects. I can imagine a pair of very intelligent parents familiarising themselves enough with the material to teach at a high school level but then they can not have a day job. And even then, I don’t believe that the person who can teach maths well can also teach music, or creative writing, or a foreign language just as well. If they just read the textbook together with their child then that’s not teaching and isn’t up to the standards of a real school. They have to be able to answer questions and go beyond the material if necessary.
ETA:
But how are his knowledge of poetry, history or his PE skills? I don’t know this person, so I don’t want to assume anything about them but I have long since learned that outstanding achievement in one field does not an education make. The importance of school (besides teaching social skills and adherence to a schedule) is the variety of subjects taught that are supposed to give you a good grounding in society whatever you choose to do afterwards.
I consider myself an adherent of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s educational model so I am shamelessly stealing this quote from its Wikipedia page:
There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life
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The simple answer is that they can’t. Many homeschooled kids end up in public high schools, where their deficits show up at once. America is a country that more and more despises expertise and refuses to believe that education is more than memorization of a limited set of “facts”. More advanced education is seen as job training. Being able to answer questions isn’t necessary, since questions are strongly discouraged, as they may lead to kids having their own ideas, and we can’t have that! Having seen the children they isolated from the world decide that the bullshit they had been taught was, in fact, bullshit, they just expanded the bubble to include older and older people.
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Which is why insular ultra-religious communities like Amish and Haredi put strict limits on the level of education of their members. (Amish 8th grade, Haredi High School’ish) So even if they leave the community, they lack the skills to survive outside it.
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Much different era, and he was a recognized child prodigy at age 7. He completed his BS by age 14. That is hardly a run of the mill example of ANY form of education.
In many cases homeschool parents lack the skills, resources, motivation or time to do the job effectively. What makes it worse is many homeschool advocates attack public education for the rest of us as a way to justify their choices.
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It always ends with a straw man with those clowns. Comfort and Cameron are also known for their “duck alligator” picture and other childish animal photoshops, to show how “ridiculous” evolution is. But, like, nobody is saying that’s how it works. If you have to argue against a straw man that silly, your argument is weak indeed.
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I assume, without proof, that this is part of the “mark screening”. If your audience will fall for that, it won’t be too hard to persuade them to send money.
ETA: I used to assume that Kirk Cameron was as silly as his arguments, but the article pointed out that his net worth is around $20M. That kind of money is difficult to raise if you’re that silly.
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Oh, the Christian evangelicals are far more directly harmful, absolutely, so there’s no equivalency there! While I’ve absolutely known some atheists who were transphobic, homophobic, and racist, they weren’t in public office with wide ranging acceptance for their positions. Unfortunately that didn’t keep them from punching down whenever they got the chance. Similar to the Christians with the appellation, they were not good representations of the whole!
I agree in the technical sense but I’m also not going to waste my energy tearing down what others accept as proof of a deity, unless they push me on the matter. If their belief brings them comfort and succor then good for them. (I do participate in some rituals for a sense of community, for my own mental purposes, or just for fun but I also do not believe there is anything to them beyond the physical actions and created traditions with the other participants.)
Again, I have known those atheists who take great joy in tearing down the beliefs of others, when it is safe for them to do so, simply because they can. I stay away from those in the same way I stay away from evangelical Christians, even ones that don’t actively mean harm towards me.
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For sure. Organized Atheism (for lack of a better term) is all privilege-blind white men and for that reason I tend to avoid anyone who hinges their identity on “atheist”. If they mention it, great, and most people these days actually are quietly non-religious anyway so it rarely comes up.
Definitely. Especially the ones who write books. I don’t think mockery gets you anywhere in this life (with a few exceptions). Especially with the people you are trying to reach. You gotta meet people where they are and find common ground to change minds on stuff like this. Why would anyone give up religion when the publicly visible alternative is a bunch of rich white assholes laughing at them?
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In the past, it probably wasn’t easy or possible.
The rise of online education like MOOCs (Khan Academy, Coursera, edX, Udemy, etc.) may make it a bit easier.
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Due to the pandemic, many folks who tended to be dismissive of teachers found out the hard way that they couldn’t. It wasn’t just high school material, either. There was a popular TV show called Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, and it turns out that many adults are not. This is why a lot of comparisons are made between spending on public education and police funding (and salaries). A lot of it is rooted in misogyny and it leads to under-funding institutions that are crucial for a functioning society.
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Just a bit. You still need a highly directed and self-starting kid to get good results from homeschooling. Xtianist homeschool parents try to compensate for this and their own lack of expertise and time by imposing their typical strict-father model discipline but it doesn’t get the job done.
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The social element is often overlooked in homeschooling. If kids aren’t getting social interaction at school, the parents have to go the super-extra mile to get them that socialization elsewhere. In college, I knew at least a dozen homeschooled kids. Some failed out because they didn’t actually have the education necessary to do college level work. Almost all the rest seriously struggled because they didn’t have the appropriate social skills.
The fundy kids did the worst. Completely unprepared for adulthood and higher education. And these weren’t the most extreme fundies either, because those didn’t go to college at all or went to far more religious colleges.
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I tuned out when he fell down the gamergate hole. When I looked for his Waterseeker video years later, I found that he was still digging.
I don’t know if he was always like that, or if he adjusted his channel subjects for maximum views and profit, and brought in the whole misogynist crowd in a feedback loop.
Don’t know, don’t care. He chose his audience, and that’s not me. If he says some interesting things now and then that I miss, oh well.
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It bothers me immensely that the Rapture bullshit can be described as “mainstream” anything. It’s a 19th-century American heresy, mostly cobbled together from an incredibly tortuous reading and out-of-context quoting of two of the most obscure apocalyptic texts - Book of Daniel and Revelation of St. John - in the Bible.
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I’ve noticed this very thing. I think by the time I was 12, I more or less adopted the hard atheist stance - then again, revised that later to “it’s complicated”, LOL. I might have said as much to get a rise out of some xtianists (at least as a teenager and early 20s - but that’s what that age is for), but for the most part, tried to just…disengage on that front, most especially with relatives/friends. If someone asked and wanted to know more, I was direct and honest, though. However, I have definitely seen atheists that more or less are ready to do battle, metaphorically, on the topic of religion at the drop of a hat. IRL, I mean. So I definitely know the type of which you speak. I know many of them…
I knew so many in fact, that I consciously went out of my way not to behave like a born-again atheist or a born again Christian when I decided to become vegetarian many moons ago. Because the same thing comes up in the vegan/vegetarian crowd. When someone is wanting me to go over the litany of things of the carnism vs. vegan/vegetarian thing, I ask how long they’ve been a vegan/vegetarian. Usually, it’s less than three months or so. Sometimes, it’s someone that has been doing it for decades, but doesn’t realize they are probably turning more people away from veg*n stuff than they could possibly realize.
I think far more people are probably convinced by seeing someone set an example. If they have questions, I’ll answer them, and with no apology - and I’ll be blunt if they state dumb things like “but you’re a man, you need meat” (my response is usually along the lines of, but I’ve seen women eat meat too, and not one of them grew a dong), but I won’t go out of my way to proselytize. People just tune that right out.
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Yeah, I hear you. I only had some vague sense of him showing his ass somewhere along the way in relation to gamergate and then I knew he had a falling out with the skeptic community over his anti-feminism and something about sock puppets he was using on a mailing list? I just skimmed the rationalwiki on him to try to catch up on some of it. I haven’t watched anything or read about him in years until a few weeks ago someone on Wonkette (I think) mentioned his series on Elon, and seeing this article on Cameron and the talk of Bananaman brought back all those memories of VenomFangX…anyway.
As on anything else, caveat emptor as to the content that’s out there, and those behind it. I used to think Naomi Wolf was someone worthy of reading and we see how that turned out. Same with thunderf00t - it started off well, then went wildly off the rails. It’d be nice to think that thunderf00t might be able to see the error of his ways, but given human nature, I bet criticism of his positions on feminism only make him further entrenched. It’s rare for someone to apply reason to things like this and instead of taking in the arguments, it’s more likely to cause the backfire effect, I’d wager. It seems like there is still a seed of rationality there since apparently he’s taken on Trump, Elon and Libertarians, so…who knows, I guess it could happen that he rights the ship.
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