U.S. liberal/leftie parents do homeschooling first in 1970s, >50% later support religious parents?

For this whole scenario to work, I think you'd really need American schools to be way more hardcore conservative than they are. I'm not just talking about morning prayers, pledges of allegiance, and history lessons that go a little too easy on General Custer. I'm talking about morning prayers that openly extol hellfire and damnation, POEs that commit you to hunting down the enemies of America, and history lessons that say Custer was entirely justified in what he did because the indians were all a bunch of subhuman savages anyway.

And this all being done well into the 1970s.

The problem with liberals(from the pov of making the OP's scenario real) is that, for most of them, ideologically suspect school curricula aren't an existential crisis. They might not like the politics behind the Pledge Of Allegiance, for example, but they also don't think they're gonna burn in hell for reciting it. And if the history lessons are a little on the jingoistic side, they'll think they can just supplement that with showing their kids a PBS documentary about how crappy American natives have been treated.

Contrast this with Christian fundamentalists who think that adopting the wrong opinions can lead to you being damned for all eternity, and you can understand why it's that group which has been the bigger force behind home-schooling.
 
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. . . to disability, . . .
The understanding about dyslexia, Aspergers-Autism Spectrum, attention deficit disorder, etc, could have come much earlier.

For example, with the autism spectrum, in addition to patchy social and intellectual skills, there are often sensory issues. For example, a kid on the spectrum might be bothered MUCH MORE than average by the strong cleaners used in school. An analogy might be if you're balancing your bank statement while a punk rock band plays 15 feet away. Yeah, you could probably do it by concentrating very hard. But could you keep it up a full six hours? And you're likely to be labeled as "bad" once your energy slumps.
 
Plus, people love telling of their winning battles with officialdom.

So, if 'enough' liberal parents are willing to talk freely with religious parents, if the progressive strain of American evangelicalism more plays out,

if unions are more successful talking about lost manufacturing jobs, if Tip O'Neill has a more successful tenure as Speaker of the House (Jan. '77 through ? '87)

a lot of ifs, but just maybe American society is able to address the slow erosion of middle-class jobs, and you avoid this, you also avoid a lot of scapegoating.
 
So, if 'enough' liberal parents are willing to talk freely with religious parents, if the progressive strain of American evangelicalism more plays out,

But instead in OTL we ended up with liberals and evangelicals getting together at anti-pornography meetings and fueling the Satanic Panic.
 
if unions are more successful talking about lost manufacturing jobs, if Tip O'Neill has a more successful tenure as Speaker of the House (Jan. '77 through ? '87)

I think the union connection would be a double-edged sword here, because if liberals are the ones promoting home-schooling, that's gonna alienate the teachers' unions big time, and the rest of the labour movement would likely stand with the teachers in solidarity.

That could be another reason why, as I argued earlier, you'd need American schools to be unrecognizably right-wing for this all to work out. Basically, they'd have to be so fascist that anyone sympathetic to the labour movement wouldn't be able to work in them.
 
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. . . if liberals are the ones promoting home-schooling, that's gonna alienate the teachers' unions big time, . . .
I envision very small numbers. Say with an elementary school with 250 kiddoes total, about a half dozen students are doing homeschooling. Maybe two or three students who have learning differences, the school being a stick-in-the-mud, and at least one parent has the time to homeschool.

And another two or three kids for other assorted reasons, including devout religious beliefs.

And yes, even with the learning differences, I realize at this point we're talking about parents who are merely feisty and independent-minded, and not necessarily liberal/left-wing.
 
But instead in OTL we ended up with liberals and evangelicals getting together at anti-pornography meetings . . .
Ah, if only my fellow liberals had focused like a laser beam on working conditions, and told honest, heart-felt story after honest, heart-felt story. Some of which happened in 1985, '86, but too much jumping to ready made conclusions.
 
P&B%2026.11%20Decrease%20Aggregate%20Supply.jpg

For really high trajectory, get rolling with a successful response to stagflation starting in '73.

For medium high trajectory, a successful response starting in '79.
 
. . . and history lessons that go a little too easy on General Custer. . .
Not so much the content, but rather the whole "he must learn to stay in his seat!", reciting back memorized infirmation for a test, the stilted way papers are required to be written, that is, the whole authoritarian atmosphere of 'school' that the institution seemingly can hardly get away from even if it tried!

Yes, I think this is what some liberals would be more likely to object to.
 
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Not so much the content, but rather the whole "he must learn to stay in his seat!", reciting back memorized infirmation for a test, the stilted way papers are required to be written, that is, the whole authoritarian atmosphere of 'school' that the institution seemingly can hardly get away from even if it tried!

Yes, I think this is what some liberals would be more likely to object to.

Indeed they would, and do. However, most of them don't view those things as bad enough to make it worth their while to endure the hassle of pulling their kids out of school, setting up a home-teaching system, and then either finding people to teach, or be the teachers themselves. It's more just something that they bitch about the way a lot of people bitch about all the crappy advertising on TV, but never actually get the wherewithal to boycott the advertised products as a protest.

BUT...

I wonder if we could somehow get the hippie movement to survive the 60s, and to maintain its commitment to deep-seated social and lifestyle changes. Not just wearing the hair long, smoking pot and listening to Ravi Shankar after a long day at the office, but REALLY serious about the whole non-hierarchical social-structure thing, to the point where it's basically a non-negotiable for them. Even if this was only a tiny percentage of the population, it might attract the attention and sympathy of more mainstream liberals, who would fight for the counterculture's right to home-school.

But like I say, you'd need a seriously revitalized hippie movement, both in terms of commitment and numbers, for this to work. And I still think the teachers' unions would agitate against the hippies.
 
The Sons Of Freedom Doukhobors were a left-wing religious group, directly influenced by anarchist teachings, who refused to allow their children to study in the state-run schools of Canada, and in fact burned a few of those institutions to the ground.

I'm not sure how much sympathy they attracted from Canadian liberals and leftists at the time. I think civil-libertarians probably took up their cause to some degree(as with the Jehovah's Witnesses as well), but it would be difficult to build a social-democratic political culture if the influence of such self-alienating sects is allowed to go unchecked.
 
http://www.gallup.com/poll/9460/election-polls-vote-groups-19761980.aspx

Catholics

1976

Carter 57%

Ford 41%

Eugene McCarthy 1%


1980

Carter 46%

Reagan 47%

Anderson 6%
Protestants

1976

Carter 46%

Ford 53%

Eugene McCarthy *


1980

Carter 39%

Reagan 54%

Anderson 6%
So, the big difference in presidential politics from '76 to '80 was mostly among Catholics. Meaning the whole theory about evangelical citizens coming alive is only partially confirmed by the evidence, or at by least this particular batch of survey data.
 
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. . . Not just wearing the hair long, smoking pot and listening to Ravi Shankar after a long day at the office, but REALLY serious about the whole non-hierarchical social-structure thing, . . .
yes, no, maybe. :p I don't want to throw down on people too hard for not being professional activists in all but pay! I mean, not that high a percentage of people are wired up for sustained activism as an equally important part of their lives as family/friends/personal and work.

For example, someone pointed out that many more gay men attended a 'gay' disco than ever attended a protest march. And the disco was just as empowering as taking a public step in embracing your authentic self.

Or, if we had taken a small a step as legalizing marijuana—and we weren't too far away in the '70s—we would have prevented the single biggest contributing factor of the mass incarceration of the '90s and beyond.

Or a third example, 80% of new businesses fail within a year or two, and I've got to figure it's at least as difficult for activism. Yes, that's the baseline stat, 8 out of 10 new businesses, and I like to put that out there because a lot of people don't and instead put forward entrepreneurism as some kind of panacea. And we could ask, what percent of American adults are wired up to be entrepreneurs in a complex, 'modern' economy? And why would we expect it to be any different for long-term social activists?
 
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. . . progressive parents reacting against the standard test obsession? . . .
Yes, I can certainly go with this as one of the threads. But I'm kind of settling on the idea that dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, autism spectrum, and perhaps other learning disorders and merely learning differences are understood decades earlier. And some of these feisty parents fight major battles with the schools, unnecessarily, but the schools are being sticks-in-the-mud.
 
I Was The Original CFC Fuck-Up: R.L. Stollar’s Story

July 3, 2013

https://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2013/07/03/i-was-the-original-cfc-fuck-up-r-l-stollars-story/

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But as time progressed, as month after month of touring and teaching went by, as the months became years and I finally couldn’t take it any longer, my spirit began to twitch. I began to lose my ability to just shrug everything off like it was nothing. It was not nothing. It was something and there was a reason why I hurt. And when I began to lose control over my external placidity, when my soul split from years of parents looking down on me in my youth while I taught their youth to not be looked down upon, I snapped.

It happened at the very last conference, in Hawaii, during my third and final year of touring. It happened over something completely inane, something about going to a movie with friends after the conference. But it happened. And it was one of the only two times in my entire life when I yelled. I yelled at Teresa and she yelled back. And we kept yelling. And at some point we stopped talking to each other at all. She sent Wendell after me, to be our messenger because we were done talking with one another. And I refused to talk to Wendell then, too. I refused to talk to him and he was my best friend for the last three years.

I am not proud of that. I am not proud of my anger. I am not proud of the hurt I caused either my teacher or my friend. But I couldn’t control my psyche any longer. I had a full-blown nervous breakdown. Following that night, I would descend into a major depression marked by self-injury and consistent suicidal thoughts that I continue to fight to this day.

I don’t think I can summon a cogent narrative of how I got to that point. But I can relay some interesting stories to lighten the mood. Like how the very first time I got wasted was on a CFC tour.

The beginning of that story is that I didn’t get wasted with fellow CFC interns (not that time, that is; CFC interns did not start getting wasted together until the third year). I got wasted with the children of homeschooling leaders from around the country.

The second year I taught with CFC (I was 15 at the time), which was the first year we officially “toured” around the country in the Moons’ motor home, we stopped at Regent University. HSLDA was holding their National Leadership Convention. This convention was an invite-only event for recognized leaders in the conservative Christian homeschooling world: the directors of all the state homeschool organizations, for example. CFC was tasked with teaching the leaders’ kids about speech and debate.

So, pretty much our job was to babysit the kids while the parents got inspired. During the day, we taught our peers. During the evening, while the parents mingled together like God’s chosen socialites, the kids roamed the university, unsupervised. One of those nights I was offered hard alcohol by the son of a national homeschool leader. I accepted. I was too scared to follow up the shots with a prescription-level painkiller, but I watched as he and his friends — the children of some of the other leaders — all took shots and popped various types of pills. They commiserated with each other, and found solace in their mutual disdain for each other’s parents: “____ cares more about the idea of homeschooling than homeschooling his own fucking kids.”

I could name names that would shock you, but that is not the point of this particular story. The point of this story is that, the higher you climb the power structures of the homeschooling world, the more they resemble the power structures in any other world.

I can tell you other stories, like what it was like living in a motor home for months on end. How traveling in a motor home with David Moon was like traveling with Jekyll and Hyde. One moment he was the lighthearted, lovable counterpart to Teresa’s professionalism. Then he’d snap and turn into a completely different person — red-faced, terrifying, and raging — and Teresa would silently turn the other way until his “episode” subsided.

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One, Christians are people, too. That's the most important conclusion. They can hurt just like everyone else.

And no, I don't think Christian homeschooling parents would be all that likely to be great friends with liberal/leftie homeschooling parents or disability rights advocacy parents, but there might be some areas of overlap. Maybe more so for the kids, who share the loneliness. And the sacrifice for a cause where you're not sure it's worth it, and for the kids, where it's not entirely your choice.

And the part where the mid-teens are mixing shots of hard liquor with prescription-level painkillers, Holy Shit. Please don't be doing that shit. And this is the point where older people should just give very honest advice. Part of it might be saying, "No thanks." Just a very matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental "No thanks." Or, a "I'll have a coke." For even if a young person is a drinker, you don't always want to drink, right? And it's good to have the skill of matter-of-fact deflection. And I'd say, you'd also want to talk about the skill of drinking to a pleasant buzz. A lot of adults might have a problem giving this advice. But I think we should talk about it as a specific skill and let the young person decide for himself or herself. Hell, I think we should talk about heavy drinking and the issue of do you have friends around you can trust, is it safe, is someone the designated nondrinker or light drinker, the "party mom" or "party dad" so to speak? And instead of foisting this conversation awkwardly on younger teens, this can be part of the public conversation that young people have access to if and when they're interested.

And the part where the brother talks about struggling with major depression and consistent thoughts of suicide, I'll just say, Please don't. Please keep writing and creating and connecting and contributing, even if realistically only some of it pans out, that's plenty good enough. I've read that antidepressants are trial and error in a respectful sense, and also that once you decide to stop taking them, it's important to do so in a series of medium steps. No way in hell am I a doctor, but this is what I've read and I thought I'd share it.
 
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GeographyDude wrote:

And no, I don't think Christian homeschooling parents would be all that likely to be great friends with liberal/leftie homeschooling parents or disability rights advocacy parents, but there might be some areas of overlap.

I know some parents of disabled kids have a real problem with abortions undertaken to eliminate certain "abnormalities", especially Down Syndrome, and actually meet with expectant parents who are considering terminations for that reason, in order to convince them to bring the pregnancies to term.

Though I don't think most of them have an issue with abortion in general, they just find it somewhat disheartening that people could be so dead-set against bringing a disabled child into the world. And there isn't really a "school" connection there, even if they were to make common-cause with right-wingers.
 
I know some parents of disabled kids have a real problem with abortions undertaken to eliminate certain "abnormalities", especially Down Syndrome, and actually meet with expectant parents who are considering terminations for that reason, . . .
I'm glad they meet with the prospective parents, if just to let them know that a person with Down Syndrome can have a rich and full life, even though it will be a different life from what the parents first expected.

Society's meaner than it used to be. Please see some of the above on economics. For example, a lot of parents think they have to pay more than they can really afford + work 60 hours a week in order to live in a "good" neighborhood located in a "good" school district. And factually, I'm not sure the parents are entirely mistaken. There is a slow erosion of middle-class jobs, even for people with college degrees. And we here in the United States never really followed through on Brown vs. Board of Education and school desegregation and made sure that pretty much all schools are good. We didn't do that.

So, the parents don't see anyone helping them. And taxes as only a drag on them.
 

youtube: THE SCHOOL FLUNKED MY AUTISTIC SON ON PURPOSE! (I have PROOF!)

I said there's a 50-50 chance this mother would be happy to talk with parents who wish to homeschool for religious reasons, maybe better odds, but 50-50 is the way to look at it. :)

In fact, let's give her a little credit and assume she's quick on the uptake and realizes it's important not to swamp the new homeschooling parent with too much info all at once. Instead it's better to have shorter conversations a couple of times a week, as she has the time.
 
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