Religion and Virtual Schooling

I have argued in the past that online or cyber charter schools are just a way for people to circumvent the separation of church and state and to provide religious school to their children here in the United States (see "Loopholes with Cyber Charter Schools" and "Questions for those Involved in Virtual High Schools"). It appears that I was barking up the right tree, as you can see from this item: Online Christian Education - an Alternative to Public Schools at The Christian Post.

I should note that the particular school that they are referencing in this article, isn't as bad as the ones that I normally rally against, as this particular school is privately funded. Personally, if you want to take your children out of the public school system and using your own dime have them religiously schooled, I have no problem with that.

What I do have problems with is the religious right's continued push to try and subvert the publically-funded education system and infuse it with their own white, middle/upper-middle class, Christian views. To set the record straight, I am a white, middle class Christian. This does not mean that I think that my particular views should be shoved down the throats of those who do not share these demographics. Yet, the religious right, through the use of charter schools, standardized testing, the joke of intelligent design, etc. (see my thoughts on some of these issues at my other blog, Breaking into the Academy, in entries titled "What does your first grader need to know?," "Testing and what American students know," and "Standards, accountability and expectations").

This is why I feel so stringly against the cyber charter movement, simply put, it is taking public money away from a system that needs every penny that it can get and then some...

Tags: virtual school, cyber school, charter school, standards, high school, politics, education