Tuesday, May 11, 2004

If you repeat it often enough...

Recently, HSLDA has been claiming that 80% of homeschoolers are evangelical Christians, as they do in this article in Insight Magazine. What a load of bunk. Ian Slatter of HSLDA says,

"It's difficult to get exact numbers, but about 80 percent are evangelical Christians and 20 percent are nonreligious."

So, Ian, say we accept for the moment that 20% of homeschoolers are non-religious. What about all the NON-evangelical Christians, and the Muslims, Buddhists, Baha'is, Jews, Unitarians, Pagans, Hindus, etc. that homeschool. You seem to have forgotten about them when you fabricated your statistics.

3 comments:

gary said...

I don't necessarily disagree with you Laura. Ian Slatter DID say it wasn't exact. From the looks of the homeschooling curricula out there and the homeschoolers I have met and see attending conventions, it's definitely way more than 50%. 80 sounds about right.

Upon reading your post again, I can see you must be reacting to his presupposition that anyone who is not evangelical is non-religious.

Good point.

Book Lady: Linda Jo Martin said...

It might be more accurate to say that 80% of HSLDA members are Christians.

Sandra Dodd said...

Maybe those who don't use a curriculum (most of which are published by and for Christians) and who don't attend conventions (most of which are run by Christian organizations and supported financially by vendors aiming at the Christian homeschooling market) are less likely to be Christian homeschoolers.

Seems obvious to me.