[asa] Christian education Dawkins

Iain Strachan wrote:

>
> As someone who been a volunteer with the Samaritans (a phone line for
> the suicidal) for ten years, I can confidently say that Dawkins really
> doesn't know what he is talking about, and that this statement is
> extremely offensive - not to religious people, but to all people who
> have REALLY been subjected to sexual abuse. Not the minor incident
> Dawkins relates about being fondled by a Latin master at age 19, the
> reality is that it's FAR WORSE than that, and often starts as young as
> age 3. I have spoken to many severely depressed and suicidal people who
> have been subjected things like being forced to have oral sex or buggery
> at age less than 6. It comes up again and again and again. But I don't
> recall ever speaking to a caller who was depressed and suicidal because
> they were brought up a Catholic. Dawkins belittles the suffering of
> people who are subjected to the "physical actuality of sexual abuse" by
> what he says here and it's a disgrace. Dawkins got over the "skin
> crawling revulsion" of being fondled by a Latin teacher at 19 - but the
> sort of abuse I'm talking about is something many people never get over.
>
> I hope people aren't too offended by some of the explicitly direct words
> in the above. I am truly outraged by this. I can't understand why
> anyone would want to defend him. Perhaps Dawkins should spend some time
> as a Samaritan volunteer (it's a secular organisation) and then he'd get
> a better idea of the terrible damage caused by sexual abuse.
>
> Iain
>

I would agree with Iain that severe sexual abuse starting at an early
age is much worse than what Dawkins experienced. It often results in
periodic bouts of depression through out adult life and counseling by
professionals in psychology. My wife was abused in the way Iain
describes and the latest bout with depression has lasted so far 15
months.

During most of my elementary and high school (10)years I was an inmate
of a Christian boarding school and for seven of those attended an
associated Christian elementary school and the rest of the time we went
to the schools in the public system. While most of the damage was done
in the boarding side, certainly during grades 1 thro 4, when I had the
same teacher damage was also done. Part of the damage was from a
simplistic, syrup like view of Christianity and part due to the fact
that the teacher diagnosed me as being too stupid to graduate from high
school and thus not worth spending much time on. I was also sexually
abused while at boarding school, like Dawkins was, however, that was a
very minor issue compared to the other abuse. A close friend's brother
committed suicide about 20 years ago and my brother was highly socially
  none functional. In both cases I am convinced the school played a
significant role. Most of the time I put it all aside and deal with it
by not thinking about that part of my life, as I have found in the past
that dwelling on it can start me in a fast downward spiral.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, my son has dyslexia and the
public school was totally uncooperative in terms of getting help. When
my wife was looking at alternatives one of the Christian schools was
definitely on both the YEC and extreme fundy side of things. We also
knew a couple of the teachers and my mother filled in their briefly but
gave it up because discipline was impossible to keep. Without going
into further details we would have been abusing (IMHO) our children to
send them to that school and it seems close to the kind of thing Dawkins
is talking about. Although he would probably go much further? In
Canada only the Roman Catholics are privileged to have tax payer funded
elementary and high schools and now I would probably consider sending
children there if I had no other option, one of the Christian schools
our son attended was co-located with a Catholic school as they had the
unused space.

Of course there are lots of good Christian schools and I am glad we had
the right and the money to send our children to two of them. But maybe
Dawkins has a bit of a point, although I probably would disagree with
most of what he writes at least recently, when he goes outside of his
specialty and if his books ever got high enough on my priority list. It
is not clear to me how the church should deal with a few of the
Christian schools that are abusive (IMHO).

Dawkins concept of memes seems to me at least to describe well how ideas
spread especially in the popular media.

Dave W

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Apr 28 13:21:41 2007