HOME SCHOOLING IN CANADA: A Fraser Institute Report

Record: Deani Neven Van Pelt, “Home Schooling in Canada: The Current Picture–2015 Edition.”  Barbara Mitchell Center for Improvement in Education (June 2015).  [Available Here]

Summary: Van Pelt, who has published occasional studies of home education since 2003, is director of the Barbara Mitchell Center for Improvement in Education at theFraser Institute, a libertarian think-tank based in Canada with a long history of advocating market-based policies drawn from libertarian economists like Friedrich Hayek, Edwin G. West, and George Stigler.  This report updates a 2007 update of the widely cited 2001 report the Fraser Institute published called Homeschooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream.  The 2001 report was written by Patrick Basham, who has since moved on to be a prominent voice at the Cato Institute, another libertarian think-tank based in the United States.

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Gunn on how the Cold War created a new American Religion

This post reviews T. Jeremy Gunn, Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009).

Gunn, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief (among many other assignments), here constructs a fascinating if flawed argument that the Cold War led to the unique blend of Christianity, militarism, and capitalism that is now the dominant religion in the United States.  First I’ll lay out his argument and then say why I think it’s flawed.  What does all of this have to do with homeschooling?  I think conservative Christian homeschoolers are perhaps the purest expression of the sort of religion Gunn is chronicling here–fiercely committed to the idea that the United States is (or was and should be again) a Christian and capitalist nation, and strongly pro-military.  Why are so many conservative homeschoolers like this?  Here’s Gunn’s explanation:

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