"Parents want education, not indoctrination"

 Often, you'll see conservatives arguing that schools should only teach facts and important skills, rather than spending tax money to indoctrinate kids into an ideology. And in principle that's correct.


But then the schools try to teach facts: "Gay people exist, you shouldn't be shitty to them." "Black people exist, your grandparents were shitty to them." "All the available evidence indicates that the universe is MUCH older than 6,000 years, and that we descended from ape-like creatures." "Human behavior affects the climate, we should probably do something about that." "Vaccines do not cause autism, but the diseases we vaccinate against do cause death. Also, only an asshole would believe that your autistic classmate would be better off dead."

And they try to teach important skills: Critical thinking. The scientific method. How to understand history as it really was rather than through the lens of nationalism. How to know the difference between fact and fiction.

THOSE are the things that conservatives consider to be "indoctrination".

And then they turn around and demand that tax money should be used to pay for Christian schools. 

Places where the kids start each day pledging allegiance to the "Christian flag" and to the Bible along with the American flag. Places where they learn such "facts" as how there was this firmament of water surrounding the earth before Noah's flood for which we have no evidence. And such "facts" as "There's an all-powerful invisible guy watching everything you do and hearing everything you think, and if you even THINK about disobeying your parents or your pastor you will be tortured in fire forever." 

And necessary "skills" such as how to beg this invisible guy for help, how to suppress normal and natural sexual urges (especially if they aren't the type of urges that the church thinks you should have), how to be an obedient servant to your husband and your pastor, and how to keep convincing yourself that voting for Republicans is the moral choice no matter who the Republican candidate is or what they say and do.

But that, they would argue, is NOT indoctrination, and therefore tax money should be spent on this sort of "education".

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