The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
5
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/education/08HOME.html
College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: March 8, 2004
URCELLVILLE, Va. --As one of 12 siblings taught at home by their parents in St. Croix Falls, Wis., Abram Olmstead knew he would fit right in at Patrick Henry College, the first college primarily for evangelical Christian home-schoolers. But what really sold him was the school's pipeline into conservative politics.
Of the nearly 100 interns working in the White House this semester, 7 are from the roughly 240
tudents enrolled in the four-year-old Patrick Henry College, in Purcellville. An eighth intern works for the president's re-election campaign. A former Patrick Henry intern now works on the paid staff of
th
e president's top political adviser, Karl Rove. Ove
r the last four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns in their offices or on their campaigns, according to the school's records.
"I would definitely like to be active in the government of our country and stuff," Mr. Olmstead, 19, said as he sat in a Christian coffeehouse near the campus, looking up from a copy of Plato's "Republic." "I would love to be able to be a foreign ambassador, and I would really like to move into the Senate later in my career."
The college's knack for political job placement testifies to the increasing influence that Christian home-schooling families are building within the conservative movement. Only about half a
million families around the country home-school their children and only about two-thirds identify themselves as evangelical Christians, home-schooling advocates say. But they have passionate politic
al v
iews, a clo
se-knit grass-roots network and the financial support of a handful of wealthy patrons. F
or all those reasons, home-schoolers have captured the attention of a wide swath of conservative politicians, many of whom are eager to hire Patrick Henry students.
When President Bush signed legislation last fall banning the procedure it calls partial-birth abortion, Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and the president of Patrick Henry, was one of just five prominent Christian conservatives invited to the Oval Office for the occasion.
Patrick Henry College is the centerpiece of an effort to extend the home-schooling movement's influence beyond education to a broad range of conservative Christian issues like opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and
obscenity in the media. The legal defense association, located on the Patrick Henry campus, established the college as a forward base camp in the culture war, with the stated goal of training
home-sch
ooled Christian me
n and women "who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical valu
es."
"We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read," Mr. Farris said. "The most common thing I hear is parents telling me they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the farm system, some may get to the major leagues."
That is an alarming prospect to some on the left.
"Mike Farris is trying to train young people to get on a very right-wing political agenda," said Nancy Keenan, the education policy director at People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, and a former Montana state superintendent of public education. The number of Patrick Henry interns in the White House "scares me
to death," she said. "It tells us a little bit more about the White House than it does about the kids."
Mingling in the corridors of the White House and Congress
is also a l
ong way from the sense of
retreat at the heart of the Christian home-schooling movement. It began in the early 1980's as a few thousand evangelical Christians began teaching t
heir children at home in disgust at what they considered the increasingly secular, relativistic and irreligious culture ascendant around them --exemplified by the ban on prayer, the teaching of evolution and the promotion of contraception in the public schools.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/education/08HOME.html
College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: March 8, 2004
URCELLVILLE, Va. --As one of 12 siblings taught at home by their parents in St. Croix Falls, Wis., Abram Olmstead knew he would fit right in at Patrick Henry College, the first college primarily for evangelical Christian home-schoolers. But what really sold him was the school's pipeline into conservative politics.
Of the nearly 100 interns working in the White House this semester, 7 are from the roughly 240
tudents enrolled in the four-year-old Patrick Henry College, in Purcellville. An eighth intern works for the president's re-election campaign. A former Patrick Henry intern now works on the paid staff of
th
e president's top political adviser, Karl Rove. Ove
r the last four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns in their offices or on their campaigns, according to the school's records.
"I would definitely like to be active in the government of our country and stuff," Mr. Olmstead, 19, said as he sat in a Christian coffeehouse near the campus, looking up from a copy of Plato's "Republic." "I would love to be able to be a foreign ambassador, and I would really like to move into the Senate later in my career."
The college's knack for political job placement testifies to the increasing influence that Christian home-schooling families are building within the conservative movement. Only about half a
million families around the country home-school their children and only about two-thirds identify themselves as evangelical Christians, home-schooling advocates say. But they have passionate politic
al v
iews, a clo
se-knit grass-roots network and the financial support of a handful of wealthy patrons. F
or all those reasons, home-schoolers have captured the attention of a wide swath of conservative politicians, many of whom are eager to hire Patrick Henry students.
When President Bush signed legislation last fall banning the procedure it calls partial-birth abortion, Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and the president of Patrick Henry, was one of just five prominent Christian conservatives invited to the Oval Office for the occasion.
Patrick Henry College is the centerpiece of an effort to extend the home-schooling movement's influence beyond education to a broad range of conservative Christian issues like opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and
obscenity in the media. The legal defense association, located on the Patrick Henry campus, established the college as a forward base camp in the culture war, with the stated goal of training
home-sch
ooled Christian me
n and women "who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical valu
es."
"We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read," Mr. Farris said. "The most common thing I hear is parents telling me they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the farm system, some may get to the major leagues."
That is an alarming prospect to some on the left.
"Mike Farris is trying to train young people to get on a very right-wing political agenda," said Nancy Keenan, the education policy director at People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, and a former Montana state superintendent of public education. The number of Patrick Henry interns in the White House "scares me
to death," she said. "It tells us a little bit more about the White House than it does about the kids."
Mingling in the corridors of the White House and Congress
is also a l
ong way from the sense of
retreat at the heart of the Christian home-schooling movement. It began in the early 1980's as a few thousand evangelical Christians began teaching t
heir children at home in disgust at what they considered the increasingly secular, relativistic and irreligious culture ascendant around them --exemplified by the ban on prayer, the teaching of evolution and the promotion of contraception in the public schools.