It seemed like a good idea at the time.<\/p>\n\n
Why not produce, thought conservative activist Paul Weyrich, a library of educational videotapes to help home-school parents? Perhaps even a cable-television channel that offered quality classroom materials mixed with a little wholesome entertainment?<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt made sense to me,\u201d said Weyrich, a veteran media entrepreneur and one of the founding fathers of the Religious Right. \u201cBut the idea didn\u2019t get very far. I\u2019ve been asking home-schoolers about this for several years and a lot of them keep telling me, \u2018We don\u2019t have cable. We don\u2019t even have a TV.\u2019 Many of them are unplugged \u2014 literally. \u201c<\/p>\n\n
These are not business-as-usual families, cookie-cut into the sizes and shapes on display in shopping malls, mail-order catalogues and, especially, prime-time television. They have unique priorities when they budget their time and money. They have radically different family values that often defy simple political labels.<\/p>\n\n
In a strange way, home-schoolers are creating a new counter-culture outside the American mainstream. It\u2019s the Anti-Woodstock Generation.<\/p>\n\n
No one has showered more praise on this crowd than Weyrich. He is ecstatic that 1.5 million or so children are now being educated at home, a number that will only rise in the wake of school-day disasters such as the bloodshed in Littleton, Colo. Even mainstream politicians are starting to pay attention, as symbolized by the GOP presidential hopefuls who paraded through last week\u2019s Home School Legal Defense Association convention in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cYou have shamed the regular school system with what you have achieved,\u201d said billionaire Steve Forbes.<\/p>\n\n
In Texas, Gov. George W. Bush said reverently, \u201cwe view home-schooling as something to be respected and something to be protected. Respected for the energy and the commitment of loving mothers and loving fathers. Protected from the interference of government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
But Weyrich went much further, in a speech sandwiched between the flash-bulb festivals that greeted the heavyweights. If there is hope for this culture, Weyrich told the faithful, \u201cit\u2019s because of what you people are doing. Now what we need to do is replicate what you\u2019re doing in a whole number of other areas of American life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Last February, Weyrich made precisely the same point in a controversial letter in which he said moral conservatives have won some political victories, but have done little to cleanse the \u201cever-wider sewer\u201d of American popular culture.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cPolitics has failed because of the collapse of the culture. What Americans would have found absolutely intolerable only a few years ago, a majority now not only tolerates but celebrates,\u201d he said. \u201cAmericans have adopted, in large measure, the MTV culture that we so valiantly opposed just a few years ago, and it has permeated the thinking of all but those who have separated themselves from the contemporary culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The Weyrich letter made waves for obvious reasons. Here was the man who coined the phrase \u2018moral majority\u2019 saying that the moral majority was gone. The founder of the Heritage Foundation was saying that America\u2019s cultural heritage was in ruins. The president of the Free Congress Foundation was saying that the GOP-driven Congress had sold out, on moral issues.<\/p>\n\n
Meanwhile, home-school families were getting the job done, he said. They stopped spinning their wheels in existing educational systems and did something positive. Weyrich believes that the same thing needs to happen in entertainment, journalism, politics, higher education and even in many American religious groups.<\/p>\n\n
But there\u2019s one problem. Remember all those unplugged TVs? It\u2019s will be hard for home-schooled children to have any cultural impact, said Weyrich, if they\u2019ve been systematically taught to reject all of their culture \u2014 the good as well as the bad. This hit home when he tried to find talented Christian humorists to take part in an alternative television project.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIf we totally drop out, we aren\u2019t going to produce any alternative voices in American life,\u201d said Weyrich. \u201cWe won\u2019t have any humor or music or movies or literature or anything else that Americans will be able to turn to, when the culture hits bottom. We really can\u2019t afford to become the new Amish. That would be a disaster for us and, I believe, for America.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Why not produce, thought conservative activist Paul Weyrich, a library of educational videotapes to help home-school parents? Perhaps even a cable-television channel that offered quality classroom materials mixed with a little wholesome entertainment? \u201cIt made sense to me,\u201d said Weyrich, a veteran media entrepreneur and one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n