Juxtaposition

The top headline on Google News for the subject "homeschooling" right now is "Homeschooling: America's Hidden Breeding Ground for Conservative Ideology" on www.alternet.org. Soon after seeing that headline, I was reading Joanne Jacob's website and read in a recent post that a professor is saying students today are unfit for a college education because of faults "in their 'educational backgrounds, analytical thinking, quantitative skills, reading abilities, willingness to work, and their attitudes concerning the educational process.'"

Seeing these two items together made me wonder whether analytical thinking, quantitative skills, reading abilities and good study attitudes are considered conservative these days? After all, I think most homeschoolers will tell you that they doubt the public schools would do an adequate job in developing these attributes in their children. Hence, the homeschooling by both conservatives and liberals.

Once I was able to get the alternet.org website to load, though, I found out from the comments that the article itself (written originally in French and actually titled "American Families That Defy the Public School") wasn't focused on conservative zealots isolating their children after all. It seemed a fair depiction of both rightwing and leftwing homeschoolers' motivations and circumstances. It's just alternet.org, I guess, that felt they needed to scare readers about parents teaching their own children *gasp* their own values (Merriam-Webster's definition of conservative: "tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or insitutions; traditional; marked by moderation or caution; marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners").