Parents in Athens County, Ohio, are concerned that a planned new charter school will drain funding away from their local public schools. The proposed classical academy is relying on conservative Christian Hillsdale College to deliver its curriculum and set it up but insists it is not a Hillsdale charter, despite appearances.
A planned charter school with ties to evangelical Christian and politically conservative organizations could, if successful, divert approximately $2 million a year from area school districts starting in 2024.
Southeast Ohio Classical Academy, to be based in Athens County, has stirred controversy among local parents and educators who are concerned in part about the school’s:
- Association with a private Christian college known for its political activism.
- Ties to a “planted” evangelical church in Athens.
- Curriculum based on “our Western civilization inheritance.”
- Potential to siphon state funding away from public schools.
Those concerns have been aired on social media, including a spirited discussion in the Women of Athens Facebook group last month and the creation of an Athens Parents against SOCA Twitter page. Local law enforcement investigated one Facebook comment for “indirect threats” to SOCA board members, although the case was closed without charges.
The school’s founders say that SOCA has no religious affiliation, that its curriculum offers a “well-rounded education,” and that “school choice is a part of freedom.”
Public charter school, private Christian backing
Board member Kim Vandlen said she has long hoped to open a classical school, inspired by her own education at Hillsdale Academy in Michigan. The private, Christian K-12 school is operated by Hillsdale College, a private Christian college with longstanding ties to libertarian and conservative politics.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Doesn’t Hillsdale have as many links to conservative Catholics like Clarence Thomas and Leonard Leo as it does to evangelical Christians which the public associates with protestants?
Yes. Yes it does.
I had a colleague who I am glad left our building, he moved to South Carolina to run a religious charter school! He was a teacher of very dubious intentions in his position. A member of MAGA der Trumpenvolk, he was a natural at working with our rough and tumble kids who were consummate disciplinary issues which, of course, masked their terrible home environment and for that he deserves commendation, no question. However, in his position as a respected male authority figure along conventional/traditional traits of masculinity, every so often he would dip into preachy territory which blurred the line of Church and State. However, when he praised the January 6th insurrectionists as patriots–to his classes–most of which were impressionable senior boys looking up to this muscular fatheresque figure, any remaining respect went out the window.
As Biden said last night, we are definitely at an inflection point in this country. DOJ and the law are moving slow but if MAGA takes over again, everything democratic to the soul will be lost, especially public education as we know it. This may sound like hysteria along MAGA-style lines. But the threat is very real. What infuriates me are the consumer-narcotized suburban soccer mom colleagues who scoff, “Pfffff, that won’t happen, c’mon!” Oh yeah? You said the same exact thing about Roe. What’d’ya think now?
As I have learned from attempts to organize against the opening of this specific Hillsdale affiliated charter in south east Ohio, the threat you describe is not hysteria. The threat is real. And, while the soccer moms my scoff in person, the threat continues to be ushered in by their husbands and pastors.
The “soccer moms” you referenced don’t respect women’s rights.
The Hillsdale Board of Trustees and Trustees Emeriti are at a ratio of about 45 men to 5 women -in other words, close to what a person would expect in a religious patriarchy.
“ushered in” — exactly right wording
In the somewhat good news department, the charter school in Utah run by the polygamist group, that should NEVER have been authorized, is looking at becoming a private school.
There was one of these Trumpanzees, for a year or two, teaching American history in a school where I was teaching the American lit survey course. So, he would tell his kids one thing: The Pilgrims and Puritans treated the native Americans with respect and brought them the word of God. And I would tell them another: Most of them thought that they were claiming waht were previously the Devil’s territories from Satan-worshipping savages, and give them tests, Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World and John Underhill, Account of the Mystic Massacre. He would tell them, the Southern states didn’t secede because of slavery but because of state’s rights. I would pass out to them copies of the articles of secession from these states, listing as a major reason for their secession a wish to preserve the institution of slavery.
It was a game we played all year. My kids were continually saying to me, “But Mr. _______ says. . . ,” and I would say, I’ll bring you a text next class period.
Hillsdale College is unaccredited, by the way, and very small but very wealthy, funded by DeVos money, among others. Ginny and Clarence Thomas are supporters, for example. One reason for their lack of accreditation is their refusal to meet federal standards for equitable treatment of students: They don’t follow requirements of Title IX. I believe their students are ineligible for federal student aid because the school does not meet federal standards. Their mission is indoctrination of Christian Nationalism.
Hillsdale doesn’t want federal funding
The proposed charter school will no doubt appeal for public funding, which
unfairly drains funds from public schools, but the fact that it is affiliated with
a religious curriculum, despite its claims, should render it unable to call itself a public school deserving of public funding. This connection undermines public education with a religious agenda. The plan should be rejected.
Unfortunately the Supreme Court is moving closer and closer to requiring states to fund religious schools because “religious freedom”….
I see “”religious freedom” as the right to choose a school based on religious principles. It does not mean a secular or public school. This idea foists religion on secular schools, which is happening now.
The Philosophy and Religion page at the Hillsdale site shows 11 men who are faculty members. It appears one female faculty member was added in 2020. The racial ratio can be speculated from the photo array. Those who are interested can read the bio’s at the site and learn the names of the colleges from which the professors graduated.
The internet lists a Hillsdale course in Humanities, Roman Catholic Theology.
Regressive reactionary xtian theocrats who wish to turn this country into an xtian caliphate are what Hillsdale is.
“School choice is part of freedom.” Yes, it is. When Ohio makes laws that allow privatization of its public schools, it gives freedom to whomever wants it. That includes Hillsdale. That includes Gulen. That includes any and every invasive species of twisted vine, every freedom loving parasite on earth.
Crap, these theofascist are sneaky and ruthless!
In other news, today, the illegally held presidential records in Don the Con’s Mar-a-Logo lair included 43 FOLDERS LABELED TOP SECRET THAT WERE EMPTIED OF THEIR CONTENTS. Were these documents already turned over to his handlers by Vladimir’s Agent Orange, Donald Trump? Inquiring minds want to know.
Thanks for the update.
Hillsdale has a course, Neo-orthodox Renaissance: Barth and Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany. Bob- can you explain to me what Neo-orthodoxy is?
In the Middle Ages, people in Europe took their religion entirely on faith. The priests were the learned ones, the ones who knew things. They could read. Other people couldn’t. Masses were in Latin. People often had no clue what was going on. It was beyond them, hocus pocus (hoc est corpus meum).
So, with the Enlightenment, people started looking to justify everything not with faith but by reason. This led to liberal theology (liberal in the sense of Enlightenment-era, classical liberalism). They started arguing that you could look around the universe and see the evidence of the existence of God and of his designs. And they argued that moral truth could be derived from first principles. We hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT. That’s a very Enlightenment, classical liberal view. This notion,, that religion and morality were discoverable by religion was the classical liberal view, sometimes referred to as natural theology. So, a couple examples of that: Paley, in the opening of his book Natural Theology (1802), argued that if you find a watch on the street, it’s evident from its complex mechanism that it was designed, that it had a designer, and similarly, if you look at the clockwork mechanism of the world, the universe, you can conclude from that that it, too, had a designer. The Deism of some of the founding fathers, such as Jefferson, is like natural theology, aka liberal theology, in its limit.
Well, neoorthodoxy is a rejection of the liberal theology consensus. There is all kinds of crazy stuff in the universe. Humans are the craziest of all. They are capable of great evil and they are far too inferior, too stupid, to understand God. God is not accessible by reason. He (or whatever) is too far beyond mere people for people to have any claim to understanding him (or whatever). You can’t arrive at religious or moral truth, therefore, via reason, because both stem from God, who is unfathomable. So, religious belief is absurd, and we should embrace that. It’s about faith, commitment, the leap, the embracing of submission to a greater power.
So, I entirely agree with these folks that religious belief is absurd, unreasonable. LMAO. Kierkegaard actually argued that we have merit to the extent that we are able to demonstrate commitment (e.g., commitment to our friendships, our children, our mates, our country, etc). Since religious belief is absurd, our willingness to embrace it shows real commitment, he says. Therefore, we should believe because it is absurd to do so. LMAO. One of the more insane philosophical arguments anyone has ever come up with.
cx: that religion and truth could be discovered by reason
That’s the idea behind Enlightenment Era liberal theology, or natural theology.
The opposite–that it’s not about reason but faith because of our limitations vis-a-vis God–is neo-orthodoxy, a return to the orthodox, faith-based view of the Middle Ages.
However, this is quite crude, because Acquinas was all about reason (though his reasoning was, again and again, totally cuckoo, IMHO).
The enlightenment philosophical approach also looked for the mechanism of all things. Impressed by Newtonian physics, they postulated a universe governed by immutable laws. Newton himself must have believed this, for he labored intently to unify the physical and the spiritual (alchemy, it is called).
Bob-
I knew you were the person to ask. Thanks very much for the explanation. I think I get it. Your framing was appreciated. One tact that indirectly took me to the Neo-orthodoxy subject may amuse you – Jay Richards of the Heritage (Koch) DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, co-authored, The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom that Tolkien Got and the West Forgot.
The Oathkeeper’s lawyer (arrested this week related to Jan. 6) has been described by media as quoting Lord of the Rings. Her law practice site has a picture that looks like it could be a scene from the book.
I’m sure you know the following but, for those who don’t, Tolkien, who was Catholic, exalted small government. Some in the Koch/Catholic brand weave Lord of the Rings stuff into a patchwork that includes conservative Catholic beliefs and libertarian politics.
Big surprise- Republicans don’t want Black people cast in the Amazon series about Lord of the Rings (CNN).
They opine that it is embedding social justice politics. A Black actor hired for a role retorted, conservatives “are happy with a dragon flying and characters with white hair and violet eyes. But, a rich Black guy- that’s beyond the pale.”
Correction: these empty folders had various Classified banners. So they weren’t necessarily all Top Secret. The news report doesn’t say. But they were classified documents, of various levels of secrecy, that disappeared, leaving only the folders behind.
Oopsie?
I don’t think so.
More to the point, they are so much more troubling that Hunter Biden’s laptop that poor Hunter fails miserably to compare, despite the MAGA focus on him. If Hilary Clinton has done something like this the Right would be dying of apoplexy.
Women who belong to conservative religions that act upon the view that women are 2nd class citizens should look for churches that don’t. If the women can’t find it within themselves to leave their misogynistic churches, they should, at least, make it easy for their children to leave.
Nationalist Christian fundamentalist madrassas funded by taxpayers, coming to a community near you! Thanks, SCOTUS!
Bring it, Hillsdale, Scrotus. As Neil Postman wrote long ago, kids have excellent crap detectors.
I am tempted to say that it will be funny when the current generation of young people meet up against these troglodyte Christian nationalists and fundamentalists. A breathtaking chasm between them. The young will laugh heartily at these people and rebel and do dangerous stuff in their rebellion, and so on. However, all this won’t be funny. Here’s what’s coming: a period of Fascist rule and the rebellion of the young, of POC, and of the young in heart and mind against the goose steppers. And this will unfortunately involve a negative feedback loop of escalating violence until, eventually, the Fascists are overthrown and they all go the way of Mussolini.
Theocracy-
Cleta Mitchell (an election denier with links to Koch) was the attorney for the National Organization for Marriage. John Eastman was NOM’s president. Mitchell hosted a fundraiser in August for Ted Budd (born with money) who is running for national office in N.C. Ted graduated from a theology school. His 3 kids were homeschooled. Ted and his wife (likely, American) met in Moscow while they both were attending a campus crusade mission.