Meeting Internet Friends
Ford had a good time with the gang at Tio's and fit right in. had a great idea for me: a foundation to help kids from fundamentalist religious families go to accredited schools. Ford says if I start such a foundation, Universism can provide the corporate structure under the Universism charity. It seems like this is the week for meeting people who I've known for years only on the internet! In addition to Ford's visit, this weekend I'll meet Robin Lee Powell and several other speakers of Lojban at their intermittently-annual gathering. I call it "try-annual" because we try to have it annually. Tomorrow morning Bill and I leave for Pennsylvania to attend Philcon, which has set aside a room for Lojban. Bill won't attend Logfest, of course; but he needs a good science fiction convention where he doesn't have to worry about running it. I've made this 11-hour car drive twice all alone, and I'll be very glad to have another driver.
Comments
ericthemage on Dec. 8, 2005 3:31 AM
a foundation to help kids from fundamentalist religious families go to accredited schools.
I'm curious about this concept. Why would these kids need special help?
overthesun on Dec. 8, 2005 1:16 PM
I assume he intendsit as a method of helping them escape from the fundamentalism. I see a subtext here indicating that these families send their kids to non-accredited, extremely fundamentalist schools.
ericthemage on Dec. 8, 2005 2:46 PM
I understand escaping fundamentalism, but to me that indicates escape from the family, not just going to college. Or does that mean escaping from the family into a dorm room?
tlatoani on Dec. 8, 2005 3:02 PM
Matt can address this better, because he's experienced it, but it came out of a conversation about how many kids wind up going to unaccredited fundie "colleges" simply because those "schools" offer a free ride. Then, they wind up with an "education" that's pretty much useless unless your future job is going to involve talking about the Bible or enforcing oppressive rules of conduct. From real universities' points of view, they've got something that's maybe half a step above those "life experience" diplomas. (Something similar, but at the high school level, has happened in Pakistan. Which is why the Taliban is called the Taliban; the word means "students". But that's another story.)
So... he was talking about how to raise donations to let his brother go to an actual school somewhere, where he could get an actual education and skills, rather than just an indoctrination. I suggested that was thinking too small, and...
ericthemage on Dec. 8, 2005 3:43 PM
Ahhh, now I understand. That makes a lot of sense. I ran into someone like that at Davenport University, who was retaking basically his entire degree because of a fundie college.
Sounds like a good cause. I'd donate to it.
tlatoani on Dec. 8, 2005 4:38 PM
Me too. And so will a lot of people, provided it's well-organized and you go about it the right way. That's why I suggested doing it full on as a charitable foundation, rather than as passing the hat for one person. It's an interesting fact, but it can be much harder to raise small (i.e. one person) amounts of money than to raise large ones.
ericthemage on Dec. 9, 2005 3:50 AM
I think Modest Needs does exactly that. Not sure how well they do though.
tlatoani on Dec. 9, 2005 4:47 AM
Modest Needs is a very cool concept, and they seem to do extremely well for the kind of amounts of money that the average middle-class person could lend a friend without being too stressed out ($250-500). (I've thought about setting one up for local fandom as an AASFA project, but I've got a couple other things I want to try first.
sarahmichigan on Dec. 8, 2005 4:15 PM
I also would support this cause, with volunteer hours, money, or whatever you needed.
rachelann1977 on Dec. 8, 2005 5:32 PM
This is a great idea. Of course, government loans are also an option, but you usually have to move out on your own before you can get the good subsidized loans.
funding for a useful education is a topic that is important to everyone, but I do see how children from a fundamentalist family may be pressured into an education that does them no practical good.
But the reason I replied to this is that I listened to governor Granholm on the radio yesterday, and she had a really great idea that I think the Federal government should consider adopting for the whole country (as soon as we get Bush out of office and stop wasting so much money, but I digress....). The idea is this: every single high school graduate gets $4000 dollars to use on some sort of accredited education. It could be used for college or university or a technical school. If children who actually wanted to get an accredited education had access to some funding from the get-go, do you think that would make a difference?
I'm not sure if this idea applies to this particular situation, but my brain made the connection, so I figured I'd throw it out there. What do you think?
ericthemage on Dec. 9, 2005 3:56 AM
The idea is this: every single high school graduate gets $4000 dollars to use on some sort of accredited education. It could be used for college or university or a technical school.
I think it's a bad idea. Who gets to decide what is accredited? What if we get another fundie in office who thinks that only religious schools should get the grants? I'd rather get government out of the equation.
tlatoani on Dec. 9, 2005 4:39 AM
Accreditation could be defined in the law. It's straightforward now. There's no question about whether a school is accredited or not.
temujin9 on Dec. 9, 2005 3:35 PM
You've got a broken tag - looks like you tried closing an tag with a .
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