It seems Christian homeschoolers have the biggest stigma attached as being narrow minded, bigoted people. Research shows that just isn't true.
I certainly agree with you that this assumption is unfair! There are bigoted Christian HSers and there are open-minded Christian HSers, just like there are bigoted and open-minded segements of any population. Such assumptions about Christian HSers are unfair.
Still, as Spock (
), I feel I must say that it doesn't seem to me that this research from the website necessarily shows what you're claiming there.
They decided to study home-schooled students� ability to successfully adjust to college life as an important criterion for demonstrating a positive outcome (or not) of home-schooling.
They compared Christian college freshmen who had previously been home-schooled with a matched sample of traditionally schooled Christian freshmen on the College Adjustment Scale. The average scores of the two groups were compared across nine scales designed to measure emotional, behavioral, social, and academic problems as typically presented to university counseling centers.
Even if the study evaluated narrow-mindedness and bigotry as part of that adjustment to college (it might not have--the website doesn't say, and I can imagine that a bigot might still adjust well to college), we could draw no conclusions about relative levels of bigotry compared to non-Christians from this study because non-Christians weren't included in it.
*All* the Christians (HSed and not) might have been more narrow-minded than *all* non-Christians, but we can't know that because no non-Christians were part of the study. It is equally possible that *all* non-Christians were more bigoted than *all* Christians. It's just not knowable from this info.
I don't mean to be argumentative. As I say, I think your point is 100% right and I think stereotypes are dangerous. I just don't think this study is the one to point to to prove your point.
Sorry to slip into my annoying argumentative writing teacher shoes there for a minute. I promise to stop now!
