Evil wears many masks in this world, but none so dangerous as the mask of righteousness. The American Family Association (AFA) is a group of Christian Fundamentalists who have come together in a common belief that the world we live in has been corrupted by immorality. They have decided to fight back against this corruption by trying to re-instate the "proper" religious morals given to us by the Bible. These moral views are narrow minded in the extreme and are often full of hate and prejudice. They often voice their beliefs that abortion is wrong, that homosexuality is a sin, that separation of church and state is a violation of their rights, that the media isn't biased enough in favour of Christianity and much more. The more I read articles from their website (http://www.afa.net) the more angry and horrified I become. So why do I keep going to their site? It's like a train wreck. I don't want to see, but I can't turn away. I was thinking of ranting about them in my Rant and Roar section, but there is just far too much that I have to say. That's why I have created this section. Every so often, I will chose an article from their website and analyze it. I don't know if they store their articles on their website or if they remove them after time, so you might encounter some broken links.
<----- Back to previous AFA articles and reviews
Anyone who has ever taken a stats class will be able to tell you that there is a big difference between correlation and connection. Eric Buehrer clearly never took a stats class. In today's article, The AFA takes statistics that have nothing to do with each other, and then claims that there is a causal relationship. Now, in all fairness, they don't come out and say there is a connection, but if you can't tell that this is their intent, then you're probably not very good at following the plots of action movies either. Let's take a look...
The declining
stability of the family and its effects on children has been
documented once again. This time the evidence comes from UCLA's
Graduate School of Education. In a survey of some 250,000
freshman
in 460 colleges and universities nationwide, the researchers'
findings
are sobering.
That's good, 'cause I'm drunk.
In 1978, 67.2
percent of students said their family had four or more
members. By 1997 that number shrank to 49.2 percent. The number
of
college freshmen reporting that their mothers are full-time
homemakers
dropped from 33.9 percent in 1976 to 11.4 percent in 1997. The
percentage of students reporting that their parents are divorced
or
separated jumped from 8.7 percent in 1972 to 25.8 percent in 1997.
So basically, this paragraph is saying that the classic concept of the atomic family (father, mother, 2.4 children, etc) has been on the decline since the 1970s. It's no secret that the AFA has been quite vocal about their disapproval of divorce as well as homosexual marriages/unions and single parent families (and according to this, they're apparently against women in the workplace as well). This article is their attempt to show how such things can be destructive to a child's development...
The survey also
found that over the last ten years (1987-1997) the
percentage of students' reporting boredom with their classes rose
from
29.6 percent to 36 percent. Those reporting having overslept or
missed
a class or an appointment rose from 30.3 percent to 34.5 percent.
Students study time decreased, as well. From 1987 to 1997,
students
who reported doing six or more hours of homework or study dropped
from 43.7 percent to 33.9 percent.
Hmmm.... so let me see if I understand this correctly... as family size decreased over the past 30 years, students started to do worse in school? Wow, that really would be a sobering fact if it was based on any kind of evidence. If you actually believe what the AFA is saying because of the statistics mentioned above, then you NEED sobering up. While these statistics are given to us in a neat little package, the fact is, there is NO evidence here whatsoever that any relationship exists between family size and a student's study habits. To assuming that a change in a student's study habits is simply the result of his/her family size is insane. Are they honestly suggesting that things like culture, media, intelligence, social interactions and the education system itself have NOTHING at all to do with a student's study habits?! And, if you'll notice, the AFA never mentions how well these students performed in their classes. Don't you think that would be extremely important to a study like this? For all we know, these students have been getting 90% in all their courses. How do we know that the students mentioned in the study aren't just really intelligent? The decrease in study habits mentioned above can easily be symptoms of an intelligent student stuck in a bad education system. That would explain why they find their courses boring and why they feel they don't need to attend class or study hard to know the material. Interesting that their academic performance wasn't mentioned at all, isn't it? After all, if these students weren't having academic trouble at all, then that would definitely turn this issue around. The statistics mentioned above would remain the same, but now a "traditional" family might have far worse consequences on a child than the AFA would lead you to believe. And how do I know that it's family size that affects a student's study habits and not vise versa? Just because the AFA mentioned one statistic before the other in this article, doesn't mean one caused the other. I mean, just read about the decrease in student study habits before you read about the decrease in family size and there you go! I've just shown that if a child finds his class boring, then it will cause his family to get smaller. Just because you lump two statistics together, doesn't mean there is a causal relationship or even that the two are connected. I think a student's boredom at school says more about the education system than it does about family size.
I'm sure that some of you are dismissing what I've said because "statistics don't lie". You're probably thinking that I'm just twisting things to make it appear as if the AFA is manipulating facts. So you know what? I've decided to do my own research. I managed to find some sobering statistics of my own that I'd like to share with you. Now, as you already know, the study habits of students have been on the decline over the past 10 years (as the article says) but did you also know that according to the State Institute of Statistics in Turkey, over the past 30 years (which was during the EXACT SAME TIME that the traditional view of the family went into decline), the population of Turkey increased by almost 63%? Well, doesn't that mean that the reason the traditional family has been on the decline and that your child has doing badly in school is in fact because the population of Turkey has increased? After all, statistics don't lie, right?
<----- Back to previous AFA articles and reviews
<----- Back to my homepage