Andrew Schlafly

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Andrew L. Schlafly

Andrew Layton Schlafly is the son of well-known American conservative author and activist Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum. An unabashed conservative Christian, Andrew Schlafly runs a homeschooling program in his home state of New Jersey, where he has taught at least 170 homeschooled teenagers since 2002.

He is also the founder of a website called Conservapedia, which promotes staunchly conservative Republican and pro-American values, and a strictly Young Earth Creationist view of the history of our universe, planet, and life. Intended as an educational resource, and promoted as "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia", Conservapedia has caused great controversy in print, on the radio, and online, primarily over the accuracy of the information that the website provides.

Background

Personal life

Born on April 27, 1961, in Alton, Illinois, Andrew Schlafly is the son of John Fred Schlafly (1909-1993), a conservative lawyer, and Phyllis Schlafly (née Stewart in 1924), best known for her activism in the American fundamentalist conservative movement.

He was homeschooled until the age of seven.

Post-secondary education

Schlafly holds a B.S.E. from Princeton UNiversity (1981), a J.D. from Harvard Law School (1991), where he graduated magna cum laude. While in college, he was on the Harvard Law Review, and he clerked for a federal appellate judge in Washington D.C.

There is currently no evidence in the public domain for his credentials or training in the fields of education or childhood/pre-college development.

Family

On November 24, 1984, Schlafly married Catherine Agneta Kosarek. They have two children.

Professional life and political career

Schlafly became a member of the New York state bar in 1993. Before turning to private practice, he had been an associate with the New York City law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, & Katz. He is currently a legal representative for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and has appeared on television as a voice for the anti-vaccination movement.

He has served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School in 1995.

In 1992 Schlafly made a bid for the Republican Party nomination for a seat in the United States House of Representatives, but was defeated in the primary, garnering 11% of the vote and finishing in fifth place after spending $84,725 of his own money. He ran as an advocate of conservative causes.

Private tutor

He has taught classes in World and U.S. History to homeschooled high school age children for several years. As a volunteer he teaches eight online courses on the Eagle Forum University, where over 6,000 students are registered, largely from the same course material that he provides for his homeschooling program.

Political Affiliation

Schlafly is a member of the Republican Party, and in the 2008 Presidential Primary contributed $1500 to the campaign of Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.

Andrew Schlafly, educator

When considering whether to employ Schlafly as an educator of your children, we feel there are a few issues which should be brought to the attention of potential students, parents and their families. We list some of these, with links to his own statements on the issues, mostly from Conservapedia.

Qualifications

Outline legal status of homeschooling

Although the State of New Jersey requires no qualification of homeschool teachers, nor the use of standardized texts, "Instruction academically “equivalent” to that in the public schools is required. In addition to language arts, math and science, public schools are required to teach 1) in the last 4 years of high school 2 years of U.S. history, including New Jersey history (civics counts as history per N.J. Stat. Ann. § 18A:35-2.1); 2) a one-year elementary school course in community civics, citizenship, and New Jersey civics, geography and history; 3) 2.5 hours per week in health, safety and physito 35-5.4." If legal action is initiated, parents must carry the burden of providing the local superintendent with evidence that the child is in fact receiving equivalent instruction. However, ultimately it is the state that must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the parents failed to provide their child with equivalent education. 231 A.2d at 257.

The law as it relates to homeschooling varies from State to State. For example, in California, Article §48224 of the Education code requires homeschool teachers to hold a teaching credential. In a 2008 case, "California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children."

Qualifications as an educator

As yet, Schlafly has placed no evidence in the public domain of his formal training or certification in education or pedagogy, or made any mention of qualifications in this field. When asked directly about his teaching credentials at Conservapedia, he has declined to respond.

Educational Standards

AP certification for his courses

While Mr. Schlafly does not bill his class as an AP course, he does say "Students seeking to earn college credit can take the CLEP or AP exams upon successful completion of this course." However, his class is not an AP certified course - a student taking his course would gain no college credit for the course itself. Schlafly has indicated he will not seek certification for his course as he feels the board would censor him. An apparently experienced homeschooling parent has publicly discussed at length with Schlafly that his course is not at AP level, and may also poorly prepare students for the relevant exam.

A student taking the AP test upon completion of Mr. Schlafly's class should not expect to be adequately prepared. Without additional and extensive specific preparation it would be difficult for a student to receive a high enough AP score to qualify for college credit. Regardless of score achieved on a subsequent AP test, parents should be mindful to not refer to this course as an "AP course" on any college application, as such a false statement could imperil a student's chances of acceptance if the claim were examined by the college.

The book Schlafly uses in his course apparently is an SAT II preparation book, a review book, and not a proper textbook at all. AP courses use a college-level textbook.

Comparisons between Andrew Schlafly's class and the AP

The U.S. History AP exam contains both a multiple choice section, and a section requiring answers in essay form. Schlafly's exams are entirely multiple choice. You can see Schlafly's midterm exams here and here (Schlafly gives separate tests to boys and girls, which is discussed elsewhere). AP questions can be seen here.

The AP test contains three extensive essay questions, one document based, and two general essays, accounting for half the overall grade. Answers are expected to be in-depth and very thorough; the students are expected to write for between 35 and 45 minutes on each. Schlafly's exams contain no essay questions at all. To review what he expects from his students' writing, we need to examine his homework assignments. These 'essays' contain no such stringent requirements; Schlafly suggests "These questions require at most one or a few phrases to answer; you do not need to write complete sentences".

Examples of AP questions:

1. Analyze the impact of the market revolution (1815-1860) on the economies of TWO of the following regions:
   • The Northeast
   • The Midwest
   • The South
2. Presidential elections between 1928 and 1948 revealed major shifts in political party loyalties. Analyze both the reasons for these changes and their consequences during this period.

Examples of Schlafly's questions:

1. What do you find most inspiring about Christopher Columbus?
   • Sample answer: "That he had an idea: That you could go west by sailing east. Nobody believed him, but he pursued this idea, and he went down as one of the most famous travelers of all time. He didn't let anyone dilute his dream." Although this answer is factually incorrect, as it was already well known the world was round, full credit was awarded: 10/10 (You may also notice that the student had the directions backwards; Columbus aimed to go to the East by sailing west. As the overall concept is the same regardless of direction traveled, we let this slide.)
   • Another sample answer: "His determination." Grade: Full credit.
2. What was the Boston Tea Party?
   • Sample answer: "Samuel Adams led a group of colonists, all dressed up as Indians, into the Boston harbor, where they dumped all the tea into the water." No mention of motives, taxes, effects, whose tea it was or where it came from, or anything else is made, but full credit is awarded.
3. Describe what you like most about the Monroe Administration.
   • Sample answer: "I like the prosperity that occurred in under the Monroe Administration." Grade: full credit (Seeing as how Mr. Schlafly specifically tells his students that complete sentences are not required, this student presumably would have received the same score for merely answering "Prosperity")
4. Abraham Lincoln was homeschooled. Do you see any characteristics in him that might have reflected his homeschooling, such as his independent thinking?
   • Sample answer: "That he was open to ideas such as growing a beard." Grade: Full credit

While Schlafly on occasion does ask questions that could potentially approach the level of the AP, they are generally vague, and the answers he expects from his students would be completely unacceptable on an AP exam, which expects thorough analysis, not "at most one or two phrases".

Schlafly does not prepare his students for the most difficult part of the essay section: the document based question. The AP exam requires the ability to synthesize the contents of multiple primary sources into a coherent historical argument, a skill that Schlafly rarely attempts to develop in his students. Although sometimes he will ask his students to explain a political cartoon, Schlafly has not asked his students for any real analysis, nor to interpret multiple documents simultaneously, a skill vital to success on the AP exam.

For more information on the AP exam, see here. You can download sample exams on this webpage.

Uncertain of his own ability to graduate students who are qualified for college

In a 2008 posting on Conservapedia, Schlafly made clear that he is not convinced of his own ability to qualify the children he teaches for college, as he does not follow the expected curricula, and he sought "suggestions" from his community of students and editors as to how he might do so.

Parents choosing to educate their children under the tutelage of Schlafly should be mindful of the fact that Schlafly himself is unsure that his educational program will properly prepare the student for post-secondary education.

Educational Practice

Ideas on class size

Mr. Schlafly believes larger classes are inherently superior to smaller ones. He first made this claim when announcing on Conservapedia that his American History 101 course was going to be the largest such class in the world, with more than 50 students. He did not quote any figures to back up this claim, he simply assumed there were no high school classes this large — although African classrooms can be far more crowded. Conventional wisdom dictates that smaller class sizes are preferable, primarily for the individual attention a teacher can give each student in a smaller class, but Schlafly disagrees. This "larger is better" notion is particularly strange given his overwhelming support for homeschooling which by definition typically would have a tiny class size. He defended this idea of his in an essay which you can read here (see also the talk page). Our own defense of smaller classes, and a rebuttal to the individual points made by Mr. Schlafly, can be seen here.

The notion that smaller class sizes are preferable is so universally acknowledged that class size is an important factor in official college rankings (smaller average class size yielding a higher rank on the listings). If you intend to enroll your child in one of Mr. Schlafly's classes under the impression that your child will be in a smaller, more intimate environment, and will receive more personal attention than in a public school classroom, you are likely mistaken.

Girls are academically inferior to boys

Schlafly believes that because of biological predetermination, girls are less intelligent than boys and that they cannot achieve academically at the same level, and he openly repeats such views on the record. In response to a criticism of these views, Schlafly said "Think girls can excel in math as well as boys can? Liberals teach they can, which is teaching a falsehood". Another posting of his decried a federally-funded report which showed no difference in educational ability across genders - Schlafly derided the findings as "politically correct. Schlafly's belief that girls are intellectually inferior to boys is not confined to math, and is also evident in his social sciences courses - for example, in examinations for his American History course, girls are given 15% fewer questions than boys but the same amount of time. Schlafly's stated reasoning for this is to "minimize competition between boys and girls". Mr. Schlafly's aversion to inter-gender competition has been noted before and is apparently strong enough to allow him to engineer this gender bias into his course. The policy seems ill-advised for female students, as the AP exam, SAT-II, and college exams for which this course is ostensibly preparing students make no such distinction.

These opinions contrast with the findings of most educational studies. An American Psychological Association study found zero difference in achievement across the gender gap in 7.2 million students nationally, and in the study Schlafly disagreed with, the National Science Foundation found that "girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests". And while there are indeed fewer women working today in science and mathematical fields than men, many studies, such as one from Stanford University, show that the reason for the imbalance is because women are in the minority and societal norms are being perpetuated by opinions like Schlafly's - in essence, a self-perpetuating and circular situation. The outstanding achievements of women in science such as these astronauts, scientists, and mathematicians are well documented. Our opinion is that any imbalance should inspire teachers to work even harder to encourage their female students, but Schlafly does not share this view and actively discourages girls from attempting to achieve at the same academic level as boys. His desire to set an imbalanced educational standard for girls has even resulted in public protests from his female students^{[citation needed]}, but despite such complaints he continues to pursue his agenda.

Clearly, if you plan to place your daughter under Schlafly's tuition, his opinions in this matter are likely to be of some concern.

Ignorance of fundamental elements of American history

Schlafly's lack of training as an educator — and as a historian — is evident in his attempts to design an American history course. A recent unit test on early American history, meant for a college-prep course on the subject, asked questions that were of dubious value in preparing a student for college level, or even high-school level history. One question asked: "What do you find most inspiring about Christopher Columbus?" A student answered "That he learning how to be a captain at age 10", which Schlafly graded as a "good" answer. Other questions sought to obscure facts commonly accepted by academic historians such as the existence of a pre-Columbian Viking settlement in Newfoundland and the "Triangular Trade" model of explaining the Atlantic system of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Inflated sense of expertise

Schlafly frequently claims superior expertise in whatever subject he is debating, and has repeatedly attacked and overturned opinion, evidence and references supplied by fully qualified editors based solely on said expertise. Often, rather than simply disagreeing with others, he makes totally unsubstantiated claims that are simply opinion, assertion or even simply uneducated guesses, and of which he brooks no criticism. To date, he has declared himself more knowledgeable than others in these fields:

• Anthropology

-Schlafly believes that the theory that American Indians are descended from Asian peoples who migrated across the Bering Strait is "liberal claptrap"

• Constitutional law of the US
• Law in general^{[citation needed]}
• Great Works of Mankind
• History of the US

- Schlafly claims he is teaching "the largest pre-college American History class in the world".

• World History

- Schlafly purports to teach a World History course, yet does not understand that the Greeks had comedy, considering pre-Christian humor a "mystery."

• Biblical scholarship and translation and his opinion of the views of 'experts' in this field
• Ancient language scholar
• Entertainment Industry

-Schlafly estimates there are about 50 "active, well-known" women musicians, perhaps 450 television and movie actors, and "no more than 500 female 'Hollywood' performers under the age of 30".

• Immunology
• Oncology
• Statistics
• Child and adult psychology

-Most notably his view that adopting liberal points of view causes mental illness.

• Pure mathematics
• Economics^{[citation needed]}
• Microbiology
• Nutrition

- He asserts that liberals are fatter than conservatives.

• Cinema

-In the Evangelist Values section of this conversation, Schlafly hotly debates a number of editors regarding a movie entitled Trainspotting, about which Schlafly holds many opinions despite admitting never having seen or even heard of the film. In the back-and-forth, multiple conservative editors disagree with his total misunderstanding of the plot and characters, but Schlafly maintains his position. It is notable that the one person to defend him in this debate, Bugler, eventually revealed himself as a parodist.

• Linguistics

-Despite the fact that Islam is a religion, not a linguistic group, and even though Muslims live all over the world and speak dozens of languages, Schlafly believes that Muslims may be identified by the way they pronounce certain words, or even their ability to dance.

-Schlafly believes that the English language is unique in its ability to use loanwords.

-Schlafly creates often illogical and unsupported linguistic theories, and then acts as though they were true: "If a word inevitably alters its meaning after an approximate number of uses, then the time period for the change in meaning will shorten due to improved technology."

• Humor

-Schlafly repeatedly asserts that pre-Christians and atheists are devoid of humor. On February 10, 2009, he wrote that "atheists... like the ancient Greeks, are unable (or refuse) to open their minds to what real humor is" No evidence is given of the ancient Greeks refusing to open their minds in this manner. He cites "the dictionary" (he declines to say which, despite being asked) as giving the definition "something 'ludicrous' or 'absurdly incongruous'," which, he insists, disqualifies vulgarity, slapstick, and irony from the category of humor.

Schlafly has almost never publicly admitted a mistake, whether that be in the form of research, factual error, reference, quotation, calculation, etc.

Consequently it is surprising, given his claims of expertise in so many fields, that Schlafly is openly contemptuous of acknowledged and credentialed experts, and particularly so when they conflict with his uncited assertions. His often stated slogan "Don't read a book to learn, write a book to learn" further underlines this anti-intellectual stance.

Mr. Schlafly proposes that editing Conservapedia is a better way to learn than "reading a book, attending a seminar, ... discussing with people [sic]". He claims that "In merely a few spare minutes or hours, the participants in this project have learned more than they could have after spending 10x or 100x many hours in any other medium." The extent of his views regarding his own site lead him to consider it one of the greatest achievements throughout history.

Lack of emphasis on grammar and spelling

High school students, especially those wanting to further their education, need to learn how to construct well argued, correctly written, properly punctuated and grammatically correct essays. However, Schlafly spends little time if any in his classes providing students with necessary writing guidance^{[citation needed]}. He does not expect complete sentences in the essays he sets^{[citation needed]}; he does not take students to task for more than the most basic of grammatical issues other than to suggest some capitalization errors, and those corrections are inconsistent at best^{[citation needed]}. One can see an example of Schlafly's preference for brevity displayed in this Conservapedia discussion - he refuses to respond to an editor's question because, to his mind, it lacks the necessary concision. Parents of Schlafly's prospective homeschool students are invited to consider the tone and reasoning that concludes: "[Y]our above rant illustrates my point. I'm moving on and request that you be substantive and concise in the future."

Throughout the pages of Conservapedia, one can find Schlafly claiming expertise in spelling, grammar and punctuation, and attacking people on these terms in order to deflect contributions to his encyclopedia with which he disagrees. These responses typically have no bearing on the suggestions put to him: see and , where Schlafly deflects attention from his unsubstantiated encyclopedia entries concerning Obama as a Muslim by criticising the contributor's spelling instead, and with an unrelenting emphasis on what he regards to be liberal: see this footnote, where the British English spelling of the word "honor/honour" is, on its own terms, taken as being not only non-American, but "liberal" in its bias.

Despite this persistence, Schlafly's own posts, articles, and essays are frequently rife with poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling, which remain uncorrected and unacknowledged. Examples include:

• "See if you can learn out to spell 'superior'"
• "You're "sources" for that ungrammatical claim are interesting..."
• "I do teaching writing"
• "Jesus is describing as writing in the ground"
• "You'll be fine if you're hear to teach and learn"
• "Folks, learn how the simply concept of futures markets work"
• "we learn ourselves in the process"
• "Childbirth prevents against breast cancer"
• "Conservapedia has long observed that girls are injured in sports at much higher rates than boys, and how liberals denial or downplay it."
• "We are looking into ways to restore that even that data"
• "This is tremendous potential".
• "I have to run an errand but want to you everyone know, as I've said before, that it's only productive to discuss something with somebody who has an open mind."

Public grading of homework

Mr. Schlafly grades his student's homework publicly, online. The student's answers are posted, and Mr. Schlafly provides notes, commentary, corrections and gradings for all to see- not just other students, but anyone who happens to be reading Conservapedia, including people who are not supportive of the students. Some educators would argue this is neither fair nor appropriate, and that a private teacher-student relationship when grading allows greater mutual understanding and a less judgmental educational environment. Recent examples of public grading can be seen on Conservapedia.

Grade inflation

Conservapedia derides grade inflation in liberal schools. However, when grading his students' homework, Mr. Schlafly has yet to give less than an 8 out of 10 on any question, even if the answer is clearly wrong. 98% is a typical score for a homework assignment containing various errors and the most cursory of answers.

The reasons for this inflation remain unclear. Potential reasons could include: an unwillingness to tell a student that his or her work is substandard (or even poor) especially in a public forum (see "Public grading" above); inflating his own ego as a teacher by ensuring all of his students excel, thus reflecting well on him; seeing his class as more of a diploma mill, in which all a student needs to do is get their parents to pay, and show up to receive an A, thus profiting from parents' desires for their children to have stellar transcripts; or his belief that the cursory, simplistic, and erroneous answers he receives are actually superb (this is unlikely, as he has been known to state that an answer is incorrect, though he will still grade it 8/10 at the least).

Poor communication with students

Schlafly's guidance as to how his American History course students should focus their studying time left many scratching their heads as to his intent:

"You will spend a certain amount of time preparing for the midterm exam. Call that amount of time "x". How you allocate that time to different areas of 1500-1877 will make a difference on how well you do on the exam. If you spend 90% of x on the period between 1500 and 1700, then you will do poorly on 90% of the questions, because they will be from the period 1700 to 1877. You would have done far better to spend the 90% of x on the time period that will have 90% of the questions."

This kind of poor communication with his students perhaps explains the basic nature of many of his student's examination answers.

Disdain for other students

Schlafly has a very poor opinion of public schools in the US, and repeatedly disparages them in comments and articles . Schlafly also directly disparages, mocks and insults students of such schools. While Schlafly is entirely free to be disdainful of schools within the public system, since he offers an alternative, it is an interesting insight into this educator's mindset to see him publicly mock the actual students of these schools.

Beliefs

Disrespect for academic qualifications

Schalfly is highly dismissive of academia and academics in general, and believes that "the process of inducing people to rely on 'the perceived view of experts' is a misleading one" - in Schlafly's view, learning is best achieved by ignoring experienced, qualified researchers in any given field and instead "thinking for oneself". Throughout Conservapedia, many other examples of this philosophy exist.

Additionally, the Conservapedia article Professor values, created and written mostly by Schlafly, is clear in its disregard for academics.

Politicization of curriculum

Andrew Schlafly politicizes most topics he teaches. He believes that movies, books and music have underlying political messages that are either liberal or conservative, and in particular has refused to watch any movie featuring Tom Hanks (a well known liberal) in the belief that his films push a liberal agenda . He furthermore claims that the dictionary has become affected by liberal bias as it contains an entry on CE (common era). For information on how he has politicized his math course, see the corresponding section and links below.

In October 2008, in order to justify teaching a very large homeschool class, Schlafly claimed that all teachers unions were liberal, and seek smaller classes in order to enhance liberal mind control. He also contended that small homeschool groups are often liberal public school teachers teaching outside their class who are thoroughly indoctrinated in the small-class mind control.

Seemingly inconspicuous words such as "efficiency", "phonics" or "radar" also fall under Schlafly's dichotomy of liberal/conservative.

Open clash with the Bible

Finally, Schlafly has conflicting views on the Bible. On the one hand, as a fundamentalist Christian with a literalist interpretation of the Bible (he prefers the NIV, although he has recently begun to suspect it is too liberal), he views it as the authoritative work of history and science and thus believes that Genesis is a true description of the beginning of time. As a result, he holds, along with other Conservapedia administrators, Young Earth Creationist views, believing that the Earth is 6,000 - 10,000 years old and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed until recent times.

On the other hand, Schlafly also believes that certain passages of the Bible are "tainted" and have been modified since the original passages were written. In the case of the "adultress parable" (in which Jesus invited those without sin to cast the first stone at an adultress, and none were able to do since all were sinners), Schlafly believes that the passages of John 7:53-8:11 which contain the story have been inserted after John was originally written and accepted as legitimate in order to support a liberal worldview in which sinners are forgiven, as no one is without sin. Schlafly views this behavior of Jesus to be the beginning of so-called "Moral Relativism", of which he disapproves; for this reason, he argues that this passage of the Bible is actually a hoax.

Throughout Conservapedia, Schlafly uses examples from the Bible to prove his points, believing as he does that it is the infallible Word of God. Yet his conflicting beliefs that certain passages of the Bible are hoaxes complicate that belief enormously. His desire to revise the texts of the Bible and remove what he describes as "vandalism" to the Bible to fit his own views disturbed many of even his closest peers at Conservapedia, as did his evident desire to disavow Christian forgiveness of the adultress in the story. Schlafly has in fact rejected one of the central tenets of Christianity, referring to the notion of extending goodwill to one's adversaries as "foolish."

Finally, on Christmas Day 2008, he began his own 'Bible Retranslation Project', wherein he proposes a rewriting of the Bible to, for example, replace all instances of the term "The Word of God" with his own translation, "The Truth of God", and the rewording of The Ten Commandments with the wording "Thou Shalt Not Murder" replacing "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Questions might be raised over how capable he is of rewriting the Bible as he has admitted he's ignorant of Greek, Hebrew or even the language Jesus spoke.

Math course

Since August 2007, Mr. Schlafly has promised an upcoming math course called Critical Thinking in Math. You can read the course description, and it sounds very ambitious. Taught by a professional math teacher at a college level, some of the material could certainly be very educational, enlightening, and challenging. However, Mr. Schlafly is not a qualified math teacher, and various skeptics and critics who questioned and commented upon the class (who seem to have professional knowledge of the subject, though it is hard to confirm this on any wiki) made it clear that not only is the curriculum beyond almost any high school student, it is well beyond Mr. Schlafly himself, who established in many cases that he is no expert in the field. A discussion of some of these reservations can be seen on the class's talk page. Further statements by skeptic "Robert", which may have proved embarrassing to Schlafly, were deleted.

This course was announced on the main page at Conservapedia for over a year, but with little interest from students, and no apparent start date, it has recently been removed, and we may perhaps assume that the course has been abandoned. For much more detail on the fate of mathematics in general at Conservapedia, see Conservapedian mathematics.

Further evidence of Mr. Schlafly's lack of competence in the field of mathematics can be seen in Conservapedia's math articles. While generally factually correct, they range from the incredibly simplistic to the hopelessly convoluted, with little in between. Conservapedia's dual goals of being both a comprehensive mathematical encyclopedia, and a reference work for the average 14 year old, lead it to contradictory results in article depth. For instance, Fourier series tells the reader little unless they are already familiar with an advanced level of math, while the algebra article is clearly written for a very young audience. Schlafly's abilities as a math teacher are further sullied by his insistence on politicizing the subject - e.g. his dismissal of topics such as complex numbers and proof by contradiction. He is also dismissive of the scientific topic of relativity, because of a connection he makes to "Moral Relativity".

Conservapedia

Typically part of his homeschooled courses will take place on his online encyclopedia, Conservapedia. When considering whether to have Schlafly as a teacher of your students/children it is important to consider the environment they will be exposed to on Conservapedia.

History

Schlafly founded Conservapedia in November 2006, with the help of his homeschooled history students, to counter what he perceived as a liberal bias in the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Initially, it was an interesting attempt to build a conservative, Christian-friendly, pro-American encyclopedia, with his students helping write short articles on various topics ("American History", for example) as part of their coursework in his class. Various internet commentators picked up on his project in early 2007 and created a rush of traffic to the site. Many editors from across the political spectrum were concerned at the inadequacy and factual inaccuracy of the content, and some of Schlafly's assertions, and signed up in order to contribute to the articles and discuss these issues with him. They were almost all banned from the site by late May 2007. At the same time, several refugees from Wikipedia (and other websites) turned up, sensing an opportunity to have a voice, and gain positions of "power".

One result of this has been that instead of a group of children building an encyclopedia and having fun while learning, the site has become the battlefield of a series of power struggles between disaffected grown-ups and internet vandals, resulting in a zone of intense censorship.

Using Conservapedia

If you are considering employing Andrew Schlafly to educate or homeschool your children, we recommend that you first visit Conservapedia, and learn a little about the site. First, click on "Random page" (in the "panel" on the upper left below the Conservapedia logo) several times and scan the various articles that come up. Second, click on "Recent Changes" (in the same panel) and see which "talk" (e.g. Talk:Evolution) pages are being edited a lot. In particular look for talk page edits by Andrew Schlafly (Aschlafly) himself, and his other trusted editors such as Ed Poor and TK. You will see two options next to each edit listed - "(diff)" and "(hist)". Click on one of the "diff" links. A "diff" link is wiki-jargon for a special version of a page showing one single change to the page at the top and the resulting page below it. This shows you the 'difference' between the new version of the page and its prior content. Also, at the top right, it will indicate whether there is a "next diff" - an edit following the one you are looking at. By clicking on "next diff" again and again, you can clearly follow not only the "conversation" on the talk page (this works for articles too, of course), but you will see when people's comments are deleted, altered or ignored (ignore the occasional intrusion of internet "trolls" and vandals). Also, if you see an edit that has been "reverted" you can see by clicking "diff" what info has been reversed, usually with a message as to why.

A "Wiki" is essentially a collection of online documents that may be edited by anyone visiting the site. "Editors" sign up to contribute to the resource. We recommend you do so yourself - it is free and all you need to provide is an email address (you can use a 'junk' email address if you're worried about getting any spam). Find an article you know something about and see if there's something you can contribute to it or correct. Just click the "Edit" button at the top (or to the right to edit a "section") and edit the text that appears in the box. Remember to click "Save" below the edit box when you're done. Now, the information you have added is visible on the website to any other visitors, and other editors who may be interested in the topic may accept it or reject it. And so the cycle of editing and reviewing goes on across the internet, 24/7 around the world. (Note that Conservapedia is 'locked' overnight- EST- to prevent editing).

The best way to learn a little about Schlafly and Conservapedia is just to watch the edits being made for a while. We encourage you to work through the learning curve if you are considering exposing your children to this - 15 minutes a day for a few days should be enough for you to see the nature of the online community there.

By the way, the same strategy will work here, on RationalWiki - if you are curious about this site and our purpose, please feel free to use the same advice. But please be aware that we often just prefer to have fun, and we don't consider ourselves to be building an "encyclopedia".

Typical usage patterns

Schlafly and his appointed administrators (the "sysops") rarely tolerate facts or information that disagree with their own views. Editors who disagree with the CP worldview are often told by Schlafly or others that they are "clueless" - regardless of their expertise in the field or the validity of their information. They are often told that they don't understand logic, science, or history, and that if they just "open their minds" they will see the truth. Schlafly frequently introduces non sequitur issues into discussions. All too often, in the middle of a discussion, editors are banned from the site by Schlafly or an administrator.

One of the issues that has most concerned critics is that articles are often "locked", and written only by one editor/sysop - no visitors may edit the article whatsoever. For example, the article on homosexuality has been essentially written by one editor, named "Conservative", and the page has been locked for at least a year. This is true of other articles, for example the articles on President Barack Obama, Prof. Richard Dawkins, the Theory of Evolution, and breast cancer, among many others. The concern is that these articles contain not only opinion, but also a considerable number of factual inaccuracies which cannot now be corrected, since the "owner" of the article is the only one who writes the article, and only other "sysops" can edit it at all. In most cases, appeals to include information in those articles on their "talk pages" is rebuffed - if not simply deleted, to avoid the appearance of dissent. These articles are presented as "encyclopedic", yet are clearly just personal essays with no other input allowed.

Reading the site (especially the essays and talk pages) can give you a good feel for Schlafly's teaching and management style.

Conservative discomfort with Andrew Schlafly and Conservapedia

On occasion, the "unbiased" status of the Wikipedia entry on Conservapedia has been questioned by those who have found it to be a condemnation of the site, rather than a description of it. This is the long standing claim of Conservapedia itself, which defines itself as an unbiased response to the "liberal" tendencies of media and culture in general, and Wikipedia in particular^{[citation needed]}. Contributors to Wikipedia have explained their NPOV status as follows: "If the sources reflect general opinion, and split 90/10, then our goal is for the article to also split 90/10. That is NPOV; treating opinions which have different levels of support as though they had equal levels of support is POV and, frankly, misinformative if not deceptive".

The consensus through Wikipedia is that the general public view of Conservapedia is a negative one, and yet it is very evident from the talk pages of Conservapedia's articles that this perspective is not limited to the "liberal" attitudes that they condemn. Many Conservatives have expressed concern that the arguments and tone of Conservapedia cast them and their beliefs in a bad light, and that the encyclopedia is so extreme and absurd that it comes across more as a parody than anything they wish to acknowledge seriously.

A handful of these concerns by committed Conservatives, accompanied by Andrew Schlafly's unabashed dismissal of each, are presented below:

• Disgusted Conservative
• This Is Why Obama Is Winning
• For the love of God... HE IS NOT A MUSLIM

See also

• Not the article you were looking for? RationalWiki has another, far more satirical, article about Andrew Schlafly.
• Lenski Affair (our own moderately satirical, but mostly fact-based, take on Mr. Schlafly's failed attempt to discredit Dr. Richard Lenski)
• Schlafly; our fork page for Schlafly and eponymous articles.