If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?

Matthew Yglesias thinks there should be some limits on the rights of parents to determine their children's upbringing. Well, so do we all, but Mr Yglesias draws those limits a bit more tightly than many parents might like:

What I think is that children should be brought up to believe the things that are true. For example, that life evolved over the course of hundreds of millions of years and was not created by God. It seems to me that this is something the state ought to try and cause children to believe. It also seems to me that it's something parents ought to try and cause children to believe, but many parents believe that they ought to try and cause their children to believe the reverse. Then the question is -- who should win?

Some feel that parents should always win -- creationist parents have a right to raise their children in their faith and non-creationist parents have a right to raise their children in their faith. I think this is wrong. The fact that a child's parents believe something is not relevant.

But of course it is eminently relevant, even where the parents' belief is wrong. Mr Yglesias is conflating two quite separate issues: what parents should raise their children to believe, and what schools should teach. Schools, of course, should teach evolution. But if devout creationist parents tell their children that they disagree with what they learn at school, that is another matter. It is no business of the state, nor of Mr Yglesias (or me).

It should be hard for me to take this view. I am thoroughly persuaded that the theory of evolution is correct; that every schoolchild should be given at least a grounding in the sciences; and that (as Dobzhansky said) nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. I am as thoroughly persuaded that attempts to make schools teach creationism (even when tarted up as 'intelligent design') are nothing more than attempts to put the state in the service of fundamentalist religion. Parents who raise their children to believe creationist accounts of the the origin of life do them a profound disservice. Yet I have no difficulty at all in conceding their right to raise their children according to their own best lights, dim as these may be.

The state should not let schoolchildren be taught 'theories' that every informed person (including the vast majority of Christians) must regard as ludicrous and patently false. But nor should it usurp the parents' role in forming their children. When parents abuse or neglect their children, the state is right to intervene. Beyond that, the rearing of children should not fall within the state's purview. And that's true even if you or I, or a majority of the population, think the parents wrong.

Perhaps it is easy to conclude that parents should be barred from teaching their children that creationism is true because, as we all know, creationists are unpleasant ignorant yokels. But one can easily substitute any number of other beliefs. Let us say you are an atheist. You sincerely believe it true that there is no deity. And, because truth is a good, and you wish good for your children, you wish to teach them the same. Let us say I am a Christian, and as equally sincerely believe that you are gravely misleading your child. Let us say, indeed, that an overwhelming majority of our fellow-citizens agree with me. However unfortunate we all might think your choice, it is your choice to make. The state, in such a scenario, might mandate religious instruction in the schoolroom. And, assuming its constitution would permit such a thing (the American constitution wouldn't, but where I live religious instruction in state schools is the norm), this rule could even have democratic legitimacy. So let the wee ones be taught at school to prostate themselves before the altar of Crom - but do not tell their children that they cannot teach them something else at home. (Though I'd like to think it unnecessary to do so, I should add that I do not believe state schools should teach children to worship any god, not even Crom.)

Mr Yglesias notes that

[c]hildren are people, not the property of their parents like a dog or a car that they have a right to treat any which way they happen to prefer.

Quite so. I can't have my child put down like a dog, or sell him like a car. But parents do bear a responsibility towards their children that they bear towards no one else. And it is their responsibility alone. That responsibility is to raise them, as best they can, to be good and happy adults. Some parents fail in this miserably. Even where they have done their best in all sincerity, they may find that their children reject some or all of what they have been taught. After all, children are people; they are not dogs or cars. No doubt many creationist parents have seen their children grow up to accept evolution. Heartbreak for the parents, of course (though a good thing for the child); but then thinking and deciding for oneself is part of what it means to be an adult.

This is not especially a post about creation/evolution; that was simply the example Mr Yglesias chose. My own parents devoutly believe, and taught me with the best intentions in the world, many things with which I have come to disagree very strongly (creationism not among them, in my case). I believe my parents were, and are, deeply wrong on these points. I could wish that, in some ideal world, they would have thought as I do and not spent all those years cluttering my head with nonsense. But I would not for all the world interfere in their ability to teach their children what they believe is right.

What the writer of this post's title quotation seems not to have realised is that many parents give their children stones, thinking them bread. Perhaps all parents do, to some degree. So long as they are making every effort to provide what they sincerely believe is bread, they are doing their duty as parents. It is not for the state to decide whether they are right; that task will fall to the child.