Opposition to Fundamentalist Education

December 17, 2011 9:57 AM

Philanthropy: Is anyone aware of a non-profit organization that specifically focuses on U.S evangelical or fundamentalist-christian education or extremist Islam education (even better, grade school focused) its mission recognizing that the Christianity or Islam, in its perverted form(s), e.g., creationism, intolerance, senseless violence etc, is logically, from an educated standpoint, harmful to society. E.g., A reputable NP organization in whatever form committed to advocate against fundamentalist schools that teach silliness and harm children, likely an idea tank or direct advocacy program.
posted by gagglezoomer to Society & Culture (6 answers total)

Best answer: I don't know of an organization that is targeted against fundamentalist teaching, but here are a couple that may be aligned with your interests:

The National Center for Science Education defends the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State does what it says on the tin, including keeping an eye on the intersection between religion in public schools and universities and fighting vouchers and public subsidies for public schools.
posted by BrashTech at 10:47 AM on December 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Perhaps you would be interested in Developments in Literacy, an organization that builds and operates schools in Pakistan. Their method of opposing fundamentalist education is to provide a better alternative where it otherwise wouldn't exist. Looking at their website is bound to cheer you up (though it be much more cheerful if there were no need for such an organization at all).
posted by Corvid at 11:05 AM on December 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank's so far ya'll. I'm looking forward to further responses.
posted by gagglezoomer at 11:20 AM on December 17, 2011

This isn't exactly how the Texas Freedom Network states their mission, but that's close enough to what they do. There's a lot of fundamentalist-Christian influence in this state's politics, educational policies, etc, and they act as a counter to it.
posted by adamrice at 12:20 PM on December 17, 2011

I don't know one, but if I wanted to find one, I'd start by looking up ACLU work against religious indoctrination in schools and see who their allies in particular cases have been.
posted by Salamandrous at 1:16 PM on December 17, 2011

Well I know that the El-Hibri Charitable Foundation funded this film, but I haven't seen it. I came across it by chance.
posted by oceanjesse at 1:54 PM on December 17, 2011