The North Canterbury duck girl is real.
No, I haven’t gone off my meds – can you stop asking that question?
After such a huge worldwide response to my posting of 14-year-old homeschooled Jasmin’s letter to the Northern Outlook last week, I thought a follow-up was necessary.
Many of you thought it was a hoax, and fair enough – the Internet is full of rubbish. But this morning I received the following email from Geoff Mein, editor of the Northern Outlook, in response to some questions I sent him about how the letter came to be published and if it was kosher:
Hi Christopher…
The letter is real.
It was submitted by Jasmin, and because of her age we checked with her mother before publishing it.
Regards
Geoff Mein, Editor
Jasmin’s mother has herself spoken out in the wake of the global coverage here. I hope that will go some way towards satisfying some of the more vociferous scoffers, like “Denizo”:
I’m so embarrassed that I ended up here and read this. Please, PLEASE tell me the author is not so profoundly stupid as to fail to realize that this is complete satire, please tell me I’ve been trolled by all of these “commenters” who can’t figure it out either. For goodness sake… what is causing this? Must be something in the water.
There is something in the water, but it’s in the water that secular liberals drink. Some of us are hermetically sealed in gated communities of like-minded thinkers, and while this may be great for finding friends that you don’t want to block when you see their name come up on caller ID, it can over time create a kind of person who finds it impossible to comprehend that there are indeed people in the world who believe exactly what they say – and there are a lot of them.
Author and neuroscientist Sam Harris has been at pains to point this out on numerous occasions when he has been accused of cherry-picking extremist religious views to point out the folly of theism. His response?
“…religious extremism is not rare, and it is hugely consequential. America is now a nation of 300 million souls, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet 240 million of these souls apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers.
This hankering for a denominational, spiritual oblivion is extreme in almost every sense—it is extremely silly, extremely dangerous, extremely worthy of denigration—but it is not extreme in the sense of being rare. Of course, moderates may wonder whether as many people believe such things as say they do.
In fact, many atheists are confident that our opinion polls are out of register with what people actually think in the privacy of their own minds. But there is no question that most Americans reliably claim to believe the preposterous, and these claims themselves have done genuine harm to our political discourse, to our public policy, and to our reputation in the world.”
Most of the views on my post on Jasmin’s duck apocalypse scenario have come via the United States. It would seem that Harris is right.
Jasmin is part of the next generation. Google “homeschooling” in Australia and you’ll come up with Australian Christian Home Schooling on page 1. They boast to be “the largest home schooling organisation in Australia with hundreds of families being actively supported and three decades of experience.”
In the ACHS statement of faith, this is article number 1:
That the 66 books of the Bible are the Word of God, divinely inspired in all parts without error in its origin and the sole authority for doctrine and practice;
The curriculum?
“Scripture and Biblical principles are woven into the curriculum, ensuring students are not exposed to humanistic teaching which conflicts with the Bible.”
This is not satire. This is real.
But you may still decide to go with the response of my friend John, who when I texted him to tell him the truth about Jasmin responded:
“And we really don’t think the ‘mother’ was the author? I think it’s a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top…”
At least he was joking. These people aren’t.
PS. By the way, according to ACHS, the kids mark their own work.
I at first thought it was a brilliantly written piece of satire. Sad to find out it is indeed a product of indoctrination and lacks any sense.
Should we allow the parents/guardians to indoctrinate the children in their care?
As an adult student, I chose to do ‘Logic’ as a high school subject to matriculate and enter university. I think, Logic, along with maths, English and science are essential subjects, before philosophy/religions/culture/social studies/psychology etc. can be studied properly. Logic is where maths and language meet, and like the belief in any supernatural phenomena including ‘God’, a large part of humanity, in common with a schizophrenic episode has a lack of it!
I would just like to say that I called it early, lol. It was obvious through sentence structure and syntax that the person that wrote this was either a child or a poorly developed adult, with me leaning hard on the side of a developed adult.
While Poe’s law may apply to extremism, it probably doesnt apply to writing like a child or in a childlike fashion. Any writer leaves ‘marks’ on their work that identify them (which is why I am positive that Francis Bacon wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare). Those are difficult to fake and on many occasions was able to use the corollary of that to catch students that tried to cheat on their writing assignments in my class.
Have a great day!
Reblogged this on BarkingShaman.com and commented:
I *so* wanted the duck girl to be a hoax, but no such luck it would seem.
I’m curious as to why you quoted a reference to Australian home schooling when the article and girl in question is a New Zealander? Are Jasmine and her mother even involved with the home schooling ideals that you have quoted? Or was it simply the most extreme example you could find in the somewhat close vicinity to North Canterbury to add to the “shock/horror factor” of your article?
I quoted Australia because that’s where I live. The Sam Harris quotes refer to America. The issue of irrational belief systems and how they affect our lives are present in many countries, and the readers of this blog are not limited to New Zealand.
There is homeschooling, and then there’s this-and this extremist homeschooling exists on both sides of the political and religious fence. I once read an article about homeschooling in a now-defunct local alternative newspaper; in the article there were three of the extremes presented, one religious, one secular/environmental, and the other based on gender-in the latter case, the parent wanted her child home-schooled because she didn’t like how the system handled gender, so she wanted her child to learn about gender and feminism issues from her alone. The second was afraid that her child would be poisoned by capitalism, she she wanted her child educated at home. If those examples aren’t typical of extremism, I don’t know what is.
For my part (and this is somewhat clouded by the bias of what happened to me as a result of my learning disabilities and the way the system fucked up my education) I appreciate the idea of leaving school and educating oneself if said school system is not meeting one’s needs (for most teenagers, including most GLBT youth who are being screwed with, I’d recommend getting The Teenage Liberation Handbook and leaving school to educate themselves) and I usually wouldn’t mind homeschooling if and when it’s done well. However, when it’s conducted in this way as nothing more than an extension of extremist worldview from either sides of the human spectrum, then it’s just indoctrination that will end up warping a child quite badly, and it’s a negative thing. Myself, I much prefer that a child get an education in school if this is what’s being done, although the option/educational path I mentioned (The Teenage Liberation Handbook) would and should be something that youth do more than what’s usually done.
Another reason to at least encourage children not to make their opinions public is that if they change at all in the future, which is quite likely on a lot of things, then they’re gonna be stuck with people making judgements on them as an adult based on what they’ve previously said as a child.
Personally, I think it’s great when people expand their knowledge and change their minds on things they may have once believed given enough reason to do so, but not everyone does. I hope for her sake this doesn’t come back to bite her in the future.
With what this girl said, sadly, it won’t.
Chris, let me say as someone who used to live in North Canterbury, that there are certain rural areas in the region that are very populated with home schooling christians who are very devout in their beliefs.
Lets not forget that the Cooperites were founded and originally lived in Cust in North canterbury before they moved to the west coast in 1991, perhaps they left a family behind? but unfortunately i believe that this is merely an example of the, often underestimated, population of “extreme-ist” christians that live in quasi-isolated communities in rural NZ.
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The world is crazy, this is something i’ve realised for a while and it makes me angry!
I read this in the newspaper yesterday and put up a post abotu it. It was funny. Sadly though, this poor girl is serious.
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