Focus on the Problems: Public School Districts Are Using a Religious Right Group’s Materials in Classes
Like many former fundamentalists, I am all too familiar with “McGee and Me” – though it’s hardly the worst Christian children’s show in existence. That honor likely belongs to “Psalty,” which purportedly follows the adventures of a singing anthropomorphic hymn book. Psalty and his terrifying mouse friends lead their “little praisers” on a series of Pied Piper-esque adventures that are allegedly about Jesus. He will haunt my nightmares until I die, and that’s probably the point of the show.
On a scale of “Psalty” to, say, “Veggie Tales,” “McGee and Me” hovers somewhere in the middle. But it still doesn’t belong in public schools. None of these shows do because they’re designed to convert children to a very specific branch of Christianity. The connection of “McGee and Me” to Focus on the Family is of particular concern: As Kopplin notes in his piece, FOF promotes the use of violent corporal punishment on children.
The organization’s founder, Dr. James Dobson, is a child psychologist, and has for decades deployed his academic credentials to defend extreme views on child discipline. “[P]ain is a marvelous purifier,” he wrote in 1970’s Dare to Discipline. “It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.”
In The Strong-Willed Child, Dobson graphically described beating his pet dachschund after it refused to get into its crate. Dobson didn’t include this anecdote as a charming aside; instead, it’s framed as a model for parents.