Oops. The lottery on child birthing foreordained spirits has just placed the next Einstein in a Christian home. His room, all ready for next months due date, is blue. Above the crib sits a mobile with jesus and twinkles with children’s hymns. The walls are adorned with bible verses and pictures of Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus praying in the garden of gethsememe, and Abraham praying up to a cloud. The boys name will be Daniel, after the prophet.
—fast forward 12 years. After showing excellent aptitude for math and science, his parents question his devotion to god and distract his convictions with innuendos and smugness. They correct him with comments about pseudoscience and how faith is the answer to all of life’s questions. They openly criticize climate science, and other ungodly, intrusive left wing conspiracies. Those who believe in science have more faith than Christians. They continue to read select bible verses and tell the creation story, and that we all know that truth comes from the Bible and from god—the answers to life’s questions are in scripture. Bible camps and Sunday worship, youth choir and is now president of his Sunday school class. He can quote 50 scriptures. He is a good boy. His neurons are off the chart smart. He memorizes the King James Bible. He is a prodigy.
At graduation he leads the school in an unsanctioned prayer, even catching his parents by surprise. They are so proud. He is a leader. Perfect GPA and smart as they come—he will do just fine in life and be a good husband and a godly man. On the side he is applying the sciences—quantum mechanics—his true love. He’s been accepted to Liberty University and plans to major in divinity. His parents are so proud.
At 21 his love for science remains, but the pace of college life and an early graduation, student debt and a baby on the way, he takes a job at a church in Tulsa. Moving expenses paid and a little house on the property, he begins the rest of his life. His ideas of quantum mechanics are never published or reviewed. His math is getting rusty, and the equations he had memorized he can no longer decipher. They sit in a “get to it later” moving box as his life begins. He now does a local Christian radio show Saturday nights. Q and A and a memorized bible. He’s fantastic!
Religious side-tracking is delaying progress in the world. Statistically, 80% of the greatest scientific minds we’ll never hear of. Distracted with faith, belief, and fable, the windows of opportunity close and what could be, would be great, becomes mere baggage to the few that are pulling us along toward greatness. Fill the mind with something great, but anything will do if you’re starving it.
And if you think christians are indoctrinated, what do you think of their cousins?
“Is it true that Muslim children can RECITE the whole Quran? How?
Yes! It is true. Our children can recite the Quran by age 5–12 years. Around 90% children in Muslim households memorize more than 6000 verses and can recite Quran from memory”. Literally millions from each Muslim country have done this. And the cultural pressure for these “Hafiz” is great. They must maintain the memorization through there life leaving little time for advanced learning.
Although an impressive feat, it is also a discouraging look into the future of practical knowledge from the former breadbasket of higher learning.
When that’s all you know, it must be true. There is no time for anything else when culture dictates a life filled with one topic that designs your every thought.
TheCommonAtheist 
Such a waste, & so sad.
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Oh but he was not at all influenced by his parents, was he? His life decisions were made all on his own, right? No indoctrination, no “godly” encouragement. He just “decided” to put aside his love for quantum mechanics.
How sad.
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I also was unaware that Muslim children memorize the Quran. Guinness has the youngest on YouTube at three years old. Over 6000 verses. How you have time to learn anything else?
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It’s even worse than it sounds. Unlike Christianity, Islam doesn’t accept translations of its holy book as the real thing. Only the original version in Arabic is the real Qur’ân. Only 20% of the Muslims in the world are Arabs; the other 80% — in Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. — are native speakers of languages other than Arabic, and not many of them learn much Arabic as a second language.
So for Muslims in those countries, it’s a matter of trying to memorize a whole book in a language they don’t even understand. Just imagine the amount mental effort involved in that.
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Wow, Jim, you paint a terrifying picture here….and all the more so because, as we know, it happens all the time.
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I hear comments all the time, ” what does it matter?” It matters to me for two reasons. 80% of the world is depending on a god to come down and make everything better, judge the sinners and save the world, delaying responsibility of our self destructive behavior. Every generation thinks they are the last, but no one is coming to bail us out. Without religion dominating the conversation, we could sit down as real people and make this a kick ass world to live in. When people leave faith behind they become human again and start having their own thoughts, do a 180, and for the first time in their lives think for themselves. They can’t believe the things they said and believed. We don’t have a people problem, we have a religion problem and most of the world is stuck in a system that opposes humanity.
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Could not have possibly said it all better Jim! Hear hear! Here’s to the quick end of humanity’s mental-emotional enslavement of 2,000+ years! 🖕
Become a Heathen and become an Einstein or a Sofia Kovalevskaya, Emmy Noether or Ada Lovelace! 🙂
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I really liked your Blog.
(I am also an atheist.)
My Blog – https://maddyzphysics.wordpress.com
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I checked yours briefly. I too enjoy physics and how we relate to it on a human level. I post some correlations from time to time. This is one of my favorites https://jimoeba.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/dissipated-energy-the-collapse-of-religion/. I’ll give you a follow as well.
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Thanks 😀😁
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“Are you an atheist?” she asked me. I could not say the answer I knew to be true. Days later, I admitted a truth that I had spent a lifetime fearing. I discovered that only by accepting my own personal truth was I then a free man. Free of the self-imposed bonds that I allowed because I thought so many others knew what I did not. For me, “yes, I am atheist” was when I saw that light. I tried so hard for my entire life to believe what I did not, what was not true, and at my own peril. Accepting the truth was one of the best days of my long life. There is always hope for the truth.
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I avoided learning anything contrary to the faith because it was a waste of time filled with the religion of science. I love science, but science that countered my belief system were shunned by teachers and preachers and then by me. I fell in line with it for several years. God know what he’s doing. I missed many opportunities because of the thoughts put in my head. Took me a while to clear it out.
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I was fortunate in one way, the Catholic church’s attitude, at least at the time I was in Catholic school, was to accept science as fact and adapt their beliefs to fit science. Evolution, for example, was accepted. Why? Because, well, God was God and he could work through evolution just as easily as he could just create stuff out of nothing. Same with the origins of the universe. The Big Bang theory was accepted as well. I was lucky that we had some nuns who were passionate about giving us a good education, believe it or not, and a parish priest who was equally so.
How did they deal with biblical contradictions like the Genesis story? The Bible was wrong, basically. Genesis and the Old Testament especially was, I was taught, a collection of stories, tales and oral traditions that were intended to provide moral guidance and were never intended to be accurate descriptions of creation. If something written in the Bible was contradicted by scientific discovery, then what was in the Bible was incorrect. The people who wrote the Bible weren’t trying to write a scientific paper, they were trying to write about religious beliefs and moral behaviors. The priest we had at the time didn’t attempt to claim that Noah’s flood, for example, was a world wide deluge. What he really believed was that the flood was a catastrophic event, yes, but a localized one that hit a specific community, and was probably about a family that managed to survive by getting the family and livestock on a raft.
Come to think of it, I seem to have had a rather odd religious education. I think I got lucky.
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I avoided learning anything contrary to the faith because it was a waste of time filled with the religion of science. I love science, but science that countered my belief system were shunned by teachers and preachers and I fell in line with it for several years. God knew what he was doing. Lol. I wasted a lot of years following someone else’s dreams.
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I also often wonder how many budding female scientists have had their careers ended before they could even get started by some of these Christian sects which indoctrinate girls into believing they need to be subservient to men and allowing themselves to be treated as little more than the property of a father or husband.
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That is certainly true. In almost every culture historically, half the potential brainpower has been largely wasted.
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When I was a kid, I was told many times that I could not be better than the boys at anything. I hated hearing that!
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If I did happen to be better at something, the boys always had to be allowed to win. GRRRRR…..
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Nice story, Jim. But there are other paths…
I am not about to say anything for self-aggrandisment. I will only tell you the facts as I know them:
I was born with an IQ of over 200. I had most of the bible, including the begats, memorized by the time I was six. In school I was always miles ahead of my classmates, usually finished a whole year’s work by xmas, then gliding along for the rest of the year. I was already a year ahead of my age group, but psychologists of the era thought it best to keep me with the kids I first started going to scool with–better for my social development.
Meamwhile at home I was the brunt of my father’s anger, and my mother’s strictness. I was not allowed to read adult books though I craved them. On those days that my mother didn’t beat me, but usually whether she did or not didn’t matter, my father would beat me when he got home from work. He told me I was the dumbest kid he ever met. He accused me of stealing my little brother’s brains–my little brother was born with Downs Syndrome. He expected me to know things I was never taught to know, and he hit me when I did not do them right. (He was mean to my whole family, but once the school informed him I had a genius IQ, he directed most of his meanness my way.) I began questioning my religious upbringing in my early teens, and the gap widened thereafter. Back in school I was was doing some amazing things. But…
I moved away from home on my 16th birthday. I tried to continue going to school but I had to support myself and where I went to school nobody knew me from Adam. I changed the spelling of my name, and school officials had no idea I was a boy genius. I changed schools often depending on where I could find to live, and I fell between the cracks. I became a teenage criminal mastermind for awhile, and then I ran away to Vancouver and became a hippie.
None of the things I was supposed to do in life ever happed. I tripped out on LSD and discovered my path to spirituality.
Somewhere along the road, I’m not sure where, I can remember saying to myself, if I am truly a genius I am going to set the word on its religious ear. But then scientology, Jonesville, and David Koresh made me re-examine my thoughts, and feelings I had had previously to keep my mouth shut finally came to be understood, you cannot raise anyone’s consciousness unless they are ready to have it raised. My thoughts to leading a religious revolution died before I reached the battleground, and I made it my responsibility to only talk to people that were true seekers, and even then not try to be a teacher, but a role model and midwife.
This is how I used my genius, if you will pardon the word. I no longer see myself that way, but even now as a senior citizen it is hard not to fall back on old habits. When people tell you that you are born to do great things, you come to expect ourself to do them. But now, all I really want to do is tell people there is hope for the future, and let them now it is up to them to help make that hope become reality. I know certain things are possible, but I cannot teach how. It is against my “religion” to even try.
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If your abilities were encouraged or even just left to your own things would be different. My point is not lost in your story, but had you been allowed to excel, no limits (like religion or lousy parenting, alcoholism etc) the world would be a different place. Thanks for sharing RG.
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No alcoholism here, but lots of addictive personality traits. I have overcome smoking, and gambling, colas, and other things in my lifetime, but nothing too damaging to my biological systems.
But it was your story that brought all the bullshit back, and I needed to excise it before it could gain a toehold.
My thoughts are these: had I not been put through my childhood hell, I might never have questioned authority. If I had not questioned authority, I might have invented something new, or improved on something, but probably it would have been part of the system, that which holds the world in its fiefdom. As I entered high school I was aiming at becoming an astrophysicist, studying the stars, and how to get there. I would probably never have delved into spirituality, though maybe atheism. I don’t know.
As it is, I am happy with how my life turned out. Spirituality is far more important than anything else in or out of this world. Not everyone will agree with me on that, but that is okay. All in its own time. I know my time here was not wasted, though many think it was. They don’t count. They don’t know what I do.
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But one may still find spirituality and discovery in the sciences at the same time and by reason of joy, not misery. But, I am very happy you have found your happy spot. What a vivid and interesting life you’ve led to be you.
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To me it’s just a life, not so different from most peoples’. You are right about discovery being available in a lot of different scenarios, but I don’t think spirituality would have been in mine. I can look at so many things that happened in my life where forks in my journey could easily, usually preferably, have taken a different route. But they didn’t, and I ended up where my birth had not intended me to be.
Not that birth intends one to be anywhere, but certain conditions are chosen that would help a being to learn particular lessons, if things go along a possible course of action. So many things caused me to alter course, sometimes of my own choosing, sometimes of other people’s choosing. They all stand out now, yet when they were happening they mostly seemed completely innocuous. I’m sure most people can look back at their lives and see forks that did not look like forks as they passed by them. But we can seldom sense their importance at the time.
Just like me talking to you. I am not even sure why I first visited your blog anymore, yet you have posed questions and set scenarios that cause me to rethink old thoughts, or even just remember old experiences. You are helping me on my kourney, whether you know it or not. And I appreciate this, though I don’t always tell people that they help. It is a possible case of the scientist affecting the outcome of his own experiment. But w’ll let it go at that for now. It’s just a pleasure to know you.
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Thank you and igualmente,
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You are so right about the Muslim case. From around 800 to 1100 CE the Middle East led the world in science, technology, and mathematics (this is often called the heyday of “Islamic civilization”, but it’s more correct to describe it as a Hellenistic revival under Islamic rule). That golden age was suffocated into stagnation when conservative theology gained the upper hand in Islam. For the last nine centuries that region, where civilization itself began, has contributed practically nothing to human progress. Who knows how many potential geniuses were born there but never developed their talents because the religious culture had no use or tolerance for them.
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Nicely put. Why? Why would they go from such extremes that you destroy the very thing that made you interesting and alive? I know you know the answer. Monotheism. Now it’s one same old topic and behavior monitored piety and control
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Orthodox theologians like al-Ghazâlî and al-Ash’arî attached no value to science and the Greek philosophy (translated into Arabic on a massive scale in the 9th century) on which it was based. They considered those things a distraction from the only real source of truth — divine revelation. Pretty much how the religious mentality in your story views modern science, that is. Al-Ghazâlî was able to show that the Islamic concept of God’s omnipotence means that cause-and-effect relationships are an illusion. If you aren’t allowed to believe in cause-and-effect relationships, you can’t do science. Once the Middle Eastern governments of the day accepted that kind of theology and started enforcing it, it was all over. Sort of like what would happen if the creationists and global-warming deniers and assorted fundies in Congress were able to force all scientific research institutes in the US to bow to their views.
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I’ve tried following your blog over there but I can’t seem to comment. Do I have to set up a blogspot account? Any chance you’ll be at WP any time? And thanks for the link up yesterday.
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Unfortunately Blogger and WordPress (and Disqus) are separate systems and having an account on one of them doesn’t allow you to comment logged-in on the others. My comment form does have a link to how to post comments without a Blogger account and link back to your own blog, but it’s not the same thing as being logged in. Setting up a Blogger account is an option — I have WordPress and Disqus accounts just so I can comment on blogs that use those systems.
I’ve been on Blogger for twelve years and I’m kind of used to it. Unless they start censoring content or something, I doubt I’ll switch. Thanks for your interest.
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I tried to follow you too. 😢
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Different practices have served as a limiting factor to our development, different cultures views on women have prevented us from hearing that voice of insights that would have changed the course of our history
Having a child used up his early childhood reciting and memorising the Quran has set us backwards. Our childhood is the period in our lives were our curiosity about the world is at its peak , suffocating curiosity and our quest for understanding of how the natural world works most of the times leaves irreparable damage on the mind of an individual
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Great comment Jonathan. That age up to twelve are wonderful years of exploration. I would offer that even in their free time during that time their mind is full of reciting Quran like the Tetris effect. Over and over. What a waste.
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I was away for a few days and it’s been hard to keep up with all my favorite blogs.
This is a great post and the comments are fabulous. I think there will always be some religion that will always have the element of judging others and needing to feel superior and ” chosen.”
And there will always be tyrants who want to control people and will do so through fear. It’s just a sad fact. It’s a poison that’s always been here and will continue until humanity is all gone. Humans can be lazy and have a propensity to want to be led and feel righteous.
To me the current religious”stage” and trump supporters are two sides to the same coin. Trump is god to them and they believe his every word.
The only thing I can see that would ever change it would be AI. And again that would depend on the programming, so we as a total species may never be truly free.
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I think it really boils down to parents should allow their kids to try new things, but be willing to back off if the child shows they are really not interested as well as foster and support interests they do show. However, it’s inevitable that sometimes parents have to make decisions for their child that the child might not like or understand.
It’s of course a tricky balancing act. I really appreciate the “religious” education (really more a cultural education) I got as a kid now that I am an adult, but hated it when I was a kid because I would rather have spent my time watching cartoons. But would watching more cartoons really have benefited me? I would have said the same thing about learning math though and obviously that is a useful skill to have that I can appreciate only now that I am an adult.
We always were taught the importance of questioning traditions, but also honoring them too. I don’t think the two necessarily have to be enemies!
(This is kind of a response to this post and your previous.)
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If you can find out what they love you can find out what they’re good at. Variety is important for balance. Curious your take on the time and efforts of Quran memorization and such a flood of religious rote. Am I overreacting?
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Hard to say. Part of the problem is I don’t know enough about the topic of a standard Islamic education to make an accurate or educated judgement. How much time do they spend on it versus studying other subjects? Do they only do so in specialized religious schools a few times a week, etc. Are they teaching it as a replacement for science?
I don’t think I have an issue with time spent memorizing the Quran for its own sake in the same way I wouldn’t care if someone spent time memorizing the Bible or any other book. The central question for me is: for what purpose? What ideas culturally are being emphasized?
When it stifles someone’s personal growth or abilities and makes them unwilling to consider other answers and go along with pernicious societal ideas then I see it as a problem.
I would still be very careful in overgeneralizing in that I am sure there are plenty of faithful Muslims who memorize Quran verses, but who also go into STEM fields as well.
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I’ve only caught a few documentaries on Islam in various regions and nations in the world and that is about all I can base my knowledge on — here in Texas what few Muslims there are stick pretty much STRICTLY to their “religious community” only — and very few times they would chit-chat with me at the grocery store or some public festival maybe they keep it very formal and short. I’d prefer more, but I also don’t want to pester them(?) either, if that makes sense.
That said, I know that in Saudi Arabia and other very wealthy Muslim nations, most all of the higher echelon of families obtain university educations from the West, like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, etc., then return to their native country and cultures. Those particular “families” and their extended families don’t seem hell bent on killing and terrorism. But then again, they come from very wealthy homes. On the other hand, those Muslim regions that are horribly impoverished, wore torn, corrupted, and with no quality education (outside of the Quran) available or PRIMED for this sort of indoctrination:
https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-isis-afghanistantaliban-hunters/
This entire series of an embedded journalist was QUITE poignant for me.
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I was criticized pretty heavily a couple weeks ago by muslims after I mentioned much of the culture is a mystery to me. My feeling was they wanted it that way as they answered very little
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Well, knowing what I know about the history of Palestine and the Middle East after World War I… I totally understand their “caution” with Westerners.
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Check out this fellow…
Armin Navabi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born 25 December 1983 (age 34)
Tehran, Iran
Residence Vancouver, British Columbia
Nationality Iran
Canada
Occupation
Political ActivistAuthorSpeakerPodcaster
Known for Atheist activism
Notable work Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
Movement Secular movement
Website http://www.atheistrepublic.com/
Armin Navabi (born 25 December 1983) is an Iranian-born ex-Muslim atheist and secular activist, author, podcaster and vlogger, currently living in Vancouver, Canada. In 2011, he founded the online freethought community Atheist Republic, a Canada-based non-profit organisation[1] which has hundreds of branches called “consulates” in several countries around the world such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines,[2] enabling nonbelievers to interact in societies where irreligion, apostasy and blasphemy are often criminalised and repressed.[3] As an author, he debuted with the book Why There Is No God (2014), and in 2017 he became a co-host of the Secular Jihadists from the Middle East podcast with Ali A. Rizvi, Yasmine Mohammad and Faisal Saeed Al Mutar.[4] In January 2018, the show was renamed Secular Jihadists for a Muslim Enlightenment, with Rizvi and Navabi as co-hosts, which fans can support through Patreon.[5]
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Have a look at this fellow….
Armin Navabi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born 25 December 1983 (age 34)
Tehran, Iran
Residence Vancouver, British Columbia
Nationality Iran
Canada
Occupation
Political ActivistAuthorSpeakerPodcaster
Known for Atheist activism
Notable work Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
Movement Secular movement
Website http://www.atheistrepublic.com/
Armin Navabi (born 25 December 1983) is an Iranian-born ex-Muslim atheist and secular activist, author, podcaster and vlogger, currently living in Vancouver, Canada. In 2011, he founded the online freethought community Atheist Republic, a Canada-based non-profit organisation[1] which has hundreds of branches called “consulates” in several countries around the world such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines,[2] enabling nonbelievers to interact in societies where irreligion, apostasy and blasphemy are often criminalised and repressed.[3] As an author, he debuted with the book Why There Is No God (2014), and in 2017 he became a co-host of the Secular Jihadists from the Middle East podcast with Ali A. Rizvi, Yasmine Mohammad and Faisal Saeed Al Mutar.[4] In January 2018, the show was renamed Secular Jihadists for a Muslim Enlightenment, with Rizvi and Navabi as co-hosts, which fans can support through Patreon.[5]
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Also, I’m not in any way excusing any American military covert or overt military operations of killing either. We have a VERY long history of committing atrocities as well, it just isn’t in our traditional “history textbooks”. If it is in there, it is obviously SLANTED one way and one way only! Just fyi. 🙂
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Great comment
Where I grew up I was told that I should always ask questions on things I didn’t understand ( well that’s the whole point of questioning )
Generally if the question had to do with a cultural or religious tradition, you were in some kind of grey area, I had been told many times that my questions mostly regarding god and Catholicism were either useless question or you are not supposed to ask that kind of question or if you were given an answer other than ‘that’s how it is’, you were not meant to question further, if you did you would be labeled disrespectful
There was another rule, obey before complain. Regardless of how you didn’t agree with a cultural or religious teaching or tradition you had to follow it. Now in some cases that was great but what is the whole point of supposedly permitting people to question traditions if you must agree with them at the end
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Are we talking about Daniel Donald Dingleheimer-Smith?
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Possible we are talking about a general trend in religion to overwhelm the senses with feel good fables and then passing up other parts of life because you already have the truth. It could be Smith, but jones will do
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It’s tough to keep up with those guys
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Hello Jim. We have the same problem with Ultra Orthodox Jewish schools in NY. The poor kids are taught almost religion only. Boys are worse off than girls as the boys are expected to be rabbis. They graduate school unable to do math, they know no sciences, and can’t get jobs. The families are taught to figure social services like food assistance into their daily lives as the schools know the kids can not get jobs that pay enough to support the large families they are encouraged to make. To make it worse, the state funds a lot of these schools. I posted about it here. https://scottiestoybox.com/2018/04/06/taxpayer-funding-for-religious-schools-that-teach-only-religion/ Hugs
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Shameful. I remember reading that.
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How can parents do that to their own children. Heck I don’t get how anyone would wish a child to have less education rather than more? Good parents want their children to have it better than they do. That use to be the American dream, each generation is better off than the one before them. Yet these parents know there is nothing waiting for their kids when the graduate, yet they still send them to these schools. They are sabotaging their own children and grand children. I don’t understand that. Hugs
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More education confined to the approved dogma = less educated and more indoctrinated.
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@Scottie
I think the answer is that the ultra-Orthodox think they are giving their children a good education by teaching them strictly Torah, Talmud, and the various commentaries. In their heads that is what a good and responsible education looks like.
Pretty much all other forms of Judaism generally think this is insane, do the complete opposite (with the exception of Modern Orthodox Jews who find a balance), and put a lot of value into secular education. It has a lot to do with how each group responded to the Englightenment, being freed from the ghettos, and given new legals rights in European societies that they originally lacked.
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I can see the parents wanting their children well versed in their faith. However if their children can not add or subtract, can not speak or write understandably in English there is no way that can be called a good education. If their child can not read English well enough to know what labels on food items say, or what is in basic service contracts they are not educated. There is no way the parents could call that failure a good thing. The school slogan should be “make my child dumber please”. I personally think it is child abuse. Hugs
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Oh, I completely agree. Basically their education doesn’t prepare them to function as adults in the United States, which is a shame.
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And then the taxpayers have to pay for their life style. The do not know anything of birth control, they are encouraged to have more children, but they can not support them. The can’t get jobs that pay much because they have no skills to offer. They need housing assistance, food assistance, and the state of New York is paying a large amount of there schools funding.
I am not sure how to change the situation, but for the sake of the children we must try something. What do you think we could do? Should religion have priority over life skills? I just had a thought, if the religious right has their way in public schools this will be happening all over the country, religiously trained young people with no job skills or the ability to question what is being done in the country. Hugs
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This problem occurs in Israel as well.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.jpost.com/Magazine/Back-to-the-core-for-haredi-education-469513/amp
Like I said it all stems back to the Enlightenment and how each group formed and reacted to its ideas, principles, and emancipation from the ghettos. At the core of the ultra-Orthodox’s religious and philosophical output is the rejection of the Enlightenment and isolating themselves from the modern world. They also generally don’t care what a Reform Jew, Conservative Jew, or even a Modern Orthodox Jew thinks about their lifestyle so critiques from that end won’t do much.
I grew up in NY (not the city, but Long Island). When I went through most district in NY offered to types of degrees: a local diploma or the more rigorous Regents diploma (where basically every course you took in high school had state developed Regents test that you needed to pass). I would suggest that the state government essentially control accreditation. You can have a private school where you teach Yiddish and Hebrew, but you also must teach all the regents level materials and a certain percentage of your students must pass the test in order to remain accredited.
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