The Unguided Academy of Richard Dawkins

Last week the New York Times published a profile of evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins. It’s mostly light and chatty, a kind of review of Dawkins’ work to date. But right at the end it gets interesting. 

The occasion for the profile is the upcoming release of his children’s book, The Magic of Reality. Near the bottom of the last page the article reads: 

[Dawkins] wants to raise questions—Why is there a sun? What is an earthquake? What about rainbows?—and provide clever, rational answers. He has toyed with opening his own state-sponsored school, though under the British system he would have to come up with matching money. But it would not be a school for atheists. The idea horrifies him. A child should skip down an idiosyncratic intellectual path. “I am almost pathologically afraid of indoctrinating children,” he says. “It would be a ‘Think for Yourself Academy.’”