HA note: Shaney Irene’s story was originally published on March 13, 2013, on her site ShaneyIrene.com. She was homeschooled and was a former moderator on the Rebelution forum and now describes herself as a “thinker, reader, and writer” who is “passionate about adoption, youth ministry, and ending sexual abuse.” This story is reprinted with her permission.
On Valentine’s Day 2007, The Rebelution unveiled the Modesty Survey. Girls submitted questions, and guys responded. As a moderator of the Rebelution forum, I was really excited about the project. I posted it on Facebook, forwarded it to my youth pastor, and talked about it with anyone who would listen.
Six years later, if you ask me what I think of the Survey, I’ll tell you I regret having been a part of it, and I wish the project didn’t exist.
What happened? Well, basically I realized there are a lot of problems with modesty as taught in American Christianity, and the Survey hands a megaphone to some of the worst of those problems.
Perhaps the biggest and most disturbing problem is that we gave a platform to guys just because, well, they were guys.
We had no way of knowing whether the respondents had a healthy understanding of their own sexuality, knew the difference between attraction and lust, truly respected women, etc. We gave legitimacy to the idea that they had a right to speak about women’s clothing choices simply because they were male.
Just because a person is male doesn’t mean their opinions on modesty are legitimate. And, quite frankly, it was inappropriate for us to promote the idea that men should teach women what clothing choices are appropriate. It reinforces the false idea that modesty is something that women do for men, an idea never found in the Bible and fraught with its own set of problems.
In offering a platform to over 1600 guys, many of whom shouldn’t have been given it, we lent legitimacy to some very dangerous ideas.
Many guys admitted to losing respect for girls who didn’t live up to their ideas of modesty, feeling “disgusted” or “angered” by these same girls, and even going so far as to say, “…she loses her right to ask guys to stop looking at her like something to be had…you are asking to have guys stare at you.” The word “cause” in relation to guys’ lust also made a frequent appearance.
This is the same attitude that says victims of sexual assault and harassment who wear “immodest” clothing are “asking for it.” This is the attitude that allows pastors to think that “What were you wearing?” is a legitimate question to ask when a woman reports being sexually harassed or assaulted. It’s the attitude that allows stories like this to happen.
We gave this attitude a platform.
(Ironically, all of the guys were asked to sign a petition in which they admitted that their lust was entirely their own fault. We missed the contradiction we were presenting.)
We also promoted the idea that modesty is primarily expressed through clothing choices.
While modesty as an attitude of the heart was given a lot of lip service, you simply can’t get past the fact that the vast majority of the 148 questions were about clothes.
The idea of modesty was inherently connected to the idea of not being a “stumbling block” for men, instead of being connected to the ideas of humility and self-respect. Modesty in Scripture is about not flaunting oneself. When Paul tells women to dress modestly, he’s basically saying, “Hey, let your beauty be about a beautiful heart, not about dressing extravagantly to impress others!”
But when modesty is about not “causing men to stumble,” it becomes about someone else’s reaction, not the state of one’s heart.
The survey allowed little to no room for the idea that, “Hey, maybe just because the majority of guys think a girl is being immodest, doesn’t mean she actually is.”
This is further reinforced by many responses from guys that made a direct correlation between a girl’s clothing choices and the state of her heart. Multiple guys made comments such as, “It changes everything about what I think of her,” “I feel sorry for them, because they must value their looks a lot, and esteem themselves a lot in their body, rather than in their relationship with the Lord,” and “…my opinion of her character lowers quite a bit.” In making these statements, the guys are making assumptions based solely on one factor: clothing.
You can’t say modesty is a heart issue, then make assumptions about a person’s heart based on their clothing choices. That’s backwards.
The last problem I’ll mention is that the Survey did nothing to differentiate between healthy, normal biological attraction, and lust.
Unfortunately, there are lots of guys who are led to believe they are the same thing. So when they find themselves physically attracted to a girl, they feel guilty. By asking guys to go through a list of questions about clothes and think about their reactions, we unintentionally reinforced unnecessary shame for those guys who didn’t understand that their biological reactions are not the same as lust.
(For further reading on the problems that modesty teachings present for guys, I recommend these posts by Preston and Dianna.)
When these concerns were brought up when the Survey first launched, we justified its existence through disclaimers and clarifications. Not once did someone say, “You know what, disclaimers don’t exempt you from the problems with the Survey.” Six years later, after hearing many stories on how modesty teachings have hurt people, I’ve realized it’s true: good intentions don’t erase problems.
So while I still think that modesty is important, the Survey approached the topic from the wrong angle, used incredibly problematic methods, and ultimately does more harm than good.
If you are a girl who has felt pressure from the Survey, I’m so sorry. If others have used it to control you, devalue you, or question your discernment, I’m sorry. You are free to ignore the Survey and to make decisions based on the Holy Spirit’s leading and input from friends and family that YOU trust.
(”Sex™” for this post refers to traditional (procreative/penetrative) intercourse.)
Sex™ is hard – and I don’t mean it in the cute double-entandra way. I mean it’s difficult.
It’s hard being newly married with an unhealthy body image, unhealthy (and untrue) understanding of what Sex™ is and means. Becoming quickly disillusioned by false promises perpetuated by parents and theologians and feeling horribly ashamed – and mostly? mostly angry. Because the lies of my childhood permeated every fiber of my being and made intimacy scary.
Imagine being told that you’re damaged goods and no one in their right mind would love you if you had sex before you were married. Imagine being compared to murky water in a glass, a scratch on a sports car, a chip on fine china if you were to be impure (which is so loaded that it could even mean something as simple as having a crush on someone. I know I felt guilty and apologized for having a crush once – thinking that made me undesirable). Imagine being scrutinized for kissing, or so much as holding hands while dating. Because that leads to Sex™ you know? And there’s no such thing as self control.
But then also being told, as a young girl, that when you’re married – you have to have A LOT of Sex™. Whenever your husband wants it, and you have to have unprotected, unsafe Sex™, too, because otherwise you’re ruining god’s design. Being told that essentially your job, once married is to be a baby and sex machine – because otherwise your husband would probably leave you (don’t get me started).
To make this worth it? To make not having sex before you’re married worth it, they tell you that you will have The Best Sex Ever™ just because you’re the purest of them all.
The Best Sex Ever™ is supposed to happen with absolutely no knowledge of your body, learning only abstinence, and being told your entire life that Sex™ is evil, bad, and ungodly outside marriage, but that as soon as the pastor announces you, it’s the most best thing ever and you suddenly know all about your anatomy and how your bodies work together?
It’s about time someone called bullshit.
Purity teachings, abstinence only education, and guilt/fear/shame tactics about my sexuality have been hard to get rid of. They permeate, they collect, they stay, they tell me I can’t talk about the fact that I did not, indeed, have The Best Sex Ever™ because I waited and proceeded to be ignorant about my body. My ignorance has cost me much, personally. Largely in embarrassment, but also in identifying physical problems, and forming a healthy relationship with myself and my own sexuality.
Those feelings of failure persisted for a while, failure because purity teachings required us to be ignorant. Our parents subscribed to “if you tell them nothing, they won’t do it or know how”. The ignorance that was required, the lies I was told – the fact that value as humans were dependent on first: whether or not sex was had before marriage, and second: on how many kids you’ll have after – anger me to no end.
The philosophy of, women must be 1) horribly self-conscious and paranoid about other women their husband see and 2) must be gods in bed because that’s what’s keeping their husband there, strikes me as demented and generally makes me want to strangle whoever is spreading that lie around.
I often feel strange when I’m around people who live this way. Because I don’t feel self conscious or paranoid, I don’t care, and I trust my partner. Our relationship is based on so much more than that.
“Purity” teaches you that appearances and sex are everything, but also that you should in no way think about or know about your body, sex, or have any healthy relationship regarding your sexuality or your future partner’s.
“Purity” taught me that ignorance is safe, wanted, necessary and it lead to me feeling like a failure, guilty, ashamed, confused, and disillusioned.
I was homeschooled, I bought the lie, I believed ignorance was best, and I was told I’d be rewarded. I know countless others have suffered at the hands of purity teachings, and abstinence only education, of not being allowed to know about our own anatomy. I was ashamed because I didn’t know basic things (like, about my hymen).
I wish that I had been taught a healthy outlook of my body, of my sexuality, of my existence; instead of one that degraded not just women, but all of humanity into raging sex beasts. Even so, if there is one thing I learned the hard way (ha), the one thing that I learned that made dealing with the shame and guilt easier (if not almost completely go away)? Is that sex is what you and your partner make of it. Sex is about enjoyment, it’s about each other, it’s about what makes both people involved feel good and is not about procreation.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on July 18, 2011.
Children who go to public school receive sex education. Some sex education programs are better than others, some are more comprehensive, others less so, but at least children attending public schools get sex education. I didn’t. My parents never told me about sex, never had “the talk” with me, nothing. My parents taught me that sex within marriage was the most wonderful thing ever but that sex before marriage was the most sinful thing ever, but they never actually explained what sex was. They just told us that it was a “special way of loving.” Weird? Yes. In an ideal world children will learn both about sex and to hold a healthy view of sexuality from their parents. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world.
Now of course, I was curious: just what was this “special way of loving?” What was this thing at once so dangerous and so wonderful? And why was it so taboo, kept hidden from me like a secret? I pieced this secret together here and there from various sources over the course of six or eight years using a variety of sources:
A Biology Textbook: When I was in middle school I found a description of sex in a biology textbook. The two or so sentences of clinical explanation horrified me, and I quickly closed the book and put it away, more confused, terrified, and ashamed than enlightened.
An Art Book: Around the same time, I found a book full of pictures of statues in a stack of art books my mother had gotten from the library. The statues were nude. I stared, fascinated, looking at the pictures in an effort to learn more about human anatomy. I then felt incredibly dirty and put the book away quickly before my mother could notice that I had seen it.
A Book Store: When I was around fifteen, I was at Barnes and Nobles and ran across a book on how to tell your child about sex. I hid behind the shelves of books and listened anxiously for footsteps. I skimmed the pages furtively, hungry for whatever information I could find, information that would help explain this confusing thing to me. Given that I was terrified of being found and that the time I had was limited, the only thing I remember learning was about masturbation, which I had never heard of before. I felt extremely guilty and dirty afterward.
A Christian Sex Guide: At some point during high school, I found a Christian guide to improving your sex life in my parents’ bedroom. Closing the door and extremely nervous I might be discovered, I leafed through the book, slightly concerned that my parents might be having marriage problems and very frightened of being caught looking at the book but more curious than anything else. After a few minutes, I returned the book to where I had found it, feeling guilty and dirty, but slightly wiser.
The Internet: When I left for college I could use the Internet without being afraid that my parents would check the computer’s history. Finally I could solve questions that had been puzzling me, like just what “oral sex” was – I had heard the term somewhere several years back and had been curious ever since, but had been unable to find the term in a dictionary. Finally my questions could have answers. I clicked through pages of Christian sex advice websites, always afraid that my search terms might bring up porn sites. I justified what I was doing by reminding myself that I was now an adult and besides I was only looking things up on Christian websites.
A Mirror: I realized during my first year of college that I had no idea what parts I had down there. My parents’ emphasis on purity had made me feel that my private area was somehow dirty and unclean, and I had therefore never paid any attention to it. I didn’t even know where my vagina was, just that it was down there somewhere. Curious, I looked up anatomy images on the Internet and then then stood naked in the bathroom using a hand-held mirror to explore body parts I had not even known I had. I was both fascinated and horrified by what I learned.
Romance Novels: After I had been in college for some time, I held the hand of the man who is now my husband for the first time. This made me feel warm and wet in certain places that I had not known could be warm and wet. I was completely baffled. I had no idea what was happening to my body. I might now know the basic mechanics of sex, but I knew nothing about how it actually worked in practice, or what it meant for the body to be “aroused.” What was this? And so, I turned to the lurid romance novels one of my friends kept in her dorm room, reading the sex scenes in depth to try to find out what sex was actually like.
And that, reader, is how I learned about sex. Is it any wonder that I wish I had had a sex education class? Some years later, after I left my parents’ home and was married, a fifteen-year-old girl in a youth group I helped out with started asking me questions about sex. I answered her questions, every one of them, with the openness and honesty I wish my parents had had with me. I didn’t want her to have to learn about sex by sneaking her mother’s Christian sex book or reading romance novels. I didn’t want her to be nineteen or twenty and completely ignorant of her own anatomy. I didn’t want her to be like me.
I’ll never understand how my parents could on the one hand teach me that sex was something beautiful and sacred and at the same time leave me in ignorance about it and make me feel like it was something dirty and unclean. It was the most wonderful thing ever…but it was completely taboo as a topic. It was a sacred bond between husband and wife…but please don’t mention it or think about it. The contradictory messages I received gave me a very warped view of sex. I both looked forward to the sacred bond of sex with my future husband and felt dirty any time I thought about it. Learning about sex piecemeal here and there didn’t give me a very accurate view of sex either, even discounting the sense of guilt I felt about doing so.
When I finally got to the point of actually having sex, I was disappointed to find that it neither felt sacred nor lived up to the descriptions in the romance novels I had read. Picking up knowledge of sex in bits and pieces here and there while awash in guilt does not lead to a comprehensive understanding of sex or a healthy sexuality. I had no idea that sex took practice or effort, or that sometimes one partner wouldn’t feel like it and the other would, or that it could be sweaty and gross. It has taken me years to iron all this out and to come to a healthy view of sex. I wish that instead of focusing on keeping me ignorant of it, my parents had informed me about sex and focused on giving me a healthy view of sexuality. But then, their beliefs about sex would not allow them to do that.
What I would have given a sex education class, a safe place where I could have found the basic information and asked questions! Sure, it wouldn’t have been perfect, but it would have been something.
Fundamentalist Homeschooling Is A Poison: Isaiah’s Story
HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Isaiah” is a pseudonym.
“Fundamentalist homeschooling is a poison. I say this from experience. It spreads like a virus, and not just among the conservative Christians who form its natural hosts.”
I have mixed feelings about homeschooling, to say the least. While I find many, if not most, of the common criticisms of homeschooling to have some kind of validity, I still feel myself cringe when homeschoolers are caricatured as deranged fundamentalists since I know from experience that there is more to the story. My experience with homeschooling consists of extremely varied highs and lows — the highs of a dedicated and capable parent as a teacher, an education that fit with my self-motivated personality, and freedom from rigid schedules; and the lows of religious indoctrination and the personal struggles caused by living in an insular environment. If the good side of my homeschooling experience was very good — and it was — the bad side was very bad, and I still feel its effects to this day.
I was homeschooled for my entire lower-level education — kindergarten through high school — and in that time I knew homeschoolers from all sides of the social spectrum. I knew unschoolers, conservative Christians, liberal Christians, vaguely religious people, non-religious people, and even a Wiccan at one point (though I didn’t know what “Wiccan” meant until some time later). I knew people — or more accurately, the children of people — with a fairly wide range of beliefs and philosophies which had led them to homeschool, rather than just the evangelical families so well-represented in cultural tropes about homeschoolers.
But in spite of the diversity I was exposed to, my experiences have led me to be very suspicious of homeschooling in general, for a simple reason: in the homeschooling movement, the most extreme voices are the majority. There is a reason why the archetype of homeschoolers as fanatical morons is so popular. For every parent who chooses to homeschool for health reasons, extenuating circumstances, or educational philosophy (ie, that of unschooling), it seems like there are ten who homeschool because they are part of the fundamentalist or Quiverfull movements. Knowing what I know now about the history of homeschooling, this makes sense. After all, the Quiverfull movement openly says its goal is to produce large broods of future homeschoolers who will repeat the process over and over until they outnumber everyone else, and while the majority of Christian homeschoolers tend to be less brazen, they often only believe in milder versions of the same philosophies touted by Michael Farris and the other leaders of the Fundamentalist/Quiverfull movement.
Fundamentalist homeschooling is a poison. I say this from experience. It spreads like a virus, and not just among the conservative Christians who form its natural hosts. There are people of milder faith who get progressively sucked into more and more conservative elements of the homeschooling movement. Sometimes, through ignorance of fundamentalism’s real motives and philisophical underpinnings, a person can be lulled to sleep by the superficially attractive images of evangelical rhetoric and never notice the bigotry and delusion lurking right below the surface. I’ve seen it happen to people, and my mother was one of them.
As is probably typical for non-fundamentalists, many things contributed to my mother’s decision to homeschool me. Essentially, she believed — not without reason — that the public schools I would go to were dirty, violent, overcrowded, had poor curricula and bad funding. We couldn’t afford a private school, so she as a stay-at-home parent began to consider homeschooling.
By the time I had reached four my mother decided not to enroll me in preschool or kindergarten, and for the next three years did a wonderful job both educating me and socializing me with other children and adults. Even though I was an only child, I had a healthy and very normal social life, and was able to be educated above my age group, starting grade one at five years old. These were some of the best years of my childhood, and I still believe to this day that with sufficiently intelligent, caring and involved parents, early life education does not require formal schooling of any kind (although I see nothing wrong a with a good formal early education either).
After this successful start, when I had turned about seven, we decided to continue homeschooling through grade school. This marked the beginning of our brush with the conservative homeschooling movement. The HSLDA, which previously had been only an abstract form of social insurance to us, began to be a resource for our studies, and its sister organizations were used to help choose my formal curriculum. We spent a while before the start of my third grade school year deliberating on what system offered the best education, and ultimately decided on a hybrid approach. Other than the notoriously dry Saxon math textbooks, we chose a fundamentalist Christian curriculum called LIFEPAC and its digital equivalent, Switched-On Schoolhouse. This might seem incongruous, since we weren’t fundamentalists, but my mother was a religious conservative in the sense that she had a very hard time criticizing anyone who claimed to represent Christianity, and always gave religious individuals and organizations a great deal of respect even when her values were utterly opposed to their beliefs. She never looked beyond the very thin religiously moderate veneers that the HSLDA and other conservative Christian organizations put up, and so she assumed the curriculum was merely a good Christian education, and nothing more.
If the thought had ever crossed her mind that the curriculum I used for ten years would progressively harm me intellectually, psychologically and spritually, she would have thrown it back on the shelf in an instant. But as it turned out, this curriculum would prove to be the central destructive influence of homeschooling on my life. It was from these textbooks and lessons that I was poisoned by fundamentalism, and they are largely responsible for the part of my homeschooling experience which stunted my development and left me struggling with extreme self-doubt, self-hatred and depression as years went by.
The lesson plan started off innocuously — even with a bible study textbook as one of the main subjects (right next to science, history, and English), the first few grades were of decent quality and generally avoided controversial material. Thanks to excellent teaching I excelled consistently in my studies and everything seemed to be going well. But as the years went by, little oddities started to present themselves when I studied my textbooks or took lessons on the family computer. Starting around the sixth grade — once biology and astronomy became serious subjects — science seemed to take a strange path, and as grades progressed upwards the tone of the text became more and more defensive, with the writers eventually resorting to actually mocking biology and astronomy (evolution and the big bang were the biggest targets) rather than merely promoting creationism. The extreme immaturity of using mockery in a textbook apparently never occured to the writers of the lesson plan.
History not only consisted of the standard American whitewashing, which strains a person’s grip on historical facts badly enough, but also a Biblically literalist whitewashing, an almost colonial view of non-Europeans, and to top it off, no acknowledgement that anything over six thousand years old could exist at all. It is not an exagerration to say that everything I actually know about history I learned outside of that curriculum, and that beyond certain parts about Rome, colonial Britain and early America, I have had to erase and relearn much of what I was taught to get an accurate picture of the world. As with the science curriculum, history lessons progressed in their deviance from standard textbooks over time, in this case by including slightly more biblical content in each grade level, marked as “history” right next to the founding of Rome or the pyramids of Egypt. Bible study, needless to say, was extremely focused on inculcating the “right” beliefs into students as quickly as possible and didn’t pull its ideological punches as much as the other subjects did. Although it did review the whole Bible (starting at about the 6th grade) it only did so in a literalist context, progressing in nastiness and pushiness by grade. All this time I had continued to use Saxon’s math textbooks — which I loathed, but did seem to work — and occasionally found myself welcoming their dry dullness near the end of the school day.
Saxon didn’t preach — it merely made you fall asleep.
The curriculum as a whole struck very softly with indoctrination, couching it in well-written and produced textbooks as well as computer applications that included media and games. The packaging was, as a whole, fairly slick, and if you weren’t looking it was easy to miss the poison that peppered the whole thing.
In addition to the other beliefs I described, all the subjects I studied promoted complementarian sexism, sexual abstinence, chastity, Edwardian/Victorian style gender roles, human exceptionalism, and of course Biblical Literalism, though they all did so in different ways. What strikes me now is how subtle some of this propaganda could be — it was even present in English class, not only in the books on the required reading list but occasionally written bluntly between otherwise unrelated text in the middle of a lesson. Now and then harsh Bible quotes would appear beside inspiring ones, as if in warning, and heaven, hell, angels and satan were all real characters in the context of the textbooks.
Before I make this look too bad, though, I have to say that I didn’t even notice much of this until the last years of my education, although I always noticed, ignored and then tried to forget all kinds of little doubts I had about what I was learning. I read voraciously, including many science and history books that contradicted what I was taught, but until I became an older teenager I never really paid much attention to the contradictions, and through some kind of doublethink held that both ideas could be true. My mother remained an excellent teacher, I continued to hold a healthy social life, and I was otherwise quite whole as a person. Because fundamentalism only came from one part of my life and it was not promoted — though it was also never criticized — by my family, I had a lot more intellectual freedom than do most of the children who use this kind of curriculum. While some problems were simmering within me, my middle school life was overall a good experience even with my inane curriculum.
Personal issues during my high school years finally drove me to look back on, question and eventually discard the philosophy I was taught. A move to a faraway state had left my social life in tatters and it never recovered for the rest of my teenage years, I was forced to realize my own sexuality (both the existence of a sexual instinct itself, and that I was bisexual), I learned enough about real science and history to know that my education had not given me the whole truth, and I began to realize the terrible cruelty and undesirability of the world that fundamentalism sets out before people. All the little doubts and moral outrages I had repressed over the years came flooding back piece by piece, and after a long and hard struggle that included four years of constant depression I left both the fundamentalist part of my education and religion in general, becoming a happier and better person for it.
Only a couple of years after that last break from fundamentalism, my feelings on homeschooling remain mixed because my experience was mixed, and while the high points were great, the low points could be awful and intolerable. My mother’s dedication and inherently tolerant and empathetic nature gave me not only a good basic education, but a diverse and varied social life, ethical feelings I could seperate easily from religion, and intellectual freedoms that most homeschooled children never enjoy. But my curriculum, much of the media I watched or listened to, and the culture I grew up in contained no voices arguing actively against fundamentalism. Because of this, I became a host to the virus of religious paranoia and self-hatred, which I only recently managed to shake off enough to do things like write this essay. I was taught a much more warped perspective of history than even the average American middle-schooler, and my knowledge of useful science was very small until I studied real science for enough time to fix what my curriculum had broken. My relative intellectual freedom as a young child had left me well-prepared for this and I have managed to “catch up” without much fuss, but not everyone gets that opportunity.
Ultimately, I can’t say what my views are on what should or shouldn’t be legal in homeschooling. No matter what, I believe that there must be a strict basic code of regulations on homeschooling to prevent indoctrination and abuse, but I also understand the position of Germany and Scandanavia when they choose to simply ban it outright except in exceptional circumstances. I have met a few secular homeschoolers, unschoolers and other non-fundamentalist homeschoolers who have done well with their children’s education and have nothing to do with religion, let alone religious indoctrination. But the poison of religious fundamentalism is very potent, and the potential for even non-religious abuse within homeschooling is still high, regulated or not. I was a very loved and nurtured child in a relatively liberal household, and yet I suffered at least some of what children in deeply authoritarian Christian homes do.
I can’t imagine what I would be right now if I had grown up in a family of true fundamentalists, Quiverfull members, or right-wing evangelicals.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published as “The Homeschool Movement: Its Reconstructionist Roots and Rushdoony’s Influence” on December 8, 2012.
*****
“We are authorized by God to challenge all that is not godly! God is angry with the wicked every day, and the sins of the wicked deserve the infliction of God’s wrath in this life as well as the life hereafter!” ~ R.J. Rushdoony
I know the title of this post seems dry and boring. If spiritual abuse is a concern of yours, I encourage you to take the time to read this post carefully. Check out the links and do some research on your own. The information I have found has compelled me to keep blogging, to keep telling my story, and to keep sharing the stories of others. I am just a little worked up on this topic.
There is much more to homeschooling than just educating children. There is much more to patriarchy and courtship than fathers being heads of home and parents involved in the process of finding mates for their adult children. You must know that there is an agenda going on.
This agenda ties these practices together. I thought I was homeschooling my children because I could do a better job than the local public school system. I thought I was homeschooling my children so I could include Bible in their education and also protect them from negative worldly influences. That was pretty much my agenda. But that was not the agenda of the people I looked up to – the leaders in the homeschooling community. We looked to the leaders because they knew what they were doing and could help guide us on our foreign path. But there was an underlying agenda that I didn’t know about, that they did not disclose. It was there all along, but it’s not so obvious. I want to expose that now.
My blog started with the intent to share about my family’s experience at a spiritually abusive church. There has been much heartache in that experience and then 3-1/2 years later, it continued as my former pastor filed a defamation lawsuit against me and 4 others (and lost) this past summer. I have seen the impact on my family and have done a lot of soul searching: What led us to that church? Who influenced my life as a Christian? Who influenced my life as a mother? Who influenced my life as I ventured into homeschooling my children? As I researched my primary influencers, I found a common thread of destructive ideologies within the homeschooling movement.
My first article on the homeschooling movement opened up a whole can of worms on a culture that I have been a part of for the last 20 years or so. Some of these teachings (courtship, modesty/purity, full-quiver) have infiltrated churches and families who do not teach their children at home. It is a powerful movement and I caught on to the movement without realizing I was part of it. I embraced certain aspects of it, brought those aspects that I agreed with to my churches. As we moved around the country (my husband was in the Navy), I shared these aspects with my friends and friends shared the aspects they learned with me, etc.That is how this movement spreads. It can be one particular teaching or many, but they all intertwine, feeding the agenda.
It is important to have knowledge of this movement because even if you have no desire to homeschool your children or maybe you are single or empty-nesters, this movement spreads to churches in some way or other and as we have seen with courtship, patriarchy, and other teachings, some of the teachings leave a devastating path with emotional and spiritual turmoil.
The other night I read an article about Michael Farris that got me worked up. Mike Farris is known as one of the key pillars of the homeschool movement. I wanted to share my thoughts on a situation regarding Michael Farris, but realized without sharing more background information, you wouldn’t get the full picture. So, please allow me to do that now.
Before Michael Farris was a pillar in the homeschool community, there was another very prominent figure, Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001). I believe Rushdoony set the trajectory for the homeschooling movement. Although Rushdoony died in 2001, he established the basis of the movement long before. These roots are in Christian Reconstructionism.
I found this article which described Christian Reconstructionism very well. As you read the variety of quoted materials included in the post, I encourage you to keep in mind how the ideas of patriarchy, courtship, full-quiver tie in with this belief system:
What is Reconstructionism?
Reconstructionism is a theology that arose out of conservative Presbyterianism (Reformed and Orthodox), which proposes that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel, or “Biblical Law,” is the basis for reconstructing society toward the Kingdom of God on earth. Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life–such as government, education, law, and the arts, not merely “social” or “moral” issues like pornography, homosexuality, and abortion.
Reconstructionists have formulated a “Biblical world view” and “Biblical principles” by which to examine contemporary matters. Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly describes this view: “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s law.”
More broadly, Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God’s covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are “in submission” to him. In turn, the husband “submits” to Jesus and to God’s laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God’s laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called “theonomy.”
Let’s learn a little about Rushdoony. This is from Wikipedia:
Rousas John Rushdoony (April 25, 1916 – February 8, 2001) was a Calvinist philosopher, historian, andtheologian and is widely credited as the father of Christian Reconstructionism and an inspiration for the modern Christian homeschool movement. His followers and critics have argued that his thought exerts considerable influence on the Christian right.
I was glad to find this video on Rushdoony and his Reconstructionist beliefs. It is an interview with Bill Moyers of PBS and is very good. It’s still difficult for me to wrap the idea around my head that part of this belief system is to bring the Old Testament laws into modern times: e.g., death penalty for those who commit adultery, death penalty for homosexuals, etc.
This quotation — from a very interesting article — describes how Rushdoony took his Reconstructionist views and made a case for educating children at home and thus became known as the “father of the homeschool movement” by many:
Key to this strategy was the homeschooling movement. Education, Rushdoony realized early on, was the best way to distribute his message. To that end, he wrote multiple books on the history of American education, charting its transformation from one-room schoolhouses and parochial schools to urban institutions. These books became guideposts for Christians who believed that public schools were indoctrinating their kids in the false faith of secular humanism. McVicar, the Ohio State scholar, says, “Rushdoony understood that if he changed the way Christians educated their children, he could change the way they thought.”
The homeschool movement is comprised of specific teachings/beliefs. These teachings come from various groups or individuals who share the common thread of homeschooling. These groups work independently and may have different focuses, are in different locations, but again, the foundational agenda can be found in Reconstructionist roots. Interestingly, I had the above paragraph typed up a couple days ago and a few minutes ago I read an article by Frederick Clarkson originally published in June 1994 about this Reconstructionist “movement” and how it has spread over the years:
A Movement of Ideas
As a movement primarily of ideas, Reconstructionism has no single denominational or institutional home. Nor is it totally defined by a single charismatic leader, nor even a single text. Rather, it is defined by a small group of scholars who are identified with Reformed or Orthodox Presbyterianism. The movement networks primarily through magazines, conferences, publishing houses, think tanks, and bookstores. As a matter of strategy, it is a self-consciously decentralized and publicity-shy movement.
This is exactly what I have seen happening in the homeschool movement and why it is so hard to pin down because it is not localized in one church, one denomination, or organization. Both the Reconstructionist and homeschool movements are so invasive and have spread the same way. You or people you know may be part of either the Reconstructionist movement or the homeschool movement and have adopted ideologies without even realizing it. I realized through my research that I furthered the homeschool movement by sharing books, CDs, talking to my friends about my new-found ideas. I had been a part of it all along endorsing it and spreading it quite convincingly among my friends and church acquaintances.
Here’s a little more on Rushdoony. In 1965 he founded the non-profit organization called Chalcedon Foundation to promote the Reconstructionism. Read Chalcedon’s vision statement here. Here’s a brief summary from Wikipedia:
The Chalcedon Foundation is an American Christian Reconstructionist organization founded by Rousas John Rushdoony in 1965. Named for the Council of Chalcedon, it has also included theologians such as Gary North, who later founded his own organization, the Institute for Christian Economics.
The Chalcedon Foundation provides educational material in the form of books, newsletter reports and various electronic media, toward advancing the theological teachings of Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstructionism movement. It is notable for its role in the influence of Christianity on politics in the U.S. and has been described as “a think tank of the Religious Right.” Rushdoony’s son, Mark now heads the foundation. The Chalcedon Foundation has been listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centerfor, among other reasons, supporting the death penalty for homosexuals.
We can see in the above summary that this Reconstructionist organization has infiltrated the education systems and politics in America with their Reconstructionist agenda.
Here are more articles I found interesting in researching this topic:
When we think of spiritual abuse, we think of it in the confines of a church. The homeschool movement is different because it has no confines. It is scattered all over the country, people can become as involved as they want in various groups, but what I’ve noticed is that there are behavioral characteristics used by those in the homeschool movement which are similar to behavior used by spiritually abusive church leaders. There are different dynamics, but the end results can be the same. This is why I keep sharing personal stories about these topics.
HA note: Cindy’s story was originally published on her blog Baptist Taliban and Beyond. It is reprinted with her permission.
I was expecting my fifth child when I had to make the decision to either send my two school-aged children to school or to home school. They had been attending a tiny A.C.E. school where I worked as a supervisor/monitor two days a week to help pay their tuition, but it was closing, and I would no longer be able to work in another school in exchange for tuition since I would be caring for a newborn. This presented a dilemma.
There was an evangelist who had eight children, seven with which he traveled the country, preaching and singing at revival services and other special meetings. They were a home schooling family who testified of the merits of educating children in this way everywhere they went. Their children, several who were teen-agers, were impressive examples to the effectiveness of this strange, new alternative to conventional schooling. This was my very first exposure to the home schooling concept. It was a strange idea to us, but our life was already venturing a few steps *outside- the-box* of our earlier existence anyway, so this seemed the most valid option.
Neither my husband nor I had much confidence in public school since much of our own school experiences were negative. We could not afford to send the kiddos to a Christian school; public school was out of the question, so home schooling seemed to be the perfect solution. We took the plunge and started the very next semester.
I was charmed by the whole notion of a little one-room school in our home—complete with little school desks, teacher’s desk and school-room ambiance. I determined that I would give my student-children a one-on-one, tutoring-style education which I believed to be the very best method. Full of idealistic zeal and energy, I felt I was embarking on an exciting new adventure—one that included the challenges of a new career as well as the comfort and satisfaction of being at home, nurturing all my little charges to their full potential.
It was a new purpose beyond the youth ministry of the church, beyond just being a wife and mother—one that involved more of an intellectual pursuit. I liked the whole idea of being a ‘home educator’. Besides the many benefits this would provide for my children, it would also give me a greater sense of importance and significance.
And as for the kids?
What was there not to like for them? What kid would rather not have to get up at the crack of dawn, rush to eat, rush to get dressed, spend endless hours listening to boring lectures, do work at school, then come home only to do homework, day after day, month after month, year after year for twelve plus years of their youth?
Certainly not my kids.
Since their dad and I didn’t enjoy those things, they surely wouldn’t either. Surely, they would rather stay up later at night, wake up when they were ready to wake up, take their time getting dressed and eating, finishing all their work early making more time for fun things and not having to put up with bullies, mean teachers and all the rules. Surely, they would love being home schooled!
Well, I doubt they really loved it, but they didn’t seem to mind—at least not until they were older.
At the beginning of her teen years, my oldest began to wish that she, like some of her friends at the church, could go to “real” school. By this time, we were far too inflexible in our beliefs to even consider allowing that. We made it clear, early on, that “school of any kind” was a non-negotiable, so she did the only thing she could do—she complied.
Through all my years of home schooling, I read many books on the subject. As each child grew into their “school” age years it became obvious that my cozy, relaxed-but-efficient “school-at-home” vision was just not materializing. Imagine that! There were hungry babies, noisy toddlers, a constantly ringing phone, and children who would rather eat worms than fill out workbooks or listen to me read from textbooks. I so wished that I could find some way to make learning as desirable to them as eating or playing.
All the books that I read gave glowing reviews of revolutionary materials and methods which promised to make hungry learners out of even the most disinterested children. So, I tried nearly everything. The girls would work pretty well on their own in the workbooks. But those little boys! There were four of them as well as four quieter, more compliant sisters and they ALL had a dedicated aversion to sitting in a chair for any reason! I have memories of drilling spelling words and multiplication facts to the beat of bouncing balls, floor surfing, and headstands. Now, imagine trying to chisel “structure” out of that!
Thankfully, I never had to school all eight at the same time. My first two were ready to graduate by the time my last three were old enough to start, but I did have five to teach at the same time and three younger ones who needed attention also. We muddled through, somehow. A relaxed home schooling family we were indeed! ‘Relaxed’ was the only reality for me.
A little over a year after we left the Baptist Taliban, we sold the house that we built and lived in for eighteen years and relocated to another town forty minutes away. Our lives seemed to be spinning out of control, and we were constantly coping with issues resulting from the fall-out of being forced to leave everything and everyone associated with that life behind. Needless to say, that was a difficult time to maintain some semblance of school, but we hobbled along.
None of the five I was trying to teach had temperaments compatible with school-work, so, I was getting a bit disillusioned with the whole “school-at-home” model for educating them. I tried several different approaches—the literature approach (the boys hated reading), the video approach, the hands-on approach, the little of everything approach, hoping something would take hold. I tried sending them to home school co-op classes. I sent one to Christian school (which didn’t work), and even sent one to public school (didn’t work either) relaxing the expectations more and more with each failure.
Finally, I stumbled on the book, “the unschooling handbook-How to Use the Whole World As Your Child’s Classroom,” by Mary Griffith which led to much more research on the subject and eventually renovated my whole pattern of thinking and feeling about everything educational—especially as it pertained to my seemingly UNeducable kids.
Gradually, I felt myself letting go of the school-at-home paradigm and accepting a different set of ideals—ones that would free us all from societal expectations that were not a good fit for us and free us to embrace the intellectual freedom that life-led learning offered. Finally, an approach to learning that we could all be enthusiastic about; especially me! Somehow, they actually liked viewing every aspect of their lives as opportunities to learn!
Truth is, I had no other choice — unless you believe that mother/teachers should adopt the drill sergeant persona during school hours and force the little “maggots” to learn. Call me weak, call me negligent, call me a sissy parent or even a non-parent, but I didn’t want to trade in my nurturing mommy hat for the drill sergeant/teacher uniform no matter how many completed work-sheets that would accomplish.
Giving my younger (by now growing older) kids the responsibility for their own education back to them where it belongs was the best thing I ever did. It is a bit uncomfortable at times as it always is when you operate outside the norms and it may not be evident to outsiders that anything profitable has been gained by this, but my family has noticed very positive results.
They are:
• much improved relationships
• a return of natural curiosity
• livelier conversations
• opportunity for self regulation instead of parental controls
• choices not motivated by resistance to arbitrary rules and pressures to perform
• capacity to think much improved when focus on filling brain with facts for a test is removed
• value as a person not based on how one compares to *the ideal* student or even the *normal* one
• increased opportunities to discover one’s own unique gifts
• increased opportunities to specialize in areas of interest and ability as opposed to acquiring only surface knowledge in many areas
• sense of self respect and image not destroyed by the prejudices of unkind peers
And this….only to name a few.
Now, I am at the end of my 22 year career as home educator. As I look back and consider what I would change since retrospect always reveals what should have and could have been done better, I would do these things differently:
• Allow those who wanted to go to school, to go
• Trust my instincts concerning what is best for my kids instead of conforming to the consensus of my peers
• Trust my kids more to make choices about what they learn
• Spent much more time going, doing and playing with my kids to learn with them instead of trying to teach them from books and schedules
• Expecting them to do right instead of suspecting they are doing wrong
• Looking for the causes for their restlessness instead of making hasty judgments
• Being more available to them to support them mentally and emotionally instead of just physically and spiritually
• Really listening to their complaints and being willing to change what needed to be changed
• Encouraging and supporting their dreams and aspirations, even if different from what I dreamed for them
• Recognizing and respecting their need to try new things
• Allowing them to make mistakes without judging them
• Letting them go when appropriate in order for them to grow
This is not an exhaustive list, but it does summarize the predominate deficiencies.
It has been a long, winding road that led me away from educating to facilitating their learning. I do wish I had taken that route from the beginning, but I am so thankful that it is never too late to change. It has been a source of deep satisfaction to see my resistant-to-book-learning-kids return to the intense curiosity that they were born with so much that they are now seeking out the opportunities to learn themselves.
With that, there is no limit to what they can accomplish.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn’s blog Bridging the Gap. It consists of two separate posts that HA has combined. The first, “The Cult That Changed Everything,” was originally published on March 18, 2013. The second, “Silence Isn’t Golden,” was originally published on March 10, 2013.
*****
The Cult That Changed Everything
“Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get better at balance, and I’ll be able to embrace all of it and accept the things I’m ashamed of, and help the ones who need it, and live an epic life.”
When I was between the ages of 5 and 7 my parents joined a bible study group through a family in our homeschool group. I guess it was less of a bible study and more of a home-church, because we went to their house for hours every weekend (I can’t remember if it was Saturday or Sunday, probably Sunday). This was not very long into homeschooling, maybe a year or two – my parents, I think, had been pressured by some of the group who had an incredibly spiritual persona that they weren’t godly or spiritual enough *or* homeschooling for the right reasons (but that’s a different discussion entirely). Anyway, My brother and I, we went along to this group with our parents and sat around being really bored, eating weird tasting food, listening to whatever it was we could understand and spending the rest of the time looking at the animals and wondering why it smelled funny at their house (they had a farm, and were into healthy/organic/self-sustaining life and for some reason that has a particular smell).
I don’t remember how long it took before my parents and the other couples at the group were introduced to this program called “Cleansing Stream.” Wanting to be godly and whatever, everyone hopped on board – they “learned” how to study their bible, use a concordance, expel demons (no, I’m not kidding), and we all had to make sacrifices (my brother and I lost many a loved plushie in the name of demon expulsion, and family heirlooms which didn’t matter to *me* as much) to make sure the demons didn’t have any “footholds”. There was a little red book, and any work by the Beveres’ makes me run the other direction. A lot of this now is instinctual, I don’t remember exactly what was taught (besides that demons could inhabit christians if they sinned, and apparently my stuffed tiger) but the ramifications have lasted…well they haven’t stopped.
My parents “left” or dropped out of the cult when they realized that the whole demon-inhabiting-christian-thing wasn’t actually biblical, but they never exited. They learned how to interpret the bible (according to the cult) and this is what became harmful. I was too young to understand anything happening at the bible study (that, or the memory is just blacked out), but the price that came with the things they learned there and after cost a lot:
Somehow god had turned from a loving being to an angry, vindictive, bastard who sent bad things to people for the fun of it, to “test” them, and “try them by fire” and somehow you knew you were loved by how miserable your life was and how much you suffered. The years following the cult were packed with much “love” from this deity.
We became increasingly isolated, we were drilled on the family beliefs, we had unassisted home-births (two of which resulted in stillborn babies – that *could* have been prevented by cesareans), we were constantly told that suffering was a good thing, that we should expect to suffer, even that not suffering was a bad thing (so anyone who good things were happening to? doomed. Anyone happy? obviously not loved by god). I was so scared to leave (and get married)because I thought for sure that after living through my own version of hell, the cycle would start all over again with my husband and our inevitable family.
We never had friends that lasted for more than a year or two – when I was finally able to make my own friends (on the internet!) I built myself a group of people I could trust, most whom I’m still friends with. The friends my parents “made” usually end up having a falling out over some doctrinal issue. We were kicked out of churches and widely hated (or so it felt) by anyone my parents disagreed with.
It grew worse as I aged, in ways I don’t yet have words for. I went from believing and being told that I could hear from god, to being told that he spoke to me through my parents (from my parents – it was convenient and self serving). I was less because I was a woman, my god-ordained-job at home was to be a caretaker to my siblings; I was brutally reminded of that pregnancy after pregnancy, child after child. I was told that my god-ordained-job as a woman, when I was married, was solely to reproduce and homeschool and give my husband sex when he wanted it (because otherwise, he’d find it somewhere else don’t ya know?). Not only that, but I had to let god plan how many kids we’d have, because “he wouldn’t give us more than we could handle” – don’t dare interfere with any kind of protection because that would be getting in the way of god’s will and that would be sinning.
I was a little self-conscious (I resisted as long as I could), but not of my own volition. My mom freaked out about facial imperfections – I have hereditary upper lip hair, my acne was worse than hers at my age, my teeth weren’t straight (supposedly, we could pray my teeth straight. true story), I didn’t wear makeup, I wore clothes a size too big so I’d “grow into them” (with a large family, you do that sometimes) even though I stopped growing when I was 15. The modesty culture was rampant, though admittedly my parents had little to do with this themselves.
Image and appearance were everything: we had (had) to look perfect and perfectly happy on the outside to everyone. We had to be good examples and witnesses, we could never complain, or have a less than perfect moment whenever we left home – if we did, there would be consequences. I can’t tell you how many times people have come up and commented to me about how perfect my family is and how “I bet you help out a lot, huh?” and I just had to stand there and smile politely, and nod, and say “yes, I don’t mind” (or a better variation) even though everything within me was screaming “no! everything is NOT okay! my family is NOT perfect!” There was no room for human moments or authenticity (which is why I treasure them so).
We had to attract people (those poor, ignorant sinners) to our lifestyle, so we had to seem perfect. I have a great smile.
The version of christianity/god I knew, “loved”, and served was egotistical, demeaning, self righteous, superficial, and fear based (much of christianity I’ve seen so far is fear based, don’t you dare say love!). If my parents didn’t like someone, they’d rip them to shreds as soon as they were out of earshot, if I was less than perfect I’d get dragged out of bed and made to sit through several hours of Kierstyn-is-evil-thus-saith-the-lord lecturing until I would finally give up and act how they wanted (usually it was for minor infractions, like not hearing or understanding something correctly – sometimes it was for *gasp* wanting a life) I never knew when this line would be drawn or what the boundaries were.
*****
Silence Isn’t Golden
I’m tired of watching abuse. It happened to me, it happens around me – it’s the reason I can’t run away and escape from my past. The reason I can’t forget, the reason with every core of my being I become so angry that I lose words and start to breakdown.
In 2005, 2006, and 2007 I was a blogger, an NCFCA-er, a Rebelution moderator, a Regenerate Our Culture board member, a Student Project campaigner, and a TeenPact Alumni – if you recognize any of those (*except NCFCA outside region 8 prelims, I didn’t get far), then my name, Kierstyn Paulino (or variations thereof) will ring bells. I contributed to the amount of hurt I and many others who grew up in this radical/evangelical/conservative/christian subculture endured and continue to endure. I’m sorry for that, and ashamed. A large reason I don’t write about it here, and am vague at best is because I’m so ashamed of my past and who I used to be. I didn’t know any better, I was 15 and growing up in a spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally abusive environment. I was trying to do the “right” thing, to be a good girl, to be approved of, and I was. I was looked up to, and even World Magazine noticed. I succeeded for a while, before it all fell apart.
I am not that person anymore. I’ve spent the last 4 years of adulthood learning things most people learn in their late teen years, trying to heal and reach a sense of normalcy, trying to discover who I am because I lived a charade my whole life just to survive, grieving for everything I’ve lost, putting the pieces of myself back together with my best friend who’s been beside me this whole time. I have grown and evolved. I’m not whole, or healed, or perfect, or awesome, or anything. I’m still remarkably borked, but my past keeps casting a shadow and I’m so tired of being quiet, scared, and ashamed. It happened, it was wrong and abusive on so many levels, and I can help it stop.
I am a geek, artist, actress/filmmaker, and activist. I am a paladin, a champion, a defender of the defenseless. I am strong, determined, defiant. I am a protector, a safe place, a warrior, a sister. I am done being silent. I will fight to help the scores of us who are coming out of the woodwork to right the (unintended) wrongs and heal the fellow broken souls. Maybe that will help me heal too.
I doubt that I’ll ever be able to be completely normal, to live a life without the pain and reminders – because my past is a part of me, and it’s the reason that I rage at injustice, and it’s the reason I’m so strong. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll get better at balance, and I’ll be able to embrace all of it and accept the things I’m ashamed of, and help the ones who need it, and live an epic life.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Brittany’s blog BAM. It was originally published on March 26, 2013.
Scene: Walking home from dropping the boys off at school. I stopped to chat with a fellow mom.
Other mom: Hey there! Are you on Facebook?
Me: (thinking, Who isn’t??? I LOVE FACEBOOK!) Yes!
OM: You should join our new group, the Perrymont Parent. It has the picture of the school as the profile pic.
Me: Awesome! I’ll join.
OM: Great! By the way, we are looking for parents to write a brief note about their child’s teacher, what you like about them, or whatever, to put in the school newsletter.
Me: I love my kids’ teachers! I’ll be sure to write a little something.
And I did. I joined the FB group and I spent 7 minutes composing a short love note for each Pre-K teacher for my twins. Because I do love their teachers. I love their school!
I love their Public School.
And the fact that I love their Public School is a little surprising to me. Here’s why:
As a former homeschool student, the prevailing thought was that all public schools were “bad.” Public school students were only “a number” in the classroom, would get lost in the crowd, and would therefore get a “bad” education. Public school kids were a “bad” influence because of their “worldliness” and bad attitudes. All the teachers were some combination of atheist/evolutionist/Marxist/liberal/lesbian/tree hugger and that was “very bad.”
Growing up, I was deathly afraid of public school.
Fast forward 20+ years and I am much smarter, wiser, more logical, and less silly.
I also have twin boys who are school age.
Last year when I launched my blog series about Adult Homeschoolers, the drive behind the project was my overwhelming, agonizing, paralyzing decision about whether or not to homeschool or send my kids to public school (private school wasn’t an option). All those fears from my childhood were blunging my brain, making my stomach cramp, and keeping me awake at night.
So I dove into exploring my educational past, and the educational experiences of so many other homeschool students. I talked the ears off my husband (who went to public school) and my best friend (who went to private school). I accosted to every mom I came in contact with (friends, strangers–whatever!) who happened to mention that she had school age children and threw out that loaded question: “So, public school?….how do you like it? Have you had a good experience?”
And, amazingly(!), all of those moms who sent their kids to public school answered, “YES!”
I had to face my fears with Truth:
My husband, a product of that “bad” public school system, turned out perfectly fine. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, way better than “fine.”
Through writing my homeschool series, I realized that I, as my children’s parent, will still be the #1 influence in their lives. I could still have a great relationship with my boys. I could still teach them about God and having a relationship with Him. I could still raise them to be respectful, grateful, loving men.
Even if I choose not to homeschool.
Even if I sent them to Public School.
So, we enrolled them in the small neighborhood Public School that is literally right across the street from us. I nervously asked my husband, “So, what is registration?” and then filled out all the forms, crossed all the T’s, dotted all the i’s. And they started school in August.
They loved it.
A few weeks later, I nervously asked my husband, “So, what is a ‘parent/teacher conference’? What do I say? What do they say?” and then went to have a one-on-one with my sons’ Public School teachers.
And I loved them.
They are wonderful women: kind, patient, creative, loving, and darn good educators. My children are learning so much in a loving, creative environment. My husband and I are constantly saying that each teacher is perfect for the personality and learning style of each of our sons. During one of our parent/teacher conferences, I told one teacher that she had been an “answer to my prayers.” She then shared about her relationship with the Lord.
Yep, the public school teacher.
The uncharted waters of Public School have been far from “bad.” They have been good, so good for our family.
I do know that all the stereotypes that I encountered as a homeschool student were probably not completely unfounded. Many parents have had justifiably bad experiences with public school classrooms, teachers, and their child’s peers.
However, stereotypes are just that: stereotypes. They are not true in every instance, or even most cases. And after our experience in the Public School system, I now take those stereotypes with a healthy grain of salt. As a former homeschooler, I am more than happy to shed my fears and add “Public School” to the list of viable options for my children as my husband and I continue to make conscience decisions about what is best for their education.
I was talking with a homeschooled friend the other day who was raised fairly similar to how I was, with a more structured and less impoverished environment, and we were sharing stories. This and a few other things got me thinking. We both went on to higher education, got our masters degrees. The conversation between us turned to whether homeschooling was preferable to public schooling. While the homeschooling environment was very oppressive and abusive for us both, we each had access to classic literature and read voraciously as a coping mechanism. Favorite books would be read 3, 4, 5, sometimes 6 times over. I think this intensive, almost obsessive, consumption of the written word is one reason why a number of former homeschoolers who have had neglectful educational environments can often write eloquently, in an almost old-fashioned way.
Still, I am sure there are many more who did not get into reading like this and whose voices are not being heard. I knew a homeschooled kid who could barely read or write when he was a preteen, but could repair everything from lawnmowers to electronics just by self-taught tinkering. I often wonder what became of him. I would like to find some of those people too, and feel that those of us who write stories should help them write theirs, share theirs. (Then maybe they can help us fix that jammed door or the broken old-school Nintendo game set in the basement.)
Anyway, so my homeschooled friend and I discovered that despite the problems and the loneliness, we both cherished certain aspects of what we learned as homeschoolers, largely left to our own devices, and we both felt that if we had been sent to public school as little kids, we would not be who we are today, that we wouldn’t value the same things. He was homeschooled the whole way through, so he also expressed concern that he would have been bullied for a health condition in a public school. I told him that I was bullied when I started high school initially, not for any health condition, just for being socially backwards. A few aspects of the bullying I experienced were rather bad (like someone putting gum in my hair once), but most of it was just incredibly awkward. There were many gaps where I tried to connect and failed painfully, many awkward and lonely times before I found friends to eat lunch with and learned social norms. (See Lindsay Lohan’s movie Mean Girls, which accurately captures the feeling on homeschool to high school culture shock.) It lasted almost a year and by then I was seen as properly integrated so it stopped.
So I told my friend that I thought the bullying would have been a bearable phase for him and that the main risk I saw from public school was absorbing the lack of enthusiasm about learning and knowledge endemic to a typical middle-of-the-road public school. He would have learned a lot of different things, but he wouldn’t have likely read all those books that have informed his hopes and dreams because they would not have been assigned, and if they had, depending on what kind of school he went to, by then he might have already been trained into not caring.
Most people I knew in public school only did the assigned work and the bare minimum at that. I guess this is normal, but it was shocking to me – I fought so hard to get an education, then ran into others’ lethargy about learning, an expressed desire for good grades without putting in the work, and widespread dependence on the grade book and teachers’ expectations for self-worth. I think it was much more a problem with the system than the people, although some people certainly stood out in both good and bad ways.
I took honors and advanced placement classes because I had the drive and ability to, so I met and became close with friends who felt similarly about the value of knowledge as I did. I had some good teachers who taught me a lot and who I still love and respect, and a principal and an assistant principle who supported me and tried to integrate me as much as they were able. I also had a terrible guidance counselor, one who knew I grew up poor, and after I’d taken the ACT and made a 25 (a good score), crisply noted that being on the B+ honor roll didn’t mean I was in the top of my class, and then she told me “college isn’t for everyone. There’s community college and trade schools.”
I sent my guidance counselor’s negative comments into the same mental trash bin I reserved for my parents’, so I naturally assumed other people wouldn’t take her seriously either, only later realizing they might not have had a lovable old military grandfather talking to them about degrees and high-powered careers, counteracting her negative message.
Maybe it should not have surprised me back then that certain classmates of mine who also grew up poor but were by all standard metrics very good students (certainly better students than me), went on to work at Wal-Mart, or Waffle House, or enlist in the military, and forgo college altogether. It did come as a pretty big shock to me though, as I’d absorbed the idea of a “meritocracy,” the idea that your skills and abilities are what set you apart. Whenever I see it being something else that sets people apart it still sucks. It just plain and simple sucks.
It also makes me angry when I reflect that I wasn’t the only one who heard this not-so-subtle tune of low expectations while in the guidance counselor’s office. I feel that my fellow students from low-income families deserved better. The truth is maybe she was right though, since the statistics indicate that only 11% of students who grow up below the poverty line complete college. However, the fact is I am now one of that 11%, and I expect that if I’d been in public school the whole way through, absorbed more of the social values on what being poor meant, perhaps the bar for my own dreams would have been set a bit lower.
Overall I am really glad I got to have my Grandad’s intensive tutoring (a form of homeschooling) and I am glad I got to attend public school. Attending public school helped me to familiarize myself with social norms, connect with classmates and make friends (a number of whom I still have), and do all those lovely things like go to prom and have an awkward 10 year class reunion. I have good memories of passing notes in class, volunteering in the concession stand, and cheering my high school football team as they won the state championships.
However, there are a lot of things that do make me want to hold my nose when I consider the entire public school system across our nation, with all the inequality, discrimination, busywork, and reinforced social stratification it brings. That’s why people like John Holt advocated homeschooling as an “underground railroad” away from it in the first place. He saw this and he felt that highly structured authoritarian classrooms were generally not the best learning space and I think in many ways he is right.
Considering where I am today, a person with a master’s degree who is kicking around the idea of going for a PhD, I also realize I need to take a fuller view beyond my own experience. I could say “oh, it turned out fine for me. No harm no foul.” However, although I can speak to what educational neglect is like, ultimately my experience has not been that of the average educationally neglected homeschool kid. My trajectory drastically changed. If I had been left there without outside help, I doubt I’d be writing here today, plain and simple. It would be beyond my sphere of knowing. I would be keeping my head down, working a low-wage job somewhere. That’s what too many kids from poorly run, under-resourced, low-performing public schools also do. The neglected homeschool kids and the neglected public school kids are both neglected kids. They are ultimately the same group.
So this debate of public school versus homeschool that keeps cropping up seems really silly and often rather irritating to me. Homeschool and public school are both options — chicken and fish, apples and oranges, paper and plastic. Sometimes, given the circumstances or personal preference, one option is obviously better than the other, sometimes it isn’t. It is important to have the best versions you can available so people can make the most of the choices.
So why do people keep talking about homeschool or public school being better or worse when the real question is, “How do we get kids, including kids from families living in poverty, to reach their full potential?” I don’t know. But I think we need to think about why we do it and then think how we can fix it.
Like I said in my recent guest post for Libby Anne (which I am pleased to say was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for the whole Patheos website), I think it ultimately comes down to children’s rights. If the needs of children are seen as being important and the voices of children are seen as being important then both homeschooling and public schooling must work to improve the experience of kids who struggle, live with few resources, and who have seen and dealt with hardship beyond their years. There are cracks in both systems and there should be no “throwaway” children in either. Pointing fingers does nothing to erase what is going on for these kids.
So if you want to pick a dichotomy, if you really need one, then think about the “haves versus the have-nots,” the kids who have people in their lives who truly care about their education and wellbeing and have high expectations for them versus the ones who don’t. Those groups exist in both homeschool and public school and they are pretty serious problems in both worlds. That is the variable that educational success is dependent on, not whether you are sitting in a classroom or a living room.
Homeschoolers Anonymous 