HA Editorial Team

How I Learned To Stop Being Afraid and Love Other Religions, Part One: If Satan Made Xanax, And Other Worldview Myths

July 31, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from R.L. Stollar’s personal blog. It was originally published on July 30, 2013.

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“Nothing short of a great Civil War of Values rages today throughout North America. Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible world-views are locked in a bitter conflict that permeates every level of society.”

~James Dobson and Gary Bauer, Children at Risk: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Our Kids, 1990

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Part One: If Satan Made Xanax, And Other Worldview Myths

When I enrolled in the Eastern Classics program at St. John’s College back in 2005, I encountered many and varied responses from fellow evangelical Christians. Some proved encouraging and others not so.

The most common response, though, was: “Are you a Buddhist?”

As the months passed and the time of graduation grew closer, the question changed, but only slightly:

“Have you become a Buddhist?”

At first the question provoked but a smile. As it grew more regular, however, and as I began to know more about Eastern philosophies and religions as well as what actually occurred in the minds of the questioners, it provoked a thought process. I realized that, to many Christians I knew, “Eastern” meant “Buddhist.” And “Buddhist” meant some tranquil species of rebellion against the American Jesus — like if Satan made Xanax for the mind. I vividly remember one individual who commented that, if I were to study Eastern religions, I better not become a Buddhist: Buddhists have no emotions whereas, you know, Jesus wept.

Such comments are likely the result of ignorance regarding world religions. A good number of the people who asked this question in 2005 did not shun inquiry. They merely lacked familiarity with Buddhism. They did not know (as I did not know prior to a year of study in the Eastern Classics) that Buddhism, like Christianity, has a dizzying number of denominations, each vying for doctrinal dominion. Consequently, when someone asks me now if I agree with Buddhism, I experience great difficulty answering the question: “Which denomination?” I have to ask. I have great fondness for the emotional freedom and experience-based practices of Diamond Way Buddhism, for example, whereas I dislike the asceticism of Theravada Buddhism. American Zen Buddhism is another story.

I have thus realized, after these conversations with friends and fellow students, that the American Christian mind (maybe even the American mind) has a paltry understanding of some of the longest-standing and deeply rooted ideas of the world. American evangelicals especially do not take time to appreciate, let alone understand, a good number of their strongest opponents in the sphere of religion. Those who have taken time (seemingly not much) only do so to construct flimsy card-houses with the purpose of a surprise attack.

You have groups like Summit Ministries and Worldview Weekend, training up the next generation with nothing more than an arsenal of generalizations, simplifications, and shameless reductionism.

No one seems interested in taking the ideas of other religions at face value and learning to see any sort of beauty or value in them.

To say that other religions can be beautiful or valuable is not an exercise in relativism. But granting this beauty or value will likely suffer the fate of being interpreted as such by many of today’s “worldview” champions. The old guard of American Christianity and Christian homeschooling — Dobson and Bauer, from this post’s opening quotation, and people like Summit’s David Noebel and John Stonestreet, or homeschooling’s Kevin Swanson and Ken Ham — is terrified of anything that sounds “postmodern.”

Postmodernism is like intellectual dub step to the old guard.

In today’s evangelical culture, a defense of religion as an aesthetic and social phenomenon seems indistinct from a defense of religious pluralism and intellectual apathy. But that’s because this culture is so afraid of “liberal” arts to the point that it cannot comprehend some basic philosophical and sociological concepts. The fact is, to understand religion as an aesthetic and social phenomenon grants humanity the freedom to explore a ground to aesthetics and society that condemns, rather than condones, an unwillingness to pursue truth.

But first: what does “religion” mean? And what would it mean, that one can perceive this noun’s content as “aesthetic” and “social”?

To the evangelical culture, religion is either Christian and thus true or pagan and thus untrue. This proves a stunted understanding, however, because religion is neither one nor many truth-claims which one can either affirm or reject. Religion is no doubt a phenomenon which entails truth-claims. But it also entails much more. Religion is a complex totality of human and other elements, only one element of which is the sort of truth-claim that one can package into propositions.

We need to start seeing religion — and any particular religion — not as a mass of disembodied doctrines but as what sociologist Peter Berger calls a “world conspiracy.” “World conspiracy,” in fact, seems the best definition for religion.

What does this mean?

In The Sacred Canopy, Berger explains that,

“The condition of the human organism in the world is…characterized by a built-in instability. Man does not have a given relationship to the world. He must ongoingly establish a relationship with it.”

The world abounds with the sort of innate precariousness that a Buddhist would term as impermanence — “All things pass,” sighs Kaoru, one of the main characters in Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji. This line is almost identical to Solomon’s sentiment in Ecclesiastes.

Human and other life forms, buildings and projects, ideas and romances—these all rise and fall, constantly, perpetually, each and every day. As a result of this precariousness, human beings go about selecting structures of meaning in which they can operate. Humans construct families, work places, technology, and institutions in which to control the elements of the world that bear chaos. Out of their constructions human beings hope for an order, a society. Peter Berger says,

“Society, as objective reality, provides a world for man to inhabit. This world encompasses the biography of the individual, which unfolds as a series of events within that world”

But humans need more than order: they need to feel meaningfulness within that order. They require that order to be “ordained” in some way. Thus,

“a meaningful order, or nomos, is imposed upon the discrete experiences and meanings of individuals.”

This nomos is religion:

“Religion is that human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established, wherein ‘cosmos’ implies not a galaxy but order.”

This final addition to the human world-building project grants the project and its everyday objects and endeavors a sense of purpose, an all-encompassing reason for pursuing the ends of the society. Berger terms this sense of purpose or reason a “sacred canopy” cast over world-building. It is a “world conspiracy” in the sense that humans work together to give their reality a meaning:

“Religion is the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant”

What Berger as a sociologist calls a “world conspiracy,” or “sacred canopy,” a theologian like N.T. Wright might term “worldview.” (1) Jamake Highwater, a historian and philosopher of sexuality, preferred the term “mythology” in his 1991 book Myth and Sexuality:

“All human beliefs and activities spring from an underlying mythology—those metaphors, informing imageries, and paradigms which deeply influence every aspect of our lives and which determine our attitudes about reality—about the world and about ourselves: good and evil, normalcy and abnormalcy, fact and fiction, justice and injustice, beauty and ugliness, power and powerlessness.”

Whether one prefers world conspiracy, sacred canopy, worldview, or mythology as a descriptive, the common factor among the ideas is that human being itself contains within it a hope and passion for carving out a home in a hostile existence.

This hope and passion — and all its nuances, quirks, failures, and successes — is the stuff of religion.

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Part Two: When Buddhism Saved My Life >

Relationships, A Series: Part Three — The Calm Before The Storm

July 31, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Three of this series was originally published on May 23, 2013.

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Part Three — The Calm Before The Storm

Phil made me feel safe.

There really is no other way to put it, other than that he truly makes me feel safe, protected. As I write this I can only think of how much this miraculous man has kept life in me and has committed himself to loving me with all that he is. He has done nothing but firmly stuck with me through some of the worst parts in my life. He has wiped tears from my eyes when I no longer had strength to do it and he held me close when the outside storms threatened to overturn our little boat.

He’s pretty awesome, people, and that is becoming even more clear and obvious to me as I gain a clearer perspective of our story.

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Phil started telling me that if he ever started his own company he wanted me to be his secretary. I asked him why, and he told me that I had some of the most efficient writing skills he had ever seen and that I was at the top of the list (I honestly think I was the list!). He loved my ideas about projects and we were constantly coming up with ideas that we could do together. We were an odd mix of very outgoing and incredibly introverted. We were most happy when brainstorming in the corner at a party than being in the midst of all of the action.

By the time we had known each other for 5 months we were best friends in the sincerest form of the word. Ever since letting go of my tightly held idea of marrying a tall man I had started realizing that Phil was a man that I would be willing to spend the rest of my life with, but I had no idea what he thought of me. So I somehow very easily pushed my feelings of romantic interest in him back and just let myself enjoy the awesome friendship we had.

I am glad we had such a deep friendship before “falling in love.” In fact, I’d say that it was our deep friendship that actually made loving each other a natural next step.

I am a huge advocate of being best friends with your husband.

For his birthday I planned a surprise birthday party. I wanted it to only be his closest friends and just an opportunity to hang out, eat pizza, and play games. He just about ruined the surprise when a day before his birthday he sent an email to all of the people I had invited, saying that all of them were welcome to stop by for his birthday. His sister and I managed to contact everyone and let them know to play it cool about dropping by. We did actually surprise him and it was a great party!

A few days later, Phil told me that he wanted to send me something. I raced up to the library that day, and opened the email he had sent me, only to discover a song that he had written for me. It even had my name in it! (Cheesy, I know, I know, but it was pretty significant to me! I still work that song into some of the piano compositions I make up these days.) I was floored. Here was a guy who had told me a month ago that he wouldn’t get into a relationship until after college. Here was a guy who seemed to genuinely enjoy my company, going so far as to write a song that was specifically for me.

And yet, as he told me later, he still wouldn’t admit that he “liked” me.

At the same time as our friendship was reaching deep, our church was putting on an original production of Pilgrim’s Progress. I was doing costumes and Phil was in the play. The play provided a convenient location for us to see each other and to spend time together. There was rarely a time when we weren’t talking a mile a minute and discussing all of our marvelous ideas. I also discovered that he thought pretty much the same things as I did on a number of random topics, but he had just enough variance in his thinking that it made for fantastic conversations.

From February to April (we met in October of the year before), our friendship started changing very subtly. Phil wrote several very long letters to me during that period, and I still have those letters tucked away in my memory box. During those months, we hit a strange rough spot.

He sent me an email one day and told me that he wanted to take Spring Break that year to think and pray about our friendship specifically.

I was taken aback but readily agreed to cut back communication. I think even though he still wouldn’t have admitted it at that point, he was falling hard for me and that was freaking him out especially since he was barely through the first half year of college. This meant that his plans for the future were being drastically shaken.

The end of that week landed on the birthday party of the mutual friend who had introduced us. I was very unsure about going, especially because I didn’t want to lose Phil’s friendship. The week of limited communication had been hard. Seeing him at the party was one of those moments where a sweet calm washed over me and I knew instantly that everything was going to be okay, there was no way on earth I was going to lose this guy. We were some of the last people to be dancing on the dance floor that night. We danced for over two hours, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company and having a total blast. Our friendship very much deepened after that week, but there was also that one crucial thing left unsaid, so there was a creeping awkwardness. We started seeing more of each other as opening night for the play started creeping ever nearer. Rehearsals were frequent but were also very busy. I spent a lot of time repairing and managing a huge 20 x 40 (I think that’s how big it was, probably bigger) foot piece of canvas that was part of one of the scenes. I still managed to see a lot of Phil, and as most mothers are, we started getting comments about how often we were hanging out together.

I started having friends come up to me to ask if I was guarding my heart.

No really, I’m serious.

I started getting really annoyed and frustrated with all of these people putting their noses into something that seriously wasn’t any of their business.

That’s what we get for having been in the famous, I Kissed Dating Goodbye Josh Harris’ church.

It all came down to the Thursday night before opening week. I was having to fix a major rip in the canvas, and was seated on the floor of one of the gyms, hand sewing and trying to get the thing patched up. (I hated that canvas by the end of that opening week! I was fixing it after almost every rehearsal) Phil, of course, was a very frequent visitor to my misery and on that particular evening, I had at least 4 people come up to me and question my judgement about hanging out with Phil.

By the time the evening was over, I was furious, at Phil (even though it wasn’t his fault that we both enjoyed hanging out so much), at everyone who had talked with me, and with myself, and most importantly the canvas. Phil came to say goodbye to me, but I was less than cordial as it was now coming up on three hours that I had painstakingly been hand sewing that wretched canvas. I was so uneasy and upset, and as I went home that night I felt like something was about to happen.

Something most definitely happened the next day. The first sign was that Phil wasn’t answering any of my texts, nor was he online. I felt a far reaching sense of foreboding as I made my way to rehearsal that afternoon. I still had a bit of the canvas to finish fixing, but I was mostly anxious to see Phil. I knew something was wrong. I was among the first crowd of people to show up at rehearsal, and I immediately knew he hadn’t gotten there yet. I knew the moment he arrived and my heart and stomach reached my throat when I caught sight of his face.

Something was definitely wrong and I raced out the door, frantically calling one of my best friends.

Phil and our mutual friend headed in the opposite direction. My friend thankfully picked up after the first two rings and I started breathlessly telling her that something was about to go down and I desperately needed pray. “Pray, and pray hard. I’ll call you in 20 minutes,” I told her. While on the phone with her, the mutual friend called me and wanted to know where I was. She was soon walking towards me as I stood in the middle of the field at the back of church. She told me that Phil needed to talk with me and that he wanted her to be there as well.

My heart barely beat as I felt my limbs turning to molasses. This was it, I thought, this was what I had been waiting for all day. I walked up to where Phil was waiting for me barely breathing, and my heart just about stopped as I saw how pale, teary-eyed, and sick he looked. I still feel the panic in my stomach as I write this out, even though it’s been 4 years since this moment. I waited blindly for him to start talking as I watched him look at me with heavy concern. He rushed through words that I can hardly remember him saying. He said something that my friendship meant the world to him, and that he wanted me to always remember that. Then he dropped the bomb.

“We can’t be friends anymore. We can’t talk, email, chat, or text, nor can we hang out in the same group.”

He said something about this being his parents’ decision, and then asked if I had anything to say. I don’t remember responding, and in that moment, I was closer to fainting than I have ever been.

For the second time in three years, my heart was completely shattered.

The very person who had been keeping me breathing and moving for the past six months was being ripped from me.

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To be continued.

When Spiritual Abuse Comes From The Home

July 30, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published on June 15, 2013 with the title, “Adult Children Shunned by Homeschool Parents: Selah’s Story.”

On my blog we recently discussed the challenges that some former homeschool students face when they leave their home. This story is quite different from the last story, but it, too, deals with painful and strained relationships with fundamental Christian parents who were influenced by the subculture of the Homeschool Movement.

The pseudonym, Selah, was chosen for this personal account: ”a Hebrew musical word that merges the modern concepts of pianissimo and fortissimo.” For those not familiar with musical terms, pianissimo is a dynamic marking indicating the music should be played very softly, and fortissimo, very loudly. Selah continues, ”In Jewish worship it is that moment of silence to mediate on what’s past, but an admonition to prepare to be dynamic.”

I love that description. It will come more clear why she chose the name when you read her story.

I had the opportunity to talk with Selah and she shared her disturbing story with me. Selah is 30 years old and left home 7 years ago. Her parents had dysfunctional backgrounds, but both wanted to get things right in their lives and attempted to do a good job living their faith. Selah’s family was one of the first families to begin homeschooling in their small community. In fact, her family was ostracized for doing so.

Her family went from church to church trying to find the perfect church. They eventually traveled to all churches within a 30-mile radius of their home, a total of 23 churches in all. They dabbled in the Shepherding Movement, had church in their home for several years, experienced some pretty destructive churches with affairs and sexual abuse occurring by church leaders. R.C. Sproul, Jr., was among her father’s influencers.

Eldest children in homeschool families often get burdened with a lot of childcare responsibilities and Selah’s family was no exception. Selah is the oldest of six children. While her parents worked, Selah took care of her younger siblings. She had an outside job, but took the responsibility of making her siblings breakfast in the morning, went to work, and then came home to make sure they had their lunch, later giving them baths and putting them to bed. Selah was the one who took most of the responsibility for caring for her two youngest siblings, yet her parents complained that she didn’t do it right.

Through her teens, Selah experienced suicidal thoughts and depression. At the age of 19, Selah took a full-time job, but wanted to go to college. Like many homeschool families, her parents embraced the courtship model for Selah and wanted to oversee all aspects of her romantic life. At the age of 23, Selah’s parents interfered in the relationship with her boyfriend and eventually kicked her out of the home.

Currently, Selah is living away from her parents, but struggles because she wants to have a relationship with them and her younger siblings. God has provided other people in her life, but the void of her family is ever-present. This was the comment that Selah posted on the Spiritual Sounding Board Facebook page:

What do you do when the Spiritual Abuse comes from the home? I have left. I have no contact with them, which is their choice, not mine. And in a recent letter to my boyfriend, my mom (who is at the crux of this) stated that I am a threat to them and has stated to my pastor and other friends that I am mental.

I have been on my own for seven years, hold a good job and regularly attend church. They refuse to go to church stating that the corporate church is apostate. They state that until I am married, they should have the final say in my life.

I must esteem and honor them, and any perceived deviation from that has repeatedly gotten me expelled.

If they were ‘just a church’ or ‘just some people’ I could maybe just let it go. But it’s my mom and dad, and my five siblings.

There is nothing harder than telling the man you want to marry that he can never know his inlaws and that your children will never know their grandparents.

Is there a solution to this? Or will it look like this forever?

This is really heart wrenching. What adult child deserves to be abandoned by their parents? Why is it that some fundamentalist Christians are willing to completely sever ties to their adult children when they don’t measure up to their Christian standards?

What kind of love is this?

Let me share with you what I found on Wikipedia on shunning with regard to family relationships:

A key detrimental effect of some of the practices associated with shunning relate to their effect on relationships, especially family relationships. At its extremes, the practices may destroy marriages, break up families, and separate children and their parents. The effect of shunning can be very dramatic or even devastating on the shunned, as it can damage or destroy the shunned member’s closest familial, spousal, social, emotional, and economic bonds.

Shunning contains aspects of what is known as relational aggression in psychological literature. When used by church members and member-spouse parents against excommunicant parents it contains elements of what psychologists call parental alienation. Extreme shunning may cause trauma to the shunned (and to their dependents) similar to what is studied in the psychology of torture.

What can we as a church body do to help people like Selah?

How can the church body respond to her?

I cried unto the LORD with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. Selah.

~Psalm 3:4

Adult Homeschoolers Speak Out: Part Ten, Are the Stereotypes Better or Worse?

July 30, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following series is reprinted with permission from Brittany’s blog BAM. Part Ten was originally published on July 11, 2012.

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Also in this series: Part One: Why I Wanted To Write This | Part Two: Survey Stats and Large Families | Part Three: Top 3 Reasons Parents Homeschool | Part Four: Academic and Emotional Experiences, K-8 | Part Five: The Highschool Experience | Part Six: College? Prepared or Not? | Part Seven: What About Socialization? | Part Eight: The Best Thing vs. What Was Missing | Part Nine, Do Former Homeschoolers Want to Homeschool? | Part Ten: Are the Stereotypes Better or Worse?

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Part Ten: Are the Stereotypes Better or Worse?

Homeschooling is surrounded by stereotypes. Here are a few:

Long jean skirt
Weirdo kids
Socially Awkward
“Is that even legal?!”
“What about college?”
All homeschoolers are socially awkward
“There must be something wrong with the kids, otherwise the parents wouldn’t be doing that”
Religious fanatics

And the list goes on. When I wrote my socialization post, I said that the Number One homeschoolers got was “What about Socialization?”

When I was growing up, this was actually the Number Two question. The Number One question I got when I told someone I was homeschooled was:

“What’s that?”

Nowadays, everyone knows someone who has been homeschooled. But that doesn’t mean that stereotypes have gone away or even changed. So here is the survey question:

Do you think public thoughts/emotions/opinions have changed about homeschooling today? Briefly explain.

The answers I got were all over the board:

Yes!
No!
Um….kinda/maybe/sorta

Enjoy the answers below: they range from hilarious to bitter to though-provoking to wise.

37% or 17 adults said yes, public opinion has changed for the better.

Corinna R. 35 from VA: Absolutely! One of the common questions I would get was “You what?!? How does that work?” Now it is common and accepted and as a whole more mature.

Jerusha C. 30 from VA: Yes! Very much so! My sister and I were like freaks to other people! And most of the other homeschool families we knew smelled like pee! Now it is much different now.

Stuart G. 29 from VA: I think it has changed. I believe home-schooling used to be considered abnormal. The stereotypes range from controlling religious fanatics to lazy families neglecting the true value of education, and everything in between. While these scenarios can be true, most of the time they are misconceptions, and I believe that more and more of the population realize that. Many now view home-schooling as a progressive approach, emphasizing the value of a self-tailored education.

Renee P. 30 from MS: When I was little and first started homeschooling it was kind of a new thing and everyone said I would never be able to get into college. I think homeschoolers have shown that this is not a problem anymore, and actually I don’t think it ever was. Seeing a generation of homeschool students grow up and be very successful, especially academically has helped. As homeschooling has become more popular more people know homeschoolers and they find them “normal”. I think that has helped change the image for the better. On the other hand as more people homeschool, more homeschool for the wrong reasons or don’t do a good job with it. When I started it was kind of a novelty and only people who were 100% committed did it.

Stacey M. 29 from WV: Definitely. Back in my day, no one had even heard of homeschooling and people assumed that my brother and I were mentally disabled and could not attend public school. I had to jump through many hoops and cut through a lot of red tape to attend college. In contrast, my younger brothers (11th and 12th grade currently) have no lack of social interactions and opportunities to do pretty much what they like. I’ve even noticed some comments on their Facebook about other kids being jealous.

Joshua M. 27 from MS: Yes. More people are willing to accept it as an alternative, even outside of the church.

Christy L. 28 from CA: Yes, I think that homeschooled kids are seen as more “normal” today than they were in the 90s. I remember my family attending a homeschool convention in Wisconsin when I was in 1st grade and it was so weird…my brothers and I didn’t fit in at all, the other kids there were so extremely sheltered that they didn’t own TVs or listen to music other than hymns. Today, you do still find some homeschool families like that, but the number seems less.

20% or 9 adults said no, negativity and stereotypes are still very prevalent.

Kaitlin G. 22 from KS: No, people think that families who homeschool have something wrong with them and I feel like there are a lot of negative things associated with homeschoolers.

Beka R. 25 from KS: I think they have to a small extent – fewer people immediately judge a woman’s ability to teach her children now, and most know that predominantly, homeschoolers have solid academic backing.

I think that many of the stereotypes about socialization still exist. I think the examples of “homeschooled homeschoolers” that people see are kids who would be weird in public school too… goodness knows there’s no shortage of weird kids in any environment! I think that there is still a huge and predominant bias against homeschooling.

I do worry about some of the families who I see homeschooling sometimes… without a strong focus on academics, you’re really doing your kids an injustice. If they can’t read and write, what’s the point? Sometimes I see parents who seem a little lazy and that makes me very sad, not only for their kids, but for the future of homeschooling in general.

Jeremy T. 25 from VA: As far as the public, not at all. People still think homeschoolers play and don’t do anything and aren’t social people at all. They can think what they want, but they will never know unless they experience it.

Melissa G. 26 from VA: Not really. We’re still seen as overly Christianized families with too many children and absolutely no social skills. We’re just harassed less by the government now.

Matt W. 30 from OH: There is a stigma attached to home schooling that only Bible thumping fundamentalist Christians are the ones who home school their children. It’s my personal opinion that this still how the public views homeschooling. Technology and the internet make home school much more accessible and possible. I feel that most people would assume that if you are home schooling your child either the family is extremely religious or something is wrong with the child.

Emily M. 26 from FL: I still believe a lot of people have all of homeschoolers lumped into this big sort of dorky group of socially challenged individuals. I don’t often hear good things about homeschooling unless I go looking for it. Those that have been in the homeschool environment though, still often continue to sing its praises.

40% or 18 adults had mixed responses about how they think the public views homeschooling/homeschoolers today.

Laura H. 34 from NE: I think it depends on the location. Here in Nebraska there is usually a favorable reaction. I encountered discrimination while in Iowa though (e.g. “you’ll never be able to pass classes in college”) where it’s less common.

Nara N. 30 from NC: Yes, it seems much more normal, and people know about it and what it is. There are all kinds of programs geared towards homeschoolers (like from the public library, community music schools, and public parks/recreation departments) and many more options (curriculum, online, hybrid w/public school) than there were.

One bad thing, I think because it is easier to choose to homeschool, there are more people doing it now who really shouldn’t be, i.e. they are not committed to putting in the work to make sure their kids do school and learn. I don’t know an answer to this problem, because I do think parents should be free to determine their children’s education, even if they make a bad choice. It is not the government’s job to step in.

Samantha C. 24 from MO: In some ways, yes. It’s not just for crazy religious nutjobs anymore, but it still seems to be considered pretty “fringe.”

Courtney M. 22 from VA: I think that some people are realizing that homeschoolers can be somewhat normal people, but it is a slow process. There is still the stereotype in people’s minds to where a girl walks down the hallway in a T-shirt, jean skirt, tube socks and tennis shoes and the first thing people think is “she was homeschooled” and they’re probably right. Thank goodness I never had that kind of look, but I think there are enough homeschoolers like that still around who keep the stereotype “alive”. But I think enough “normal people” homeschoolers are emerging that they are not as rare as they used to be and people are getting more used to that.

Christine M. 31 from KS: Yes and no. It really depends on who you talk to. I do think that since there are more and more homeschooled students out in “the real world” now, people are seeing and hearing more about the positives of homeschooling (other than the going to school in your pajamas assumption) and realizing that we’re not all a bunch of unsocialized nerds who can recite the Declaration of Independence backwards but can’t carry on a conversation.

Jonathan M. 30 from TX: Yes and no. We are more accepted, but we are still thought of as odd.

Marybeth M. 29 from CA: The whole viewpoint and ability to homeschool has changed a lot over the years. There’s so much available to homeschoolers now, as far as co-ops, school activities and such. The stigma about homeschooling is either the kids are super smart and over educated or really sheltered. And both are true. I fall in the over sheltered category.

Bradley H. 23 from VA: To a degree. There are more “sects” of homeschoolers now (“unschooling” and others) which is a detriment to the practice. But I do feel that homeschoolers have proven themselves to be intelligent and resourceful, as well as able to function in the world.

Megan W. 27 from GA: I think people are more open to it. When my grandparents found out my sisters and I were being homeschooled they didn’t tell anyone because it was so unusual. Of course there’s that group of people who think all homeshoolers watch TV all day and have no social skills. And there are homeschoolers who fit that generalization.

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Personally, I fall into the yes category. I am so glad that people actually know what homeschooling is today, that homeschool students have exhibited success both personally and academically, and that current homeschoolers have so many more opportunities today. I know lots of parents who are currently homeschooling or planning to homeschool and it just seems “normal.” Oh, how times have changed — for the better.

What about you?

Do you think stereotypes about homeschooling/homeschoolers are still very prevalent?
If you were homeschooled, do you think thoughts/opinions about homeschooling have changed for the better?
If you currently homeschool, what stereotypes do you fight against today?

Please feel free to comment or ask questions. I’d love to hear from you!

Also, if you feel that this post or series would be interesting or educational for others, please feel free to link to Facebook or other social networking sites. You can “like” this post with the Facebook button below.

This series is at an end. I have one more post I would like to share, a rather controversial post. In the present post, I addressed stereotypes that the public has/had about homeschoolers. But I also want to address stereotypes or damaging attitudes that homeschoolers hold about non-homeschoolers, specifically attitudes and beliefs that I have had to overcome now that I am outside the “homeschool bubble.”

[Homeschoolers Anonymous previously published this other post of Brittany’s. Please read it here.]

*****

End of series.

Relationships, A Series: Part Two — We Were Best Friends

July 30, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Two of this series was originally published on May 23, 2013.

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Part Two — “We Were Best Friends, Heart Readers, And We Were Loyal to the Nth Degree”

When I wrote about courtship at the beginning of the year, I sincerely intended to continue on in a series of posts about relationships, but as life would have it, my plans got derailed. I was in the middle of some pretty difficult days, emotionally and mentally, and I didn’t have the words to continue writing. Other topics came up, and this series got put on a dusty shelf for another time. I finally feel like I have the words to get this second post in the series out. I once said that I would never talk about my husband’s and my story, but I should learn to not say “never.”

As I have been working through things with my therapist, the more I am seeing life, my life, from another deeper and wider perspective. What I am seeing is a very comforting picture, and one that makes me proud to say that yes, this is my life. I haven’t, to my memory, ever before been able to say, “yay, I love my life!” at any moment before this.

I told my therapist yesterday that I have never been able to look at my husband’s and my story without feeling guilt, shame, and feeling like it is a story of simply surviving a hellish encounter with forces outside of us. I told her how ever since the moment I met my husband, I have felt like it’s been a non stop whirlwind that has threatened to stop us from being together. It has only been in the past 2 (maybe 3) months that I have finally felt able to take a breath and let my body’s stress and tension melt.

My therapist looked at me and told me that our story was one of the most inspiring stories she had ever heard.

She told me that she would consider it movie material, and she was so amazed that we made it through what we did and are still happily married and doing amazingly well. I sat there looking at her, trying to see from her perspective and understand what she was seeing. In that moment, I think I really did catch a glimpse of the story she saw, and this is what I saw.

* * * **

I met my husband in a fairly normal way.

We met through a mutual friend and were surrounded by my siblings when we first met.

He thought I was the mom of all of the kids, and I thought he was seriously short. I had these feelings of almost intrigued disgust at his height, or lack thereof, but there was also something deep in my heart that did a double take when this really friendly, bubbly guy shook my hand and embarrassingly stammered over his mistake of thinking I was the mom. I felt God tell me to keep my eye on this guy because he was going to be someone really important to me.

We didn’t start talking right away, it took two weeks of me trying to find out what I could about this guy, and not hearing anything from him until we connected over online chat. Right around the same time, my life was falling apart with my fibromyalgia and I still wasn’t diagnosed and still was dealing with tons of doctor’s appointments. Meeting Phil and getting to know him and as our friendship quickly progressed from just acquaintances, he was the one who kept me afloat when I desperately needed that life buoy. Our short online chats very quickly morphed into two hour long conversations about nothing in particular other than wherever the conversation led.

I don’t really know what I think about soulmates, and love at first sight, but I do know that there was something seriously deeply connected between Phil and I. He had this silly rule that he would never talk with a girl on the phone unless that was the girl he was in a relationship with or had a business deal to discuss. I remember feeling frustrated when I knew he wasn’t doing well with something and I couldn’t call him and hear his voice or to yell at him to buck up. We found creative ways around the fact that I didn’t have internet at home, including sending e-texts; texts between his email and my phone. I totally jacked up my phone bill within the second month of our serious conversations because of going over my text limit for the month. Oops.

There was something deeply connecting us.

About three months after I met him, I went through the second time in my life where I cut off anyone who I felt like was sucking life from me or I felt like I couldn’t invest in. I joke that Phil just made the cut. If I hadn’t met him when I did, I probably would have never paid much attention to him, but because of his sincere care for me, and the deep sense in which he understood me, he made it. I started keeping my phone on me everywhere as I felt like he was a life line. He knew the moment something happened that wounded me deeply. He was the first one I texted when something funny happened.

We were best friends, heart and soul readers, and we were loyal to the nth degree.

At the three month mark I strongly wrestled with God over Phil. I told God that I wasn’t going to marry someone short, I had to marry someone tall so they could protect me, carry me. God kept telling me that I had to let go of that dream, I had to let him show me who he wanted me to see. For two weeks, long weeks I might add, I fought and wrestled knowing that as soon as I gave in I would see something I wasn’t ready to acknowledge. At the end of that time I finally gave in and wearily told God that I was ready to hold my dreams loosely. As soon as I did that I saw something in Phil that made me really take a hard look at him. The first thing I saw was that he was nothing like my dad and was one of the first guys I knew that I actually felt safe with.

This was huge, people —

For the first time in my life I felt safe.

I felt safe, and that changed my life.

*****

To be continued.

Adult Homeschoolers Speak Out: Part Nine, Do Former Homeschoolers Want to Homeschool?

July 29, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team17 Comments

HA note: The following series is reprinted with permission from Brittany’s blog BAM. Part Nine was originally published on June 27, 2012.

*****

Part Nine: Do Former Homeschoolers Want to Homeschool Their Kids?

When I started this series, the question”Do former homeschoolers want to homeschool their children?” was one that was very personal. In my current circle of friends, I know lots of parents who are currently homeschooling or are planning on homeschooling. But none of these parents were homeschooled themselves.

This observation then led to intense introspection: Will I homeschool my kids? As my boys are 4 (they will turn 5 in October), this question has produced a lot of deep conversations and some sleepless nights for me. (I will answer this question at the end of this post)

I wanted to know what other former homeschoolers were doing. So, I was eager to see what the survey results would bring.

And I am eager to share these results with you now.

45 people answered this portion of the survey
18 adults have children ranging from 0-10 years old
27 adults currently have no children

24% or 11 people said “No, they did not plan on homeschooling”

5 have children
6 do not have children

M. W. 30 from OH: Not unless we have to. I don’t want them to go through what I went though. I would consider home school until 7th grade but definitely not after that.

M. M. 29 from CA: I do not have kids, and when I do have them – NO. I don’t think I could do it, but more than that I don’t want to repeat the experience I had.

Kaitlin G. 22 from KS: No, I want my children to be able to experience everything that school has to offer, however we will consider doing private school instead of public school depending on where we live.

Kelly C. 29 from VA: I would like our children to go to private school if we can afford it when the time comes. If we cannot, then I will strongly consider homeschooling. My main concern is the patience it requires… I feel seriously lacking the patience department. My husband my actually be the one to homeschool if we decide to go that route. His job is flexible and he has far more patience than me and he is an excellent teacher.

Elina C. 25 from KS: I would love to, but I can’t. Tyler and I have moved to Germany to do missions work. It is illegal to homeschool your children here. I do have to admit that the German school system has very good structure. I am sure that I will do some side studies with my kids. Focusing on Creation Science, Bible and American History.

Others mentioned family situations that would make homeschooling impossible: joint custody of child(ren), financial situations that would not allow it, or the fact that a spouse did not want to homeschool.

31% or 14 participants said that they “Maybe or were unsure if they would homeschool”

6 have children
8 do not have children.

Elizabeth J. 27 from KS: I would love to, but I have compromised with my husband to say that it depends on the child and what the school has to offer at that time.

Christy L. 28 from CA: I don’t have kids right now, but if I do in the future, the decision to homeschool will really depend upon the child and where I live at the time. Right now, the thought of homeschooling doesn’t sound fun to me- but here in San Francisco the public schools are pretty bad, so if I still live here, we will either have to homeschool or move north.

Chelsea W. 30 from KS: That is still up in the air…it just depends on so many things. I dont want to send my kids to public school if at all possible. We would like to do a private school if possible, but I may decide to homeschool. Just not decided yet.

Melissa G. 26 from VA: My decision to homeschool my children will be based on their personalities. If I have a child(ren) with a similar academic personality to myself, I will probably choose to homeschool. If I have a child(ren) with a more social personality, I may choose to send him/her to the local Catholic school.

Beka R. 25 from KS: I plan to homeschool my children if I choose to stay home when they are born. If I choose to continue working, I will probably enroll them in a private Christian school. I really want to homeschool because I think that schools have gone so far from the inter-grade learning, where younger students learn faster and pick up more by being there when the older students are being taught, and because of the safety issues within public schools. My best friend teaches 3rd grade and the lock-downs and inter-student violence is really concerning. However I’m not sure whether I’ll always work, or whether I’ll stay home and homeschool, or whether I’ll do some combination thereof. Right now, I plan on working and enrolling my kids in private Christian school. But who knows, things could change.

Corinna R. 35 from VA: My oldest is 4 and I’m not sure if we will homeschool her or not. I think it will depend on how we like our options. I don’t think that private school is worth the money and I see so many advantages to homeschooling. You can really make it whatever you like. Although I cringe when I see families not requiring good obedience of their children. Then I wonder if the public school would be healthier for the children. They would at least learn some boundaries.

Anthony T. 27 from VA: We haven’t decided yet. I think it’s a good possibility though. The reason why I would want to is because I just value our role as parents to be the ones raising our kids and teaching them things… not just academics, but teaching them how to glorify God. Regardless of which type of school you put your kid in, you’re relegating that role to someone else. It may be that the person you relegate that role to is a great person and can do those same things, but part of me just thinks that the ideal scenario is for parents to do that. I don’t know though. I think academically, my wife and I could provide a better academic environment than our kids could get in a school. I think spiritually, it would be ideal for us to teach them. I don’t know though.

The responders who said “YES! They want to/plan to/are homeschooling” was the largest group. However, the numbers need a little pinch of salt, I believe.

44% or 20 responders said “Yes, They want to/plan to/are homeschooling”

Only 3 families (6%) are currently homeschooling
7 people who said “Yes” currently have children.
13 responders had no children.

I believe the “pinch of salt” is needed because while people said they want to homeschool or even plan to homeschool, I think parents’ opinions often do change when they actually have children (either for or against). (Just my little 2 cents.)

Here is what the families who currently homeschool had to say:

Jenna C. 28 from KY: Yes, because I can’t imagine sending them off for 8 hours a day without my supervision and guidance. I feel a tremendous responsibility to shepherd them and lead them up in the truth of the gospel, and also to prepare them to be adults who can thrive in this world. I feel that that is best done, right now, by me being with them as much as possible. I also know my kids better than anyone, and I know how they learn the best and what they are struggling with. it makes sense to me to be the one to teach them. We may reconsider this decision in the future, but right now, this is what we feel is the best choice for our family and our children.

Christine M. 31 from KS: We currently homeschool our older two. We LOVE it! We are able to move at our own pace to keep the kids interested. They learned to read quickly, they have plenty of time to just be kids, and we’re able to slow down if we come across any trouble spots, but honestly, they are both way ahead of where they “should” be. I have a friend who currently has a daughter in 4th grade who is severely struggling because of her reading ability. Instead of being able to slow down, or even repeat a grade, the school has continued to push her forward so her “self-esteem isn’t damaged from being in with younger students”, seemingly ignoring the fact that she is struggling to read what’s required of her.

Jerusha C. 30 from VA: I just started homeschooling my oldest 2 children this past fall. [My daughter] went to public school k-5 but wanted to be homeschooled, and when she was in 3rd grade I started thinking and praying about it. I really didn’t want to because I my own experence but I felt God “calling” me to do it.

Other responses from those who said “Yes:”

Amberley A. 33 from WA: Chances are good that we will homeschool in the future (we currently have our children in a private Christian school – their grandmother teaches there and we get a super-amazing discount!), but we will probably homeschool in the future when she retires and/or for high school. The Christian school’s high school program is limited, and we also have quite a few things that we want to teach our children in high school that they won’t learn in any school environment because they are not traditional subjects.

Stuart G. 29 from VA: We do plan on it. Honestly, we believe we can give our children a superior education – one that is tailored to their needs, talents, etc., and that goes much deeper than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. More importantly, I believe home-schooling will help us build stronger relationships with our children. Not that you can’t have strong relationships if your children are in public/private school, just that home-schooling might furnish more opportunities for such a relationship.

Jenna N. 28 from KS: I (semi-ironically) became an elementary school teacher and after having been a teacher, I really can’t imagine having someone else have the amount of influence over my children that teacher’s have. Not to mention the colossal amount of time that is wasted in a classroom and my (slightly arrogant) attitude of knowing what I think teachers should be doing and if they are doing it the right way or not.

Emily H. 19 from GA: I do plan to homeschool my kids one day. Though it won’t be a perfect experience, I feel I have definitely learned from mistakes my parents made (and will carry on the successes) and would like to put it in action in one day.

Allison E. 24 from VA: Yes, I plan on it. I think it prepared me better academically and I want to give my kids that advantage.

Megan W. 27 from GA: As of now we are planning on homeschooling because, as of now, we believe it’s the best fit for our oldest. My husband and I want to have the final say on what our children are taught. Each year our kids are in school we will seek to make the decision that’s best for each of our children.

Jonathan M. 30 from TX: Yes, because the more I look at the pathetic state of the recrutes coming in right out of highschool there is no way I would let my kids grow up that way. The other reason is that every time I hear about what they teach in schools it makes me fear for my kids.  

Another responder said: Yes (or private Christian), I plan to (if I have children); I believe it prepares them academically for the real world better than public school; I believe it lays out foundations faith issues.

The second half of this question was “If you do plan on homeschooling, is there anything you would do differently?”

While some responders said, “No, not really,” others gave many suggestions about what they would plan to do differently if and when they do homeschool their children.

The first three testimonies are from the moms who currently homeschool:

Jenna C. 28 from KY: I will be more intentional about training them in social interaction, and in providing opportunities for them to practice those skills. I will also be more involved in their learning, and will not focus so much on their “grade” but on how well they know the information. I will review with them and teach them how to apply the things they are learning to real life situations, not only during the lesson but in everyday life.

Christine M. 31 from KS: We do plan on giving them the option of choosing public school once they reach High School, and of course academics will take on a different look because there’s so much more available. But, overall my goal is to create socially active, politically literate, independent adults by the time graduation arrives.

Jerusha C. 30 from VA: I have them enrolled in a correspondence school.

Melissa G. 26 from VA: MORE WRITING! And a greater emphasis on critical thinking over religious faith.

One Responder said: Yes, I would particularly focus more on spirituality (versus theology), concentrate on finding a church in which my children can thrive socially/spiritually, etc. Additionally, I would be more focused on classic education (more focus on foreign language, literature, etc.) 

Megan W. 27 from GA: Yes. I will make lesson plans ahead of time and know what our goals are for the week, semester and year. There will be more structure then what I had.

Michelle D. 19 from KS: Can’t think of many, but perhaps I would involve my children in more group activities/co-op classes during grade school and middle school. I would not be afraid to allow them to have close friends outside of the family.

Ruth M. 23 from OK: I plan to implement a little more structure and hit math and science a little harder.

Corinna R. 34 from VA: I will focus more on academic excellence. The materials are so much better now. I don’t have to invent the wheel like my parents.

Amberley A. 33 from WA: Well, there are quite a few things we want to teach our kids that I wasn’t taught – Greek, things about finances/running a business/real estate, Also – we want to teach Bible – not only the knowledge, but the application of what it says and why it is relevant in their life, and mission trip/witnessing practice and experience.

***

So, back to my original dilemma: Do I want to/plan to homeschool my children?

In past posts, I’ve shared very honestly about what I thought was great about my homeschooling experience and what I thought could have been different/better. Overall, I loved being homeschooled and think I had a positive experience for the most part.

But, I don’t really want to homeschool.

Here are my reasons (mainly selfish):

1. I struggle with patience with my twin boys and get frustrated very easily when I try to teach them things. I don’t want my lack of personal patience to interfere with the learning process or (worse!) cause them to hate school/learning.

2. I butt heads with one of my sons quite frequently. I think he learns better from other people.

3. I want to work. I really, really enjoy teaching writing and literature at our local university. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from teaching (though I only do it part time).

My boys will be going to Pre-K this fall at our neighborhood elementary school. (It is right across the street from us!) Since they will not be 5 until October, they will enter Kindergarten next year. Though I could keep them at home this year and do “home” preschool, I am having a baby in October (we like that month around here) and I know that at school they will be able to get the social and academic attention that I will struggle to give them in the first few weeks and months after our baby boy arrives.

Reading through all of the surveys has made me go back and forth on my decision though. I definitely feel guilty about not wanting to homeschool, fearing that I will not be able to provide the “good things” that I gleaned from homeschooling:

I want to provide the Biblical education that I received through homeschooling.
I want my kids to have the freedom to pursue special interests.
And I do not want my children to be bored in school and lose their love for learning early (something my husband struggled with in public school).

However, I have come to the realization that teaching the Bible or about one’s faith is an option for every family, whether you homeschool or not.

I can still encourage my sons’ personal interests (plus, they will have other adults — teachers, counselors — who will also inspire them and perhaps provide insight and opportunities that I cannot).

The “being bored” thing is one I am concerned about. And I would more seriously consider homeschooling if I felt like my kids were starting to hate learning.

My husband and I agree that we will take our schooling decision year by year and we would definitely consider homeschooling in the future if we think that this will be the best option for our boys.

What about you?

If you were homeschooled, do you plan on/want to homeschool your children?

If not, do you (like me) feel guilty sometimes?

If you do plan on homeschooling, what do you plan to do differently with your children?

Please feel free to comment or ask questions below! And please share this via Facebook or other social networking sites if you feel that this post or series would be interesting or helpful for others. You can “like” this post on the Facebook button below.

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part One — What is Courtship?

July 29, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team15 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part One of this series was originally published on January 8, 2013.

*****

Part One — What is Courtship?

My dad once told me that he wasn’t going to let me get married until I was 30. I was probably about 12 or 13 when I first remember hearing him say that, but I couldn’t figure out whether he was joking or not at the time. I knew that there was some reality behind his joke because he is deeply under the courtship culture that I grew up in.

I grew up “broken.” Some normal girlish part of me has never quite worked. I never had any dreams about getting married, nor did I have any idea of what a relationship for me would look like. About 6 years later, I found myself in a relationship, and it was going a heck of a lot differently than any of the “courtship” books said a relationship was supposed to go. I read all of the courtship books I could get my hands onto. I found any book that had to do with emotional purity, courtship, dating or not to date, and I devoured the advice.

I even read a book by someone I used to know way back when all this was called “Emotional Purity.” I read almost all of Josh Harris’ books, and used to daydream about having a relationship that played out just like the couples in the books, or how the authors of all of these books said a courtship should be played out. Ironically, my daydreams usually included very complicated messed up situations where I was the maiden in distress where I almost died and the man who loved me saved me. Who knew that the relationship with my husband would actually turn out a lot like my daydreams, minus the almost dying part?

I have hated the word Courtship. I hated it because of what it stood for, what I have been through in the name of “courtship,” and what I have watched others face. But, I discovered something; it is not courtship in and of itself that I have been burned by, it is the twisted version of the word, act, that over the past decade or so it has become. I had a long conversation once with a friend about labels. We talked about how so many people have made up meanings for things such as courtship, family, fatherhood, denominations of churches, and whatnot and the original definitions have been lost. I used to cringe every time someone used “courtship” to describe their relationship. That was until I finally looked up the original definition of the word. According to the dictionary, Courtship is defined as thus:

Courtship
1. the wooing of one person by another
2. the period during which such wooing takes place
3. solicitation of favors, applause, etc.

There is nothing in this definition that says that the man seeking to win a woman’s heart must first “court” the dad and the parents rule the relationship. There is nothing in here that indicates that this is a strictly biblical, family based process. In fact, I find myself having flashbacks to a certain Jack Sparrow egging a certain Will Turner on about wooing said lady. This definition brings up memories of a sincere “I want to get to know you” relationship. This reminds me of a man and woman falling in love and choosing to marry.

This is my definition of Courtship: It is simply the wooing of one person by another.

[I have been asked multiple times to share my story about how Phil and I met and how our relationship played out. Let me just say this. I will never write that story under my real name. I consider some of the relationships that I have now with some involved in the story more important than what they used to be, no matter how messed up things were. Things were rough, parents controlled our relationship and forgiveness has been asked on all sides as has been needed, and that is all you need to know for now. ]

I found this story recently and it brought to light a pretty significant problem that I have with courtship as it is played out today. Even though this is a very radical (and true as much as I can tell) story, it shows how much the Patriarchal/Quiverfull/Fundamentalist Christian movements have gone back to the Old Testament for their rules. They believe that the father [of the woman] is in complete control of the relationship, and that father is holding the only key to his daughter’s purity. They believe that the man should ask the father to court/get to know his daughter, ask his blessing for marriage, and to give the daughter over to the man at the altar. Again, a very clear picture of how much control the father has in the entire relationship. Even though the purity culture within these movements believe that the women are to be cherished, that is roughly translated into these women are the men’s slaves and they have no voice. The women’s only responsibility is to keep house and spit out babies.

On the surface, these are all, for the most part, not all that bad. Underneath, it’s the legalism, control, and authoritarian structure that causes problems. It is not a bad thing for a father to want to protect his daughter, but her purity is not his to keep. It is not his to manipulate and flaunt about so that he can catch the man he wants his daughter to marry.

There comes a certain point in any child’s life when the parents truly have to let go and let their child figure out life for themselves. It is not a bad thing for a man to ask a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It is just not a biblical commandment or principle. It is cultural. It is not a bad thing for the family to be involved and around while a couple is working through their relationship. It goes south very quickly when it becomes an obligation for the couple to always be in sight of the family, and never have any time for themselves to talk, and to get to know each other without little siblings acting as spies for the parents, ultimately the father. It is not a bad thing for a couple to seek advice for their relationship from their parents, or others they respect, especially if they are serious about marriage. But that again, is not a biblical commandment or principle, and taken too far to say that the father has ultimate control is really wrong.

[ I am not a parent yet, and most likely when I reach this point with our children, I will probably have different ideas. But for now, this is simply what I am seeing, what I have pondered long and hard about, and what I am now ready to share. ]

Courtship isn’t about a man overcoming a woman and designing her life with her father’s consent but without her consent. Courtship isn’t about a man pressuring a woman to marry him because God told him so. [Read more about that here from my dear friend Hännah @ Wine and Marble.] Courtship does not have to be a deeply serious thing. It can simply become a man really liking a girl, she liking him back, and they take the step from being friends to something deeper.

Normally, in normal cultures, this step happens naturally. If there is something more in a friendship, usually it manifests itself and becomes clear as the friendship becomes deeper. Courtship is two people loving spending time together and enjoying each other while their friendship deepens. If they, as a couple, without parents pressuring them, or controlling the relationship, feel like it’s time to move closer to getting married, then by all means, it is up to them, and them alone. Courtship should be two people deciding for themselves that they are ready for a relationship.

The purity culture and the courtship culture (basically those both go hand in hand) have taken good things and turned them into extra-biblical commands that are expected for every couple, family, and parents to do.

Phil and I have had many conversations about what we are going to do when we have children old enough to decide for themselves. We will not try to control them, nor will we force them to date, court, marry someone we want and not who they want. I want to see my daughters truly wooed and my sons wooing their ladies. I want to rejoice in that, not feel concerned that our children aren’t obeying us. We will raise our children to make good decisions. By doing so, when they reach the age when they are interested in the opposite sex, then we want to give them the freedom to make those good decisions.

Courtship is the wooing of one person to another.

*****

To be continued.

A Call to Action: Together, We Can Make Homeschooling Better

July 26, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

By HA Community Coordinator R.L. Stollar

Every day on Homeschoolers Anonymous, we are hearing about how appearances can be deceiving — how heartbreaking abuse happens all around us, and can hide even in the families of homeschool leaders. We read Mary’s story, our blood boiling in horror that a respected family could inflict such emotional and physical abuse upon its children. We read about people like Susie, who were left on the side of the road with a few dollars in their hand because their parents were unwilling to love them for who they are. We read with shock that Jennifer‘s family would go so far as to threaten to kill her pets and remove all her belongings just to get her to obey an ideology.

We read these stories with heavy hearts.

Yet we also read with hope and amazement that there are so many of us willing to join together and create a network of love and support for people like this. When we announced that Jennifer needed assistance, there was an overwhelming outpouring of it. When we put out a call for stories on any number of topics, there is no shortage of people willing to speak up, to make their voices heard. There clearly is a need here, and there are many who want to help.

This makes us excited about what 2013-2014 has in store for Homeschoolers Anonymous.

We started Homeschoolers Anonymous on March 16, 2013. It is a cooperative project by former homeschoolers interested in sharing our experiences growing up in the conservative, Christian homeschooling subculture. Our mission is to make homeschooling better for future generations through awareness, community building, and healing.

Today, we are four months old. In four short months, we have accrued over 400,000 views on our blog. We’ve had the privilege of being a part of some amazing things.

We launched #HSLDAMustAct, lobbying HSLDA to create a public awareness campaign to combat child abuse. We helped Hännah Ettinger at Wine & Marble raise over $10,000 for a young woman rescued from an abusive family environment. Our awareness series have addressed some big issues, including LGBT experiences and struggles with self-injury.

Together, we are making a difference. We are changing lives.

Today I am excited to announce that Homeschoolers Anonymous is expanding to become a non-profit organization called HARO — Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out.

To this end, our goal is to raise $100,000 over the next 60 days. We will be utilizing the crowd-funding platform Indiegogo to move HARO into official 501c(3) status and put into motion several concrete action plans.

What does this mean?

Crowd-funding means that we need you, the members of this community, to help us achieve our fundraising goals.

We need you to donate — once, twice, or however many times you can in the next two months. But whether you donate or not, we need you to share this call for help with your friends and family. We need you to talk it up on Facebook and Twitter and your favorite social media sites.

Creating a 501c(3) means that HARO will be a real, live non-profit. We will have tax exempt status, and (when the IRS approves it), donations to HARO will be tax-deductible. (Note: HARO is not currently a non-profit and donations to this campaign are unfortunately not tax deductible.)

We are proud to unveil some highlights from our future projects:

Homeschoolers Anonymous website

The Homeschoolers Anonymous website will get a professional makeover, greatly improving its internal structure and usability. We also plan to set up a forum with dedicated moderators.

Annual HARO Convention

This wouldn’t be a homeschool-related organization if we didn’t plan a convention, would it? In all seriousness, the internet is a wonderful tool for disseminating information, but in-person community and engagement is important as well. To this end, we will develop an annual HARO convention to begin in 2014.

The Mary Project:

Named in honor of the pseudonymous author of our most popular series, the Mary Project will undertake a public awareness campaign to fight child abuse in homeschooling communities — the campaign that we asked HSLDA to undertake and that HSLDA ignored.

Broken Arrows Initiative:

The Broken Arrows Initiative will create a tangible and concrete support system for homeschool graduates in need, as well as lifelines for current homeschool students in unhealthy situations. Physical, legal, and financial assistance are all included in this initiative.

R.A.H.A.B.: Research Alliance for Homeschooling Attitudes and Beliefs

Concrete data is important when you’re working with any demographic, and homeschoolers are no exception. Data helps us determine where we can do the most good and evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts. R.A.H.A.B. will be the arm of HARO that researches and documents data pertaining to the homeschooling movement.

For more detailed information regarding each of these projects, click here.

What if you don’t hit your fundraising goal within 60 days?

Indiegogo’s “flex-funding” campaign model means that, unlike Kickstarter, it’s not all or nothing. If we don’t make our goal, we keep what we raised, minus a 9% fee to Indiegogo. However, if we make our goal, that fee goes down to 4%! While we plan on achieving our goal, we will work with whatever the results are. We will start with what we have and go from there, focusing on buildling a secure, stable infrastructure, filing paperwork to be legally recognized as a 501(c)(3), and pursuing grants to round out project funding and offering assistance to those in need.

Who are the founding board members of HARO?

The four founding board members of HARO were chosen based on several criteria, not the least of which is that they have the trust and respect of many members of the communities we are building online. HARO board members not only need to have skill sets applicable to founding a non-profit, but also have demonstrated that they are invested in our future and passionate about our vision. A community fundraiser of $100,000 is a serious matter, and the public faces of this organization should be ones that you know will use that money responsibly and wisely, for the good of future homeschool generations.

The board members are:

R.L. Stollar
Nicholas Ducote
Andrew Roblyer
Shaney Lee

We will be adding a fifth board member in the next few months.

How Bad Homeschool Research Hurts Homeschoolers

July 25, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team12 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kathryn Brightbill’s blog The Life and Opinions of Kathryn Elizabeth, Person. It was originally published on July 24, 2013.

When I was in college, I was one of the participants who answered the NHERI/HSLDA/Brian Ray survey of homeschooling graduates. I don’t remember how I got the survey, probably via email forward from my mom, but what I do remember is sending an email to my family after taking it in which I said something about how I wouldn’t believe a thing from the eventual study results. Aside from the fact that an email forwarded among homeschool groups asking people to take an internet survey is a lousy way of getting a representative sample (especially when we’re talking more than a decade ago, when we were nowhere as close to ubiquitous computing as we are now and computer access was still largely along socioeconomic lines), the survey itself was rife with methodological problems.

My memory is of a survey where I could tell exactly what answer they were looking to find, based on both the questions asked and the possible answers given for those questions. It was a survey that, even as a college student who had a positive experience and didn’t have the criticisms of the system that I do now, was so bad that I wondered why anyone would design it the way they did unless the goal was not usable data but a certain set of predetermined results.

If I got anything out of being homeschooled for twelve years by a math teacher, it’s a healthy appreciation for numbers. Numbers explain the world, or at least they can explain the world if they’re used correctly. Without good numbers, you might as well be stumbling around in the dark bumping your shins into the furniture. Bad numbers are even worse than no numbers; they’re like spreading Legos on the carpet while stumbling around in the dark with bare feet.

The HSLDA/NHERI numbers on homeschooling are like stumbling around on that Lego-strewn carpet. Aside from the aforementioned homeschool graduate survey, they also have test scores that they trot out to prove that homeschoolers do better on standardized tests than other students.

Except that the numbers don’t show that. What they actually show is the results of those homeschooled children whose parents not only use achievement tests (which isn’t all of them), who were aware of the NHERI survey (again, not all of them), and who agreed to submit their children’s scores for a study that they were already told was intended to make homeschooling look good. We have no idea how representative that group is of homeschoolers as a whole because it was self-selected and we don’t know whether that self-selected group in any way mirrors homeschoolers as a whole.

The modern homeschool movement is more than 30 years old and we still don’t have a good idea of homeschooling demographics. We know that they’re predominantly white and might be mostly religious (but even the religious makeup is hard to guess because the religious and the secular homeschoolers seldom run in the same circles). We don’t know what the socioeconomic makeup of the homeschool population is, and we don’t know the average education level of parents or a breakdown of those parents’ degrees. Without that, we can only guess at whether the socioeconomic levels of homeschoolers in NHERI’s test score data in any way represent homeschoolers as a whole.

Homeschoolers are fiercely independent even without taking into consideration that the religious ones don’t trust outside researchers because they’ve been told by HSLDA for years that outsiders want to hurt homeschooling. As for the secular unschoolers, they aren’t exactly fans of the establishment, which makes it hard to pin them down as well. Compounding the problem, the people the religious ones do trust (aka, HSLDA and NHERI) aren’t interested in giving good data, they’re interested in giving a good sales pitch for homeschooling. And so, we’re stumbling around in the dark knocking our shins into furniture and stepping on stray Legos.

There are a handful of small studies about adult former homeschoolers, but the rest is guesswork. We don’t have a good picture of the socioeconomic status of homeschooling families. We don’t really know how homeschoolers as a population do on achievement tests because we don’t have any surveys that aren’t self-selected. We don’t even have a good idea of how many people are homeschooling. It might be a million and a half, it might be twice that. We need good data and we simply don’t have it.

Are the kids I knew in high school who were all upper middle class children, mostly of parents with degrees in STEM fields, an accurate representation? What about the kids I knew when I was younger whose blue collar parents had no college and were passing their non-standard English dialect on to the kids rather than standard English grammar? Was my dad right when he always said that math was a weakness that homeschoolers needed to watch out for because the kids were being taught primarily by mothers who had been put on the consumer math track in school? Was I right when I used to tell people that the reason they thought homeschoolers were weird was because the normal ones who are in the majority didn’t advertise that they were homeschooled?

I don’t know because no one does.

And yet the Brian Ray/NHERI research keeps getting repeated in conservative and mainstream media even though it doesn’t actually tell us anything.

I understand why homeschool parents want to like the NHERI numbers; they help reassure them that they’re on the right path and not totally screwing up their kids with the homeschool choice. That’s why what NHERI’s doing with self-selected, unscientific research methods is so messed up. Parents, good parents, are relying on data that’s given a veneer of science but that may well be leading them to make educational choices that aren’t the best possible for their children. If math education, for example, really is the weakness for homeschoolers that my dad thought it was, homeschoolers need to know that so they can compensate for the weakness. If more than a fringe number of homeschool kids are having trouble fitting in with mainstream society because of the homeschool bubble, parents need to know that to correct for it.

With nothing but bad data to rely on, parents are left stumbling around in the dark hoping that they aren’t going to bash their shin on the corner of the coffee table or step on a stray Lego. That’s not serving homeschool parents well, and it’s certainly not doing anything for the kids.

Adult Homeschoolers Speak Out: Part Eight, The Best Thing vs. What Was Missing

July 25, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

Adult Homeschoolers Speak Out: Part Eight, The Best Thing vs. What Was Missing

HA note: The following series is reprinted with permission from Brittany’s blog BAM. Part Eight was originally published on June 19, 2012.

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Part Eight: The Best Thing vs. What Was Missing

If you homeschool or are considering homeschooling, sometimes fears or uncertainties or just generally being overwhelmed by choosing a curriculum, lesson planning, or keeping up with all that socialization can sometimes make you forget the “big picture” of why you wanted to homeschool in the first place.

This post is the “big picture,” the reasons that former homeschoolers list as the best thing(s) about homeschooling. The second half of this post is the responses of these adults about what they wish had been different about their homeschooling experience.

I hope this post encourages you and gives you some food for thought as well.

Survey Question: What was the best thing about homeschooling?

Here are the top three answers:

#1: Closer Family relationships (15 responses/ 34%)

#2 & 3 are tied:

Flexibility (10 responses/ 23%)
Freedom to pursue interests (academic and extracurricular) (10 responses/ 23%)

Almost everyone mentioned more than “best thing.” I have divided all the responses into these five categories (the numbers listed are how many people mentioned each one):

Family

Closer family 15
One-on-one time with parents
Greater appreciation for parents

Academic

Freedom to pursue interests (academic and extracurricular) 10
Ability to work at your own pace 7
Laid back schedule 2
Fewer interruptions
More time efficient
Better Learning
Reading
Never stopping the learning process
Getting college credit in high school
More attention
Learned how to think for oneself
Learning for learning’s sake and not for grades
Freedom to adapt to personal learning styles
Custom education
No wasted time on “busy work”

Personal

Flexibility 10
Promoting Independence/ independent thinking 3
Sheltered from bad influences
Reduced Peer Pressure
More confidence/ less social pressure
Having “real life” experiences
Self-motivation
Learned strong work ethic
Matured quickly

Social

Being able to travel 2
More time for volunteering 2
Unique experiences (field trips, etc) 2
More free time
Meeting lots of different people

Religious

Bible Education 3
Closer walk with God 2
Faith integrated into every aspect of learning

Wow! So many “best things” about homeschooling! I hope these lists are encouraging to you.

The second survey question I asked in my survey was this:

Survey Question: Do you wish anything was different about your homeschooling experience?

Here is the statistical break down:

43% (19) said “No, they couldn’t think of anything they wished was different”
56% (25) said “Yes, they wished ‘xyz’ had been different”

The answers were both fascinating and widely varied. I have divided the “Yes” answers into Academic and Social categories.

Academic:

J. M. 30 from TX: I wish my folks had spent more time on math and science. (even though I was ready for collage level study I feel like I could have done even better if we had) 

R. M. 23 from OK: I wish we had done more science.

M.G. 26 from VA: Looking back, I think that my education lacked any real writing component. However, I have compensated for it since.

J. D. 18 from VA: Sometimes I just wish I had a teacher to help me through situations that I didn’t understand the material.

M. W. 27 from GA: I wish there had been more structure and a more complete curriculum.

R. P. 30 from MS: When I got to high school I would go to the homeschool convention each year and pick out my books for the coming year with my mom. I then went through the text books pretty much on my own. I wish my mom had held me accountable a bit more because I didn’t end up finishing as much as I could have (although in the end I was completely prepared for college). Also we didn’t do science labs in high school, which I wish we had even though that tends to be hard. In WA state we have a program where you can go to community college for free for the last two years of high school and graduate from high school with an AA. I kind of wish my mom had pushed me to do that, but it may be that I wasn’t socially ready at that point.

E. M. 26 from FL: I highly recommend co-op. I wish we would have done more of this early on in my experiences. It provided more structure.

E. H. 19 from GA: Not much, just that maybe we had been part of the co-op longer and we had been stricter on keeping grades.

M. M. 29 from CA: I honestly kinda wish I wasn’t [homeschooled]. Although I wouldn’t be who I am today, but I really felt I was [robbed] in the education area.

Social:

Several people mentioned that they wished they could have been involved with sports:

Kelly C. 29 from VA: I wish that it would have been easier to get involved in sports. The only option for me was a rec league and the one time I got involved in a rec league it was all boys (on a boy/girl team).

Beka R. 25 from KS: I look at my younger siblings all involved in basketball, and I wish I had given it a shot . . . looking back I think I would have enjoyed that very much.

Samantha C. 24 from MO: Being able to be involved in competitive sports, like softball, would have been nice.

Others focused on deeper social issues:

S. G. 29 from VA: I do wish I had been forced into more social situations. That could have made the public sphere less trying. Even today, conversing with people remains difficult for me; I believe my schooling experience plays a large role in that difficulty.

J. C. 28 from KY: I wish my parents had been more involved in my schooling and in making sure I was involved socially, not just by putting me into social situations but by training me in how to act in those situations.

B. H. 23 from VA: That I would have had a bit more contact with other homeschoolers, but I did have adequate social activities in Youth Group at Church.

K. C. 24 from VA: I wish that I had a better homeschool group in high school. Having a good local group is key to not feeling isolated.

S. M. 29 from WV: I wish it had not been illegal at the time and that it had been more widely accepted. My brother and I were teased and bullied mercilessly by public school kids about being homeschooled. My two younger brothers have had a completely different experience because homeschooling is so common now.

O. G. 29 from KS: I kind of wish I had been pushed to try more things. I was a little timid.

M. V. 27 from IA: I wouldn’t be homeschooled. I wish I’d been sent [public school], actually. If I had to still be homeschooled, I wish my parents had pushed me into doing things besides choir and 4-H and work, to try new things instead of just doing what was immediately available.

I suppose another angle of this is that I wish I had spent more time doing things with people who were not homeschooled and who were not like me, so I didn’t have the huge learning curve post-high school graduation.

I think this is an often-overlooked disadvantage of homeschooling: Sometimes homeschooling students get jobs or are pushed into service activities and spend too much time doing adult things before they are truly adults, and missing out on important kid activities instead.

In my 10th grade year, my mom took on responsibility of two young boys for a lady in our church who worked; we essentially became a two-kid daycare . . . I didn’t enjoy it (I’m not much of a kid person) and school had to be fit in on the sides. I have heard my parents’ current pastor’s wife say that she prefers her daughter, who does like kids, to not always be babysitting, because she doesn’t want her daughter to grow up being a sort of pseudo-teen-mom. And I think that happened to me a little in my 10th-grade year. I also worked a lot (at the Y, which was fun), but sometimes that stood in for other social activities. I didn’t actually have to work. So, different: not so many adult activities, so soon.

Finally, one responder gave this answer which I though was really interesting (and I wasn’t quite sure how to categorize it):

C. R. 35 from VA: Yes, I believe that it is a really struggle for homeschooling parents to release their children once they are grown.

I think these “wishes” are very enlightening. Some of them are more tied to being a “first generation” homeschooler than others. For example, there are more co-op opportunities and sports opportunities today than there were 15-20 years ago.

Perhaps these other academic and social “wishes” will help give current homeschoolers insight into where they can pursue conversation with their children or perhaps make changes.

What about you?

If you were or are homeschooled, what is the very best thing about it?

As an adult homeschool alumni, is there anything that you wish had been different about your homeschooling experience? What advice would you give to homeschool parents today?

Please feel free to comment or ask questions! And please share this series if you think it would be interesting or helpful to others by linking to Facebook or other social networking sites (you can “like” this post by clicking below”)

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To be continued.

Homeschoolers Anonymous

An Archived Blog

Author: HA Editorial Team

How I Learned To Stop Being Afraid and Love Other Religions, Part One: If Satan Made Xanax, And Other Worldview Myths

Relationships, A Series: Part Three — The Calm Before The Storm

When Spiritual Abuse Comes From The Home

Adult Homeschoolers Speak Out: Part Ten, Are the Stereotypes Better or Worse?

Relationships, A Series: Part Two — We Were Best Friends

Adult Homeschoolers Speak Out: Part Nine, Do Former Homeschoolers Want to Homeschool?

Relationships, A Series: Part One — What is Courtship?

A Call to Action: Together, We Can Make Homeschooling Better

How Bad Homeschool Research Hurts Homeschoolers

Adult Homeschoolers Speak Out: Part Eight, The Best Thing vs. What Was Missing