Author: HA Editorial Team

I Hate That There Is A Name For This: Heather Doney

HA Editorial Team16 Comments

I Hate That There Is A Name For This: Heather Doney

Heather Doney blogs at Becoming Worldly.

Trigger warning: self-injury.

First off, let me say that I can’t write about this topic without tears of shame coming to my eyes.  Still, I figure the best thing to do with shame is to shed sunlight on it.  So here goes…

I pull my hair out when I’m stressed.  I grab a single hair and yank it out by the root, and then grab another one and do the same thing.  Pulling out the coarser hairs hurts more and those are the ones that I want to pull out.  Wanting to do it isn’t the right word, actually.  It is a compulsion.  If I am absentmindedly messing with my hair (and I generally don’t notice I’m doing it when I am) and find a coarse hair, it is very very hard to not pull it out.  It is an exercise in willpower to just leave it alone, smooth my hair back the way it was, and do something else.  Sometimes I have to put my hair up in a ponytail or a bun because otherwise I can’t help but pull that hair out and then look for another one just like it and then another one after that.

This may seem like an odd problem to have.  Maybe it strikes you as kind of nutty.  I guess I think it’s kind of nutty, and I imagine that if I didn’t have it, I’d probably be pretty judgmental towards someone who did.  Heck, I’m pretty judgmental about it and I do have this problem.

You probably wouldn’t ever know I had this problem if I didn’t tell you I did, or at least I hope you wouldn’t.  I have lived in fear of people discovering it and thinking I am ugly or crazy.  Instead lots of people tell me I have great hair, beautiful hair, compliment me on the cut and color, but I secretly know the truth.

There have been many times when I’ve had a patch or two of short hairs growing back in after I’ve pulled a number of them out and I will use hairspray, clips, ponytail holders, and lots of other things in the arsenal of hairstyling products and tools to hide it.  When in doubt I’ve sometimes gone months without ever wearing my hair down in public.  It makes me so mad.  I prefer having a simple beauty routine as well as wash-and-go haircuts, so the idea that I have this annoying problem and need to spend time and mental space on covering it up, all the while knowing I caused it myself, drives me nuts.  The frustration of being your own worst enemy with something this weird is as maddening as it is hard to explain.

There is a name for this problem.  It’s called trichotillomania.  I still can’t stand that word.  Just writing it down I feel intense loathing for it.  It makes me want to puke or punch a wall.  I hate that there is a name for this.  I hate that it exists.  I hate that I still have it and I hope that sometime, somehow, it will go away.

There are apparently other problems connected or somehow related to trichotillomania and I used to have some of them too.  I still have one of them, although it’s minor.  Nail biting is a similar sort of compulsion, as is skin-picking, and chewing on the corners of your mouth.  I still chew on the corners of my mouth, particularly while reading or writing.  (Yep, just caught myself doing it right now.)

I used to bite my nails and the skin around my nails down to the point where they’d bleed.  I quit at age 14 and have nice healthy nails today. I accomplished this by carrying a nail clipper in my pocket for immediate use on any hangnails (biting them just makes them worse), keeping my nails neatly trimmed and painted with clear nail polish that had a hint of glitter (a forbidden rebellious thing that made me happy), and I would literally sit on my hands when I really wanted to bite my nails until the urge had passed.

I used to pick at my skin daily, making my teenage acne considerably worse, and I stopped because I got a better skin care routine (I use Lush facial scrub followed by a little dab of organic coconut oil as moisturizer every day).  I also limited the time I allotted myself to inspect my skin, and I stopped using a magnifying mirror.  Today I have good and well cared for skin and thankfully the tiny scars I accidentally gave myself aren’t all that visible since I have freckles.

I had trichotillomania for years before I knew what it was.  One day when I was around 11 or 12 years old I was reading a book and noticed I had a small pile of my own hair on the couch next to me.  I threw it in the garbage.  Pulling my hair out inexplicably felt like a relief from stress, which, as the eldest daughter in a large, impoverished, and dysfunctional Quiverfull homeschooling family, I had a lot of.  A few months later I was shocked out of my hair-pulling denial when my parents noticed I had two visible bald spots on my head, each about the size of a quarter.

“Are you stupid or something?” My Dad said,  “You’re quite an idiot to be pulling your hair out by the root.  It might not even grow back now.  You’d better hope it does.  Nobody’ll want anything to do with some baldheaded girl who’s yanking out her own hair, that’s for sure.  Do it again, stupid, and you’re gonna get a spanking.”

My Dad and my siblings mocked me and laughed at me in the months afterwards as the tiny little baby hairs started sticking up when they grew back in.  I was filled with shame and embarrassment. I started wearing my hair in a ponytail all the time.  It’s the only way I was able to stop pulling it out so much and stop having people notice what I’d done.

My Dad’s solution to my problem had been (predictably) to make me feel powerless, ashamed, fearful, insecure, and scared of being hit.  As it is, I think I developed trichotillomania in the first place because I already felt all of those things very strongly.  My life was out of control, I was pointed down the future submissive wife track, and as a sensitive girl who enjoyed books and ideas a hundred times more than babies and domestic duties, I felt I would rather die than have that be my lot.  I felt stuck inside of a skin, an existence, a body, all of which I desperately wanted to shed.  Those were some of the darkest times in my life and I loathed myself as much as I felt my parents did.

I’d like to say that it was sheer willpower that got me to quit these destructive behaviors, but the truth is that over time, as my life trajectory changed for the better and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, these compulsions naturally weakened to the point that quitting them was possible.  The most noticeable improvement was when I started public school.  Still, I never did quit the hair pulling entirely.  I just hid it better and I tried my best to put my hair up and out of my own reach when I noticed I was doing it.  Thankfully today I don’t do it nearly as often as I did as a girl and at times I have thought the problem was gone entirely.  In recent years it has still returned during periods of extreme stress though.

Finals week.

Flooding out in Hurricane Katrina.

The death of my grandfather.

A breakup.

For years I believed that this problem was because I was somehow defective, screwed up, pathetic, damaged goods, and just couldn’t hack it.  When I think of trichotillomania today I view it through a different lens though.  The image that comes to mind is a bird in a cage.  This connection hit me when I learned that certain kinds of parrots, when they do not get proper socialization and care, will pull their own feathers out.  I can identify with being that bird, wings clipped, kept behind bars, not even knowing what goes on outside of the little space it’s allowed to live in, but feeling bored, unloved, and loathing it’s immediate surroundings.

I think that for girls (and probably guys) who grew up like this and have struggled with various forms of self-harm, it was a perfect storm where the expectation that “God-given natural beauty,” obedient behavior, rigid levels of self-control and self-denial, and perfection in your assigned duties were seen as giving you all of your worth, while any real independent thinking, personality, and human desire were ignored or stamped out, that self-harm became a rebellion of sorts.  It’s natural to want to be valued for who you are, not what you are, so I think that although it is certainly counter-productive, harming your appearance or health, behaving in a manner that is not allowed (towards a body that is your own but you’re told doesn’t really belong to you), and developing compulsions (the very definition of a loss of self-control) is on some level reactionary against that mindset, a twisted affirmation that you are more than those things.  After all, we all are more than those things.

I don’t think I would have ever developed trichotillomania if it hadn’t been for how I was treated as a girl, day in and day out.  Being made to live in a way that is not compatible with human nature really does strange things to people and this is what happened to me and apparently to so many other former homeschoolers (and mistreated kids in general) who developed self-harming behaviors.  The toxic environment messed with our heads so much to where we hurt ourselves, it felt natural to do so, and we didn’t even know why.

TeenPacters Speak Up: Part Six, TeenPact Breakaway

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TeenPacters Speak Up: A Series by Between Black and White

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Between Black and White. Part Six was originally published on May 22, 2013.

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Part Six: TeenPact Breakaway, by Jessica

I remember it clearly. Like a scene from a movie

I remember the exact moment I began to breakaway from the TeenPact message.

And what is funny is that the reason it started to crumble had nothing to do with the misogyny, the hypocritical modesty standards or corrupt election rigging. Instead, it was a young person who dared to speak their opinion; an opinion that the powers-that-be did not share.

First some background.

In March 2002, Alabama legislature was locked in an intense debate over reforming the Alabama constitution. At the same time, the 2002 Alabama TeenPact Session was conveying. They thought it would be the ideal time to introduce us to government in action (and rightfully so).

This was my second year to attend TeenPact. The first year, my involvement was fairly basic. I went to my state class. I learned a lot and really enjoyed socializing with so many people so decided to go to an alumni event: Leadership Summit.

It was there that I bought into the whole TeenPact ideal. The TPA dress code, how to interact with guys, how to keep “sweet” and be acceptable (which I never quite could do). But the biggest thing I learned was the idea of servant leadership. To the TeenPact organization, sacrificing yourself is the only way to be a servant leader. Which is true, in part. However, they failed to emphasis that it doesn’t mean becoming a doormat, an enabler or codependent. Telling impressionable young people…especially young women that to be God-like you must take anger, taunts and other abuse  without providing guidance on assertiveness and boundaries is dangerous. But I bought it. I bought it all.

And it damaged me.

To this day, I am prone to accept abuse from toxic individuals because I feel like I deserve it. I do not establish appropriate boundaries because I don’t feel I deserve them. If I want to be a good Christian, I will want to be abused and mistreated. This has caused a lot of problems in establishing friendships and even in my prior relationships with men (before my husband).

Back to my TeenPact story, though…

After Leadership Summit, I was hooked. I went and worked for two weeks at the National Offices, I staffed a one-day class, and was so ready for my alumni state class!

It was at this week-long class, that I, along with the Alabama TeenPacters, sat and observed the Alabama legislature debate the reforming of the state constitution. My father was a county official and I was very familiar with the state constitution reforming bill. Reforming the constitution would be beneficial for every county and would also alter the language to remove racist terms. I didn’t see a problem with allowing the state to do so. It was thousands of pages longs and the way it had been created was not intuitive to the 21st century. I, however, was in the minority. The rest of the TeenPacters were in a fever that the Democrats (said with all fear and loathing) would add all kinds of liberal propaganda. Like, gasp, the horror, lottery! Even at that age, I didn’t see the big deal in having a lottery. Sure it was stupid and I didn’t want to waste my money on it but so what if it was added to the constitution; if it would improve efficiency and remove racist language, who cared.

While I sat there with my other TeenPacters, a newscaster came along and tapped me and my friend on the shoulder:

“Are ya’ll here to watch the debate?” she asked. “Do you support constitutional reform?”

I said naively, “I do!”

She took me out of chambers and did an interview with me. I was glowing because I was actually expressing my views on an important matter, one that could affect my state!

After the interview and the Senate dispersed (not ever deciding on anything, of course), I walked back with the rest of the group. The Program Director walked up to me and said “I see you were getting interviewed. What about?”

At this time, I had a huge crush on this Program Director and was convinced that we would have one of those love stories that I read about in all my courtship books.

I said proudly, “I told her how I was pro-constitution reform. And I gave her an interview!”

His face went blank. He was shocked. At that moment, I realized I had gone against the TPA code of conduct by disagreeing with them on a policy matter. It should have been obvious to me that constitution reform was something we were supposed to be against since being pro-constitution reform was a “liberal” thing.  To his credit, the Program Director (who I did not marry, thank God) didn’t chastise me or report me to the TeenPact Dad for the week (please, someone, write about the TeenPact parents).

It was at that moment the first seed of doubt appeared about TeenPact. I might not have been aware of it but it was then that I started to realize I was “different.” I didn’t follow the party line exactly. In hindsight, I wish that I had questioned “the look” more.

Looking back, I think I know what was in that look from the Program Director. It was astonishment that someone would think differently. It was confusion that a girl would speak out.  It was suspicion over my ability to critically analyze a problem and come to a pretty good conclusion. All qualities that TeenPact supposedly promotes in theory but in action they are just as harsh on free thought as any other religious or political fanatic.

To be continued.

Grassroots in Education: A History of the Modern Homeschooling Movement in America, Part 1, By Katy-Anne Wilson

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Grassroots in Education: A History of the Modern Homeschooling Movement in America, Part 1, By Katy-Anne Wilson

Katy-Anne Wilson describes herself as “mommy to four public children who are or will be sent to public school (so thankful for special education programs).” She is about to graduate college with a degree in writing and sociology. This post was originally published on her blog on August 4, 2012, and is reprinted with her permission.

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In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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Introduction

"The public school system in America originally emerged as a protestant religious initiative in the 1830’s."
“The public school system in America originally emerged as a protestant religious initiative in the 1830’s.”

The story of the modern homeschooling movement in fundamentalist and evangelical Christian circles, who currently dominate this movement and have done so for more than a quarter of a century now, is a story of manipulation. A lot of the modern homeschooling movement happened because of the “culture wars” which started to emerge in the 1920’s. In fact the whole premise of this paper is that the main reason the modern homeschooling movement is as strong and popular as it is currently is because the religious right wanted to gain political and cultural influence in order to “take back America for Christ” and turn the USA into a Christian country. The religious right want to force the American people to live by their ideals and their morals by changing laws in America.

This paper focuses on the fundamentalist and evangelical Christian homeschoolers because 85% – 90% of homeschoolers are fundamentalist or evangelical Christians. (Gaither 2009, p. 341) When the modern homeschooling movement first started there were roughly 10,000-15,000 children who were homeschooled in the USA, but by the mid-80’s the professional estimates are at somewhere between 120,000 and 240,000 (Gaither 2009, p. 341) and now that number is even higher at 1.35 million children in the United States are now homeschooled, (Cooper & Sereau 2007, p. 110) with the majority of these being fundamentalist or evangelical Christians.

The modern homeschooling movement started as a grassroots effort in the 1970’s on the part of secular educational reformers who believed that an institutionalized school setting was not conducive to their children’s education and wanted to educate them through means they considered to be more natural. By the 1980’s, the fundamentalist Christians, the ideological homeschoolers, were beginning to infiltrate the homeschooling movement and by the mid-80’s had completely hijacked the movement from its founders original intentions and had turned it into a political fight against society. (Coleman 2010, unpub.) During the 1970’s the “Christian Right” (fundamentalists and a lot of evangelicals) rose to a position of great political influence. (Dowdy & McNamara 1997, p. 162)

Educational History in the USA

Emergence of the Public School System in America

The public school system in America originally emerged as a protestant religious initiative in the 1830’s and was established by the religious fundamentalists such as the Calvinists, Puritans and the Reformers. (Goldfield et al. 2001, pp. 403 – 404). The Puritans believed that everybody should learn the Bible as well as basic math, reading and writing skills, and they thought that the best way to do this was to develop a public school system. (Goldfield et al. 2001, p. 403). Klicka (1995, pp. 117-118) claims that the main reasons for wanting the children educated at all were so that children could read the Bible for themselves and if they could read and understand it for themselves then they would obey it. The main goals of the original public school movement were literacy (but only as it pertained to learning to read and obey the Scriptures) and vocational training (which was really either household work, the trade of the child’s parents, or an apprenticeship in another trade). Although colleges have existed in some form in the USA since the 1700’s, the goals of the Colonists did not usually include a college education for their children. (Klicka 1995, pp. 117-118). However the public school system was very loose and unregimented until the 19th century.

The public school system was overhauled and reshaped between 1880 and 1920. (Goldfield et al. 2001, p. 681). The 1920’s were the start of what has been dubbed the “culture wars” (Goldfield et al. 2001, p. 777). It was during this time of public school reform that things such as compulsory attendance laws came about, and when kindergarten was started and age appropriate segregated classes were formed. The public schools began to hire professional teachers, and the schools provided students with vocational training. (Goldfield et al. 2001, p. 681).

Although it was fundamentalist Christians who began the public schooling movement, they abandoned it in droves during the 1980’s in order to home school. Secular educational reformers started the modern homeschooling movement which was soon taken over by the Christian fundamentalists and while secular people homeschool, it is not to the same magnitude as the Christian fundamentalists. There are also many Christian fundamentalists who place their children in public schools too but there are many more who home school.

The Modern Homeschooling Movement

When the modern homeschool movement began, it was actually lead by secular educational reformers in the 1970’s (Coleman 2010, unpub.) who believed that schools damage children. The two secular leaders of the modern homeschool movement were John Holt and Raymond Moore. (Gaither 2009, p. 339) In the 1980’s Christian fundamentalists began to join the homeschool movement in large numbers, but for different reasons than the secular crowd. Coleman (2010 unpub.) refers to the secular educational reformers as “Pedagogues” and the religious crowd as “Ideologues”, because some homeschooled for pedagogical reasons and some for ideological reasons. During the 1980’s the Pedagogue crowd and the Ideologue crowd worked together with common goals such as making homeschooling legal in all 50 states of America. (Coleman 2010, unpub.) By the early 1990’s, homeschooling was legal in all 50 states even for parents with no teaching certifications. It was at this time that the Ideologues split off completely from the Pedagogue crowd having completed their goals of making homeschooling legal. The split had been inevitable and had been in progress since about 1985. (Gaither 2009, p. 340)

The Pedagogues simply wanted their children to be able to learn in a natural environment rather than be in institutionalized schooling, because they believed that natural learning was better for their children. Their primary motive was that their children be well-educated. Whereas the primary motive of the Ideologues was to religiously indoctrinate their children in Christian fundamentalism. (Coleman 2010, unpub.) In fact, most religiously motivated homeschoolers believe that they are fighting a culture war and that they must keep their children from being influenced by society, which they usually call “the world”.  The culture wars are very important to fundamentalist Christians, and they believe that they are raising children in order to “take back America for Christ”. (Coleman 2010, unpub.)

To be continued.

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References

Carper, J, & Hunt, T 2007, “Chapter 9: Homeschooling redivivus,” Dissenting tradition in American education pp. 239-264 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 August 2011.

Coleman, R.E. 2010, Ideologues, pedagogues, pragmatics: a case study of the homeschool community in Delaware County, Indiana, Masters thesis, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.

Cimino, R & Lattin, D 1998, Shopping for Faith: American religion in the new millennium, John Wiley & Sons, New York.

Cooper, B & Sureau, J 2007, “The politics of homeschooling: new developments, new challenges”, Educational Policy, 21, 1, p. 110-131, Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 August 2011.

Dowdy, T.E. & McNamara, P.H, 1997 Religion north American style, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Gaither, M 2009, ‘Homeschooling in the USA: past, present and future’, Theory and Research in Education, 7, 3, pp. 331-346, Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 August 2011.

Goldfield, Abbott, Anderson, Argersinger, Argersinger, Barney, & Weir 2001, The American journey: a history of the United States, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Klicka, C.J, 1995 The right choice: the incredible failure of public education and the rising hope of home schooling: an academic historical, practical and legal perspective, Noble publishing associates, Gresham, Oregon.

Connecting Homeschooling and Religious Abuse

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s blog Becoming Worldly. It was originally published on April 1, 2013.

I was asked a very good question by a homeschooler recently and figured I’d answer it here as well, expanding on it a little bit. The essence of that question (as I understood it) was “Why are you including homeschooling in your discussion of religious abuse? Aren’t those two separate things that you’re mistakenly combining?”

I guess the pattern and argument for why I include them together is very clear to me but I can see how most people would likely view them as two separate things. After all, abuse in a religious context can certainly occur without homeschooling ever being in the picture (Ex. See Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal), and homeschooling can be done without ever even having religion involved, not to mention religious abuse. Homeschooling and child maltreatment based on extreme (and in my opinion pretty warped) interpretations of Christianity (what I’m calling “religious abuse” for the sake of simplicity here) certainly do not have to be connected, and obviously curtailing the former would not stamp out the latter. So why would I be talking like this, like they’re connected? Is it because I am mistaken, somehow conflating factors, or because in some ways they really and truly are?

First off, let me say that I too wish that the issue of religious abuse could be decoupled from homeschooling (which I think is a legitimate and respectable educational option), but I don’t think it can be done as it currently stands. They have become intertwined.

I think that there are some important links and patterns that once recognized, change everything, but if I don’t highlight the pattern of what I see, I imagine it’s easy to conclude that I am just mistaken or generalizing based on my own personal experience. As it is, it’s also easy for me to assume that others will automatically see this system and to get frustrated when people don’t. Then I remember that everyone’s lived experience is a bit different and that I have also read and researched a heck of a lot on this topic in addition to having the lived experience of growing up in it. Additionally, I had six years of training (bachelors in political science and master’s degree in public policy) that taught me how to use certain tools, methods, frameworks, and analysis techniques. So here’s my “policy nerd” reasoning:

If you look at the individual or family level, homeschooling looks like a mishmash of various styles based on personal choice, varying from family to family. The pattern is not very apparent (and I would reach the same conclusion that these are two separate topics) but if you look at it at a system level the situation becomes stark (and to me very disturbing).

Homeschooling started out as a way to “liberate” children from authoritarian and rote desk-based learning, but leadership of the movement has been hijacked and become the main socio-political apparatus of a fringe group that has some very extreme practices and aims and has grown very politically powerful due to this takeover of homeschooling leadership. I mean just look at what kind of stuff the HSLDA advocates for with its dues money and the radical bent of its leaders. For brevity’s sake I will only list five things:

(1) They have said that “everyone” should have the right to homeschool, not making formal distinctions for convicted abusers or others who would not pass a background check or ever be seen fit to teach other people’s children.

(2) They have advocated for what is essentially a dismantling of the child welfare system and an expansion of parental rights in a way that essentially amounts to “ownership” of children, as opposed to simply having and carrying out a duty to raise and protect your offspring.

(3) They have called for a parental rights amendment to the United States constitution essentially saying that parents should not have checks or balances from outside entities. They ignore and paper over the unfortunate yet widely known fact that not all parents are fit or have their children’s best interests in mind and that absolutely awful things can and do happen when there is no mechanism to discern or intervene when things have gone wrong within a family.

(4) The HSLDA has funneled homeschoolers’ dues money and aptitude for activism and volunteerism into fielding political candidates such as Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Todd Akin and supporting others with similar radical socio-political agendas. (This has not just been about homeschooling deregulation either. These politicians’ records and agendas regarding family planning, women’s rights, gay people’s rights, religious freedom, and rape have been clear.)

(5) HSLDA fearmongering and political activism has helped them keep their coffers full and our nation awkwardly keeping company with only Somalia and South Sudan when it comes to not ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The whole recent debacle with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was similar.

So at first this stuff just seems weird, right? I mean why might homeschooling have anything to do with gay people or rights for the disabled or the idea that ordinary children should being treated like actual people deserving of similar protections to any other American citizen? Well, the short answer is it certainly doesn’t need to (well, except that homeschooling might be a desirable option for a disabled kid, or that homeschooling in certain circumstances is used to protect children). The thing is, if you are a fearful conspiracy theorist who also believes that you are the new set of God’s chosen people and you must “take back” our nation so that everyone can adhere to the most fundamentalist interpretations of biblical law, apparently these things have a lot more in common with homeschooling than first meets the eye. Homeschooling is one of the main tools to be used in this agenda. Additionally, if you believe in this stuff, you also think that all the “unbelievers” are out to take your homeschooling away and there is a good chance they are being led by Satan himself in an effort to do so, and as such they must be fought hard, smashed into the ground. If you look at the world this way, the crazy stuff suddenly makes perfect sense. The odd political advocacy goals of the homeschooling leadership suddenly make sense too.

I think Anderson Cooper’s incredulity at Michael Farris and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities issue properly expresses what a normal person’s perspective might be when encountering this form of extremism, but the fact is we need to understand it and we also need to do something about it.

Things that normal homeschooling parents might want (opportunities for seamless and easy transitions into and out of public schools, the ability to participate and use public education resources on an “a la carte” basis, assistance with academic subjects that are not their forte, structures that make sure homeschooling kids at least know as much as their public school counterparts and are being given due credit for it, and an option for their kids to join local school sports teams) are not being advocated for by these people. The fringe doesn’t want these things. They want total control over children’s minds, bodies, and souls for their “holy” fight.

Under their leadership, homeschooling is not an educational choice. Instead it is pushed as being a lifestyle but it is really about using people as a culture wars tool. You soon learn that it is ultimately not about having a happy family life but rather about fulfilling “duties” with hope of rewards for it in heaven. I am not even going to get into how certain pastors and homeschool leaders are getting rich and powerful leading this movement. I will say that homeschooling of this sort is ultimately not about the children except that they are seen as tools in this crusade and so that is why it is seen as good to have or adopt as many of them as possible. They are weapons of sorts. This is so bad for children. I cannot overstate how bad this is for children (even when they seem to obey with a smile all the time).

This is why so many grown kids from this movement have totally rebelled against it and anything that even remotely looks like it and why others stay in, don’t question, and operate essentially as automatons working towards the objective. It hurts people in different ways and it’s why the former fundamentalist homeschool kids I know joke about whether someone “is still drinking the kool-aid” or not. It is why so many of us have “health problems” stemming from the years of being threatened, coerced, and told we were not measuring up to being what our parents were told they needed to craft us into if they were “Godly.” Yeah. Like that wouldn’t leave almost anyone with some issues.

I know plenty of homeschooling families definitely don’t buy into this extreme worldview and in fact are just as horrified by it all as I am. They just want to educate their children as best as they are able and enjoy family life. They don’t have some rabid agenda that requires building an “army.” They are more normal than that. The problem is that the crazy is louder than them, so the crazy gets heard and they get ignored or just lumped in and expected to put up with the crazy, as infuriating as that is.

So the bottom line is that an extreme fringe wing of the Christian religious right has taken over the homeschool movement leadership and continues to mold homeschooling as they see fit. They have turned something that was meant to liberate children into something that is often horribly oppressive. This is why the two issues cannot be decoupled – homeschooling is successfully being used as a powerful tool by these people, no matter how many kids their power grab disguised as “advice” hurts.

Anyway, I’m hoping this helps explain why both the religious abuse and homeschooling components are connected, and why I find that discussing them in tandem, with caveats, is the best approach to use when discussing this complicated issue.

I am not criticizing homeschooling as an educational option when I do this. In fact, I think this extreme fundamentalist homeschooling agenda is ultimately as toxic to “real” homeschooling (in all its various forms) as it has been to kids who grew up within this sort of damaging environment. If homeschoolers want to be associated with quality then they absolutely need to make sure they don’t sit back while people with extreme agendas claim to speak for them.

I think right now there is not much public awareness of these connections or how these extreme ideological agendas influence homeschooling (or our nation) as a whole, but in addition to needing to draw a distinction in motivations for homeschooling (and there are a wide range), there is also a huge need for responsible homeschoolers to “take back” the homeschooling movement leadership from the people who see it as a power and “culture wars” indoctrination tool rather than a way to give their kids the best skills and opportunities. I am not maligning homeschooling. I do not have a problem with homeschooling. I do have a problem with the current leadership of the homeschooling movement.

It is the real gorilla in the room.

How I (Barely) Survived Home Schooling: Jonny Scaramanga’s Story

HA Editorial Team14 Comments

How I (Barely) Survived Home Schooling: Jonny Scaramanga’s Story

Jonny Scaramanga blogs on Accelerated Christian Education and leaving fundamentalism at his blog, Leaving Fundamentalism. He is building a resource on ACE here, and collects survivor stories from students with experience of ACE.

"I was a shining light for Jesus. Then, suddenly and brutally, I became suicidal."
“I was a shining light for Jesus. Then, suddenly and brutally, I became suicidal.”

I must admit something: I wasn’t really home schooled. I attended an Accelerated Christian Education school, which is probably the closest thing to home schooling you can get outside of a home, but, officially, I was in a school.

At first, I loved it. When I started at the school, so many of the other children were perfect. The boys held the doors open; they smiled and nodded attentively when the supervisors spoke, and they behaved like good Christians. I was not like them. I spoke back to my mother sometimes, and I swore occasionally. If I held a door at all, it was a casual shove to make sure it didn’t hit the person behind me in the face. I never did the proper stand-beside-the-door-and-salute-everyone door-holding. And I only said please and thank you occasionally, unlike my new schoolmates, who could not ask for anything without saying both. 

They were good Christian boys and girls, and I was determined to be the best. Whenever a supervisor spoke to me, I nodded vigorously and said “Yes, Mrs. Staggs” at regular intervals. At the end of school functions, I often found that my face was hurting from smiling so much.

I became the best Christian boy. My first year ended in triumph at the school awards ceremony as I picked up the certificates for the most work completed and the highest average test score, among other achievements. I was a shining light for Jesus.

Then, suddenly and brutally, I became suicidal. At the time I thought no one knew, because no one offered any help. In hindsight, I think everyone was at least vaguely aware, and absolutely clueless what to do. My report card from my second year actually says, “We wish you could find a way to enjoy this, Jonnie.” 

What had seemed like God’s perfect place for me became a prison. And so I hatched a plan.

As many of you will know, ACE allows you to work at your own speed. If you complete the work fast enough, you can graduate early. I knew I had to get out, because I hated that school so much. So I decided I would complete 100 PACEs (ACE workbooks) in a year (compared with the average 60) and graduate young.

This meant that, in effect, I had to be home schooled through the summer. To make 100 PACEs per year possible, I needed to work through the holidays. 

What followed was probably the worst type of home education imaginable. ACE is “teacherless”, at least in theory. The student just completes the workbooks individually. So my parents left me to get on with my work and went out. I couldn’t face it. The second they went out, I was on the internet. This was in the days before high-speed connections, and even before unlimited internet access. I ran up an bill of £500 ($750) in one month, desperately looking for anything to do except PACEs. My Dad made me pay the bill, but it didn’t change the fact that I would do anything to avoid those PACEs.

Having avoided work all day, I couldn’t socialise in the evenings. I spent a summer in solitary confinement, avoiding PACEs during the day and completing PACEs in the evening. Then when I should have been asleep, I wrote diary entries about how I wished I was dead but didn’t know how to kill myself.

One day, walking through my village with my mum, I passed a boy I used to know. Before my ACE school, we had been friends. He had even come to my house to play. 

“Jonnie!” he cried, obviously pleased to see me.

“Hi,” I replied. Well, I tried to reply. My voice came out as a squeak barely audible even to me. I had lost the ability to talk to anyone I didn’t see regularly. 

“Aren’t you going to say hi?” asked Mum. I hadn’t even managed to make a noise loud enough for her to hear.

When we moved churches, we spent an evening at our new pastor’s house, and I barely managed to utter a word to anyone. Eventually the pastor’s daughter spoke to me one-on-one, and I could just about manage that because she went to an ACE school too (I use the word “school” loosely; there were three children, including her). 

Somehow, I managed my hundred PACEs, but it became obvious that I would need to do the same again next year before I was even close to graduating. I felt so resentful that I was missing out on a good education, even though I had no idea what a good education might be. I just had this vague sense that somewhere out there were real schools, with science labs and libraries and literature, and I wasn’t getting any of that. 

Finally, I had a meltdown at school. Someone said something that triggered me. My vision blurred, and for a few seconds I couldn’t see. Then I started shouting at everyone.

Following this explosion, my parents finally removed me and sent me to a regular school. And, of course, fitting in was murder because I didn’t know how to talk to anyone who wasn’t a super-conservative Christian. But I had escaped. And I changed the way I spelled my name, from “Jonnie” to “Jonny”. It was a tiny thing, but it was my way of saying that I wasn’t the same person I used to be.

Now I think fundamentalist Christian home school curricula are part of the problem. Educating children is difficult. Very few parents are equipped to do it well. An off-the-shelf curriculum gives parents a false confidence that they can provide an education with little effort. In fact, a pre-packaged curriculum for every student is not going to fit any student. Systems like ACE just provide a simplistic answer to a difficult problem. Rather like fundamentalism, in fact. 

I Was An Abusive Homeschooling Mother: Jane Doe’s Story

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Lustrous Wooden Cabinet with Regret File Label in Dramatic LIght.

Trigger warning: this story contains a detailed description of physical abuse.

I was an abusive homeschooling mother.

I can’t change that fact by writing about it.

I’m hoping to raise awareness about the higher potential for abuse in a family that homeschooling makes possible and the dangers of the Pearl child raising methods by speaking out about it, as one who has first hand experience. And partly I’m speaking up because I am still trying to recover a sense of myself in the aftermath, which is still unfolding in our lives like a years-long train wreck from which we can’t escape.

My husband and I were fervent Pearl followers, which is strange considering that he was a non-believer.  However he used other arguments to come to the same conclusions.  After a devoutly religious friend sent us some No Greater Joy newsletters we ended up buying and reading, and re-reading, almost all of Michael Pearl’s books concerning child raising.  We also bought his book To Train Up a Child by the box load and gave it away to people at every opportunity.

I was a young and uncertain college student when I met my husband to be. He was 16 years older and had been living alone for many years.  He was set in his ways and could be described, by a generous description, as eccentric. At first it seemed we both wanted the same kind of life: that of being semi-self-sufficient on a small farm.  He had the land and skills to make that life possible.

Most pertinent to this story, he has the soul of a lawyer.  He loves argument more than anything in the world, and spends much of his time devoted to it’s study and practice.  Esoteric disputation, definitions, shades of meaning, debate techniques, and hard-core allegiance to “principles” over relationships is what made it so easy for him to adopt the Pearl techniques, blowing away any objections I, or my mother, might put forth.

I must accept blame however.  I must make clear that I chose, in the face of conflict with my husband, to submit myself to his will in all things.  I made that choice.  No one else made it for me.  I felt that it was a good choice at the time, for I could not stand up to him in argument, and I could not stand conflict.  I wanted to have a real home for the kids, with a real dad, like I never had as a girl.  As time went on I was baptized and accepted that being a submissive wife was my calling from God, as preached by Debi Pearl.  I was determined to make it work and keep my husband happy at whatever the cost.

It turned out that the cost was very, very high.  Accepting his will in everything meant living without electricity or running water while living in a small decrepit single wide trailer, having a baby every two years, not going to the dentist ever or doctor regularly, wearing dresses, not wearing make up, not cutting my hair, doing all the cooking,gardening, food preservation, never buying anything, not celebrating any holidays or birthdays, not leaving the house without permission, and forbidding my mother to come visit on any occasion whatsoever.  I essentially lost contact with the outside world and became completely consumed with the vast number of everyday chores that were my duty.

For the children it meant that they had no birth certificates, no social security number, no vaccinations, and no friends.  It meant being spanked regularly, without mercy, until their “wills were broken”, as the Pearls’ say.  To do anything less would have been to allow “evil” to flourish in their very souls, and what a bad parent one would be then.  When the children got older, it meant they were “homeschooled”, which also became my job.

I loved my children.  Being a housewife with kids on a farm had been my ambition since I was a little girl.  I was never spanked as a child.  I never thought that was a good idea.  Our family’s exposure to the Pearls’ child raising ideas came along when our first child was two years old.  I was appalled.  But my husband, devouring the Pearl’s books, found many arguments to use on me.  Eventually I simply came to the point I always came to with him.  I gave up and let him have his way.

According to the Pearl philosophy however, I could not choose to be an innocent bystander.  No, it would not do to let dad do all the spanking.  The children would notice.  Mom must also do her part so that the children would know there was in essence, no escape.  I too must hit my children with sticks for the slightest disobedience or even tardiness of obedience.

And hit them I did.  The change in parenting hit my poor two year old daughter like a brick wall.  The first spanking was at least an hour long.  She, of course, did not ‘submit’ at all, never having experienced anything like it.

I believe the first command I gave her was over something relatively minor.  The second was to stop crying after her first spanking.  Of course she wasn’t going to stop.  According to the Pearls’, to stop crying was a command I was supposed to be able to give and get obedience.  I am here to tell you, it takes a long time to spank a child until they stop crying.  Their bottom gets red, welts start appearing.  You take breaks and waste your breath on endless explanations between the hitting about how you are not going to stop until they obey.  Eventually, they start trying to hold their breath while they sob, making a sort of hiccuping gasp with moans and gurgling in between, while the demanding parent tried to decide what point really constitutes “stopped crying”.

It is a horrendous thing to witness, to perpetrate.  It makes my blood boil to think of it now.  It was completely mentally and physically and emotionally exhausting at the time.  Both myself and my now ex-husband deserve jail time for what we did.  We really do.  But that really would not take the past back.

The beatings (can I now call them what they really were?) continued almost everyday.  The Pearls’ say that you should be able to spank less and less.  That the children will come to joy and peace and trust through this method, over time.  But this much awaited magic never happened.  Our oldest two children as time went on, became angrier and angrier.  According to the books, this was because I was not being diligent enough in my applying of discipline.  So, we spanked more and more as time went on.

More and more beatings.

More and more screaming.

The oldest girl got spanked over school lessons too, the few we had time to fit in.  It was especially bad in areas of math and Spanish.  Dad would butt into our lessons, and ask her if she understood what he was telling her.  If she said yes she did, but then she could not demonstrate understanding, she was spanked for “lying”, for saying she understood when in fact she had not.  Of course, she wanted to stay out of trouble and was trying to say what she thought he wanted to hear but became trapped in a no-win situation. She was also spanked for not being able to correctly pronounce Spanish words, he said she was simply “not trying”.

To this day, our girl cannot learn math or Spanish due to her emotional block to those subjects which were the setting for some of her worst tortures.

Our second child, a boy, was not so much under my attention where school was concerned.  His dad toted him around with him all the time.  This meant that instead of learning to read and write, he was standing around most of the time with nothing to do, no one to talk to, with frequently not enough warm clothes on and nothing to eat or drink.  His only task was to stay quiet and out of the way.  He had night time sleep walking episodes which involved peeing on the floor, for which he was severely whipped with the belt.

I could go on about the abuses that myself and their dad handed out to them, but it becomes tedious.

Occasionally we would go out as a family.  When in public we were always praised for the good behavior of our children. They were very quiet. They did not make scenes. What good children we had. It makes me sick!  My ex-husband points to these praises as evidence of how righteous our treatment of the kids was back then.  Our friends and neighbors never saw the terror our children were experiencing.

Five years ago I left that whole situation.  I moved into a modern house in a town.  I put the kids in school.  I got them birth certificates, social security numbers and vaccinations.  I stopped hitting them.

He fought me on all these things.  However, he too was forced to stop hitting his children.  He was also forced to put in running water and a septic tank.  After significant and extremely drawn out legal machinations, the oldest two children were given the choice to visit him or not.  They never want to see him, or talk to him, and now live with me full time.  He insists that I am the one who alienated them from him by telling them lies about him.  He cannot forgive me for “taking away his authority”.  He makes no effort whatsoever to contact the older two and seems to have completely given up an them.

When they first went to school, the oldest girl was put in seventh grade, according to her age, the boy in fifth.  Our youngest was two at the time, so she did not go to school.  However our other three children also entered school according to their ages: kindergarten, first grade, and third.  It was a stressful time for all concerned.

The oldest girl spent her first year in school crying because she did not know what to do.  She also got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized.  She repeated seventh grade the next year.  She will probably never be able to do math.  She displays PTSD like symptoms, with constant anxiety, rage, and feelings of low self-worth.  She threatens to commit suicide and goes to therapy regularly.

Despite not being able to read, write or do math when our oldest son first arrived in fifth grade, he was barely promoted to sixth the next year.  Now he has almost caught up to his grade level in his academic subjects, though his hand writing is still horrible and his reading is still slow.  He has anger issues on occasion and can be a bit of a bully.  He is aware of this and really wants to do better.  He spurns his father, yet suffers from a lack of a father.  He is in boy scouts.

In contrast, the younger four kids are making straight ‘A’s and winning writing, art and science awards.  They excel in everything they try.  They do not suffer from low self esteem.  They have friends.

Yet their father still wants to homeschool them, and has told them that homeschooling is better than public schooling, based on the results of studies.  He has got some of the kids convinced that they want to be homeschooled by him by using his powerful arguments.  He and I are going to go to court soon regarding this issue.

He is a member of HSLDA.  I was interested to read from the site of Homeschoolers Anonymous the transcripts of speeches given by [former HSLDA attorney] Doug Phillips at the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit.  His vision of having CPS abolished, and homeschooling girls to be housewives instead of considering having a career is truly terrifying, and made me realize that this whole thing is of a scope that goes far beyond my family.  I had previously thought we were strange exceptions.

What happened to me and my children could happen to anyone who becomes isolated and vulnerable, and if homeschooling is allowed to occur with such little oversight.  Unfortunately abusive parents will exploit that opportunity for everything it is worth.

Abusive parents, like me.

TeenPacters Speak Up: Part Five, TeenPact and Women

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TeenPacters Speak Up: A Series by Between Black and White

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Between Black and White. Part Five was originally published on May 22, 2013.

*****

Part Five: TeenPact and Women, by Kierstyn King

Kierstyn King blogs at Bridging the Gap.

To my knowledge, there have only been two female governors in Maine, and none (to my knowledge) in GA. Maine is seen by the staff as the more liberal/wildcard state where things happen there that don’t (or aren’t allowed?) happen in other states. Maine and Hawaii I suppose, because there’s surfing there and every staffer wants to staff those two states.

I know both of the female governors closely. Women taking on a high leadership position that isn’t somehow under a male is almost unheard of. I was shocked when I won “president” at Back To DC in 2007, but I think that was because the dude who was running before was an obnoxious 13 year old who wasn’t even going to stay the whole time and I had previously attended the class and the one other alumni there was on my campaign. I may have won favor with the staff when I shared that I was struggling with running for the position (because *gasp* I can’t lead), instead of running the campaign (because that was completely different).

At National Convention, women are allowed (I wouldn’t necessarily say encouraged) to run for Representative and Senator, and even Vice President. In my time there, I only ever saw Boy/Girl Pres/VP teams, because women running for president, while not directly prohibited was just known to be taboo. I ran for representative but never made it past primaries – although some women definitely are elected, the majority of the faux positions are still filled by males. I know this parallels real life, but here it’s encouraged. Women in leadership positions is allowed, but sketchily, always under men.

In fact, we are told, many times, in no uncertain terms that we (women) are supposed to just go along with whatever the men say – even if we disagree with it, and to not speak up if we do. They’re supposed to lead, after all, and we’re supposed to submit.

In “girl talks” a session where the guys go out (to talk about opening doors) and the women stay inside we learn that modesty is on us. completely. It is our job to cause our “brothers” to not stumble while we’re at class. We’re told exactly how to wear and to not wear items of clothing. In State Classes we must wear skirts, and they must be over the knee when you sit, never too tight when you move or bend over. All clothing must be able to hang or give at least an inch from your body, but simultaneously, should also be cute/professional and not frumpy. Just to be safe, I wore several layers – in the middle of summer, in the hot GA sun – just in case I got wet, or the sun caught something and my one-size-up tshirt were suddenly opaque.

We must be vigilant, and tell our “sisters” if they’re wearing something we think is too tight or revealing. Lady-Staff will confront girls to change their outfit if they feel it’s inappropriate. Because, again, it is our responsibility to show ourselves as non-human-shapeless-forms so our “brothers” don’t accidentally see our bodies and think something bad.

Boys aren’t told how many fingers width a neckline is allowed to be before it’s “too much”. They don’t have to reach up, and bend down to check and see if any skin shows.

But we, we seductresses in our pubescent awkwardness, we must never show any more skin than necessary to avoid heat exhaustion – and even then, pants must be loose!

I hate using the phrase “rape culture” but the more I think about it, the more this perpetuates it – because regardless, it is always the women who are at fault. We are essentially told as much, and this is coupled with “don’t tell a man no” is just a setup for abusive environments and relationships to thrive.

To be continued.

Crosspost: The One Thing You Should Never Ask A Homeschool Kid

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Crosspost: The One Thing You Should Never Ask A Homeschool Kid

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 May 19, 2013.

The local paper does stories on all of the high school graduations, and where the stories for the other school graduations follow the same formula—mention something from the speaker, go with a few quotes from graduates about going out into the world, the homeschool support group graduation story includes quotes from kids talking up homeschooling as a concept.

Don’t ask that question of kids. Seriously, just don’t. No kid should be put in the position of defending and explaining their education to adults.

Aside from the fact that in 2013 it’s not like homeschooling is something nobody’s heard of, that’s just not something you should put on a kid. It’s too much pressure and it makes the kid feel even more like an outsider, an “other,” and not part of mainstream culture. Even if a kid had an absolutely wonderful experience, homeschool apologetic isn’t something a kid should be expected to do.

Parents, don’t ask this of your kids.

Random strangers, don’t put a kid on the spot and start asking questions. It’s not fair to the kid.

I had to put up with random strangers asking me questions about homeschooling since I was six.

Six.

Let that sink in for a second.

How in the world would anyone think that’s remotely something that you should put on a six year old? I can’t even count how many times I was wandering around the public library minding my own business looking for interesting books when I’d be stopped by a stranger asking me, “why aren’t you in school?” Now, granted, back in the ’80s, homeschooling was a novelty, but still. It would have been one thing if it had ended with me responding, “I’m homeschooled,” but nope, the next question was, “Is it legal?” Seriously, people would ask a little elementary schooler to explain the legality of their education. No six year old should ever have to cite statutes for any reason, but I spent a good chunk of my early school years explaining the legal status of homeschooling to adults who wouldn’t stop asking questions.

It took me a few years after I finished college before I could begin to look at homeschooling objectively because so many adults spent so many years putting me on the spot, asking me to defend it to them. I still don’t understand why an adult would ask that of a child, especially a very young child, but that’s what happened to me and my siblings. It would make me feel like I was some kind of performing freak show to them.

So next time you encounter a homeschool kid and feel tempted to ask them about homeschooling, resist the urge. No kid should be put on the spot to defend their entire system of education,

And thus ends Kathryn’s rant.

Starship Captains and Dinosaurs: Faith Beauchemin’s Thoughts

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Starship Captains and Dinosaurs: Faith Beauchemin’s Thoughts

The following piece was originally published by Faith Beauchemin on her blog Roses and Revolutionaries. It is reprinted with her permission. Also by Faith Beauchemin on HA: “The Importance Of Telling Your Own Story.”

A fundamentalist Christian family is a hard place for a woman to grow up.

I was taught by my parents (and, more urgently, by all the books available to me) that a woman’s place is in the home.  A woman’s highest calling is marriage and child-rearing.  All of my talents and abilities and dreams could be met and fulfilled in building a happy home for my family.  If (god forbid) I were to end up single, I could be a nurse, like Florence Nightingale, or a missionary, or maybe a teacher.  I didn’t know anyone with a career, as far as I knew.  There actually were some women at church who had jobs, but they were either single or else I didn’t know that they had jobs.  It was just assumed by everyone that the normal pattern was for a woman to marry and give up her job as soon as she had kids, to dedicate herself full-time to taking care of them and, most likely, homeschooling them.  After all, Paul wanted women “to be keepers at home.”  And what someone wanted for women two thousand years ago is obviously the best thing possible for all women throughout time.

But two women slipped through the cracks and crept into my early image of successful womanhood.  Of course later, as my view of the world widened, there would be others, but these two I knew from early on in my childhood, and each holds a place in my heart.

When you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I (not feeling that motherhood right away would be my path) would respond either teacher or nurse, and singer.  Singer?  What a random career option.  This is because we had some old records by Amy Grant, which my mom had recorded onto tapes, which I listened to constantly.  She inspired me to enjoy singing, and I wanted so badly to be like her, singing such beautiful songs for a living. I imagined being on a stage, people clapping for me.  The dream was squashed by two things.  First, when Amy Grant got a divorce, I felt terribly betrayed.  I was too young to understand the reasons why it was actually a good thing for her to get out of that marriage, and I had been taught that divorce is a horrible sin.  I wouldn’t listen to her music for months afterward.  The second dream-squasher was being taught that everything needs to be done for god, not for oneself.  This led me to believe that performance was in some way wrong, perhaps not for other people but for a selfish, prideful person like me, it certainly would be.

My other early female inspiration was Captain Kathryn Janeway, from Star Trek: Voyager.  The series ran from the time I was five years old until I was eleven, and oh, how I wanted to be Captain Janeway.  I recall in particular one birthday party, I couldn’t have been older than six, where we went to a park and played on one of those big playground structures.  I ignored all the other kids at the party and ran around the playground structure pretending to be Captain Janeway commanding the starship Voyager.  I sucked in my stomach because I thought that made it look like I was a grown-up woman with boobs, lending me more credibility in the character of female spaceship captain.

I have literally no clue how I continued to want to be Captain Janeway alongside being taught harmful patriarchal bullshit about having to be a totally submissive wife and mother with no career or dreams or goals of her own except serving her family.  I don’t know how Janeway survived my upbringing, how she remained enshrined in my heart as a totally badass role model, but she did.

Maybe it’s like the way I believed in both evolution and creation at the same time.  My Grandpa gave us books about dinosaurs and fossils and I devoured them (as I devoured all books), and somehow held separate in my mind two alternate timelines for the universe.  The first timeline was illustrated by the pictures in my bible story books, god creating everything from nothing, the luscious garden scenes, the temptation and fall of mankind, the flood, and then it appeared that everybody lived in the desert for a long time, with camels and stuff.  The second timeline was illustrated by the dinosaur books and a couple other books that managed to slip through the cracks.  There were volcanoes and organisms crawling out of the water, sea monsters and dinosaurs and cave men.  There were magical words like “Jurassic” and “Cretaceous” and “trilobite.”  The evolutionary timeline seemed more like a fantasy than the biblical timeline, just because it wasn’t continuously reinforced during every waking moment.  But the evolutionary timeline was so taboo I got an almost sexual thrill from thinking about it, reading about it, looking at those strange landscapes and animals, and I thought that it, too, along with the bible taken in a strictly literal sense, was true.  There’s no way to reconcile how I was taught the bible with the evolutionary theory, but yet those beliefs coexisted in my mind.  In the same way, there’s no way to reconcile the patriarchy I was brought up in with an admiration of Captain Janeway, but I held on to both anyway.

Maybe it’s because, deep down, I liked a world where dinosaurs roamed exotic forests and then millions of years later a woman could captain a starship better than a world that had been around for brief few thousand years of history in which women were always morally obligated to be subjected to men and never aspire further than the home.  And maybe it’s because, deep down, I knew as soon as I encountered it what I actually believed, no matter how strenuously I tried to make myself believe what I was being taught.

Children’s Rights and Homeschooling: Patrick Farenga’s Thoughts

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Children’s Rights and Homeschooling: Patrick Farenga’s Thoughts

One of the reasons John Holt, a secular founder of the homeschooling movement, decided to fully support homeschooling was his hope that parents would be more likely to work patiently and differently with their children at home than teachers in school can, and would therefore learn from the children what is and isn’t working. Holt’s ideas about homeschooling are probably very different from what many members of Homeschoolers Anonymous experienced: Holt didn’t want to bring the techniques and concepts of school—which he showed in his books weren’t working in school anyway—into the home. “Don’t turn your home into a miniature school,” Holt advised in 1981 when he wrote his only book about homeschooling, Teach Your Own.

After years of working in schools Holt was appalled at the gross incivility, mindless activities, and outright meanness inflicted upon children in the name of education. One of the ways he imagined that things could be improved for children was to promote children’s rights, since his own efforts made him realize the futility of trying to make meaningful change within the school system (which is still reforming itself 32 years since Teach Your Own appeared). Holt wrote a book that describes how and why giving children rights makes practical sense: Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children (1974; reprinted 2013). It was controversial when it was published, causing both liberals and conservatives to condemn Holt’s ideas that children should be allowed to do pretty much what any adult may legally do.

Up until 2012, 9 out of 10 of Holt’s books were still in print. Escape From Childhood is the only one of Holt’s books that I have never been able to interest another publisher in; all editions of the book have been published by HoltGWS since the original publisher let it go out of print. Clearly, this is not a topic mainstream people want to engage with but, as I’ve learned over the years, it is vitally important if we want to find other ways to help children and their families get out of bad situations besides creating more layers of child protective service agencies.

Many of the ideas Holt puts forth in Escape are to prevent tyrannies at home and in society, and they are based on our Bill of Rights, thereby grounding all people to the same rights and responsibilities. However, Holt adds a new dimension to the concept of rights to account for children’s inexperience and their need to learn from the choices they make over time. Rather than just give children the rights of citizenship all at once beause they have turned 18, Holt offers a framework where children are able to move in and out of the “walled garden of childhood” as they feel ready and able to, so they can test the waters of responsibility and swim, or decide to wait for another day if the responsibility is too heavy on them now. Holt felt the best way to get good at making choices is to make a lot of genuine choices and determine what worked best for you. Right now our society denies young people responsible choices, while expecting them to assume this same responsibility at an arbitrarily determined age. This is the essence of Holt’s argument, though I urge you to read his book and learn about the history of childhood and all the nuances about rights, children, families, and primary and secondary guardians that Holt presents.

The issue of children’s rights is large, but I want to focus specifically on child abuse and homeschooling. Holt deals with abuse from several angles in the book, including the adult points of view. For example, he discusses the burden of having children and how the authority of the old is diminishing, but Holt presses the case for why adults need to relinquish some of their authority in order to provide children the opportunity to grow independently.

. . . to expand protection against abuses of authority without diminishing authority, is impossible, a contradiction in terms. There can be no adequate protection against the abuse of authority, of parents or the state, except to give the victim the right to escape it.

The authority that Time has in mind when it talks about the “psychic benefits of parental authority” is not natural authority but only the power to compel, threaten, punish, and hurt. The fact is that children can be and are regularly punished, by parents and the law, for any of the reasons, and the same reasons for which slaves used to be punished—for talking back, for “disrespect,” for disobedience, for being at large without permission, for running away—in short, for doing anything that might imply that they think they have any freedom or rights at all. (p. 153)

Escape From Childhood is full of examples of how children, from the mentally challenged to compliant overachievers, are often hurt or neglected by adults who, “for their own good” force them to do things the children would rather not do, so I won’t labor the point here. However, it is important to note that Holt wrote this in 1974, not knowing anything about homeschooling as we know it; he saw all children in society as being mistreated. Holt was willing to take the chance that by supporting homeschooling some children will be raised by parents whose views of children and education are radically different from the self-actualizing vision of learning Holt supports. Holt hoped that most homeschooling parents would not be so obedient to the demands of modern educational theory or religious dogma and would instead learn directly from their children what was and wasn’t working for them, and make adjustments accordingly.

Unfortunately, many adults seem willing to sacrifice their relationship with their children upon the altar of education and dogma, so I’m not surprised that now, as adults, children whose lives were insecure and violent at home now want to sacrifice homeschooling upon the altar of education and dogma. However, I urge you to take a step back and reconsider strategy and tactics.

It is easy for me to imagine Homeschoolers Anonymous becoming a typical political group, uniting anti-homeschooling forces under the banner of regulating homeschooling to protect homeschooled children from abuse. This will certainly result in an increase of professional educators’ and government reach into people’s homes, which will lead to the exact opposite of what Holt advised: our homes will become miniature schools run by the state. Your anger at being physically and emotionally abused as children, and then, as adults, being outcast by the homeschooling community for publicly noting your suffering and wishing to ameliorate it for a new generation of homeschooled children, is perfectly understandable. However, homeschooling does not cause child abuse. Being a tight-knit or loose-knit family doesn’t cause child abuse; child abuse occurs in public and private schools, churches, sports, the entertainment field, in all professions. It is a problem that is much bigger than homeschooling and we should treat it as such.

I urge Homeschoolers Anonymous to recognize the fluid nature of homeschooling regulations and laws in the United States and how many of the court decisions that allow alternatives to compulsory attendance in public schools are based on religious exemptions that are tied to preserving traditional ways of life (Amish, Mennonite, and so on). It is unlikely at this time in our history that the courts are going to rule against religious freedoms. Further, many adults in the United States appear to support corporal punishment—paddling is explicitly allowed in public schools in 19 states—and its widespread, though no less punishing, variant:  time outs in closets, padded rooms, and so on. It also needs to be noted that invasive practices such as electro-shock therapy for “difficult” children are permitted in many private institutions in states that otherwise ban corporal punishment in public facilities, so the situation is not easily solved by changing existing laws.

Rather than battle homeschooling regulations head on, with the real danger of creating more regulations for secular homeschoolers and strengthening the religious exemptions that permit families to prevent their daughters from aspiring to high school or college and keep their sons in line with stern obedience to authority, Homeschoolers Anonymous can build on the do-it-yourself model that homeschooling embodies. The prospect of increased scrutiny by outsiders keeps many abusive situations from being publicly acknowledged, and homeschooling is no exception. However, I think Homeschoolers Anonymous is correct to sound the alarm now so we can create awareness and solutions about this difficult issue that is different than what we’ve seen to date from other institutions. Like the leaders in the Vatican, the BBC, Penn State, and numerous other institutions, homeschooling’s leaders can easily fall prey to the means (ignore or cover up the abuse) justifying the ends (the institution continues to flourish despite the ongoing abuse, which the institution says it is handling in its own mysterious way). Like you, I refuse to see homeschooling freedoms preserved upon the broken bones and dashed hopes of children, and I hope we can get others to agree to offer help and enforce existing abuse laws rather than accept the status quo as the only way to preserve homeschooling freedoms.

Child abuse is a major, ugly issue that is difficult to discuss, especially among homeschoolers who are fearful of government intrusions into their lives. We tend to dismiss child abuse in homeschooling circles because most of “us” are “good people” or “good Christians.” But the reality is there is some child abuse going on in homeschooling, just as it goes on in schools and homes all around the world. To have the courage, as Homeschoolers Anonymous does, to stand up and call out an injustice being done to an unrepresented minority, children, is an important first step. Showing how this injustice is perpetuated in practice can help parents and children see that their situation is not normal and they are stuck in a bad homeschooling situation. Homeschoolers Anonymous can then provide support for dialog within their family, healing, or escape routes, among other options. It is important to let children and spouses know they are not alone and that others have navigated this path. The Underground Railroad was built and functioning for many years before the Emancipation Proclamation was made law, and I think we need to remember that.

Building the moral and legal case for children’s rights should not be a single, high-stakes courtroom battle focused on homeschooling, but a tactical approach focused on helping children and spouses find ways to get out of abusive situations and a strategic one of uniting with other groups that seek to end corporal punishment—not homeschooling—for children in society. We have a long tradition at HoltGWS of being against corporal punishment (scroll to the bottom of the page) and the list includes a Christian homeschooling group opposed to hitting children (Parenting in Jesus’ Footsteps).

I thank Homeschoolers Anonymous for the opportunity to express some of my views on children’s rights and homeschooling. There is so much more to say; I’ve only just scratched the surface with these remarks. However, I look forward to seeing the creative and powerful solutions you will make regarding children’s rights based on your collective experiences.

For further reading:

Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children is available on Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B42K3LE

Escape From Childhood will be also available as a printed book from Amazon as of June 1, 2013.

About the author:

Patrick Farenga.
Patrick Farenga.

Patrick Farenga started work with John Holt in 1981 and published Growing Without Schooling magazine and numerous other publications related to homeschooling, unschooling, and learning outside of school from Holt’s death in 1985 until 2001. Farenga and his wife homeschooled their three daughters, who are now adults. He continues to keep Holt’s ideas alive by writing, speaking, and publishing through HoltGWS LLC and www.JohnHoltGWS.com.