Positives

Becoming A Person I Can Be Proud Of: Sean-Allen Parfitt

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positives

Becoming A Person I Can Be Proud Of: Sean-Allen Parfitt

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sean-Allen Parfitt’s blog Of Pen and Heart. It was originally published on August 23, 2013. This is the third part of Sean-Allen’s three-part series for HA. Read Part One here, and Part Two here.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the way my parents controlled the things we learned when homeschooling us. The picture I painted was not pretty, showing the negative consequences of being taught at home. Last week I shared a different view, sharing the academic advantages I received through my home education,

This week I am again focusing on the positives of homeschooling.

For my family, school time was based on academics. We learned grammar, mathematics, science, and geography, among other subjects. But there was much more than the 3Rs to our education. I learned many life skills that have continued to be relevant beyond scholarly pursuits.

One particular bit of education that’s been useful is how to take care of a home. I was taught from an early age how to do the house chores. I know how to properly wash clothes, clean dishes, sweep, mop, dust, clean the bathroom, and more. Mom was a stickler for detail, and she taught me the precise methods that would result in crisp whites and sparkling glassware. And believe me, there was no room for error. So when I sweep, I move all the furniture.

When I clean the bathroom, I get the dust behind the toilet.

When I was 10 years old, Mom was pregnant with my 4th brother, and she put me in charge of dinners. Thus I became the family cook for 8 years. I learned how to shop for the cheapest, and healthiest, food items. I became expert at crafting meals that were not only nourishing and delicious, but also tastefully presented. I can follow recipes as well as create my own dishes on the fly. I find pleasure in the craft of delighting people’s palates and satiating their appetites.

I also learned how to take care of and fix cars. Dad usually chose to fix our vehicles when he could rather than spend money to have others do it for him. I remember helping my dad change tires, replace a radiator, and bleed brakes. I myself have replaced breaks, replace the exhaust system, and changed my oil. Just this past week one of my tires got a hole in it, so I took off the wheel and put on the new one, using the skills my father taught me. (I have to admit that I prefer taking my car to the garage and spending the money rather than fix the brakes myself. Grease, anyone? Gross.)

Another area in which I was instructed was construction. Again, my father did most of the house renovations and construction throughout my time at home. Form tearing out plaster and lath when I was 6, to installing the lighting in my bedroom at age 24, I learned framing, plumbing, electrical, drywalling, and painting.

I am certain that if the need arose, I could build a house from start to finish.

I was raised to be polite and address folks with respect. Though some people prefer to not be addressed with “yes ma’am” and “yes sir”, I have found that holding doors for others, picking up items they have dropped, saying “please” and “thank you”, and looking into their eyes while firmly shaking their hands goes a long way in building people’s positive impressions.

As the oldest of 8 children, I certainly have a lot of experience with children. I find it natural to “get down on their level” and play with them. I have learned, through teaching my own siblings as a sort of “teacher’s aide”, how to explain complex systems to others in a manner they can understand. Though I do not yet have children of my own, I look forward to the opportunities to share the wisdom and lessons I myself have learned.

I may have faced negative consequences from a tightly-controlled childhood and education, but I have still been successful in my adult life, thanks to the academics and life-skills my parents’ instruction provided.

I am grateful that they cared for me and gave me the tools I needed to become a person I can be proud of.

The Freedom From a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Education: Apollos

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The Freedom From a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Education: Apollos

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Apollos” is a pseudonym.

I loved being homeschooled.

Homeschooling gave me freedom. The freedom to explore my interests. The freedom to follow my heart’s passions. The freedom to study the things that I wanted to study.

It was an overwhelmingly positive experience that I would never trade for anything.

I was homeschooled all the way through. Starting in kindergarten through highschool graduation. Religion was a factor and I don’t mind that. My parents are Christians, we were in a Christian homeschool co-op, and I am still a Christian. I am not ashamed to say I love Christianity and I love homeschooling.

But what I love about my homeschooling experience was the lack of structure.

It’s not that there was zero structure. I had to learn the basics. Ya know, math, science, history, language arts. But there was no per se “curriculum.” We’d start with some general outline: read this book, or that book. My parents would assign me a book on U.S. history, for example. And when I read something interesting about William Jennings Bryan, I was allowed to focus on Bryan and progressive Christian politics. I wasn’t forced to only study the side of history (or the ideas on that side) that a particular group of people liked.

This freedom really fostered my creativity and my innate desire to explore new ways of thinking.

In a very true, deep way I was not taught what to think, but how to learn.

And again, my family was Christian.

But they didn’t let their ideas about religion get in the way of my education. In fact, their willingness to let me look at ideas they personally disagreed with ultimately led me to see that Christianity doesn’t have to be believed from a fearful, reactionary stance.

In the last few years, I’ve noticed a big push in homeschooling towards “Classical Christian Education.” (I’m just going to call that “CCE” for short.) Which is funny, in itself, because that push comes from Mr. Slavery Apologist himself, Doug Wilson; which, insofar as slavery is truly a classical institution, demonstrates that “classical” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Wilson’s books, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning and The Case for Classical Christian Education, have been credited by many people in the CCE movement as being inspirational. Lots of Christian homeschoolers I know are now moving in this direction; Classical Conversations is one such manifestation.

I find this odd. Key to the CCE movement is the radical integration of one particular worldview into all subjects and a reliance on Middle Ages pedagogy. Is everyone forgetting that these are the very things that Protestants did when they created the public school systems in the first place — the systems that us homeschoolers have tried so hard to break free from?

I don’t see much difference between the public school mentality and what CCE homeschoolers are now doing.

They’re both using the same top-down techniques and one-size-fits-all pedagogies which — when I was being homeschooled — were explicitly rejected by the homeschooling movement.

But I digress.

The main thing I wanted to say was how thankful I am that homeschooling, for me, freed me from a one-size-fits-all approach to education. It liberated me from a one-size-fits-all curriculum, too.

That freedom made me an enthusiastic student, as well as strengthened my relationship with Christ.

Reading Voraciously in a Land of Books: DoaHF

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Reading Voraciously in a Land of Books: DoaHF

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “DoaHF” is a pseudonym.

As far as the best parts of my homeschooling: I had a very solid education.  My mother had a college degree and she took pride in her work.   Once my father convinced her to homeschool she threw herself in whole-heartedly.  Even in a foreign country she bought or shipped over textbooks and taught us daily with dedication and passion.

I learned to learn and to love learning.

Her approach to certain subjects was different from traditional education, but she required us to complete everything with excellence and had us correct and re-correct our work until we fully understood issues.  She usually helped me with problems on lower grades until she had so many different grades that she couldn’t find the time.

I thrived under her verbal approach to history. Once I learned to read, I began voraciously devour the large stock of tame classics and children’s books that she collected and continued to expand as we got older (she hid some of the other classics like The Good Earth and Dr. Zhivago from me, as well as Rilla of Ingleside, but not Les Miserables or A Tale of Two Cities).

She even included my habit as school credit, giving me special allowance to read more when I wanted to further engross myself in an imaginary book land.

She kept detailed records of our work and made sure that we were competent before moving on.  She gave me a break inbetween Saxon pre-algebra and Algebra 1 to do Abeka Consumer Math because I was struggling with the concepts. She made sure I completed my work and made sure I did not just cheat or guess.  I remember loving school as a pre-teen.  Science was covered by Wyle and while she could not help me much, she spent time with me looking over the answer key and the module in order to find out how they arrived at their answer.

While we never had a positive personal relationship, she encouraged my love for herbs and baking by letting me have seeds and do extensive research into uses and cures and teas.  She also encouraged me to bake bread, pizzas, biscuits and desserts for my 8 siblings and friends and guests.  She coached me past my stages of not-hair-brushing, wearing dirty and/or stained clothing all the time, bed-wetting, and I think she really understood my struggle to be accepted

My father and I were very similar.  He always stood against the tide that shut women up and encouraged us to speak our minds and to think boldly.  He did not believe in women preachers, but he taught us theology and koine and told us not to be intimidated by any hot-shot divinity student who thought they knew the Bible.  He refused us independence and further education like college, but he modeled hard work and dedication every day for us and he truly wanted us to be intelligent and capable of being progeny he could be proud of.

I learned my fierce independence and tenacity from him, as well as my money habits which have stood me well on my own.

My grandparents insisted on being part of our family’s lives no matter how many thousands of miles away we lived.  They made an effort to spend quality time with each of us and I still remember their lessons and examples to this day.

My favorite part of homeschooling in the US was my last three years at home where, even though I had graduated school, I was involved in a homeschooled Square Dance program.  A local caller realized the potential and lack of time constraints that we kids as a group had and he organized us in practice for a local talent competition which we entered each year.

The social scene and the physical activity made a huge difference to my mental health, and I made two very close friends whose friendship I cherished and miss.

For Science in grade school my mother put together elaborate unit studies.  We spent a whole summer learning about the seas in Oceanography.  We then went on to memorize the Animal Kingdom as we studied Horses.  Finally, after learning everything we could about Volcanoes, our whole family went on a week-long trip to see, climb, and learn about one volcano in specific, even speaking with someone who lived through a volcanic eruption.

I am, and always have been the gregarious, outgoing, bubbly one in our family. Even though I went through abuse and trauma, I loved being homeschooled. My brain thrived on the literature-based approach that my mother took.

If I could afford to not work and stay at home, I might homeschool my future children if they wanted me to.  

Even so, I want to teach my children to read voraciously and to love information more than a method of learning. That is a positive one can gain anywhere.

I Was Born With A Severe Immune Disease: Attackfish

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I Was Born With A Severe Immune Disease: Attackfish

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was a guest post by Attackfish and was originally published on Patheos on February 3, 2013.

I was “homeschooled” (and I’m not sure I am comfortable calling it that) for absolutely non-ideological reasons, and in fact, there was only ever a brief time during my schooling in which I was not enrolled in public school, at the very end, a few weeks before I took my GED.

I was born with a severe immune disease, and along with making me extremely prone to infection, it also causes me to have seizures, narcolepsy, fainting spells, asthma, and circulatory problems, all of which grow worse when my body is run down. This made just getting to school, a building with two thousand people and all of their pathogens, a real challenge for me, and in my freshman year of high school, my family and I convinced the school district to send a teacher home to teach me, as part of a program usually used for students with less chronic illnesses, like pneumonia. I was enrolled in six periods of classes, and the teachers from those classes would send me assignments through the home hospital teacher, so the academics of my schooling were identical to the ones at the local high school, aside from the fact that I was allowed to pace myself.

Every year, I did attempt to go back to attending school, and every year I lasted a couple of months before admitting that no, I wasn’t magically better this year.

We knew that the home hospital program existed, because my elementary school had begged us to take advantage of a similar system when I was in kindergarten, because they were unable to handle my “strange behavior” which would much later be diagnosed as seizures. My seizures aren’t what most people think of as seizures. During them, I lose all awareness of myself, and run around, glaze-eyed and utterly non responsive for up to several hours, looking for a place to hide, attacking anyone who physically tries to stop me.

They happened at least once a week before I was diagnosed and received treatment, and sometimes, they happened several times a day, almost always at school. Before I was diagnosed, the school and my teachers assumed it was some kind of emotional problem, and the other students were terrified of me. Even once I had a diagnosis, the teacher and principal I had at the time both refused to believe they were anything other than a brat’s tantrums.

As I stopped having them, they encouraged the other students to bully me mercilessly as punishment, and I eventually had to change schools because of the abuse.

Although we moved to another state when I was in middle school, the social anxiety, low self esteem, and poor grasp of social cues the earlier bullying, and falling prey to my first of two stalkers, had left me with, marked me out as easy prey for more bullies and another stalker, right up until I withdrew from high school.

My bisexuality having somehow become common knowledge to the student body didn’t help matters.

For years, my family and I had battled bullies and an administration dead set against helping me end the torment I was enduring. I had switched schools, moved, and done everything I could to blend in and keep my head down.

I was out of options and out of hope.

I remember this tremendous sense of relief at the idea of leaving school, and once I had, I felt truly safe for the first time in years.

For the first time, my illness presented the solution. I really was too sick to go to school. The bullies and my stalkers hadn’t driven me out, I could leave school guilt free. Learning at home for me was an overwhelmingly positive experience, giving me space to breathe, heal, and gather my strength. I had become so used to living in fear that I didn’t realize how afraid I had been until I wasn’t any longer. Later I would be diagnosed with PTSD, most likely from the two stalkers, and it took me years to be able to admit to myself that I wasn’t just weak, or a wimp, or an overdramatic teenage girl, that school for me was bad.

It was ugly, and it was bad

Escaping it was a Good Thing.

And it was medically necessary. Given how vital the chance to lick my wounds and put myself back together was, it’s sometimes hard to remember the real reason I left high school was that I kept ending up in the hospital.

I don’t fit in well in the pro-homeschooling camp, because I don’t think it’s the best thing ever and everybody should do it. In my case, it was a last resort, but most students aren’t as horrifically unlucky as I was. It’s more that I believe in everyone’s right to protect themselves and to leave abuse.

For me, that meant learning at home. I’m grateful for it.

From Bullying to As You Like It: Skjaere

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From Bullying to As You Like It: Skjaere

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was a guest post by Skjaere and was originally published on Patheos on January 27, 2013.

I was home schooled full time in eighth grade, and part time in ninth and tenth. Up until that time, I had been enrolled in our local public schools, where my dad was a teacher.

I’d been having problems with bullying at my middle school (both by my peers and by teachers, WTF?!).

When my mother asked me if I wanted to try home schooling, I jumped at the chance. It sounded almost too good to be true. I could choose my own reading lists and projects? Sign me up!

We were not a terribly religious family by any definition at that point. We attended the Episcopal church a block from our house because it was closest, and I had a lot of friends who went there. Our home school curriculum was not based on conservative politics either. We did things like visiting the local National Park and helping them plant seedlings. We went whale watching. I researched my family tree as a history project, and read Lewis and Clark’s journals.

It turned out the promise to pick my own reading list was too good to be true.

I loved to read, but my interest was mostly limited to fantasy fiction. I was allowed to choose books from a pre-selected list, however, which included such classics as 1984, Fahrenheit 451, To Kill a Mocking Bird, as well as various works by Mark Twain and William Shakespeare.

We also frequently got together with other home schooling families for Latin classes (our parents let us choose what language we wanted to take), and they all fell more into the hippie home schooler mold than the religious as well. One of my best friends was part of that groups, and we hung out together a lot. Many of us also took ballet classes together and participated in the Girl Scouts, so I don’t feel like I missed out on socialisation, especially when compared with the experiences I had suffered at my middle school. At the end of my ninth grade year, we organised a dramatic reading of “As You Like It” with an all-female cast and a five-year-old Duke. It was pretty awesome.

I was lucky to have two educated parents, and a mother who was able to stay home and teach my sister and me.

My dad was a math and science teacher at the local high school, and my mother had an English degree, so we have most of our major bases covered right there. I also took some correspondence courses through the University of Nebraska, did a year a our local community college through the Running Start programme, and then went to the high school full time my senior year. By the end of all that, my transcript was a confusing mish-mash, and it was pretty much impossible to calculate my GPA, but I did well on the SAT and was accepted to some wonderful univerisities.

After almost twenty years and some major shifts in my personal politics, I still feel pretty good about my home school experience.

Not Well-Rounded, But Excellent: Sean-Allen Parfitt

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Not Well-Rounded, But Excellent: Sean-Allen Parfitt

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sean-Allen Parfitt’s blog Of Pen and Heart. It was originally published on August 16, 2013. This is the second part of Sean-Allen’s three-part series for HA. Read Part One here.

My whole family has been homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. In last week’s post, I discussed how I was forbidden to learn anything that was “unapproved”. Though the effect was a deprived of a well-rounded education, I will stand by my opinion that my home education was actually quite excellent.

The base curriculum my family used was Rod and Staff. As is frequently the case with Mennonite education, the curriculum stopped at grade 10, so for grades 11 and 12 we used the curriculum by Bob Jones University Press. The BJU Press science curriculum was also used to supplement the lower grades, as was their math curriculum from 9th grade on.

The schoolwork we did was in fact quite vigorous, and Mom was a strict teacher.

We were far from “unschooled”, as some families are. Quite the opposite; we were not allowed to play until our homework was done. For many years we were required to complete every problem, question, and assignment in every lesson of every book. Every wrong answer was to be reworked and returned for re-grading until it was correct. Every reading lesson was read out loud to Mom, and any mistakes in pronunciation or inflection were to be corrected and the section read over until Mom was satisfied. Every essay was carefully scrutinized and marked up with red pen. All suggested class questions from the teacher’s manuals were duly asked, and answered. Every flash card drill was performed, with all speed times for each child written in the teacher’s book to be compared to previous work, both by the individual child, and to his or her siblings who had gone on before!

As you can see, this rigorous classroom method kept me working hard at my desk for much of my childhood. I studied math, English, science, geography, history, and other subjects. As the eldest, I did not have the competitive element that came from comparing the younger ones’ work with the older ones’. Nonetheless, the in-depth curriculum, along with Mom’s strict grading, kept me aiming for the highest grades possible. Every misspelled word was -1/4 point, and any other mistake was at least -1 point, if not -2, depending on the problem and the severity of the mistake. An A grade was 95% or higher.

I didn’t pick up as much in science and history as I did in English and math. But the education I did receive, and retain, was quite sufficient. In fact, it was superior to many public-schooled children in America.

Every 2 years our family took standardized tests, and we routinely ranked in the 99th percentile in many subjects.

When I took my SAT, even though my score wasn’t as high as I was hoping, it was still quite good. I took the entrance exam to attend Monroe Community College, which consisted of an English section and a math section. Afterward, when I sat down with the adviser, he told me that I had done so well… I had only gotten one question wrong on the whole test. They placed me in advanced composition, which in which I received an A, and when I took pre-calculus, calculus I and calculus II, I got A, A, and A-, respectively.

I believe that my academic education, though perhaps lacking in literature and humanities, was quite sound. My English skills gave me an advantage when learning Spanish, as I thoroughly understand how grammar works. My scores of essays written in school now serve me as I attempt to communicate with the world. Math was indispensable in college, and I even use it sometimes today. In fact, my career as a software engineer was born from the seeds my father planted, when he taught me how to program in MBASIC on an Osborne Executive when I was only 8 years old.

He nurtured this throughout my middle- and high-school career, and now I program for a living.

Even though there were some drawbacks to being educated at home, I emerged academically well prepared with a career path ready for me to follow. I am extremely grateful for the care my mother and father put into making sure I was ready for life. One thing I’m really not good at: speling.

*****

To be continued.

Nerdy Homeschooler: Kathryn Brightbill

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Nerdy Homeschooler: Kathryn Brightbill

Kathryn Brightbill blogs at The Life and Opinions of Kathryn Elizabeth, Person.

I’m a nerd, a geek, though I suppose not enough of one to get caught up in the arguments over which of those terms is positive and which one is the insult. I was a female computer geek back before there were enough of us for people to even start whining about “fake girl geeks” showing up at cons. When being a woman interested in tech meant you and a roomful of guys who didn’t quite know what to do with you.

I’ve read the studies, I know the statistics, and the reality is that even now in 2013, the majority of girls don’t make it out of junior high still feeling good about their abilities in math and the hard sciences. By the time they get to college, not many girls are still in the pipeline of women in technology. While the problem is multifaceted, we know that the combination of peer pressure and negative gender stereotypes makes it an uphill battle. No matter a person’s actual skill level, when the prevailing message is that people like them aren’t good at a particular subject area and there aren’t many role models, they start to internalize that message.

I missed that message.

Or rather, I should say that by the time I became aware of the idea that girls aren’t supposed to be good at math, I was sufficiently confident in my abilities that I concluded that something must be wrong with a society that says that girls can’t do math.

Being homeschooled by a former math teacher meant that it was expected that I learn enough math that the door was open to any path I might decide to pursue in college, and my sister and I were held to the same expectations as my brothers were.

I never got the message that my gender was in some way supposed to be correlated with lower math ability, or that it meant I should limit my dreams and goals for the future.

At its best, homeschooling can create a learning environment that helps to minimize the influence of societal pressures to conform to rigid gender roles and to live up (or down) to the expectations of society. That’s what homeschooling did for me. The prevailing message of my childhood was that I could be or do whatever I wanted and that no one could stop me. I didn’t internalize most of the negative gender stereotypes about women because the negative messages were drowned out by the positive. I’m convinced that one of the reasons why I was able to hold my own in the extremely male-dominated computer science major I ended up choosing in college was because I hadn’t internalized the message that I wasn’t supposed to be able to do it because I’m a girl.

It would be dishonest of me, though, to write about my positive personal experiences without also acknowledging the tension between the message I got in my own family and the messages I got from the broader homeschool world. When I was a teenager, I became acutely aware that the expectations that others had for my older brother were vastly different than what was expected for me. I was the one who wanted to go to law school, but I felt like everyone was busy encouraging my brother—who had no interest in law—to become a lawyer while not taking my interests seriously. When I changed my major to computer science in college, I got the distinct impression that it wasn’t taken seriously unless I gave the justification that programming was a career that could allow me to work from home while being a good wife and mother.

At its best, homeschooling can open up a broad range of options and free a child from the pressures of stereotypes, at its worst, it can reinforce those negative stereotypes and close off options.

For me, my homeschool experience meant that I was able to go off to college confident in my abilities and with my options open. It meant that while I was convinced that I was going to go major in history and then head directly to law school, when I discovered my freshman year that computer science interested me, I had the foundation to succeed. In the end, I discovered that studying computer science was far more interesting to me than actually doing it, and ended up with the original law school plan, but having that tech background gives me opportunities that a liberal arts major wouldn’t.

I’m not yet sure where my story ends, but it’s been an interesting ride and one that homeschooling helped make possible.

Homeschooling, The Tool My Parents Used Well: Shaney Lee

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Homeschooling, The Tool My Parents Used Well

By Shaney Lee, HARO Board Member

I see homeschooling as a tool.

Like a gardening hoe, when used correctly it can help bring life and vitality to living things. Homeschooling is not an end in and of itself; rather, the end is for parents to raise healthy, well-rounded human beings. But used incorrectly, a tool can harm the very things or people it’s meant to help thrive.

My parents were two individuals that I believe used the tool of homeschooling well.

Thanks to their efforts, I was given a solid education that enabled me to get into a well-known university on a full-tuition scholarship and graduate from that same university four years later with honors. I had a wide variety of experiences while homeschooled that I believe contributed to the well-rounded person I am today. And I grew up learning to be comfortable with being the “odd one out” when there were no other homeschoolers around, which I think at least partially contributes to my willingness to risk how others may view me in order to do the right thing.

I also have many memories of things I may not have been able to do had I not been homeschooled: volunteer projects I did during school hours, exploring subjects not typically offered in school, getting to set my own pace.

Would I have received these same benefits had I gone to public or private school, instead of being homeschooled? I’m not sure. I think I probably would have, because I believe that my parents would have taught me many of the exact same things regardless of where I went to school. Even those things I wouldn’t have been able to pursue in school probably would have been pursued in a different way outside of school.

But that’s not really the point I’m trying to make. I don’t feel any need to prove that it was “homeschooling” specifically that contributed to the many positives in my childhood that made me who I am today. The point is that, in the hands of my parents, homeschooling was a tool that they used well (even if they did occasionally make a mistake here or there). Homeschooling wasn’t the only positive experience I could have had. But, it is the positive experience I did have.

And my positive experience with homeschooling is exactly why I chose to become a founding member of Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO).

I know that many people see my decision as a sort of betrayal against homeschooling. They assume I must think homeschooling is deeply flawed and dangerous.

But that’s not it at all. It’s precisely because of my positive experience with homeschooling that I believe every child has a right to an equally positive experience. And just like any educational method, homeschooling is a tool that can be used for good or for bad. In the hands of abusive parents, homeschooling can be downright torture. In the hands of good-hearted, well-equipped, healthy parents, homeschooling can provide a child with an excellent education, and potentially open doors that wouldn’t be opened otherwise.

So I am excited for this week of positives.

I think it will show that neither Homeschoolers Anonymous nor HARO are anti-homeschooling. Rather, we are a group of individuals who have a wide range of experiences with homeschooling, but strongly believe that all children have the right to a positive educational experience.

A Week of Joy: Call for Contributions to HA’s Upcoming Positives Series

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By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

*****

I have a very complicated relationship with homeschooling.

In many ways I have significant problems with the Christian homeschool movement; in many other ways, however, I appreciate my homeschool education. My education was lacking in some areas, particularly science, but it was also exceptionally above average in other areas, such as language arts and communication. I have suffered emotional and verbal abuse in homeschooling contexts. But this was at the hands of other homeschooling parents, not my own parents. My parents have been extraordinarily supportive of Homeschoolers Anonymous, for which I am deeply grateful. Also, while I experienced emotional and verbal abuse in homeschooling contexts, I have also experienced sexual abuse in a public school context.

I am under no delusion about the universality of abuse.

It is for these reasons that I do not primarily see my identity as a survivor of homeschooling. In many ways I am a survivor: I am a survivor of abuse, sometimes from abuse in homeschooling and sometimes not. But my experiences are too mixed to be able to fairly isolate only one community from which I am a survivor. I have instead channeled that complex pain into wanting to make the world a better place in whatever context I can. Since homeschooling was my life for so many years, I see myself as an advocate for other homeschoolers who have had far worse experiences than I have.

Honestly, most of my experiences growing up in SELAH and CHEA, my California homeschool groups, were positive. It was while traveling around the country with Communicators for Christ that my eyes were opened to all the different subcultures and ideologies that can create real and serious damage to children. Growing up, I only had an inkling about some of these phenomena. I did not begin to connect the dots until I came into contact with thousands of other homeschoolers and began observing patterns.

Much of my life has revolved around this sort of tension, or dialectic: there is so much good, and there is much bad; there is so much pain, and there is so much joy.

As we begin our next “week series,” I am hoping that as a community we can explore this sense of tension and the reality of dialectic in our experiences.

On July 15, we asked you as a community to pick the next topic you’d like to see us address as a community. We received votes via Facebook comments, private messages, emails, and Tweets. Honestly, there was a good number of votes for all four of the options: (1) Mental health, mental illness week, (2) Abusive relationships week, (3) Grandparent(s) appreciation week, and (4) Positives (what you liked about homeschooling) week.

No one topic won by a landslide.

So obviously we need to cover all of these at some point in the near future. Mental health came in second, with a lot of vocal support for it. So it seems that would be the most appropriate topic for the series after this next one.

For the immediate next series, the winning topic was positives.

While this topic was the winner, it also received a lot of pushback — which, frankly, I understand. If you have suffered neglect or abuse in homeschooling, you’ve probably spent the majority of your life wearing a “I love homeschooling and nothing is wrong with it” mask. This might be the first time in your entire life that you’ve felt the freedom to talk about the negatives. You might be thinking, “I don’t want to talk about positives. I’ve done nothing but talk about the positives since I was a kid.”

Honestly, I personally relate to that sentiment.

At the same time that every fiber of my being wants to finally talk about the negatives, there is a place for the positives in our community. Not everyone in our community has had a bad experience. Not every ally here has experienced our pain. But they are here, supporting us, and listening to us.

I want to give people with positive experiences a place to be heard, too.

Our allies’ positive experiences are fundamentally vital to making homeschooling better for future generations. Those of us with good stories are examples of how homeschooling can be done well.

For every story that says, “This was a problem,” the question is raised: “What is the solution?” Sharing positive experiences is crucial to teaching current and future homeschooling parents the difference between those environments that led to pain and those environments that led to joy.

We need to hear those.

So those of you in our community that have had positive experiences, this is your time to speak up.

And to those of you in our community that have had negative experiences, this is actually also your time.

A week of positives does not mean we are just talking about generally positive homeschooling experiences. Yes, it means that we are taking a week to celebrate the good things. But it also means we are dedicating time to celebrate those moments of joy that contrasted with those moments of pain. This is a week of joy for everyone: to share in others’ good experiences, and also to celebrate those people or those moments that gave us a hope to carry on, that gave us maybe a unique experience of unconditional love.

I have moments like that. I remember when a horde of parents surrounded me and yelled at me (no exaggeration), and one parent silently pulled me out of that crowd and went for a walk with me. That one parent in a very real sense rescued me. He told me that, regardless of what the other parents might say, I was valuable. I was a human being and I was to be unconditionally loved.

I learned that lesson from a conservative Christian homeschooling father. So I celebrate him.

I remember that moment because moments like that, though maybe few and far between, are some of my favorite memories to this day.

Our upcoming positives week is an official celebration —

Of parents that succeeded in giving their kids a good education, of those adults or peers that showed you real compassion, love, or respect, of those moments that gave you hope and healing amidst not-so-positive experiences.

Let’s celebrate all of those things together.

*****

To contribute:

If you are interested in contributing, here are some ideas for what you could write about:

  1. Your personal story of a positive homeschool education
  2. Your personal story of positive aspects of your homeschool education
  3. An experience you had where another person in your homeschool life (one of your parents, another homeschooling parent, a friend, a tutor, etc.) showed you love or respect that maybe you had not experienced before
  4. An experience you had where another person in your homeschool life taught you something that gave you hope about the future, or maybe a personal struggle you had

You do not have to pick just one topic. You could combine several of these ideas, or bring your own ideas to the table, or — if you have a lot to say — contribute several pieces on a variety of these topics.

The deadline for submission is August 23, 2013.

As always, you can contribute anonymously or publicly.

If you interested in participating in this, please email us at homeschoolersanonymous@gmail.com.