educational neglect

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part Two

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

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I showed up for school with my back pack on, my lunch packed, my patent leather white dress shoes and my frilliest pink dress.  I marched straight up to the first girl my age, stuck out my hand and said “Hi, my name is Jessica and I think we’re just going to be the best of friends.” She laughed at me, and walked away talking about me to her friends.

I was completely socially inept.

I had never been around other children. The only other child that I had been around regularly was my older brother, so I acted like my autistic older brother.  Every time I spoke, I would compulsively say what I had just said again under my breath to listen myself say it. Literally every sentence. Until the other children started making fun of me for it, I had never realized that other people didn’t do that.  It took me over two years to break that habit and I still do it in my head to make sure what I just said didn’t sound stupid. No one played with me and no one spoke to me except the teachers.

That was just the social aspect. I was capable of all the grade level work the other children were doing, except the math.

However, I had never been in a class room.

When I did my work at home, I would sit at the table, read my books, do my work sheets or tests and then I was done for the day.  It usually took 2-3 hours. I knew nothing about school. My first day, I got in trouble for answering the questions when the teacher asked them. After a couple questions, I realized that the other children were raising their hands and being called on. However, it was too late. I lost my recess and had to write “I will not speak unless spoken to” 150 times. My hand ached and I didn’t speak in class again for weeks.

After the first 9 weeks, I found out that I was failing school. I aced all of my tests but I wasn’t doing any of the assignments I didn’t have the attention span to pay attention in class. I had never had to pay attention for that long before, so I didn’t hear any of the instructions. I didn’t understand, I was doing everything I was asked at school. As much as I heard before I involuntarily spaced out. What I didn’t realize is that I wasn’t done when the day was over. I was supposed to be doing work at home too. I was beaten  for flunking, but no one told me what I was supposed to do to change it. My mom had checked out of our education as soon as the homeschooling was over.

Finally, after failing my 2nd nine weeks, my teacher started paying attention and realized what was wrong. I didn’t know how to be in school. She kept me in at recess (I didn’t play at recess anyway) every day for a week and taught me how school worked. She explained homework, she moved me to the front row so she could work on keeping my attention. She explained why everything was the way it was and I finally started catching on.

Socially however, was another story. I had no friends. No one would speak to me.

It became even worse after I tried to start a conversation about demons at the lunch table.

My grades came up the first half of the 2nd semester and after that, I could no longer make myself care. I didn’t belong at home, I didn’t belong at school, the kids were afraid of me, my parents hated me. I had no reason to exist. I stopped doing anything that I did not want to do. I was never going to measure up to the expectations of my family or my peers, so trying was useless.

At the end of the year, my teacher informed my parents that I was not ready to progress to middle school and I was held back to repeat my 5th grade year. This of course was an abject failure. I had humiliated my parents.  What would the other people in town think? This was always very important. My mother cared deeply about how she appeared to the other people in our small, entirely too nosy town. I went back to school the next year and did nothing at all. I did what I had to do in class so the teacher wouldn’t yell at me and got beatings at home for the straight D’s and F’s on my report card. I didn’t care. They passed me anyway.

In Middle School, the social aspect of school started to become easier. I made some friends, yes they were the other weird kids, but they were my friends. The age of 12 brought new difficulties with it. I was starting to be interested in boys and this was unacceptable. I was allowed to go to school, but I was not allowed to go to any school social events. Dances were immoral and there was no reason to be pursuing boys until at least the age of 16 if not 18. Sports were a frivolous waste of time, so I did not need to go to those events. Still, they had to let me do something, so middle school began my years of church lock ins and Bible camp.

I will come back to church events.  First I would like to tackle the ideas of privacy and sexuality.  In the sixth grade, I had my first “boyfriend”.  It was completely innocent and consisted note writing, sneaking phone calls and holding hands in the hallway.  It was in stark contrast to what I had been taught.  I was taught that boys were only after sex and that dating was unnecessary and immoral.  So even this completely innocent venture into crush land got me in more trouble than I had been in my entire life.  I had been writing a diary, but I had kept it secret.  I was not allowed to have secrets from my parents.  I accidentally left my diary in room one day and my mother found it.  She went through my room on a near weekly basis.  Something she never did to the boys. I was the one that had to be kept pure. My life went on like this until I left when I was 18.  I would try to have some semblance of self or privacy and it was be swiftly and harshly be stomped out as soon as it was discovered. My thoughts were not my own. I was not allowed to be different, I had to fully give myself to Jesus and my parents.

Church events were the only time I could really be a kid. At the age of 7, I was “saved” at our little baptist church.  However, I didn’t have an emotional coming to Jesus moment. I was sitting in the children’s section. The alter call started and I had never paid attention before. The pastor asked if there was anyone in the room that had never accepted Jesus. I hadn’t done that. So I put up my hand.

Now I have express the sheer lack of emotion in this experience — I had no idea what I was doing. The pastor asked if we had done something and I hadn’t. He was a man and spiritual leader, so I had to do what he said. I would have had the same response if he had asked me if I had brushed my teeth that morning. I went down, I repeated the prayer the lady had me say, and I was done. I did what I was told and then I tried to go sit back down. They wouldn’t let me.

I had to stand in front of the church.

Everyone was cheering, my mom was crying.  I had no idea why. The next Sunday I had to get baptized. At some point in time, I realized that I was supposed to have had an emotional response to this event, so I faked one and played along because for once, people were proud of me.

In middle school, I went to my first church camp. It was wonderful, all the kids were just like me and we got along wonderfully. I didn’t realize until many years later that the reason we got along was because they were all just as socially inept and weird as I was. Still, it was a release. Everything was great, except worship service on the 3rd day.  We had been having Bible studies, music and praise, but they didn’t have the first alter call until day 3.  We had a long lesson on hell and suffering. Then they outlined the steps of salvation. I had an emotional break down along with about 30 other children. I hadn’t been saved, not properly. I was going to burn in hell. I crawled, sobbing down the isle to the front and terrified, I accepted Jesus. Properly this time. I had such a sense of peace.

I was on fire for Jesus for the rest of the week.

Unfortunately, the assurance wore off and a new sense of terror joined the terror I had about demons and the 2 am hour when my father came home from work. I still wasn’t saved. I had doubts and I was told Jesus would take all my doubts away when I became saved. I must broken, why can’t I get properly saved? The scenario of tearfully crawling my way up to the stage repeated its self at nearly every youth event I attended until I stopped attending youth events at 18.

It never worked.

I never felt saved and it was a constant torment.

To be continued.

HSLDA and Child Abuse: The Deregulation of Homeschooling

HA Editorial Team9 Comments
Picture 1

HA note: The following series will run each weekday this week. It is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. Part five of the series was originally published on Patheos on April 24, 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Introduction | Part Two, HSLDA’s Fight Against Child Abuse Reporting | Part Three, HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations | Part Four, HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse | Part Five, HSLDA and the Deregulation of Homeschooling

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5. The Deregulation of Homeschooling

In this series examining the actions of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), we’ve discussed HSLDA’s efforts to minimize child abuse reporting, stonewall child abuse investigations, and keep excessive corporal punishment legal. In this post we’re going to change gears and look at HSLDA’s efforts against homeschool regulations, efforts that, in effect, remove compulsory education and legalize educational neglect.

Let me put it like this: HSLDA is against any oversight of homeschooling whatsoever. Without regulation of homeschooling—including even registration with the state education authorities—there is nothing to ensure that parents who remove their children from the public schools (or never send them to begin with) are actually educating their children. But from HSLDA’s perspective, that reality is unimportant. Here is HSLDA’s Christopher Klicka in 2008, explaining the organization’s position:

Mr. Klicka added that the only regulation he found “reasonable” was that families notify authorities of their plans to home school. Other requirements, including record-keeping on childrens’ progress and either standardized testing or year-end portfolios to demonstrate competence, all required in New York State, were currently being challenged in eight active court cases nationally.

In other words, the only regulation HSLDA’s Christopher Klicka—and the organization itself, as we will see—views as acceptable is requiring homeschooled students to give their local schools notice of their intent to homeschool when removing their children.

HSLDA’s basic line is that it is the parents’ responsibility and right to direct the education of their offspring, and that they should therefore not be interfered with. HSLDA does not appear to believe that children have any sort of right to be educated, because the organization opposes any way of ensuring that homeschooling families actually educate their children. In HSLDA’s perfect world, parents would not be required to ensure that their children receive an education—instead, it would be up to their own discretion.

The problem here is very similar to HSLDA’s problem when it comes to child abuse. Both educational neglect and child abuse do take place in HSLDA member families, and they also take place in families that merely use homeschooling as an excuse to educationally neglect and physically abuse their children. (And yes, this does happen.) But the organization appears to be both oblivious to the fact that any of its member families might be guilty of educational neglect or child abuse (because they’re good Christian families!) and not at all bothered by the fact that homeschooling is being used as a tool to enable other families to abuse or neglect their children. If all homeschooling families were like the one I grew up in—if all homeschool parents put the same emphasis and importance on academics that my parents did—HSLDA’s absolutist deregulation stance could perhaps be defended (though not necessarily by me). But not every family is like mine.

Homeschool regulations very drastically from state to state. Ten U.S. states don’t even require that parents register their homeschools with the state education authority, let alone any testing, curriculum, or portfolio requirements. In these states, compulsory education has in practice been repealed. Other states, though, do have oversight of homeschooling. Pennsylvania, for example, has the highest level of regulation of homeschooling, requiring parents to turn in curricular plans at the beginning of the school year (for approval) and submit portfolios of students’ work and written reports of their progress composed by certified teachers at the end of each school year f0r evaluation, along with standardized test scores every third year. This high level of regulation, however, is a bit of an abnormality.

In order to explore HSLDA’s stance on homeschooling regulations, as well as its lobbying power, I am going to use Texas as a case study. Texas is probably the most unregulated state in the country when it comes to homeschooling, and HSLDA has worked hard over the years to keep it this way. As I look over this history, I will quote from HSLDA’s e-alerts, messages it sends out to its member families, often with requests for lobbying action.

A Texas Tale

In Texas, homeschools are counted as individual private schools—and there are no regulations on private schools in Texas. None. While private schools—and thus homeschools—are technically required to teach “reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, and good citizenship,” there is nothing checking up on them to ensure that they do this, no mechanism to catch ones that aren’t, no evaluation requirements, no curriculum requirements, and even no registration requirement. There is, then, absolutely no oversight whatsoever of homeschooling in Texas.

Homeschools didn’t always count as private schools—that particular quirk of Texas law was the result of a 1994 Texas Supreme Court decision: Leeper. The question before the court was whether the private school exemption to the compulsory education law included homeschooled children. Let me quote from the decision’s introduction:

The dispute in this class action centers on whether the private school exemption includes children who are taught at home, in a bona fide manner, a curriculum designed to meet certain basic education goals, including a study of good citizenship.

The court concluded in its decision, then, that the private school exemption did indeed apply to homeschooled children—or at least to homeschooled children who were “taught at home, in a bona fide manner, a curriculum designed to meet certain basic education goals.” There is nothing in the Leeper decision that bars the state educational commission from creating oversight of homeschooling—and in fact, the decision explicitly states that.

Specifically, the TEA [Texas Education Agency] is not precluded from requesting evidence of achievement test results in determining whether children are being taught in a bona fide manner.

Technically, this decision required that those who were given an exemption from the state’s compulsory education law to be educated at home be taught “in a bona fide manner” using “a curriculum designed to meet certain basic educational goals.” However, the Texas legislature never passed laws providing oversight of homeschooling after the decision was handed down, leaving homeschools to be overseen in the same way that private schools are—which means not at all. As a result, these nominal requirements have never been worth more than the paper it’s written on.

Truancy and Registration, 2003

This lack of oversight of homeschooling has created a bit of a problem for Texas over the years. Namely, how are educational officials to know who is homeschooled and who is, well, just a dropout? From the perspective of local superintendents, the two look very much the same: children who have stopped attending school. How is a local school district to deal with truancy when it isn’t sure who is truant and who was homeschooled? In 2003, a state senator attempted to fix this problem with a bill requiring homeschoolers to register with the state’s commissioner of education. HSLDA responded with an e-alert to its members:

February 28, 2003

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends,

A bill has been introduced in the Texas Legislature that will require all homeschoolers to be registered with the state commissioner of education. HSLDA is completely opposed to any registration or controls on homeschoolers in Texas.

Senator Barrientos introduced the bill, S.B. 586, on February 24. It was referred to the Senate Committee on Education.

We need your calls to Senator Barrientos to urge him to withdraw his bill. There can be no compromise.

ACTION REQUESTED

Please call Senator Barrientos and give him this message:

“Thank you for your concern for public school dropouts. However, registering law-abiding homeschoolers is not the solution. More serious enforcement of the existing truancy laws is all that is necessary. We ask you to withdraw S.B. 586 and keep homeschooling free.”

Senator Barrientos capitol number is 512-463-0114. His fax is 512-463-5949. His e-mail is gonzalo.barrientos@senate.state.tx.us.

Be polite, yet firm that there is no room for compromise.

In this e-alert, HSLDA makes it clear that it opposes any oversight of homeschooling, even something as simple requiring homeschoolers to register with the state educational authority. But what really struck me is that whoever wrote up this e-alert comes across as completely missing the point—the bill requiring homeschoolers to register was proposed so that local school districts could enforce the existing truancy laws, so simply suggesting that these laws need more enforcing makes no sense. Further, asking that homeschoolers register—merely put their names on a list—posed no threat whatsoever to parents’ freedom to homeschool, regardless of what HSLDA implies in this alert.

There’s a little bit left to the e-alert, though, so let me add that:

BACKGROUND

I contacted Senator Barrientos’ office and talked to his aide in charge of the S.B. 586. She explained that their intent is only to help solve the school drop-out problem. They simply “want to protect the sanctity of homeschoolers.”

When informed that that we wanted the immediate withdrawal of the bill, she asked if we would “compromise.”

I explained the history of home schooling Texas and that there was no room for compromise. Homeschoolers are content with the present legal climate and enjoy the freedom they have fought so hard to obtain.

A second call was placed to determine if they would withdraw. The aide said she would recommend that they not withdraw the bill. Officially their position is that they will not withdraw the bill at this time.

We informed her that we inform our membership.

Let Senator Barrientos know homeschoolers want him to withdraw his bill.

Thanks for standing with us for freedom!

Sincerely,

Chris Klicka

HSLDA Senior Counsel

This is how HSLDA operates. No compromise. We will inform our membership. We are standing for freedom. No compromise.

This “we want to protect the sanctity of homeschoolers” bit—which HSLDA quoted the state senator’s aide as saying—is interesting, because I think there is a strong case to be made there. Do homeschoolers really want homeschooling to serve as a shelter for abuse or as a cover for a school dropout problem? Senator Barrientos clearly hoped that requiring homeschoolers to register would ensure that legitimate homeschoolers would be protected while dropouts could more easily be taken to task for their truancy. But HSLDA would have none of that—and no compromise.

Just over a week later, on March 6th, HSLDA sent out another e-alert:

March 6, 2003

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends,

Thank you for your time and effort spent protecting homeschool freedom! Many of you have responded to our elert of Feb. 28 notifying you of  Senate Bill 586. This bill would require all homeschoolers to be registered with the state commissioner of education and would open the door for further regulations.

The bill states: “A home-schooled child is exempt under Subsection (a)(1) only if the child’s parent or guardian provides to the commissioner written acknowledgment on a form adopted by the commissioner that the parent or guardian accepts complete responsibility for adequately teaching the child based on a curriculum designed to meet basic education goals.”

Texas homeschoolers enjoy the greatest liberty to homeschool of virtually all the states. Senator Gonzalo Barrientos (the sponsor of S.B. 586) is offering to amend the bill, but no amendment would be satisfactory since it would involve some limit on the freedom of homeschoolers. Unlike many other states, homeschoolers in Texas have the clear blessing and protection of a landmark Texas Supreme Court case. There is no need to compromise.

HSLDA’s Texas Legislative Counsel Tom Sanders visited Senator Barrientos’ office and he learned that the senator has received over 1,000 calls and 1,000 emails from homeschoolers expressing their opposition to the bill. We encourage you to continue to contact Senator Barrientos.

While no action has been taken on the bill so far, we want to make sure to send the message that Texas homeschoolers are opposed to any change in the law.

…

For Christ and liberty,

Chris Klicka

HSLDA Senior Counsel

This e-alert notes that the registration form homeschoolers would have to fill out would include a commitment that “the parent or guardian accepts complete responsibility for adequately teaching the child based on a curriculum designed to meet basic education goals.” One would think that’s the sort of commitment HSLDA would support, as it places no stipulations and creates no enforcement mechanism, but merely states that the responsibility for educating the child now lays with the parent, and that the parent is willing to take on that responsibility. But no. No amendment. No compromise. Nothing that will place any limit whatsoever on the “freedom of homeschoolers.”

It’s also worth noting that the Leeper decision already stated that homeschool parents must do those things, essentially word for word. So why was HSLDA so worried about having homeschool parents sign a piece of paper saying that they would do so? HSLDA expounded on its opposition as follows:

HSLDA opposes the bill as it requires parents to send written confirmation to the commissioner that the parent will “adequately teach the child based on curriculum designed to meet basic education goals.” This opens the door for further regulation to determine what is adequate instruction and who determines adequacy. It would require additional legislation to determine the “basic education goals” for homeschoolers.

This is a pattern I’ve noticed—HSLDA inevitably interprets any law that effects homeschooling in any way as a potential Trojan Horse, opening the floodgates that will (somehow) result in a de facto ban on homeschooling. Still, in this case it makes especially little sense, because Leeper itself, which HSLDA cites here as its freedom charter for Texas homeschoolers, already opened the door to regulation when it used words like “in a bona fide manner” and “curriculum designed to meet certain basic education goals,” wording almost identical to that that this bill would require homeschool parents to affirm. But then, if the HSLDA didn’t react in this way to every little law, it wouldn’t have material to frighten homeschoolers into buying their legal insurance.

Several months after this update, HSLDA offered its members a final update:

June 10, 2003

Dear Texas Members and Friends,

Thank you for all of your hard work this legislative season! Because of your calls, letters, and email, we have been able to accomplish several major victories for homeschoolers in Texas. Tom Sanders, HSLDA’s Legislative Counsel, was in Austin nearly every week during the legislative session, lobbying on your behalf to make these
successes a reality.

Homeschoolers killed S.B. 586, the homeschool registration bill. Our consistent message was “no compromise,” and the sponsor got that message from your calls (over a thousand as estimated by a staffer).

Those thousands of phone calls and thousands of emails? This is how HSLDA gets its work done. And time and again, time and time and again, HSLDA succeeds. In fact, it succeeds in getting its way on essentially every homeschool bill it touches.

Truancy and Notification, 2010-2011

Texas schools’ problems with confusing homeschooling and truancy continued for the remainder of the decade, until someone finally blew the whistle in 2010. As reported in the Chronicle:

In an attempt to ensure that public school districts aren’t disguising high school dropouts, the Texas Education Agency is conducting an audit of students who withdrew under the auspice of home schooling.

TEA officials wouldn’t reveal details of the audit — other than to say that the state is contacting a random sampling of families to validate that they intended to home-school when they left middle or high school.

More than 22,620 Texas secondary students were listed as withdrawing to home-school in 2008 — raising a red flag among some experts and educators who worry that Texas’ lax regulations are encouraging abuse in the hands-off home-schooling category. The 2008 figures reflect a 24 percent jump from the prior year and roughly triple the number of high school home-schooling withdrawals from a decade ago.

“They looked at the numbers and data a little more closely and decided to go a little more in-depth,” TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.

If parents who withdrew their children to homeschool were required to register with the state, we wouldn’t have a problem with public schools recording dropouts as students leaving to homeschool in an effort to cook their books, and if there were at least some educational oversight we wouldn’t have a problem with dropouts claiming they’re homeschooling in an effort to avoid truancy laws. But don’t bother mentioning any of that to HSLDA!

Here is an update on the situation a year later in the Chronicle:

A new documentation requirement will make it harder for students to leave the public school system under the guise of home schooling, closing a loophole in Texas’ dropout statistics.

…

Starting this school year, a parent must submit a signed statement saying that a withdrawing student intends to study at home, regardless of the child’s age. Documentation requirements also are being stiffened for students who say they’re leaving to enroll in a private school in Texas or a school outside Texas. In either of these circumstances, a student is not counted as a dropout.

This change in policy took place without need for a law—it was a change in the school system’s paperwork. In fact, this change didn’t actually require homeschoolers to notify school districts of their intent to homeschool when withdrawing their children—something that still isn’t required in Texas even today. Instead, the change meant that if the schools wanted to list a student as having left to be homeschooled in official school documents counting the number and flow of children, the administration would have to get a signed statement of intent to homeschool. And if the parent didn’t want to give that—and they didn’t have to—the administration would be out of luck.

HSLDA sent an e-alert to its members in response to this change:

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:

According to the Houston Chronicle, the Texas Education Agency has now implemented its new policy to combat public school attendance fraud by requiring public schools to more fully document whether a withdrawing student intends to homeschool.

Last year, HSLDA alerted Texas homeschoolers that the TEA conducted an audit of public schools and found that some schools in Texas had been classifying dropouts as homeschoolers in order to keep drop-out numbers low. To combat this problem, the TEA is now requiring that when a student is withdrawing from public school, the school must have a signed statement from the parent saying that the student intends to study at home before it can classify them as “withdrawing to homeschool.”

Texas law does not require parents who choose to teach their children at home to file any sort of notice of intent. Thus, the TEA cannot mandate parents to file any such form. However, HSLDA always recommends that parents who withdraw their children from public school inform the school of their intention, lest the sudden absence of the child create grounds for concern. Members can find a sample withdrawal letter on the members-only section of our website. This letter should serve as the parent’s signed statement required by the TEA’s new policy.

Should you encounter any school district that tries to force  homeschooling parents to sign any statements regarding the enrollment  of their children, please contact HSLDA immediately for assistance.

Sincerely,

Darren Jones, Esq.

HSLDA Staff Attorney

It is absolutely true that HSLDA encourages new homeschoolers to notify their intent to homeschool when removing their children from a public school (notify, notregister) and it appears from the quote with which I began this post that HSLDA would be okay with requiring parents to give this notification. But that’s it. Nothing more than bare, basic notification.

Conclusion

HSLDA is opposed to any oversight of homeschooling whatsoever, and if you read the organization’s literature, it’s as though they don’t realize the practical results of their deregulation efforts. In a state like Texas, a parent may remove her children from the public school and, whether or not she notifies the school district of her decision to homeschool, keep her children at home and teach them absolutely nothing. After all, how is anyone to know? How is anyone to ensure that education is taking place?

In effect, it appears that HSLDA’s goal is to—in practice if not in name—make compulsory education a thing of the past, allowing parents to opt their children out of formal schooling for any reason and without any requirement that they actually educate their children. I understand where they are coming from—they believe in the supremacy of parents’ rights and parents’ total control over their children’s upbringing—I just strongly disagree with it. Their policies also, in effect, legalizes educational neglect. And indeed, in an article on compulsory education laws HSLDA stops short of openly coming out against them but nevertheless takes a very critical view of their very existence.

And again, this isn’t hypothetical—it impacts real people and real lives. In 2011, Stephen L. Endress conducted a survey of public school administrators in Iowa and Illinois as part of his dissertation project. While his response rate was low, he found that his several hundred respondents reported that they believed that, on average, 25% of those who left their schools stating intent to homeschool were actually doing so specifically to avoid truancy laws. And when homeschooling regulations are low or nonexistent, there’s nothing to stop people from doing that. This, quite simply, is the result of HSLDA’s advocacy.

And yes, I would definitely say policies HSLDA’s policies — and the state of deregulation it has contributed to — damages “the sanctity of homeschooling.”

End of series.

HSLDA and Child Abuse: A Series

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following series will run each weekday this week. It is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. Part one of the series was originally published on Patheos on April 17, 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Introduction | Part Two, HSLDA’s Fight Against Child Abuse Reporting | Part Three, HSLDA’s Stonewalling of Child Abuse Investigations | Part Four, HSLDA’s Defense of Child Abuse | Part Five, HSLDA and the Deregulation of Homeschooling

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1. Introduction

As a homeschooled child, Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), was my hero. It was HSLDA, I believed, that had given my parents the right to homeschool, and that continued to protect our rights against government encroachment. This made what I have learned about the organization upon adulthood that much harder to absorb and fully comprehend. Put simply, HSLDA is doing everything it can to keep people from reporting child abuse and to inhibit child abuse investigations, has opposed laws against child abuse, and is working to undo compulsory education laws altogether, effectively decriminalizing educational neglect.

HSLDA was in 1983, ostensibly to protect families’ right to homeschool. In practice, however many of its cases today deal not with homeschooling but with child abuse allegations. If you read through HSLDA’s Court Report, you will find story after story of HSLDA defending homeschooling parents against child abuse allegations. Homeschooling is today legal in every U.S. state, and HSLDA has gone far, far beyond its original mandate. In fact, it appears that HSLDA is today more preoccupied with sheltering child abuse than it is with protecting the legality of homeschooling.

Let me offer the Stumbo case as an example. In September of 1999, a neighbor saw the Stumbo’s two-year-old naked and unattended in the family’s driveway and registered an anonymous tip with Child Protective Services. After receiving the tip, a CPS worker appeared on the Stumbo’s porch and asked to interview the children to ensure that there was no abuse taking place. On HSLDA’s advice, the Stumbos refused to grant the CPS worker any access whatsoever to their children. The CPS worker then went to a judge and got a court order to interview the children. In spite of the fact that the case had nothing to do with homeschooling, HSLDA appealed the order and eventually won; the court found that there was too little evidence of abuse to justify a court order. HSLDA had hoped the court would find that interviewing a family’s children would count as seizure under the fourth amendment, but was disappointed as the case was decided more narrowly.

I remember reading about the Stumbo case in Home School Court Report when I was kid. It was played up as this grand scary thing, as though the kids were about to be removed from their parents for no reason whatsoever. At the time I wasn’t aware of the legal background surrounding the case—including the reality that there was never an attempt to remove the children from their parents and that the case primarily involved not homeschooling but rather the proper procedures for child abuse investigations. Whether or not the CPS took the proper actions in the Stumbo case isn’t the issue. The issue is that HSLDA has moved beyond defending the legality of homeschooling and into the world of litigating against child abuse investigations—sometimes with rather disastrous implications for abused children.

And HSLDA isn’t shy about this shift, either. For example, this statement was included in a paper from the 2000s on how to deal with CPS investigations:

HSLDA is beginning to work with states to reform the child welfare laws to guarantee more freedom for parents and better protection for their parental rights. HSLDA will be sending out Alerts to its members in various states where such legislation is drafted and submitted as a bill.

“Child welfare laws” means laws dealing with child abuse and Child Protective Services investigations. “Better protection for … parental rights” means protection against accusations of child abuse and CPS investigations. This has nothing to do with homeschooling and everything to do with protecting parents’ absolute control over their children, and absolute freedom from state interference, no matter what that means for the well-being of the children themselves.

From what I have learned in the time since my teenage years spent pouring over each month’s Home School Court Report, it appears that there are four primary ways that HSLDA is complicit in aiding and abetting child abuse and educational neglect: (1) They work to minimize the reporting of child abuse; (2) They seek to stall the investigation of child abuse; (3) They defend the legality of excessive corporal punishment; and (4) They oppose any homeschooling regulation whatsoever, even when it is merely intended to ensure that learning is actually taking place. This post introduces a series addressing these issues and revealing HSLDA’s troubling relationship with child abuse and educational neglect.

To be continued.

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part One

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

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I believe that the greatest source of tension between myself and my mother is that I have deep sense of compassion. I care about the suffering of others, too much in her opinion and it set me apart from her in a serious way. I loved to help people and she always believed that people need to help themselves. A very staunch conservative Republican. I was not her mini-me and she couldn’t stand it. I also didn’t fit her mold in any way. My mother always told me, “I had three kids. I wanted an older boy, then a girl, then another boy. That way you would be in the middle of two protectors, but your older brother can’t protect you and you don’t fit.”

She was right. I did not fit.

My mother did get her wish on the order of the children. I am the middle of three children. My older brother has a mild form of autism known as Aspergers Syndrome. My younger brother was the definition of the baby. My parents made the decision to homeschool after a series of bad experiences with public school. Autism, especially high functioning spectrum disorders, were not at all well understood in the late 80’s and early 90’s. So when my brother, with his severe speech delay (caused by deafness as a toddler) and a complete inability to cope with his peers came to public school, they had no idea what to do with him. The school attempted to diagnose him with a range of disorders from mental retardation (he has a genius intelligence) to epilepsy. This difficulty with public school coupled with their extreme religious right views led them to homeschooling.

It was perfect. My parents could hide away the autistic child that they did not understand and were ashamed of, they could indoctrinate us and they could discipline us without fear of anyone hearing the stories or seeing the bruises.

I believe of the most fundamental problem with religious homeschooling is that in the seclusion provided by homeschooling, abuse can hide and thrive. There does not have to be anyone else around that differ from the views of the parents. How can a child even know they’re being abused if they don’t know that other children aren’t treated that way? It took me years to identify the sources of abuse in my childhood. There are still times when a childhood memory comes to mind, I think it through and realize just exactly how fucked up the situation was.

My three earliest childhood memories go as follows:

Memory number one: I remember myself sitting in a highchair, I couldn’t have been more than two. My mother was chasing my older brother around my highchair with a rolling pin.

Memory number two: I was about four and was sitting playing with dolls in the living room. My oldest brother starts screaming from the bathroom. I walk to the bathroom to find my mother beating my 7 year old brother’s head into the shower wall and there was blood running down his naked body. Then we went to the hospital for stitches. We had to practice saying, “He tripped in the shower.” This was my first introduction to the government.  If we didn’t say what we were told, the government would take us away and put us with awful people that wouldn’t feed us.

Memory number three: I was 5. I do not remember what I was in trouble for, but I remember my mother looking at me and saying, “You give me looks like you want to stab me in my sleep. I’ll get you first.”  I’m sure at some point in time, I played with my parents. We had a swing, I had a bicycle, but I remember almost nothing before around age 10 that wasn’t traumatic.

The curriculum that we used was from Bob Jones University. The famous science textbook page that is floating around the web about the girl with the hair dryer that states we don’t know how electricity works? That was in my elementary “science” book. I will say that my mother did dedicate herself fully to our education, but we inherited her educational weaknesses. She was not at all proficient in even basic math. As her daughter, she was convinced that I shared her lack of math skills. She firmly placed in my head the idea that I was incapable of math. Instead, we focused on reading. The science was young earth creationism and the history, revisionist christian. I knew that the earth was no more than 6000 years old. God created it in six literal days and then flooded the planet.

When I shared my disdain for the idea of killing everyone on earth, I was beaten. God was not to be questioned. This was the academic aspect of my early childhood years.

The theological side was pure right wing extremism and some things that I can’t even give a label to.  I would like it to be noted before this section that I believe my mother suffers from untreated mental illness.  She is a pathological liar and possibly schizophrenic. I will lay out the basic tenants of my religious upbringing.

1) Abortion:

One of the most important lessons that my mother ever tried to teach was about evils of abortion. Alone in the car one day, she told me the story of my twin brother. I could not have been more than five. I learned that my mother had originally been pregnant with twins. After she was several months pregnant, she was in a car accident that killed my brother. At this point, she did not know that she was pregnant with twins. She was informed at the hospital that the fetus was dead and needed to be removed before it caused infection. She refused because she does not believe in abortion under any circumstances. God would deliver the baby when he was ready. A month later, the doctor did another ultrasound and found me. If she had submitted to an abortion I would not be here.  Then, in graphic detail I was told how my brother’s arm was born, then he came out, then me.

I was horrified. I had nightmares for weeks. I cried and cried. I spoke to my brother in prayer for years. Even as a teenager, I would lay in bed at night wondering how my life would have been different if my twin hadn’t died.

This might be one of the most important stories of my entire childhood.

It is completely made up.

At the age of 27, I told this story to a very close friend of mine. He looked at me like I had three heads and called bullshit. I was completely taken aback, highly offended. How could anyone hear one of my most personal, painful secrets and tell me it was crap? I had to prove him wrong. I ran upstairs to get my birth certificate, it would say twin birth and then he would apologize. I had never really read my birth certificate before and it said single birth.  I became instantly nauseous as the details of the story ran through my head. My mother never mentioned that story in front of anyone. We were always alone but we discussed it a lot. I ended up filing for copies of my birth records at the hospital I was born at.

I was a single, uncomplicated delivery. Single.

2)  Obedience to men:

To quote my mother, “You kids are the third most important things in my life:  God, my husband, then you. Remember, I will always choose your father over you.” This was ironic, very ironic. As I’m sure you, the reader, has noticed, I have thus far said very precious little about my father. There really isn’t anything to say. I saw him for roughly one hour a day in my early childhood. The only other times I saw him were on his few days off and vacations. When he was home, it was misery. He hit us; he beat my eldest brother with sticks. We also sometimes saw him at night. If we had misbehaved during the day, my mother would report to him as the head of household.  He would then come home from his second shift job and wake us up for a spanking with a heavy leather mechanic’s belt.  It was rarely more than one child a night, so if you were awakened in the night to the screams of another sibling, you were safe.

Even though my father was rarely present, I was to submit to him in all things. Then one day, he would pass me to my husband and I would submit to him.

Women were created to help men. We were not to question. Honestly, this is all I know about my father. I don’t know what his childhood was like. I don’t know his favorite food, his favorite color. I know that he’s a Republican, that he enjoys camping, and that I was to listen to him second only to god, just like my mother. This was also in my homeschooling curriculum. Most lessons for girls were somehow tied back to obedience of the father and, one day, the husband.

3)  Demons are real:

My mother was in constant fear of demonic influences and witches. Growing up, she would constantly discuss demons and witches. She was very fearful of witches casting spells on items to watch us. Things like MTV and other modern tv and radio could lead demons into us. This was so deeply ingrained from such a young age that I would lay awake at night paralyzed with fear that the scratching sound at my window was a demon. I even had to burn a present given to me by a friend once because my mother believed that my friend had cast a spell on it.  Even today, as an atheist with no supernatural beliefs, I still have to catch myself if something unexplained happens. The anxiety can be literally physically paralyzing and I have to stay constantly aware. I can’t let my self start into my cycle of fear.

At the age of ten, my mother decided that we had surpassed her ability to teach us. This and the strain of my older brothers autism led to the decision to put us in the local public school. I also believe, though I cannot verify this, that we were put in school because we did very poorly on the Iowa Test of Basics Skills that the state had forced my parents to take us to.

I was very excited about the prospect of school. I was going to be around kids of my own age for the first time. I would get to have friends.

Then the first day of school started and I was completely out of my element.

Imagine, if you will, that you are doing an experiment with monkeys. The test is to see how quickly the monkey can adapt and learn. So, you take this test monkey and you put it in the driver’s seat of a running vehicle heading straight for a wall. The purpose is to see if the monkey, having no prior experience with cars, can stop the car before it crashes into the wall and dies.

I was that monkey. I died.

To be continued.

Sex Miseducation

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on July 18, 2011.

Children who go to public school receive sex education. Some sex education programs are better than others, some are more comprehensive, others less so, but at least children attending public schools get sex education. I didn’t. My parents never told me about sex, never had “the talk” with me, nothing. My parents taught me that sex within marriage was the most wonderful thing ever but that sex before marriage was the most sinful thing ever, but they never actually explained what sex was. They just told us that it was a “special way of loving.” Weird? Yes. In an ideal world children will learn both about sex and to hold a healthy view of sexuality from their parents. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world.

Now of course, I was curious: just what was this “special way of loving?” What was this thing at once so dangerous and so wonderful? And why was it so taboo, kept hidden from me like a secret? I pieced this secret together here and there from various sources over the course of six or eight years using a variety of sources:

A Biology Textbook: When I was in middle school I found a description of sex in a biology textbook. The two or so sentences of clinical explanation horrified me, and I quickly closed the book and put it away, more confused, terrified, and ashamed than enlightened.

An Art Book: Around the same time, I found a book full of pictures of statues in a stack of art books my mother had gotten from the library. The statues were nude. I stared, fascinated, looking at the pictures in an effort to learn more about human anatomy. I then felt incredibly dirty and put the book away quickly before my mother could notice that I had seen it.

A Book Store: When I was around fifteen, I was at Barnes and Nobles and ran across a book on how to tell your child about sex. I hid behind the shelves of books and listened anxiously for footsteps. I skimmed the pages furtively, hungry for whatever information I could find, information that would help explain this confusing thing to me. Given that I was terrified of being found and that the time I had was limited, the only thing I remember learning was about masturbation, which I had never heard of before. I felt extremely guilty and dirty afterward.

A Christian Sex Guide: At some point during high school, I found a Christian guide to improving your sex life in my parents’ bedroom. Closing the door and extremely nervous I might be discovered, I leafed through the book, slightly concerned that my parents might be having marriage problems and very frightened of being caught looking at the book but more curious than anything else. After a few minutes, I returned the book to where I had found it, feeling guilty and dirty, but slightly wiser.

The Internet: When I left for college I could use the Internet without being afraid that my parents would check the computer’s history. Finally I could solve questions that had been puzzling me, like just what “oral sex” was – I had heard the term somewhere several years back and had been curious ever since, but had been unable to find the term in a dictionary. Finally my questions could have answers. I clicked through pages of Christian sex advice websites, always afraid that my search terms might bring up porn sites. I justified what I was doing by reminding myself that I was now an adult and besides I was only looking things up on Christian websites.

A Mirror: I realized during my first year of college that I had no idea what parts I had down there. My parents’ emphasis on purity had made me feel that my private area was somehow dirty and unclean, and I had therefore never paid any attention to it. I didn’t even know where my vagina was, just that it was down there somewhere. Curious, I looked up anatomy images on the Internet and then then stood naked in the bathroom using a hand-held mirror to explore body parts I had not even known I had. I was both fascinated and horrified by what I learned.

Romance Novels: After I had been in college for some time, I held the hand of the man who is now my husband for the first time. This made me feel warm and wet in certain places that I had not known could be warm and wet. I was completely baffled. I had no idea what was happening to my body. I might now know the basic mechanics of sex, but I knew nothing about how it actually worked in practice, or what it meant for the body to be “aroused.” What was this? And so, I turned to the lurid romance novels one of my friends kept in her dorm room, reading the sex scenes in depth to try to find out what sex was actually like.

And that, reader, is how I learned about sex. Is it any wonder that I wish I had had a sex education class? Some years later, after I left my parents’ home and was married, a fifteen-year-old girl in a youth group I helped out with started asking me questions about sex. I answered her questions, every one of them, with the openness and honesty I wish my parents had had with me. I didn’t want her to have to learn about sex by sneaking her mother’s Christian sex book or reading romance novels. I didn’t want her to be nineteen or twenty and completely ignorant of her own anatomy. I didn’t want her to be like me.

I’ll never understand how my parents could on the one hand teach me that sex was something beautiful and sacred and at the same time leave me in ignorance about it and make me feel like it was something dirty and unclean. It was the most wonderful thing ever…but it was completely taboo as a topic. It was a sacred bond between husband and wife…but please don’t mention it or think about it. The contradictory messages I received gave me a very warped view of sex. I both looked forward to the sacred bond of sex with my future husband and felt dirty any time I thought about it. Learning about sex piecemeal here and there didn’t give me a very accurate view of sex either, even discounting the sense of guilt I felt about doing so.

When I finally got to the point of actually having sex, I was disappointed to find that it neither felt sacred nor lived up to the descriptions in the romance novels I had read. Picking up knowledge of sex in bits and pieces here and there while awash in guilt does not lead to a comprehensive understanding of sex or a healthy sexuality. I had no idea that sex took practice or effort, or that sometimes one partner wouldn’t feel like it and the other would, or that it could be sweaty and gross. It has taken me years to iron all this out and to come to a healthy view of sex. I wish that instead of focusing on keeping me ignorant of it, my parents had informed me about sex and focused on giving me a healthy view of sexuality. But then, their beliefs about sex would not allow them to do that.

What I would have given a sex education class, a safe place where I could have found the basic information and asked questions! Sure, it wouldn’t have been perfect, but it would have been something.

Homeschool or Public School – What’s Worse?

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s blog Becoming Worldly. It was originally published on March 5, 2013.

I was talking with a homeschooled friend the other day who was raised fairly similar to how I was, with a more structured and less impoverished environment, and we were sharing stories. This and a few other things got me thinking. We both went on to higher education, got our masters degrees. The conversation between us turned to whether homeschooling was preferable to public schooling. While the homeschooling environment was very oppressive and abusive for us both, we each had access to classic literature and read voraciously as a coping mechanism. Favorite books would be read 3, 4, 5, sometimes 6 times over. I think this intensive, almost obsessive, consumption of the written word is one reason why a number of former homeschoolers who have had neglectful educational environments can often write eloquently, in an almost old-fashioned way.

Still, I am sure there are many more who did not get into reading like this and whose voices are not being heard. I knew a homeschooled kid who could barely read or write when he was a preteen, but could repair everything from lawnmowers to electronics just by self-taught tinkering. I often wonder what became of him. I would like to find some of those people too, and feel that those of us who write stories should help them write theirs, share theirs. (Then maybe they can help us fix that jammed door or the broken old-school Nintendo game set in the basement.)

Anyway, so my homeschooled friend and I discovered that despite the problems and the loneliness, we both cherished certain aspects of what we learned as homeschoolers, largely left to our own devices, and we both felt that if we had been sent to public school as little kids, we would not be who we are today, that we wouldn’t value the same things. He was homeschooled the whole way through, so he also expressed concern that he would have been bullied for a health condition in a public school. I told him that I was bullied when I started high school initially, not for any health condition, just for being socially backwards. A few aspects of the bullying I experienced were rather bad (like someone putting gum in my hair once), but most of it was just incredibly awkward. There were many gaps where I tried to connect and failed painfully, many awkward and lonely times before I found friends to eat lunch with and learned social norms. (See Lindsay Lohan’s movie Mean Girls, which accurately captures the feeling on homeschool to high school culture shock.) It lasted almost a year and by then I was seen as properly integrated so it stopped.

So I told my friend that I thought the bullying would have been a bearable phase for him and that the main risk I saw from public school was absorbing the lack of enthusiasm about learning and knowledge endemic to a typical middle-of-the-road public school. He would have learned a lot of different things, but he wouldn’t have likely read all those books that have informed his hopes and dreams because they would not have been assigned, and if they had, depending on what kind of school he went to, by then he might have already been trained into not caring.

Most people I knew in public school only did the assigned work and the bare minimum at that. I guess this is normal, but it was shocking to me – I fought so hard to get an education, then ran into others’ lethargy about learning, an expressed desire for good grades without putting in the work, and widespread dependence on the grade book and teachers’ expectations for self-worth. I think it was much more a problem with the system than the people, although some people certainly stood out in both good and bad ways.

I took honors and advanced placement classes because I had the drive and ability to, so I met and became close with friends who felt similarly about the value of knowledge as I did. I had some good teachers who taught me a lot and who I still love and respect, and a principal and an assistant principle who supported me and tried to integrate me as much as they were able. I also had a terrible guidance counselor, one who knew I grew up poor, and after I’d taken the ACT and made a 25 (a good score), crisply noted that being on the B+ honor roll didn’t mean I was in the top of my class, and then she told me “college isn’t for everyone. There’s community college and trade schools.”

I sent my guidance counselor’s negative comments into the same mental trash bin I reserved for my parents’, so I naturally assumed other people wouldn’t take her seriously either, only later realizing they might not have had a lovable old military grandfather talking to them about degrees and high-powered careers, counteracting her negative message.

Maybe it should not have surprised me back then that certain classmates of mine who also grew up poor but were by all standard metrics very good students (certainly better students than me), went on to work at Wal-Mart, or Waffle House, or enlist in the military, and forgo college altogether. It did come as a pretty big shock to me though, as I’d absorbed the idea of a “meritocracy,” the idea that your skills and abilities are what set you apart. Whenever I see it being something else that sets people apart it still sucks. It just plain and simple sucks.

It also makes me angry when I reflect that I wasn’t the only one who heard this not-so-subtle tune of low expectations while in the guidance counselor’s office. I feel that my fellow students from low-income families deserved better. The truth is maybe she was right though, since the statistics indicate that only 11% of students who grow up below the poverty line complete college. However, the fact is I am now one of that 11%, and I expect that if I’d been in public school the whole way through, absorbed more of the social values on what being poor meant, perhaps the bar for my own dreams would have been set a bit lower.

Overall I am really glad I got to have my Grandad’s intensive tutoring (a form of homeschooling) and I am glad I got to attend public school. Attending public school helped me to familiarize myself with social norms, connect with classmates and make friends (a number of whom I still have), and do all those lovely things like go to prom and have an awkward 10 year class reunion. I have good memories of passing notes in class, volunteering in the concession stand, and cheering my high school football team as they won the state championships.

However, there are a lot of things that do make me want to hold my nose when I consider the entire public school system across our nation, with all the inequality, discrimination, busywork, and reinforced social stratification it brings. That’s why people like John Holt advocated homeschooling as an “underground railroad” away from it in the first place. He saw this and he felt that highly structured authoritarian classrooms were generally not the best learning space and I think in many ways he is right.

Considering where I am today, a person with a master’s degree who is kicking around the idea of going for a PhD, I also realize I need to take a fuller view beyond my own experience. I could say “oh, it turned out fine for me. No harm no foul.” However, although I can speak to what educational neglect is like, ultimately my experience has not been that of the average educationally neglected homeschool kid. My trajectory drastically changed. If I had been left there without outside help, I doubt I’d be writing here today, plain and simple. It would be beyond my sphere of knowing. I would be keeping my head down, working a low-wage job somewhere. That’s what too many kids from poorly run, under-resourced, low-performing public schools also do. The neglected homeschool kids and the neglected public school kids are both neglected kids. They are ultimately the same group.

So this debate of public school versus homeschool that keeps cropping up seems really silly and often rather irritating to me. Homeschool and public school are both options — chicken and fish, apples and oranges, paper and plastic. Sometimes, given the circumstances or personal preference, one option is obviously better than the other, sometimes it isn’t. It is important to have the best versions you can available so people can make the most of the choices.

So why do people keep talking about homeschool or public school being better or worse when the real question is, “How do we get kids, including kids from families living in poverty, to reach their full potential?” I don’t know. But I think we need to think about why we do it and then think how we can fix it.

Like I said in my recent guest post for Libby Anne (which I am pleased to say was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for the whole Patheos website), I think it ultimately comes down to children’s rights. If the needs of children are seen as being important and the voices of children are seen as being important then both homeschooling and public schooling must work to improve the experience of kids who struggle, live with few resources, and who have seen and dealt with hardship beyond their years. There are cracks in both systems and there should be no “throwaway” children in either. Pointing fingers does nothing to erase what is going on for these kids.

So if you want to pick a dichotomy, if you really need one, then think about the “haves versus the have-nots,” the kids who have people in their lives who truly care about their education and wellbeing and have high expectations for them versus the ones who don’t. Those groups exist in both homeschool and public school and they are pretty serious problems in both worlds. That is the variable that educational success is dependent on, not whether you are sitting in a classroom or a living room.

Looking Down Their Noses: Jamie’s Story

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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

I have been mulling something over for about a month. Pieces of this for much longer. There is something I have noticed and it’s kind of driving me bonkers.

As someone who has taught in Christian/private schools, home schooled, been home schooled and now a mom of a public school student, I feel like I have a bone to pick.

Growing up home schooled and going to a billion home schooling conferences, I heard tons of “horror stories” of public school kids/classes/teachers. Looking back, I am surprised that some of these speakers didn’t dim all the lights and put a flashlight under their chin while they spoke. Parents leave these conferences determined not to let their kid go to a public school ever. So they keep home schooling, and honestly? Some home schooling families have no business “teaching” their kids, because they are learning nothing. (Those are the ones that give the “good” home schooling families a bad name.)

Even if these poor moms are ready to quit home schooling, they can’t. There’s fear. There’s judgement. There’s a pile of canned, self-righteous answers for all their reasons. Generally speaking, there’s no money to send their children to Christian school, public school is “out” (in their minds) and so they muddle on. Done, but not done.

When I taught (in several) Christian schools, there would be comments from the admins and staff alike that would poo-poo the other Christian school in the area. Basically, gossip:

“ABC school handled such and such poorly, we would have handled it so much better.”

“XYZ school allows such and such to go on, we would never allow that here.”

It all pretty much follows the pattern of “they are bad because ___, we are better because ____”.

Building yourself up with examples that may or may not be true (or based on truth) and tearing another down. It’s kind of a manipulative way to keep your staff and students right where you want them, all the while jacking up their tuition so much, it’s almost (if not impossible) to send even one child, never mind more than one. But still looking down their noses at public school families and rolling eyes at home schoolers.

I’m pretty tired of the whole scene.

There are fabulous teachers in the public school system, just like there are fabulous teachers at the little Christian school down the road, and fabulous mothers teaching their own children. And, news flash —

There are horror stories coming out of all three.

The public school system is not the enemy. It makes a convenient target, because it’s big and vague. And just because you assign too much home work, make your students wear uniforms, and have Christian in your title doesn’t make you “better.” And there are home schooling families that need to put aside their fear and the lies they have swallowed for years and admit they are in over their heads. The bottom line should be your children’s education. My oldest has learned more this year in public school than she has the last 3 years I have taught her. It’s been the best thing for her. I can “just” be her mom, and it’s taken a lot of pressure off of me.

It kills me when I hear people say, “I got to hear my child sing praise songs while cleaning their room. Ah, the benefits of home schooling.” Or, “I just got to see my child read a chapter out of the Bible. Ah, the benefits of home schooling.” Really? Somehow my children will never read the Bible or sing praise songs because they are in public school? They will never play nicely with their sisters or practice the piano or go to AWANA because they are in school? Just because it happens at 10:30 in the morning at your house, doesn’t mean it can’t happen after 3:30 in the afternoon at my house.

However you choose to educate your child is your business.

But there is not one way to do it. And there is not merely one way for each family. Kids are different, their needs are different, and situations change. Being fluid isn’t being weak. It’s being open minded and honest and putting your kids first.

And isn’t that what parenting is all about?

To be continued.

Was I Spiritually Abused?

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s blog Becoming Worldly. It was originally published on January 30, 2013.

I was just asked if I could add my blog to No Longer Quivering, a site for people who have left and are speaking out against the Quiverfull movement and people who are interested in learning about such things. My blog will now be cross-posted under the Spiritual Abuse Survivors Blog Network. I guess this is sort of a big deal for me, particularly considering the role NLQ bloggers had in helping me understand my own story.

"Spirituality, faith, was just as much a tool for my parents to control and hurt me as the belt or the red stick, or being put 'on restriction.'"
“Spirituality, faith, was just as much a tool for my parents to control and hurt me as the belt or the red stick, or being put ‘on restriction.'”

Being a researcher at heart, even in the middle of a meltdown, when I was hit by these scary and to me inexplicable symptoms (flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, concentration problems, a generally creeped-out on-edge feeling, and feeling compelled to avoid people for reasons that made no sense even to me), I started googling late into the night (and early into the morning) for answers. I finally typed in “overcoming childhood abuse,” not even mentally sure that what had happened to me qualified as “legitimate” abuse, with all the levels of doubt and denial that were in between me and the past. I quickly discovered that that’s what this was, and I ended up making a counseling appointment where I was told I had PTSD. I didn’t accept that either (yeah, authority issues), until with more research, I realized that yes, it was true. I did.

It was through trying to solve this issue, find others like me (hopefully ones with good advice and happy outcomes), that I googled “homeschooling and child abuse.” I came across the NLQ site, Chandra’s posts, and then I looked at some other posts, Melissa’s, then Vyckie’s story. I read it all with a lump in my throat. This was exactly what had happened to me. How? People were talking about spiritual abuse. Had I been spiritually abused? Was that a real thing? I had never even considered it because that would have meant considering spirituality itself, an off-limits topic in my mind.

I spent considerable time trying to wrap my head around all this information and getting to the point of where I decided to publicly tell my story, and can honestly say blogging about spiritual abuse is still never something I imagined myself doing.

As someone who considers myself agnostic, sees the idea of God as being a giant question mark, a blank I’m not too worried about filling in, writing about spirituality seems kind of hypocritical to me, like a virgin writing about sexual experience, or an old man writing about what it’s like to be a young girl, or a pastor writing about what it’s like to be Jesus. It is a topic that is sort of removed from my day to day life, and one that I still haven’t fully addressed or worked through I think.

The concept of spiritual abuse (or even emotional or verbal abuse) existing didn’t cross my mind growing up. It was the physical abuse, material neglect, and the educational and medical neglect that I was primarily concerned with. All of those issues had a spiritual component though. It was because the spiritual aspect of life took up all the room, the fact that everything was seen as spiritual, that made life pretty dangerous sometimes and often at least generally unpleasant and sad for the physical side.

Few people knew that I had stopped believing in God at age 11 or that I’d been repeatedly told I was on a “pathway to hell” after ill-advisedly sharing my new perspective on religion with my mother. If I did mention it to anyone, I turned it into some sort of a pastor’s daughter joke. Deep down it wasn’t funny though.

I once walked out of a high school play about the garden of Eden that my then boyfriend, now husband, had invited me to. Shaking with rage, I explained to him how not only was the dialogue crappy, but in this version Eve was wholly blamed for the fall, and how inaccurate and anti-woman it was. He just looked confused. I had never talked about how attending funerals or weddings or services where I’d hear someone preach was a weirdly nerve-wracking experience for me, that even people inviting me to church or questioning my beliefs made me very uncomfortable. When my mother-in-law invited me to go see Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” movie, the only possible answer was no.

I didn’t want to explain that there had been a spiritual component to me being dragged across the floor by my hair (headship, disobedience), or having my butt and legs covered in welts from an old leather belt, or living in fear of the red stick (spare the rod, hate your child). I didn’t like to discuss the fact that my siblings and I didn’t have medical or dental care before I turned 17 (trust in the Lord with all things), or that the medical neglect had started when I, the firstborn of my mother’s 9 children, had almost died due to an unexpected breech birth at home, no prenatal care, and unlicensed “birth assistants” from church rather than real midwives. I didn’t want to recall how all childhood injuries and illnesses I had, including a hernia, a broken tooth, and a concussion, were responded to with only “home remedies” and prayer. I didn’t mention how scary it was to be an 8 year old, watching my dehydrated little brother’s eyes roll back in his head, knowing “laying on of hands” is all he would get and if he died of the flu it would have been seen as “God’s will.”

My parents said it was all in the bible, that I’d come to understand. So I read the bible and saw a lot worse things happening, genocide, rape, war, women and children treated as chattel. I told my parents the bible was barbaric and disgusting, like them. I rejected the idea of submission or having some burden due to the sin of Eve. I bluntly said that girls should not be forced to constantly care for their younger siblings just because their parents didn’t properly understand birth control or abstinence. I even *gasp* told my Dad to quit loafing and go put his own cup in the sink. Because of this, and my penchant for responding to abuse with explosive violent anger (using your fists is solely a manly thing apparently), I was viewed as somehow not feminine, not desirable or womanly or any of the things I should be. My parents even told me no man would want to marry me, that because I rejected their ideas that guys too would reject me and go find other, more pleasing, girls. This hurt because, like most people, more than anything I wanted to find love, to feel I was desirable and worthy of love.

The spiritual side of me got put in a trunk with mothballs. There was no other option, really. Spirituality, faith, was just as much a tool for my parents to control and hurt me as the belt or the red stick, or being put “on restriction.” It was safer for it not to exist at all. So I grew up without feeling any sense of faith, without praying, without imagining that there was any higher power, that there was anyone there for me except the real people that I knew, and they weren’t there as often as I needed them, leaving me largely alone with my troubles, ultimately needing to solve them myself. I figure some people would describe this as incredibly sad. Others would say it’s accurate. My take? Heck if I know.

When I stopped believing at such a tender age, I never really revisited it. Well, I did a few times, going to church with friends as a teen, but I wouldn’t attend more than once after learning the same bible verses used to cause pain in my family were blithely being recited or referred to in this church, often in what seemed to be a similar context. This experience would make me so uncomfortable that it only reinforced not questioning or revising my stance. How could I feel safe? It was better to make an excuse and not even approach it, not have my friends think less of me or feel hurt when I said I didn’t want to go back to their church. How could I not like church? Was it because I didn’t respect their choices? Was it because my soul wasn’t right?

For a while I just wished religion didn’t exist. Then nobody would inquire about my “church home,” or invite me to bible study with virgin margaritas, or ask if my family was Catholic. My favorite answer for that last one, before I knew Quiverfull was the name for it: “No, they’re Nondenominational bordering on Southern Baptist with a little Pentecostal and Christian Scientist thrown in.”

My distaste wasn’t just confined to Christianity either. I was pretty rude and dismissive to a (slightly annoying) cousin-in-law who was into Wicca. When a very nice Jewish friend invited me to a Passover Seder, I found the beef brisket and matzo ball soup to be amazing culinary delights (the gefilte fish slightly less so) and the traditions very moving, but I still got a lump in my throat when it was my turn to read about Moses from the Haggadah. When Muslim friends of mine invited me to an Eid al-Adha dinner honoring the day Abraham didn’t kill Isaac, I brought a bottle of sparkling grape juice and thoroughly enjoyed hanging out and eating Egyptian macaroni bechamel casserole, fragrant Afghan rice, and spicy Pakistani mutton biryani, but secretly wished we were celebrating something that hadn’t been used as a veiled threat against me by my parents growing up.

Apparently I’ve always had low-grade PTSD symptoms that could be triggered by religious activities even though to me that was just my normal baseline level. I guess in many ways these issues also manifested as post-traumatic resilience. I had this intensity that helped me learn and remember, a semi-photographic memory, an obsession with literature and the written word, a fascination with learning what made people tick, with picking out errors in an argument. I had a little “bullshit alarm” that beeped in my head. I was also lucky (or perhaps somehow blessed). The few opportunities I had to make things better I took and those turned into more opportunities. It wasn’t because I was being intentionally strategic either, rather that I was truly excited about learning and positive human interaction. I intellectualized things though, I put a wall up, and that wall is definitely still there.

So today I am an un-spiritual person writing about spiritual abuse.

She Never Really Began Teaching: Sarah’s Story

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

She Never Really Began Teaching: Sarah’s Story

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

We began homeschooling because my mother, who was an nurse at the time, didn’t want to work anymore. Also, my last year of school there was an incident. As I waited for my mom to pick me up after school one day, I sat on the curb. Apparently, that particular place on the curb was a chosen spot of little thuglets. The thuglets crowded around me and the Head Thuglet said that if I ever sat in that place again, she would shove knives down my throat. I told my mom about it, she told the principal, and the next day the principal made the girl apologize to me.

"My mom tells me that it is my fault for not studying enough. She takes no responsiblity for what she did."
“My mom tells me that it is my fault for not studying enough. She takes no responsiblity for what she did.”

I think that was what finally convinced my dad to let my mom homeschool instead of working. “Us” consisted of 1 older sister and 2 younger brothers.

My sister and I had enough public schooling that we could teach ourselves from the books my mother bought us the first 2 years of homeschooling. (After that she stopped buying textbooks for us, as they were “too expensive.”) My older younger brother (does that make sense?) had lived a rather privileged existence in public school: he was white in a predominately black school, and he had white teachers who always passed him through to the next grade regardless of whether or not he learned something. Yay for white male priviledge, I suppose!

We lived in a state that required the Iowa Test of Basic Skills every year as proof that we were learning. My sister and I, each learning as much as we could with very, very limited resources (this was before the internet was big!), managed to improve our scores nicely every year.

My brothers were a different story. First, it was discovered that (thanks to white male privilege), my brother didn’t even know how to read. He was still in elementary school, yes, but he was almost through. Who lets a kid pass from K-1st, 1st-2nd, 2nd-3rd and onto 4th knowing that he can’t read?

The crappy public system I grew up with.

So, the first few years we took the ITBS my brother needed “help” from my mother to even read the exam. And when she helped, she helped quite a bit — reading comprehension especially. She’d read him the story and ask him the questions. If he answered incorrectly, she’d read over the line in the paragraph again that had the answer. For example, if the story began, “There was a brown bunny who lived in the bushes,” and he had to chose what color the bunny was (White? Black? Grey? Brown?), she would read the line again “There was a BROWN bunny who lived in the bushes,” and, miraculously, he would get the answer correct.

This is no way whatsoever to teach reading comprehension. And this is the way the entire test would go. He’d stumble, and she’d “help.” Most of the ‘”helping” was flat out telling him the answer, like the example above. And this happened for years, even after he learned to read. He was so far behind that she’d make excuses — “Oh, he wasn’t taught this!” — when the reason he wasn’t taught it was because my mom stopped teaching. 

She never really began teaching. At first she’d buy the books and tell us to go read them. My sis and I did. My brothers did not. Which meant that, every year that passed, the three of them — my mom and brothers — would dig deeper holes for themselves.

We were from an educated family, on my dad’s side, and it was expected that we’d go to college. My sister and I went to a state college and graduated with honors. One of my brothers took 8 years to graduate, thanks to many, many remedial courses, and the other brother decided college wasn’t for him.

It’s funny to see how expectations for my family just got lower and lower. My father got exasperated with the entire situation and stayed out of it. My mother is happy that she pandered to her sons so much because they are still living at home with her, despite being in their late twenties. I think my youngest brother, who had no public school education at all, gave up on college because he would have to catch up on grades 3-12. I very much do think he has around a 3rd grade education, and to be so far behind and try to go to college would be a nightmare. I know he started to take a class at the local community college, English 101, but I don’t have any idea if he passed or dropped out, as that part of the family is estranged from me, and has been for years.

And if I ever complain about my lack of schooling during my middle school and high school years my mom tells me that it is my fault for not studying enough. She takes no responsiblity for what she did — and is still doing to my brothers.