Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO), HA’s parent non-profit organization, is happy to announce our first-ever comprehensive survey: the 2014 Survey of Adult Alumni of the Modern Christian Homeschool Movement. This survey is open to any adult homeschool alumni (18 years old or older) raised in a Christian homeschool environment.
For the purposes of this survey, “alumni” designates everyone homeschooled for the majority of their K-12 education; in other words, for at least 7 years. The survey is open to anyone in that category, whether your experience was positive or negative and whether you are still a Christian or not. By “Christian,” we are including the broadest possible definition, including Christian-identified new religious movements.
The purpose of the survey is to investigate the life experiences of Christian homeschool alumni by collecting information that past surveys of homeschool alumni have not. We have done our very best to create fair, balanced questions without any leading or attempts to skew results. All results will be anonymous and used for informational purposes only.
If you are an adult alumni of this movement, we would greatly appreciate your involvement. We would also love for you to share the survey with your friends and former homeschool peers through word of mouth and social media. The more responses, the better!
My most popular post ever, the one on courtship and emotional purity, is making the rounds again, as it does every few months. And with it come the loads of ridiculous assumptions, explaining, excuses, and outright dismissal of everything from my character to my experience to my beliefs. This isn’t anything new. It’s been happening since I started telling my story. It happens to all of my friends from Homeschool Land who also tell their stories. It’s woefully predictable.
“She wasn’t really raised Biblically.”
“He isn’t a good example of proper homeschooling.”
“She’s bitter.” (Because obviously being bitter means you’re making stuff up. Or something.)
“His parents obviously didn’t do it right.”
“She’s not indicative of all homeschoolers.”
“He obviously courted in a legalistic way, but that’s not the right way, the way we will do it.”
“The experience she writes about is extremism and not the Godly way of raising kids/homeschooling/courtship/whatever.”
And after every dismissal, an explanation of why they’re different, they’re doing it right, they know better. Their kids will turn out as promised. They have it all planned.
But what these people that comment on our blogs fail to understand is that my parents had it all planned too. They did everything “right”. They read the right books and followed the right teachings that explained how to raise their kids in such a way as to ensure they will grow up to be Godly offspring. People who are the exemptions. People who are whole and full of light and unstained by the world. The next generation of movers and shakers. People who are super Christians.
Had these people who so easily dismiss us met my family 15 years ago, they would’ve wanted to BE us. We were the perfect family. We dressed right, acted right, said all the right things. People used to ask my parents to help their family look like ours; to help them make their kids as good as we were. They called us “godly”, “a refreshment”, “a good example”, and so much more. These people who now turn up their noses in disbelief at me now would’ve been our best friends back in the day.
I think that these people, who are overwhelmingly current homeschooling parents, have to have some way of making sense of the phenomenon of the so-called Homeschooled Apostates. They have to find some reason why what they follow and believe to be “God’s Plan” didn’t work. They encounter people like me and have no idea what to do with us.
Because I was not supposed to happen.
We were not supposed to happen. Every last one of us who was raised in a culture that promised abundant life and Godly children and have now since rejected all or part of our upbringings were not supposed to happen. Sites like Homeschoolers Anonymous, with it’s stories of horrific abuse, neglect, and everyday pain were not supposed to happen. We shouldn’t exist and our stories weren’t supposed to sound the way they do. Not according to all the promises made to our parents, made by our leaders and the authors of the books and the speakers at the homeschool conventions. Yet, here we are.
We who have grown up, evaluated, rejected, and chosen a different path for us and our children….we are threats. Our very existence is a threat to the happy little paradigm that is the conservative homeschool movement. We are realities that threaten to unravel the idealistic fabric of their worldview. They have no idea what to do with us.
They say “well your parents did it wrong, but we’re doing it right!” as we watch them practice the exact same things that damaged and hurt and broke us. We’re desperately waving red warning flags only to be completely disregarded, blamed, and even attacked. Our lives and real stories are no match for the rosy promises of the perfect life, couched in beautiful scripture and Christian idealism. Instead of critically thinking through anything we have to say, evaluating and considering the experiences of countless numbers of people, instead of re-evaluating their own choices and philosophies, against all reason and logic they dismiss us. Pretend we aren’t how we say we are. Convince themselves and others that we and our parents aren’t like them; we did it all wrong and the formula isn’t broken, we’re the ones who are broken. Even after the formula keeps producing the same result, they cannot let go of it.
But we aren’t going away. We happened, we exist, we aren’t abnormalities…..we’re just people. People who all lived similar lives in a movement our parents all followed for very similar reasons. Every day there are voices added to ours. When I first started blogging, there were very few people telling the story of the homeschool alumni. We had only begun to grow up and process our lives and many of us thought we were alone in this. In the last 5 years, that number has grown exponentially and I predict will continue to do so.
Homeschooling parents today have two choices: ignore the now thousands of warning voices of experience, or carefully listen, reconsider and change direction. I often wonder how many children of the people who dismiss us will end up on our blogs or with blogs of their own that are just like mine. Parents, don’t fool yourselves. You aren’t “doing it right” any more than our parents were “doing it right” when you’re doing the exact same things they did and following the exact same teachings. Your children are not more special than we were.
They are people with free will who will grow up to make their own choices, either because of you or in spite of you.
I read an article the other day entitled, “5 Simple Ways Men Can Better Respect Women.” You should go check it out.
The article inspired me to think of a parallel list for homeschool parents who are interested in how they can better respect us alumni speaking up about our homeschooling experiences. (And while we’re at it, Heather Doney made a great list a while ago called “20 Ways Not to Respond to Homeschool Horror Stories.” You should check her list out, too.)
So without further ado, here are 5 simple ways homeschool parents can better respect alumni:
1. Don’t Parentsplain; Validate.
Parentsplaining is simple: in the same way that “mansplaining” is the act of a man speaking to a woman with the assumption that she knows less than he does about the topic being discussed on the basis of her gender, “parentsplaining” is the act of a parent speaking to a homeschool student or alumni with the assumption that they know less than the parent does about the topic being discussed on the basis of their not-being-parents.
For example, when someone shares an article on Facebook about the damage Christian Patriarchy does to homeschool students’ perceptions of healthy sexuality, and some homeschool parent you haven’t talked to in years randomly pops up and says, “I’ve been homeschooling for decades and I’ve never encountered this so you should stop obsessing with fringe cultures.”
Cue eye rolls from all of us alumni.
Parents, we know you’ve been homeschooling for decades. You know why? Because we’ve been homeschooled for decades. You are welcome to explain to us about all the behind-the-curtains drama among parents, about why you chose this or that curriculum, and if you’d do things differently if you could. But you don’t get to dictate to us whether our experiences were true or valid. We are the ones who have to do that. They are our experiences, not yours. And as the people in the conversation who actually experienced homeschooling — You didn’t experience it, remember? You created the experience — we get to explain the experience, not you.
So stop telling us that we experienced what you created differently than how you intended us to experience it. That’s on you, not us. Maybe you should have thought about that before you created the experiences for us in the first place.
2. Talk to Us Like We’re Adults.
The use of diminutives by homeschool parents starts early. When homeschool alumni are kids and disagree with their parents, parents tell them they will “understand” x or y “when you grow up.” Then alumni do grow up and still disagree. So the parents tell them they will “understand” x or y “when you have kids.” Then alumni do have kids and still disagree. So the parents tell them they will “understand” x or y “when your kids start going to school.” Then alumni’s kids do go to school and still disagree and —
— and you get the point. Sometimes it seems like alumni will only be fully human and only capable of having their own opinions when they are grandparents. Though even then it probably won’t be enough.
So let’s just clear this up: Whatever argument you’re setting forward is either valid or invalid. If it’s valid, its validity cannot rest on whether or not my genitals made a baby with another set of genitals. So explain your argument’s validity and don’t talk down to us. If you cannot actually explain why your position is valid, then realize you haven’t thought it through. Go back to the drawing board and re-engage when you have a better argument than, “But you haven’t done some baby-making yet!”
3. Educate Yourself.
Education isn’t bad. In fact, groups like Homeschoolers Anonymous (and Recovering Grace, and Rethinking Vision Forum, and so forth) exist specifically to educate you. Many of us are constantly educating others, explaining what this or that acronym means (“HSLDA? VF? ATI? IBLP? YMCA?”) or what this or that individual did (“Jonathan Lindvall is to Reb Bradley as Doug Phillips is to Michael Farris?”).
But.
But don’t be lazy. You don’t need to be a walking encyclopedia of homeschool trivia like some of us are. But you can at least take it upon yourself and do your own research once in a while. Instead of demanding we justify why we think Michael and Debi Pearl are child abuse advocates, go read To Train Up A Child. Or read it again, if you haven’t in 20 years. Or go read Libby Anne’s extensive and detailed analysis of every single paragraph in the book. And if you didn’t know such an analysis existed, ask. If you actually do care about making homeschooling better, then we expect you to be a little more motivated than you seem to come across as.
Otherwise you seem more motivated to disprove us than to actually find out the truth for yourself.
Stop asking us for education. Get educated yourself.
4. Speak Up.
Seriously. Do you care about anything we’re talking about? Then speak up already!
Since groups like HA and Recovering Grace have launched, there have been a few parents and homeschool-convention speakers who have extended an olive branch. These are quick attempts at support and then they go back to their lives, rarely to speak of the interaction ever again. Homeschool celebrities will write a single, solitary blog post and pay lip service to the idea of taking abuse seriously — only to fall silent once again and continue their lives as if the whole deck is not being daily stacked against those of us refusing to be silent.
You can’t be neutral here, parents. You can’t write one blog post and then pretend like you actually did something. You can’t share one post from one alumni group and then act like you contributed to making the homeschooling world a safer place.
If you want to be an advocate for abuse victims and survivors, you need to start raising a ruckus. You need to throw caution to the wind and come along side us and fight for our voices to be heard. You need to start calling out fellow speakers and celebrities — including even your friends — when they advocate legalism, patriarchy, mishandling of child abuse, warped teachings on sex and sexuality, marginalizing attitudes towards LGBT* individuals, and so forth.
Speak up already.
5. Show, Not Tell.
There’s always that one parent who just has to interject and derail a conversation with the phrase, “Not all homeschoolers are like that.” They show up like the Kool-Aid Man:
Dear parents who aren’t “like that”: We know. If you’re not the problem, then you’re not problem. You don’t need to point it out just like a million other parents have pointed out. You don’t need to defend yourself or anyone else who isn’t a terrible human being. You don’t need to apologize “on behalf” of the terrible parents; you don’t need to show us how “with it” you are in terms of Millennial jargon; you don’t have to feel bad if you can’t relate to our memes and jokes.
Here’s what you can do instead: act.
Because actions speak louder than words.
Don’t tell us you listen. Listen. Listen, learn, support, and then go out and help us make the world a better place. We’d love for you to join us.
“No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim (“no Scotsman would do such a thing”), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule (“no true Scotsman would do such a thing”).”
When my mother decided to homeschool us, we became homeschoolers.
We joined the local homeschool support group, my mother bought our textbooks at the state homeschooling convention, and we paid dues to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. We joined a homeschool choir, homeschool art classes, and homeschool sports team. We went to homeschool park days and joined in on ‘homeschool day’ at Raging Waters.
To the other homeschoolers it was clear: we were homeschoolers.
The people my parents interacted with in a personal or professional capacity knew that we were homeschooled and asked us the normal homeschooler questions: “But what about socialization?”, “How can a parent teach their children subjects they don’t know?”, etc., and we answered them with the same responses homeschool parents and children publish on the internet today.
We joined the homeschool debate league, for which being legitimately homeschooled (by their definition, legitimate meant: not attending any school) was an enforced requirement. When my mother hosted homeschooler debate conferences, it was unquestionable that we were homeschooled.
When we hosted homeschool game nights, homeschool dances, homeschool ‘Reformation Day’ parties, we were a celebrated part of the homeschool community. When a family friend’s daughter was struggling with school, her parents asked my mother to homeschool her for the rest of the year to get her caught up with her grade.
When my mother was frequently complimented on how ‘good’ her teenagers were, ‘not like teenagers at all but like little adults’, our homeschooling was the accepted cause. When I was admitted to community college and college, my homeschooling was clearly understood as my background. When I ‘graduated’ high school, we rented out a church with four other homeschool graduates, packing out the building and holding an elegant outdoor buffet for the homeschool community on the neighboring school’s lawn after.
For years after, I was accepted as a part of the homeschool graduate community.
I participated in the exclusive ‘Homeschool Alumni’ network. I connected with other adult homeschoolers and compared notes about our childhoods. Nobody questioned the fact that I had been homeschooled. Instead, it was celebrated as the reason for my intelligence, creativity, work ethic, and academic success. Due to my father’s unique position in our local community, there were – and there are – (and this is not an exaggeration) easily more than a thousand people who knew that I was homeschooled, that I played the harp, and that I went to Santa Clara University, followed by Oxford. Many of them knew my face, and possibly even name, as well. I was the homeschooling success story of Saratoga, California, and my family was a model family, one strangers regularly told me I was ‘so lucky’ to be a part of.
But the moment I say that homeschooling enabled my parents to hide abuse and neglect, all of these facts melt away.
I’m no longer a homeschooling poster child.
After all, no true homeschooler would abuse or neglect their child.
I was an aberration. My family was a one-off, virtually non-occurring instance. The families we knew in which the entire community softly murmured about how the children were sexually abused, or neglected, but did not report because ‘it would give a bad reputation to homeschooling’ or ‘the children would be taken away’ also become aberrations the moment I mention them publicly. The number of homeschoolers I personally knew via activities such as homeschool support groups or homeschool debate who were also mistreated, several of which have written for HA, has no reflection on the percentage of homeschool homes where mistreatment occurs. After all, they weren’t true homeschoolers either.
The true homeschoolers were the ones who gave their kids great educations and a great upbringing.
Every account of homeschool experiences should, we all know, contain a disclaimer: ‘not all homeschooling families are like this. Most homeschool families are loving homes that provide their children with an excellent education’. Except, we don’t have any evidence or statistics that this is true. So why is this a required disclaimer? How can we even make this statement at all?
It’s also appropriate to ask: what do the phrases “loving home” and “excellent education” mean to the homeschool leaders and parents who use them? They tell us that true homeschoolers spank their kids, sure, but not to an abusive extent. It’s just to teach them to respect authority. True homeschoolers don’t isolate their kids; they just keep them inside during school hours to avoid calls to CPS, and they protect them from worldly influences. True homeschoolers aren’t educationally neglected; instead, many homeschool girls are raised to succeed at the high calling of being wives and mothers, learning home arts such as cooking, sewing, and cleaning, and taught applied academics as well – for example, how to multiply and divide via cooking lessons, and geometry through sewing.
Start asking specific questions about the ‘happy’ home and ‘good’ education they describe, and an unexpected picture often emerges.
After I had been working with my therapist for three years, she said to me, “You had a truly horrible experience, but I don’t think it is a reflection on homeschooling as a whole. All the other homeschoolers I’ve talked to have had great experiences.” I responded, “Yes, but how many of them were graduated homeschool kids?” Her eyes visibly widened as she replied, “Actually, they were all homeschool parents. That’s a good point. I never thought of that before.”
Homeschool parents: stop crying ‘no true homeschooler.’ If you can’t, an echo of Shakespeare comes to mind: “Methinks thou dost protest too much.”
Here’s To My Fellow Homeschool Alumni: Ruth’s Story
HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Ruth” is a pseudonym.
“Here’s to my peers, you fellow homeschool alumni (and wow, does it ever feel good to be connected).”
This is my own consumer review of homeschooling. I want to share my story simply and directly, so you can understand the results, both the intended results and the side-effects (as someone put it). I was homeschooled all my life until I graduated from high school. So was my older sister and four of my ten younger siblings. The youngest six are still being home schooled.
So first the intended results: I was raised to get A’s. An A practically stood for Acceptable and anything less was handed back for corrections. Because of this rigorous focus on excellence, I am very strong academically. I graduated college with a 3.87 GPA, was inducted into two honor societies and received several other awards.
I’m smart. OK. I’m smart, and I’ve proved it.
Now let me tell you about the side-effects.
At age ten, I moved with my family to a rural area in a new state. From age ten to age twenty, I had no friends. I went to church on Sunday and to piano lessons every other week. My mom was so busy having and caring for my younger siblings that my high school courses consisted of me by myself plowing through one textbook after another. My mom was frequently unhappy with the amount of time I spent on my school work because she needed me to help with my siblings. I was free childcare, and while I loved my family (they were all the life I had), I completely missed out on any experiences that would have allowed me to develop my own identity as an individual or develop any independence from my parents.
When my older sister left for college, I was devastated. I didn’t know how to live without a big sister. We had hardly ever been separated, and I didn’t know anything about how to maintain a relationship with someone long distance or during times of separation.
When I graduated from high school two years later, I was completely at a loss. Since losing my older sister had been such a blow, I was sure I would die if I left the rest of my family, and I was terribly confused as to why my parents suddenly expected me to go to school after sheltering me so carefully all my life. I had never thought seriously about a job or a career because home and family life had always been so glorified, and besides, it was all I knew. I had often been told that I was going to be just like my mother when I grew up (twelve kids and all). So there I was, clueless, clutching very hard at whatever was left of the life I had known.
The years I was eighteen and nineteen are very dim in my memory. I helped my mother care for my younger siblings. I practiced organ three days a week at a local church. I went on homeschooling myself rather secretively.
When I was twenty, my dad told me I needed to get a job. I got a job in a fast food restaurant and was very blessed because my boss was a young woman three years older than me, and I immediately adopted her as my new big sister. She patiently, patiently, patiently loved and supported me as I adjusted to the big, wide world of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It was her love, care, courage, ambition and confidence in me that made it possible for me to finally leave home at age twenty-five and attend college several states away. I graduated four years later, and while my college years were incredibly healing (I got to go to counseling regularly for two years and dealt with a lot of anxiety issues, and I was able to cut ties with my parents and become fully self-supporting with my own independent life), there were many, many times when I would have traded some of my academic success for some social skills.
In my life today, I honestly have to say that I am extremely lonely because I still don’t know very much about making friends. I still feel very confused about my age because I am a blend of the neglected child whose needs were set aside for her family or crowded out by the needs of her many siblings and the old (almost grandmotherly) me who knows way too much about childcare and has changed more diapers than many parents. I still feel less than other people because I still hardly know who I am as an individual, and I still find it difficult to realize that I am an adult now with a job, a career to tend to and money to earn and manage. I’m still in shock at my big, wide world, and I’ve been quite depressed for the last few months because I find myself so paralyzed, overwhelmed and confused as I confront it.
So here’s to my peers, you fellow homeschool alumni (and wow, does it ever feel good to be connected). If hearing my story can make even one of you feel less alone, less frustrated, or less like a freak than I’m glad that I shared it.
And to those who want to know how homeschooling can be improved:
1. Parents, please take into account a child’s age and level of development and don’t put more responsibility on her than is appropriate (either too much responsibility for her own education or too much responsibility for contributing to her home and family). And please, please don’t push parenting responsibilities off onto older siblings. They aren’t ready to be parents and being forced into that role deprives them of energy they desperately need to do their own growing up with, and it deprives younger children of the quality parenting that only adults can give.
2. Parents, please remember that each child is an individual person and a future adult, not just a member of your family. Too much isolation is not healthy, and a lack of friends and peers to share and compare experiences with deprives a child of validation, identity-building experiences and knowledge of social roles which are all extremely important to a satisfying adult life. Too little independence is not healthy. The process of becoming independent takes time (in reality, it starts at birth and is what all the growing-up years are about) and while you can certainly hinder this process and make your child’s normal development one hundred times more difficult than it has to be, you cannot stop her from growing up, so let go. Support her need for independence, and let go some more.
Homeschoolers Anonymous 