Resolved: That We Should Talk about HSLDA Debate, NCFCA, STOA, and CFC/ICC, Part Two
Note from Nicholas Ducote, HA Community Coordinator: I sent my thoughts on homeschool speech and debate to a close friend from NCFCA to have it proofread. She responded with some reflections about her own time in NCFCA — my essay stirred some memories. I asked for her permission to post her thoughts alongside my essay because I wanted a female voice on this topic and her response was very sincere, visceral, and empathetic. This is what she wrote.
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By Bethany*
This is such an important issue.
Listening to Elizabeth Smart when she gave that talk, I cried, because I used to think that way, too, and I know how trapped she must have felt and how disgusting. For so long, I absolutely thought “impurity” made you worthless. (As far as I can tell, that belief was something I picked up from a youth group leader, Harris books, unfortunate miscommunication in evangelical circles, and some of the NCFCA culture rather than my parents. I don’t think my parents really had fully figured out what they felt about the “purity culture” — they both had pretty wild pasts and wondered if there was a way they could protect their kids from it.)
I also know that I judged girls who behaved a certain way — girls that I now know I could’ve been close friends with and probably given a huge amount of companionship and emotional support to. The culture within the NCFCA kept friendships like that from happening on a large scale. (Especially as I consider myself to have been far more apt to “cross over” than many.) That makes me so angry.
I also remember a few occasions during NCFCA events when men made me feel genuinely unsafe — some guys were very predatory and harassing. And I remember every time I would be put upon by their advances, I would end up feeling guilty and shameful, like it was my fault. I really believed it was. It kept me from talking about it with anyone ever. (Fortunately I was emotionally safe enough with family and friends that I was never fully victimized.)
One thing that strikes me most about that culture we were in was the mixed messages. So much of the culture and ideology depended on the individual leading your local speech and debate club (usually 10-30 families). These families would plan and host tournaments. My mom and some local coaches who were far less patriarchal — they would give us long talks about how, as a woman, what you had to say was JUST as legitimate, that you should never be intimidated by a guy in a debate round and you should just be confident and hold your own, etc, etc.
Then I would go to another club or tournament and the local people there would give me the whole “women must carry themselves graciously and submissively.” I remember losing a round once because I was too assertive to a man in cross-examination, which was “unbecoming.” And it was really confusing.
I do want to say that I owe my professional confidence almost entirely to that experience, and the experience with CFC and NCFCA. Despite the mixed messages and plentiful paternalism to go around, the overwhelming lesson I carried away was to communicate as well as you could — to communicate better than the next person, male or female. Bottom line.
And that training has stuck. Part of it came from facing and facing down paternalistic attitudes — knowing there was something wrong with them and then in college developing the foundation to really push it off. Now, as a woman in a male-dominated business culture, I don’t experience the feelings of intimidation many of my female coworkers talk about and I have become a spokesperson for my company on account of that.
I’m grateful for the training.
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Contribute your story or thoughts to homeschool speech and debate week!
Is this a healthy or unhealthy environment for young people to grow up in? What are your stories and experiences with the homeschool speech and debate world? Were they positive, negative, or a mixture? These organizations were a vital part of many of our experiences with homeschooling in high school and no subject or institution is off limits here.
As always, you can contribute anonymously or publicly.
If you are interested in participating in this series, please email us at homeschoolersanonymous@gmail.com. The tentative deadline for submissions will be Saturday, June 29.
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* HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Bethany” is a pseudonym.
This is a review of academic literature regarding the modern homeschooling phenomena in America. The goal is to provide a sociological framework for discussing the diversity and homogeneity of the various branches of the homeschooling movement.
While many ideological models of homeschooling have been formulated and propagated over the past fifty years of the homeschooling movement, two have risen to prominence. Founded by John Holt, the “unschooling movement” focused on removing children from the negative influences of a school’s hierarchical social structures which, according to Holt and his adherents, impeded a child’s natural creativity and prevented them from truly learning. [i] In contrast, Dr. Raymond Moore founded the “Christian Homeschooling movement,” which argued that public schooling was objectionable because of its corrupting moral influence. [ii] In the late-80s and 1990s, Christian homeschooling expanded rapidly, while the inclusive (unschooling) brand of home education grew slowly. Mitchell Stevens authored a ground-breaking sociological work on homeschooling, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (2001), after immersing himself in many aspects of the movement for eleven years. [iii] He focused on these two main sub-cultures, or camps, of the social movement of homeschooling, their historical development, and how their core philosophies influenced everything from the method of instruction to the organization of institutions.
Any study of homeschooling faces serious limitations. There is no federal legal framework governing homeschooling and states’ regulations are a patchwork of different requirements. The lack of consistent regulation is uniquely American In ten states, nothing is required of parents in order to homeschool. Thirteen states require a simple notification of a parent’s intent to homeschool their child. In Virginia and twenty-one other states, homeschoolers are required to take standardized tests, but even these requirements vary. The lack of even basic statistical reporting in most states makes the study of homeschooling problematic when attempting to use a social scientific methodology. Even the best studies have questionable validity. In 1996, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association published a study conducted by Brian Ray, who was himself an advocate of homeschooling. Because of this bias, the results of his research are questionable. In 1995, sociologist Maralee Mayberry distributed the most comprehensive survey to date of home educators, which included fifty-six questions ranging from occupation, educational attainment, religious affiliation, household size, etc. [iv] With fewer than 1,500 respondents from Nevada, Utah, and Washington, the demographics skewed towards those who identified themselves as very religious, white, and middle class. Most researchers have to rely on convenience samples (lists from curriculum suppliers, rosters of homeschooling groups, unofficial lists compiled by local school boards), and response rates to academic studies are notoriously low – only 25% of those Mayberry contacted responded.
Because of these limitations, much of Stevens’ book is observational. Until states gather more data on curriculum, the educational attainment of parents, and consistent standardized testing of students, most studies of homeschooling will, of necessity, lack methodological rigor. Stevens focused his study in Illinois and on two main networks of homeschoolers: the “inclusive” unschoolers and the religious “believers.” He noted that the core difference between the communities was their view on how to motivate children. The unschooling inclusives believed in using solely intrinsic motivation, which is driven by the child’s enjoyment and interest in the task, whereas the exclusive Christian homescholers believed in using extrinsic motivation, which is driven by rewards and punishments that come from outside the child (i.e. the parents). From here, the communities diverge philosophically and pedagogically. He admits that his book does not adequately address groups that serve more specific constituencies, like Islamic or Mormon home educators, parents with special–needs children, or the experiences of homeschooled children, but he sought to capture the “general flow” of the movement (8). Stevens refrains from criticizing either camp, merely detailing their differences, commonalities, and how that influences their pedagogy and organizational structures.
The first sub-culture, which he terms the “inclusives,” drew their philosophical inspiration from John Holt. Holt was involved in the alternative school movement in the 1970s, but eventually decided to create his own approach to child development. Holt’s philosophy and pedagogy is typically referred to as “unschooling.” Unschooling was strictly “earth-based,” meaning parents did not focus on spiritual issues, instead encouraging practical skills and creativity. Fundamentally, Holt and his ideological offspring believe in the intrinsic goodness of children and they strive to eliminate hierarchies that subordinate children to their parents. Holt emphasized the importance of the child’s self-determination, which he claimed was a child’s inalienable human right to “control [their] own minds and thoughts” (37). Holt explained that his “concern was not to ‘improve education,’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and anti-human business of people-shaping and let people shape themselves” (34-5). He refrained from using words like “teach,” “educate,” and “school,” instead relying on egalitarian rhetoric. Holt argued that “we adults destroy most of the intellectual and creative capacity of children by the things we do to them or make them do.” These unschoolers first organized under the Home Oriented Unschooling Experience network (HOUSE) network in the early 1980s. HOUSE included anyone who wished to participate in its support group meetings, not even adopting by-laws until 1992.
Both Mary Pride and Gregg Harris emphasized a strict hierarchy within the family.
The second sub-culture, which Stevens termed the “believers,” drew their inspiration from Dr. Raymond Moore. Stevens explained that this camp was an “explicitly Christian social movement” (7). Rather than giving children intellectual self-determination, like the unschoolers, Moore’s Christian homeschooling integrated Christ and the Bible into their education. For these Christians, “homeschooling is a fulfillment of God’s command that parents take responsibility for their children’s education in general” (18). A series of radio interviews conducted by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family with Dr. Moore catapulted the Christian homeschool movement into national spotlight. In Illinois, Steve and Susan Jerome helped organize the ICHE and, in 1984, they held the first state-wide homeschooling conference. The event, held at Wheaton College (a prominent Evangelical college) outside of Chicago, featured Dr. Moore and Phyllis Schlafly. At the time, Gregg Harris served as Dr. Moore’s right-hand man. In the late-1980s and 1990s, Greg Harris, Mary Pride, and Michael Farris became major national figure-heads and leaders in the Christian homeschooling movement. Stevens found that conservative Protestant Christians dominated the exclusive brand of homeschooling, termed “Christian homeschooling.” He used the term “Christian homeschoolers” because, in his interviews with members of this community, they frequently referred to themselves as “Christian homeschoolers” involved in a larger “Christian homeschooling movement.” Stevens noted that one of the first home education magazine, The Teaching Home, was explicitly religious. It even featured “God’s Plan of Salvation” in each issue, which instructed readers in the “Protestant Christian conversion” (121). Carol Ingram, the associate director of the National Center for Home Education in the early-90s, argued that there were no “neutral” homeschoolers. In her view of the homeschooling social movement, there was no balanced middle ground between secular homeschooling and Christian homeschooling. She explained, “We are either saved or we’re lost. We’re either in a Christian world reference or we’re in a non-Christian world reference, we’re not in a neutral world reference” (129).
Gregg Harris also focused on the importance of controlling the peer influences in your child’s life.
In the Christian, heaven-based pedagogy, children were sinners that needed to be “trained up” with Christian values and protected from “contaminants” so that they were better (spiritually and academically) than the average child in public school. Both Mary Pride and Gregg Harris emphasized a strict hierarchy within the family. Usually, Christian homeschoolers recite Proverbs 22:6, which reads “train up a child in the way that he should go, so that when he is old he will not depart from it.” In many instances, training your children properly meant protecting them from “multiple contaminants,” which could include secular humanism or the influence of children from “broken homes” (51-53). Gregg Harris also focused on the importance of controlling the peer influences in your child’s life, invoking language from Proverbs,
What would happen if our children were allowed to run around unsupervised with… other children? The companion of fools would suffer harm… The more our children have the opportunity to be the companions of foolish children, the more impervious they are to our counsel. And the more they resist the experiences that we’ve had, the more things we can offer to help them avoid so much trouble.
Moore argued that the contamination of peer pressure and the institutionalized secular humanism of public education tears children away from their parents. “But with the rare exception, when a child loses a sound value system, it is never regained. So peer dependency is a kind of social cancer. Humanly speaking, to try to heal it is like putting a Band-aid on a burned roast” (52). Christian homeschooling emphasizes obedience, respect for authority, and hierarchal social arrangements. Such language encourages families to be protective of their children, lest they fall prey to temptations and immorality and never return to their parents’ values. The Mckie family, Christian homeschoolers that run a blog, provided their explanation of homeschooling [v], which emphasized complete control over the child’s environment and stimuli:
Children are like tender young plants… [and] the gardener [i.e. parents] plants the precious seed in special seed cups in his greenhouse. He provides just the right soil, lighting, moisture, and nutrition so that the seeds have the optimum environment in which to grow. As the seed begins to sprout, the gardener tends to it with love and care…As the seedling grows, the gardener is able to transplant it into larger and larger containers to make room for its growth. The greenhouse allows the gardener to control all the elements of the environment so that the plant grows into a sturdy, mature plant with deep, well anchored roots, and a strong supportive trunk. Then the gardener makes the final transplant… by the time they complete the high school years they are finally anchored in GOD’S WORD, and have learned to stand against the world.
Unschoolers also have an aversion to the way public school impacts children’s minds, but they do not focus on philosophical and religious issues, like the secular humanism targeted by the Christian homeschoolers. Rather, Holt and the unschoolers argue that the public school system is too standardized to develop the innate curiosity and inquiry of young minds. In contrast, Moore argued that children are not “cognitively ready” to even understand why their parents make them do or believe certain things (39). This meant that parents should inculcate their children with a specific set of values and religious traditions. Moore wanted homeschoolers to insulate their children from “the world.” The Christian curriculum industry developed to meet the needs of parents wishing to educate their children with an explicitly Christian frame of reference. Stevens noted that “Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have the most to choose from when shopping for homeschool curricula… continuing a long tradition of separatist education” (54).
The leaders of the Christian homeschooling were not satisfied to let the unschoolers peacefully co-exist and they attempted to hijack the entire social movement to fit their authoritarian ideologies. Mark and Helen Hegener, editors of Home Educators Magazine, argued that “a small group of individuals, their organizations, and associations” have actively divided the national homeschooling social movement and attempted to impose “an exclusive hierarchal order” (145). HEM named Michael Farris, Sue Welch, Mary Pride, Brian Ray, Gregg Harris, and “dozens of local and state leaders,” as the primary antagonists of this attempted take-over of the social movement. In 1994, Michael Farris and HSLDA created a panic over federal legislation and they spent enormous resources to inform their membership that they should contact their representatives against the legislation. Pat Farenga and Susannah Sheffer, administrators of Holt Associates, continually fought the HSLDA’s politics of panic in the early-1990s and attempted to combat the growing influence of the Christian homeschoolers. In contrast to the HSDLA, when the HOUSE network informed its membership of the legislation, they exhorted their membership to “follow [their] own conscience[s].” Much to the chagrin of the unschoolers, the “leaders” of the Christian homeschooling movement wanted to impose centralization of “power and control” on the social movement, with the authority squarely in their hands. They acquired much of this authority by creating panic over legislation, scaring parents into thinking their civil rights to home educate faced an existential threat. Even Raymond Moore spoke out against the rise of “Christian exclusivism” and the subversion of the greater homeschooling movement by Gregg Harris, Michael Farris, and Sue Welch (173). The public divide between Christian homeschooling and unschooling continues today. Recently, Farenga blogged about Homeschoolers Anonymous, condemning the “extreme authoritarian ideologies,” like military school, boarding schools, and Christian homeschooling, that leads to damaging, sometimes abusive situations.
Despite unschoolers’ objections to extrinsic motivations and the inculcation of specific values or traditions to children, Michael Farris repeatedly attempted to position himself as an advocate for all home educators. The objections in the early-1990s continued to prove an adequate description and, in 2000, Michael Farris and Scott Woodruff published an article in the Peabody Journal of Education that highlighted the academic successes of homeschooled students. [vi] Their framing of homeschooling did not even acknowledge the existence of the unschoolers. His ignorance of, or blatant disregard for, the unschooling ideology is most evident under his section “Two Trends in Home Schooling.” Where every other scholar remarked upon the divergence between ideological/religious homeschooling and the child-centered/unschooling methods, Farris claimed the two trends were “classical education” and the rise of the internet. Classical education consisted of memorizing large passages of scripture and reading Western cannon. His article also focuses on why home educated students fare better academically than their peers. He argued that part of the success is because “most home school parents emphasize the teaching of values that have been honored by time and tradition” and “because of this, most home-schooled children likely will enter adulthood with a set of personal values that closely conforms to that of their parents” (Farris and Woodruff 239). Farris never specifies his article to Christian homeschooling, rather purporting to speak for all American homeschoolers. His own monolithic view of homeschooling demonstrates the self-perception that many Christian homeschoolers have – that they are the dominant, sometimes the only, relevant homeschooling movement.
Stevens observed that local support groups, national organizations, and literatures produced by the two campus mirrored their contrasting core philosophies on human nature. Local support groups of the HOUSE network always met in a circle, while Christian homeschoolers usually meet in a religious building in a lecture-style. Stevens noted that HOUSE meetings usually involved a level of chaos and children played loudly, interacting with one another, while a circle of adults discussed their experiences. Adults in HOUSE would rarely speak from a position of authority or expertise, instead sharing their experiences with one another as peers. HOUSE network members often lacked the terms to explain their pedagogy, instead relying on metaphors – partially because their membership was so diverse and they did not wish to feign a collective voice when there was none. Another national-level inclusive group, the National Homeschoolers Association (NHA) formed in 1988, espouses values of participatory democracy and refrains from denoting any leaders. Stevens emphasized that he “never” heard the “word leader used to describe anyone in NHA” (132). Their commitment to creating an egalitarian atmosphere meant that most meetings began fifteen minutes late because no individual was responsible for the session (131). NHA members joked about being on “homeschool time.” For the believers, however, “homeschool time” carried a very different connotation – it meant being punctual and therefore deferential to those in leadership.
In contrast with the loose, egalitarian structure of HOUSE, the Christian homeschooling movement quickly adopted hierarchies and rigid rhetorical frameworks. Christian homeschooling events gave special attention and focus to what it considered the leaders of the movement, men like Michael Farris and Gregg Harris. Stevens found that even conferences, like the 1994 National Center for Home Education Leadership Conference, “were predicated on the idea that organizationally, the homeschool world is organized as a pyramid” (126). Even small, local speaking engagements were held in churches, with the parents all facing the assumed leader, or expert, who spoke from a raised platform or pulpit. Stevens noted that speakers often “bemoaned schedule delays and frequently encouraged participants to check their watches” (131).
Despite the major differences between the inclusives and the believers, Stevens noted that all homeschoolers shared some basic ideas — namely that “their children’s self-development was worthy of virtually any sacrifice” (28). Both camps believe that their children’s education and development was too important a task to delegate to the bureaucratic, standardized public school system. In this way, the evolution of homeschooling in America follows the “great American story, a story about freedom and possibility and skepticism of established authority” (8). In 1984, leaders from the two home education camps organized the Ad Hoc Committee for Illinois Home Education Legal and Legislative Matters. In 1987, they successfully lobbied the state of Illinois to drop legislation that would require reporting to the state. All homeschoolers shared a basic interest in the legal protection of their rights to remove their children from the public school system and apply their pedagogy of choice.
Endnotes
[i] John Holt authored a number of books n early-childhood development and his theory of unschooling: Escape From Childhood (1974), Instead of Education (1976), Never Too Late (1979), Teach Your Own (1981; revised 2003 by Pat Farenga), Learning All the Time (1989).
[ii] Dr. Moore and his wife Dorothy authored a series of book on homeschooling: Raymond and Dennis Moore, “The Dangers of Early Schooling,” Harpers, 1972, Better Late than Early (1975), School Can Wait (1979), Home Grown Kids (1981), Home-Spun Schools (1982).
[iii] Mitchell Stevens, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
[iv] Maralee Mayberry, J. Gary Knowles, Brian Ray, and Stacy Marlow, Home Schooling: Parents as Educators (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press/Sage, 1995): In this sample, 91% said religious commitment was “very important” to their lives, 97% said “God lives and is real,” 84% believed the Bible was “literally true,” and 93% believed that “Satan is currently working in the world.”
It’s hard to believe that it was just a month ago that we launched Homeschoolers Anonymous. So much has happened in so few weeks! This is really due to the amazing and wonderful support that you, our community of friends and family and advocates and peers, have so graciously provided.
In a mere month, our WordPress blog has reached nearly 100,000 views. More than 260 comments — almost universally positive — have been made on the site. Our Facebook page has received almost 300 likes. Our most popular post to date, a crosspost by blog partner Kierstyn King (“Sex™ (and the lies I was told about it)”), has been viewed over 3500 times; the second most popular post, R.L. Stollar’s “Homeschool Confidential, A Series: Part One,” has over 3000 views. Michelle Goldberg covered our story on the Daily Beast. We’ve also received coverage by the Daily Mail and Lez Get Real, both Google News providers. We’ve also received inquiries from other major media groups and will keep you posted on those developments.
This is a very difficult project. If you have any experience at all with the conservative Christian homeschooling world, you know how defensive they — we, really — have been, are, and will likely continue to be. You can see how afraid some of us are about speaking out with our experiences. Qualifications and disclaimers abound. The fact that such fear exists, merely about saying one has had a personally negative experience in homeschooling, is indicative that something has gone awry. No one should feel afraid of speaking up about abuse or hurt or pain. That is why we feel this community is so important and necessary. We want to create a platform for sharing and healing. We want to be a voice in defense of those who have been hurt.
It’s truly been a wild ride. We’ve been accused of being nut jobs, anti-God, anti-homeschooling, a vast liberal conspiracy manufactured by Obama, the NEA, and the ATF, and opportunists that want to take advantage of abuse victims in order to achieve vast fame and fortune.
But as someone much wiser than us once said:
Haters gonna hate.
We’re here and we’re not going away. We will continue to share stories, we will not be silenced by intimidation, and we will do our best to represent our collective voice accurately, compassionately, and strongly.
Thank you for your encouragement, support, and love. We are very grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
In honor of our one-month anniversary, we’ve decided to take our top search terms — the phrases that people have Googled that have led them to us — and ask each HA Community Coordinator and Blog Partner to write a paragraph about one of the search phrases. (Some of us went over this paragraph limit.) This was presented to them as a creative challenge. They could write whatever they’d like that they thought was important to say to whoever might be drawn to our site because of the phrase in question. To make this a bit more challenging, we intentionally switched up who wrote about which search term, so it’s different than what that person might normally write about.
The idea is to highlight both the diversity of our voices and the unity of our mission.
So, without further ado, we present to you the first ever group post from Homeschoolers Anonymous!
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“homeschoolers abused” — by R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator
Not all homeschoolers experienced abusive situations. Not all homeschoolers have the same story. The fact is, homeschooling is a vast and diverse phenomenon that includes different religions, different political beliefs, and an immense variety of educational philosophies and teaching styles. But from my own personal experience in the conservative Christian homeschooling subculture, I can confidently say that — within my particular subculture — there is a tendency to operate from an “Ideology First” mentality, instead of a “Children First” mentality. And when you elevate the importance of ideology over the humanity and well-being of kids, you can easily create cult mentalities. And cult mentalities can cause immense hurt and pain for so many people. They can create emotional, mental, physical, and sexual abuse.
Not all homeschoolers experienced abusive situations. But many have.
Not all homeschoolers have the same story. But there are striking similarities.
I want their stories — my story, our collective story — to be heard. And if you listen with an open heart and mind, maybe you can help us make homeschooling better in the future.
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“homeschoolers anonymous” — by Libby Anne, HA Blog Partner
Why homeschoolers anonymous? I think I understand why. The first time I met someone raised in the Christian homeschooling subculture who had, like me, grown up in a homeschooling family and then questioned and left the pervading ideology of that family and subculture, I was overwhelmed. Before, I had felt alone. Like it was just me. Invisible, unnoticed, an anomaly that people didn’t acknowledge, or even know, existed. When you realize that you’re not alone, that it isn’t just you, everything changes. And some of those who visit Homeschoolers Anonymous may still be in the closet or on the wall, unready or unable to make the leap, to say that there was something wrong, to speak about and acknowledge the hurt and the pain. And that’s why we’re here.
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“stand up for my children” — by Vyckie Garrison, HA Blog Partner
I know this will be controversial, but when I was asked to write about the search phrase, “stand up for my children,” I immediately thought of the period of time when all the abuse and dysfunction of our Quiverfull lifestyle culminated in a nasty court battle when I left my ex-husband and sued for custody of our six children who still lived at home.
My lawyer told me that I would need at least three people who would be willing to write affidavits for the judge stating that they were aware of abuse in our home. I was extremely discouraged because I believed I had done such a good job of covering up for my husband and protecting his reputation that nobody, with the possible exception of my mother, had any clue that there was anything amiss in our “big happy family.”
Undaunted, a fellow homeschool mom started making phone calls, and in about a week’s time, was able to gather more than 20 affidavits from friends, family, and acquaintances who all testified that they had been aware that the children and I were being abused.
That’s over twenty Christians who could have stood up for my children and spared us all those years of abuse.
I understand that as evangelical Christians we were all taught to fear the evil government social workers, but looking back now, I can honestly say that the court-ordered involvement of CPS was one of the best things that ever happened for my family.
I have plenty of suggestions for intervention and support (see the NLQ FAQ: How can I help my Quiverfull friend?), but if you clearly see children being abused or neglected, please call this hotline and get the family some outside, professional help: 1-800-4-A-CHILD.
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“homeschool uniform denim jumper” — by Nicholas Ducote, HA Community Coordinator
Jumpers, especially the denim variety, were the unofficial uniform of the homeschool mom. My mother had an entire closet full of jumpers in an array of colors, but none rose above her knee. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve seen my mother wear pants in the last decade. I wish it wasn’t so stereotypical, but a quick Google search of the terms “denim jumper” will bring you to www.denimjumper.com – “your source for everything homeschooling.” Most Christian homeschooling sub-cultures emphasize modesty in young women, especially in reaction to what they see as an over-sexualization of young girls, but their attitudes often read like an unironic guide to rape culture (i.e. The Rebelution’s Modesty Survey). In short, women are told their bodies can make men lust and, in a revolting twist of logic, the immodest women is responsible for “defrauding” the lusting man. Young women are encouraged to hide their curves behind baggy jumpers or long skirts and modest tops. Fashion, they are told, only serves to bring excessive attention to the superficiality of a woman. Modest, godly women do not need to appeal to a man’s lust. Instead, she strokes his ego by serving in the cult of domesticity.
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“homeschool cult” — by Anna Ruth Fuller, HA Community Coordinator
Think about what a homeschooler looks like. What comes to mind? If images of religious children passing out pamphlets or holding signs comes to mind, you’re thinking too narrowly. If images of hippies unschooling their children comes to mind, you’re again thinking too narrowly. Broaden your thinking.
Homeschooling occurs everywhere and for all types of reasons. The same is true of public schooling and private schooling. How you choose to educate your children is your choice. However, it is important to remember that in all of this, children have a right to their own views that aren’t necessarily your own. This is true no matter what type of schooling they undergo.
So what happens when parents do not respect a child’s right to their own worldview? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about letting your children run amok. There’s a difference between pure hedonism and having a worldview.
Not letting your children choose their own worldview is a dangerous road to take. It might seem like a good idea at the time since it is easier to control a child’s thoughts than to guide them. Most parents these days recognize that guiding their chidren’s thoughts is the way to go, but there are those that still cling to controlling them.
It is considered bizarre to isolate your children from the world so that you can protect from worldly things. We are becoming a global society with the advent of the Internet. Preparing your child for the different worldviews they will face (and more importantly, how to respect them for what they are) is crucial to that child’s success. Yet there are many Christian homeschooling parents that purposefully decide to isolate their children from all of this. It is this type of homeschooler we are bringing to light here with our stories.
This brings me to my topic. One of the most popular search terms for our site has been ‘homeschool cult.’ When I learned that, I began think about whether we were really part of a cult as Christian fundamentalist homeschoolers. According to Wikipedia’s article on cults: “The word cult in current popular usage is a pejorative term for a new religious movement or other group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre by the larger society.”
This definition makes me think we weren’t part of a cult. To have been a cult, we would have needed to have been unified religiously somehow. We weren’t. Each of us went to churches in conflict with each other on various minutiae. There was one thing that united us and that was the need to reclaim this country for the Christian God. Our parents wanted us to dream of a Christian nation and placed that first and foremost in our minds by excluding the teaching of other worldviews (thankfully this didn’t happen nearly as much to me as it did to others). We were trained up in debate to help us become better lawyers and politicians to lead this new country to its destiny. So in reality, we weren’t part of a cult in the religious sense. While there were certainly practices and behaviors that could be seen as cult mentalities to outsiders, we were less a part of a religious movement and more a part of a political movement.
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“homeschool and abuse and fanaticism” — by Kierstyn King, HA Blog Partner
Art by Kierstyn King.
This is a touchy subject, because you’re screwed in the eyes of parents or vehement pro-homechooling-beyond-all-reason-crowds from the start. The fact is, this sentence and search term oddly defines my experience in a very succinct way, and like the lonely oppressed girl over here, it’s not a good thing. Homeschool and abuse and fanaticism don’t have to be related, but sometimes they are and here’s how: parents have the idea to homeschool, they then are told they must homeschool to essentially indoctrinate their children to their cause (fanaticism) which in some way or another usually is along the lines of “taking over the world” (who doesn’t want world domination?). Of course getting to that point means squelching the life out of the individuals you’ve stopped seeing as human and started seeing as arrows – focused solely on your needs, wants, and purpose you deny basic rights, dignity, and sometimes the security of unconditional love to the child you’re supposed to care about above everything else (abuse).
The unnecessarily necessary disclaimer here is: obviously not everyone is like that (but some people are).
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“why all of the attacks on homeschoolers” — by Julie Anne Smith, HA Blog Partner
I have been homeschooling my children for the last 20+ years. When I hear about “attacks” on homeschooling, I suspect there could be some confusion. Taking a closer look at the attacks, generally, it is not homeschooling in general that is attacked (ie, the education of one’s children at home), but more specifically, a lifestyle connected with the “Homeschool Movement.” The Homeschool Movement is associated with practices and ideologies not even remotely related to scholastic achievement, e.g., full-quiver lifestyle, patriarchy, purity and modesty teachings, etc. These practices and ideologies have had mixed, and sometimes very sad results. The methodologies employed to enforce these lifestyles can also be troublesome. The Homeschool Movement must not be confused with homeschooling. I believe homeschooling to be a valid and exceptional option for motivated and capable parents who have a vested interest in the proper education of their children.
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“homeschooling and mental illness” — by Latebloomer, HA Blog Partner
For a well-informed and supported parent, homeschooling may be an excellent way of supporting a child suffering from a mental illness. It could allow for high quality personalized instruction, easier access to appointments with medical professionals, and protection from peer bullying. Unfortunately, the combination of homeschooling and mental illness also has the potential to do great harm. For instance, children with mental illness can go undiagnosed for much longer if they do not regularly come in contact with trained educators and medical professionals. Distrust of those resources is very common in fundamentalist homeschooling circles, where parents are much quicker to blame unusual behavior on rebellion and worldly influences. An additional concern is the potential for harm when a child is homeschooled by a mentally-ill parent. The child will often be far more affected by the parent’s mental illness because of the increased time spent with the parent and the lack of time with other adults. For such children, the parent’s paranoia, depression, narcissism, etc, define their entire childhood and hinder them from developing positive and healthy relationships with others even in adulthood.
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“which is more effective for learning homeschool or public school?” — by Brittany Meng, HA Blog Partner
So you’re wondering which is more effective for learning: homeschool or public school. To answer this question more effectively, you should add the phrase “for my child.”
It all depends on what your child needs to be an effective learner. Here are a few issues to consider about the effectiveness of homeschooling for certain ages and needs.
Elementary school: Homeschool can be very effective for Elementary school because children often need one-on-one time to learn basics like reading and math, which are foundational for a strong education. If your child needs extra help in these subjects, homeschooling might be a good choice. On the other side of the coin, if your child is advanced in these areas, homeschooling might be good for your child as well. Nothing squashes the natural love for learning faster than a child who is bored. Homeschooling allows you to move at your own pace.
Middle School: Let’s just face it—middle school stinks for most people. Homeschooling will not remove all awkwardness, angst, self-doubt, or attitude problems from your child. However, if social issues are getting in the way of your child’s academic success, homeschooling may be a good option for your family.
High School: By this point, most young people are able to voice their educational and social needs. These wants and needs should be taken into consideration. This is also the point where parents need to consider how capable they are to meet the needs of their child, especially if he or she wants to go to college. I believe that homeschooling can be effective in high school but only with a strong outside support and supplemental network: classes at a local high school, community college, and/or homeschool co-op.
Personally, I believe that homeschooling becomes less effective for learning the older the child gets but this is a blanket statement. Only you can determine what your child needs.
You also have to consider the needs and abilities of your family: finances, time commitment (contrary to what many people think, your child needs as much academic attention from you in 1st grade as he does in 10th grade. Kids need accountability, motivation, and a sounding board for ideas), a strong support network, and whether or not you actually want to homeschool. Even if you feel that homeschooling would be the best option for your child, if you don’t want to homeschool, don’t do it. Homeschooling is a huge commitment. You can’t toe the water; you have to jump in with both feet. However, some states allow your child to be homeschooled by someone else. Check into all your options.
When choosing the best learning option for your child, it is important to consider what you and your child need and want both academically and socially. So, which is more effective public school or homeschooling? It all depends on your child.
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“pscyholgoy of bad/evil” — by Lana, HA Blog Partner
In conservative circles parents often have a tendency to refer to their children as all good or all bad. In public — that is, among other conservative families — kids often are forced to play the role of the perfect family, the perfect godly family. I felt this a lot as a child when we did cookouts with other homeschool families, or a respected homeschool family came over for dinner. I had to smile and pretend that I was godly (whatever that means) while everyone talked about how we were great and the future of America. At home our house was in shambles, but none of that mattered around our friends. Perhaps this alone would make a child go crazy. Why is it necessary to fake it? Why weren’t we genuine? Was it all in my head that my home was dysfunctional? Was it my fault when I was unhappy? Was my friends’ home totally perfect? These are legit questions that I and many others have experienced, but the confusion goes much further. For every time a child is praised as good, its likely that he or she is shamed as bad for the most ridiculous things at home. I was taught that I was not dressed until I wore a smile. If I did not wear a smile, I was ungrateful. If I expressed frustration (that admittedly did get out of hand sometimes), I was disrespectful. A simply bad act is escalated as totally evil or rebellious. There are plenty of homeschoolers who had it much worse, directly being called evil for not being submissive to an abusive situation. And so the soul is torn between good and evil. Sometimes kids just need to be told they are human. We aren’t perfect. We aren’t all bad. We’re human.
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“living my life” — by Heather Doney, HA Blog Partner
What my life was supposed to be was set. One story said that because I am a woman, by the time I was 30 I was supposed to have been married for a decade and have somewhere between 3-6 kids, homeschool them in a nice house, and be involved with a local church. The other story was that I was supposed to have a mid-level office job where I wore business suits and cute pumps, had a comfortable salary with decent benefits, ho-hum dates with guys who wore nice watches, and appletinis with the girls on weekends.
Neither are my life. I truly thought I was supposed to somehow make one or both my reality, that they were in fact the going realities available, but now I know they weren’t, at least not for me. I knew it just didn’t feel right, but I somehow figured I’d still end up in one or the other. I didn’t. I’m still just me, and while I do own a business suit and those cute pumps today, I generally wear flats or leather boots with jeans. I have only a laptop computer, not a cubicle, to go to. If I’d wanted a baby already I expect I could have had one, but I didn’t. I don’t go to church and I don’t even like appletinis (or guys who wear expensive watches, for that matter).
So while I didn’t want my life to look like either of these so-called options, I didn’t know what it should look like. What I knew it shouldn’t look like was what I call “living in the meantime.” I lived in the meantime for a few years and meantime mode is where you just let life happen to you, figuring it knows what is best, not-so-patiently waiting until it resembles one of your ideals. The scary thing is it likely never will. You can easily spend your whole life in meantime mode, waiting on serendipity to rescue you, and the thing most people forget about serendipity is that it isn’t just some happy accident or eureka moment that breaks you out of your ordinary life. Serendipity is what you find while you are out looking for, working on, and doing other things. Because serendipity requires action, it is a lot harder to find while in meantime mode or while you’re living someone else’s idea of your life, just going through the motions.
So to me living your life is not about doing one thing or another but about breaking out of that. It is about actively writing the next chapter to look differently, resetting the script, welcoming the changes, courting serendipity. It is about “if you build it, they will come.” In order to do that you have to do something scary though – be real about the person that you know you are, not stuck on the one you feel you “should” be. You can’t go squeezing yourself into a role that makes you look like you’re wearing somebody else’s style.
To live life, forget the ideal life someone else created for you and said should be yours.
Author edit to clarify my call for more oversight: I recommended intra-community policing in my post. State action should be a last resort. Those that care to preserve their parental rights to homeschool need to hold other parents accountable. Unfortunately, fundamentalist homeschooling communities are often isolated from anyone who would question the parents. I don’t have a solution, but I know we can’t just assume the status quo will fix things. Hopefully, projects like this will scare other parents enough to make them confront other parents. But let’s be honest, do you see that happening in these sort of communities? Most of these people laugh at the idea of children having rights and would never support anything that encroaches on their ability to teach their children whatever they want. If you suspect child abuse or neglect in a family you know, please report them to Child Protective Services.
Homeschooling, as a method of instruction, is not intrinsically bad, dangerous, or damaging. I saw many children raised in homeschooling who were not abused by religious fundamentalism – even if they were Christians. However, as a society, we have to realize that the current state of homeschooling gives parents unique power over their children. Yes, many homeschooled children are a part of co-ops, interact with neighbors, and have relatively normal social interactions. But other homeschoolers are isolated in rural areas, with no contact with neighbors, or the outside world. Abuse develops in these environments because there is no oversight from outside the parents and, if criticism if lodged, the parents are defensive. To many homeschooling parents, homeschooling (the method) is part of a larger worldview that involves rejections of secularism, science, and academic institutions.
I developed claustrophobia, a generalized anxiety disorder, and panic attacks in high school. At the time, I assumed my panic attacks were the result of the Holy Spirit convicting me of my sins. The most common trigger for my panic was sexuality. As a teenager, I would often shake uncontrollably after masturbating. Homeschooling can make children feel trapped because they are literally never away from their parents. When I was quasi-dating girls in high school, behind my parents’ back because they wanted me to court, I would have a mini-panic attack when the phone rang – scared that my parents would find out. When I got in trouble it meant a few hours with mom and dad, crying and arguing about what God told them to do, ending in me feeling completely trapped. When I woke up the next day, I had no choice but to bottle up my anger, shame, and humiliation and go “do” homeschooling. In ATI, many leaders preached about how listening to rock music would literally result in demonic possession. This is abusive to teach to children. To this day, I struggle with anxiety before I fall asleep. I was taught, by my parents and by ATI’s leaders, that demons were very real and they could possess rebellious Christians. Many in the homeschooling movement conceptualized the “culture war” as spiritual warfare — the secular humanists were literally portrayed as the minions of Satan.
Spiritual abuse is a difficult term for many people to wrap their heads around. It may seem like we are trying to say that raising children in a religious tradition is abusive, which we are not. However, I can say that when homeschooling is mixed with religious fundamentalism, abuse almost always occurs.
There is a distinction between religious fundamentalism and mainstream religions. I once told my mom, “I would have been fine if you stayed Baptist. It’s when you drifted into fundamentalism that hurt me.” What many people fail to realize is that most parents don’t wake up one day and decide they need to start controlling their childrens’ lives and prepare them for the culture wars. Yes, my parents are to blame for subscribing to fundamentalism, but the homeschooling community and movement are also to blame.
In many states in the 1990s and 2000s, homeschooling parents received most of the curriculum, instruction, and indoctrination at state, regional, or national conferences. There are a myriad of institutions and groups that formed the movement, so it is impossible to point to a single root cause of the abuse in homeschooling. But I know abuse doesn’t just happen because of bad parenting. The bad parenting that people indict was being advocated on stage before thousands of people. There is a reason why so many homeschooling alumni share stories and experiences. Tens of thousands of homeschoolers attended state Christian Home Educator Fellowship (CHEF) conferences, where they were exposed to
The Harris family and their beliefs about Biblical courtship
David Barton and Little Bear Wheeler’s revisionist history
Evangelical leaders that scared everyone about the evils of secular humanism
Michael and Debi Pearl’s harsh ideas on corporal punishment and misogynistic ideas of gender roles
Huge book sales populated mostly by Christian fundamentalist textbooks — advocating creationism, teaching math based around the Gospel message, or other “educational tools.”
All of these ideas circulated around the homeschooling communities and trickled down to local CHEF chapters.
Parents’ responses have been mixed, but many of them see our blog as a tool to take control of their children away from them. Parents emphasize their rights to raise their children however they want. But, as a society, we have already decided that parental rights end where abuse begins. Thus, one of the main issue in this debate becomes whether or not a homeschooling environment is emotionally or spiritually abusive.
You might think this is only a problem of the past decades — that now, in this new zenith of modernity, fundamentalist homeschoolers that spiritually abuse their children are dying out. You would be wrong. Yes, there is growing momentum behind secular homeschooling, but there is no hard social science about homeschooling. At this point, observational data is almost all that exists about homeschooling and its demographics. We know very generally how many people homeschool and for what reasons. But ten states do not even require the parents to inform them of their childrens’ “enrollment” in homeschooling.
This is the start of an important conversation about homeschooling. I am opposed to religious fundamentalism in all forms and I believe that the abuse that occurs when fundamentalism is allowed to dominate homeschooling has no place in the modern world. I’ve heard so many Evangelicals and homeschooling parents mock the Islamic madrasas for their religious instruction, but fundamentalist homeschooling isn’t different by much.
To those homeschoolers who are afraid of this exposure, it’s time to own up. These abuses happened, the community’s leaders encouraged it, and the community does not regulate itself. If the homeschooling community is not willing to regulate itself – lest a parent tell another parent their methods and ideologies are abusive! – then someone else will.
I am tired of sitting around hoping that the abusive fundamentalist culture within homeschooling will die out. I don’t want it to die out, I want to trample it out so that no other children face the sort of abuse I, and many other, went through. Part of the means telling the honest, visceral truth about what happens in many homeschooling homes. Yes, abuse is ultimately the fault of the perpetrators, but why does everyone leave the homeschooling community blameless for how it brainwashed my parents?
The issue of abuse in homeschooling is an issue of the distortion of parental rights and the reality of systemic indoctrination.
You cannot stop the abuse without exposing the advocates.
A group of former homeschoolers are joining together to bring awareness to, and healing from, different forms of abuse in extreme homeschooling subcultures. The organization, Homeschoolers Anonymous (HA), is being coordinated by former homeschoolers across the United States, including California, Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington.
According to recent surveys, approximately 2 million children are taught at home in the United States. The total number of home-educated kids doubled between 1999 and 2007. While some are being homeschooled in non-Christian families, the National Home Education Research Institute claims almost three-quarters of those 2 million children have conservative Christian parents who aim to pass on their moral and religious values to their kids through home education. This makes religion the primary motivating factor behind this form of education.
HA’s creator is R.L. Stollar, who was homeschooled from K-12 and currently resides in Eugene, Oregon. He has a Master of Arts in Eastern philosophy and religion and is a freelance writer. Stollar says he came up with the idea for HA after realizing that many of his homeschooled peers suffered from some of the same emotional, mental, and physical problems that he does. Stollar says,
“I started talking last August to someone I knew in junior high and high school about some of the issues we both struggle with today. And it was interesting to see these similarities and that we both attributed them to the same things from our backgrounds.”
Stollar realized that many of his peers had stories like this. He decided to created Homeschoolers Anonymous to bring awareness to these stories and to inspire others to speak out. He intends for HA to give others courage:
“I think, for a lot of us, we are afraid to say what we feel, to say we have changed. A lot of us perceived the message of our world as ‘shut up, get in line, and prepare to take back the culture.’ That makes us, even as adults, timid and maybe even scared of community backlash if we were to say, ‘You know, I’m a different person now. I grew up, I’m an adult, and I have my own life.'”
Stollar connected with old friends on Facebook and made new ones. He found a community of people who shared the same vision. One of those people is Nicholas Ducote, who grew up in a family immersed in Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute (ATI). He has his Master of Arts in History from Louisiana Tech University and is currently working on a book about lumber development in North Louisiana.
Ducote considers his upbringing to be a form of fanaticism. To him, fanaticism is any manifestation of an ideology that knows no compromise and uses children as vehicles of ideological advancement. Ducote says,
“The quaint, happy, innocent life of a child can quickly be replaced by the stark absolutes of fanaticism. Muslim, Christian, and Jew are one in the same monster. Their fanatics take different names, they act in different ways, but they are all the same.”
Stollar, Ducote, and team of others are eager to see the launch of their vision. Homeschoolers Anonymous has partnered with a number of well-known bloggers to help bring greater visibility to their stories of abuse and healing. These blog partners include Libby Anne’s Love Joy Feminism, Heather Doney’s Becoming Worldly, Vyckie Garrison’s No Longer Quivering, and Julie Anne Smith’s Spiritual Sounding Board.
About the blog partners, Stollar says,
“I’m really excited to be partnering with these individuals and groups who write about, among other things, their homeschooling experiences. Honestly, they’ve directly inspired [HA] because of what they do. They’ve really paved the way to speaking out about abuse within certain cultures.”
One of the blog partners, Julie Anne Smith, is a homeschooling parent herself. Smith has over 20 years of experience homeschooling her children. She believes HA will help both current and former homeschool kids, even other parents:
“Homeschool students and their parents have become part of a unique culture yielding a mixed bag of results. The first crop of homeschooled students are now adults, establishing their own lives and families. It’s important to take an honest look at homeschool history by reading personal stories — describing the joys and even disappointments of those who paved the homeschool trail.”
While HA hopes to talk candidly about abuse within homeschooling and provide methods of healing from that abuse, the group is careful to point out they do not oppose homeschooling itself. Stollar notes that,
“This isn’t anti-homeschool in any way. At the end of the day, this isn’t even about conservative politics or Christianity. It is more about anywhere and everywhere that communities and adults use religious or political ideology to deny children their humanity and freedom to be for the sake of advancing that ideology. That’s a cult mentality. And wherever that mentality exists, you create emotional, mental, physical, and even sexual abuse and trauma for children. We want to be a strong voice in opposition to that mentality through our life stories, through education and information.”
Homeschoolers Anonymous will be launching their website tomorrow, Sunday, March 17.
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This news release may be reprinted without permission in part or in entirety for promotional purposes.
Homeschoolers Anonymous 