socialization

Torching All That Is Sacred: Alexander Anon’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Torching All That Is Sacred — One Child’s Emergence From a Totalitarian Environment: Alexander Anon’s Story, Part Two

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

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In this series: Part One | Part Two

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Something people should know about me: I am a fighter. Now, I am not an obvious fighter, and if I was put into the ring, I guarantee nobody would put money on me; but that does not change what I am by nature. See, I am a quirky fighter.  I am weird.  I am unpredictable, though not always intentionally so.  For a while, I simply took what my parents dished out and did not question it.  I do not mean what they intentionally dished out; I mean that I adopted a victim mentality and pitied myself for being in the situations I found myself in.

As I grew older though, I started wanting to change things.  I would still take things timidly, but if they pushed too hard, a fire would flare up in me and I would push back.  Harder.  Through this, I learned that I am much stronger than I had ever previously thought.  I am not a victim; I am the one in control.  If my parents would chide me for engaging in foolishness, I would keep it coming and even ramp up my efforts.  What could they do?  I was invincible.  My foolishness knew no bounds; there were no depths which could be plumbed, no dregs that could be drained.  I could out resource them, outlast them, and outsmart them at virtually every corner until they admitted the futility of their efforts to make me into the cookie-cutter Christian homeschool child.  I had another advantage: the sibling just under me was much more openly defiant (although he used vastly different tactics), thereby allowing me to get by being just slightly less troublesome.

Since being in college, my mom has several times equated my academic success (completed undergraduate honors program with a GPA of 3.92) to having been homeschooled.  This is quite possibly true, but I have never quite had the heart to tell her the truth: her perceptions of my homeschooling experience are much different than my perceptions of that same experience.  If I was to be completely honest, what I enjoyed most was the freedom of homeschooling.  I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, and pursue whatever caught and kept my attention for as long as I wanted without interruption.  For me, at that point in my life, it meant creating Redwall cards that played similar to the Decipher Lord of the Ring’s trading card game.  I would spend hours reading the books, creating workable game mechanics and themes for each culture, and then drawing and coloring the cards.  I was an artist, and a not-too-bad one at that.  I was also an avid reader, but only if the book was of interest.  Many history books and other required readings were simply not to my tastes, and since there was no way to prove if I had actually read the book, I occasionally lied about how much of the book I had read in a particular day (or, at my worst, simply did not read the book while claiming I did).  I did this so that I could spend time doing what I wanted to do: Redwall cards.

I was also notoriously bad at science.  For a while, I thought I simply sucked at science.  Since then, I have realized I did not understand how to study at that point in time.  I would shove a bunch of scientific definitions in, then output them for the test.  On tests where there was more information to memorize, I would earn lower grades.  This measured nothing about my ability to actually understand science; it measured how well I could replicate 15+ definitions word-for-word, with each definition containing several sentences and sometimes looking more like paragraphs.  My junior year, she threatened to kick me into public school for my senior year if I failed a particular science test (since I wouldn’t then be able to pass that grade of science).  Needless to say, I took the ethical high ground and cheated my ass off.  I did not (and still don’t) think it is fair to both at once tell your child that public school is essentially hell and then threaten to send your child to that hell if they do not perform to your liking.

I mention these two aspects of my homeschooling life because they would later get me in trouble just when I thought I was home free in college.  After attending college a few years, I casually joked about how I sometimes wasn’t the best homeschool student as a kid.  To me, it was funny.  Look how well I’m doing in college despite goofing off the last few years I was homeschooled (11th & 12th grade).  My mom, on the other hand, broke out crying at even the hint that I had cheated or lied.  To her, my not taking some aspects of school seriously somehow reflected on her.  It told her she hadn’t done well enough homeschooling to make me care, even though not caring about school is typical for teenagers at that age and I had proven I could excel in college.  She had not failed in any sense of the word, since I was prepared for college and doing well.  But she did not see it that way; only saw that I was admitting homeschool had not been the perfect picture of happiness she thought it had been.

Secretly, deep down, I suspect the true reason she cried is because my goofing off the last 2 years I was homeschooled sent a clear message that I did not need her and homeschooling as much as she thought I did.  Did not need her as a teacher, that is.

This gets to the crux of the matter; it ties together this up-until-now rather bizarre and random story of my childhood.  I think that despite whatever reasons my mom thought she was homeschooling us for, her true motivation was to never have to be alone again after living her entire childhood virtually alone.  Homeschooling, while it may have been about us not getting hurt by others in public school, was also about her not getting hurt by nobody needing her.  It was about making us dependent on her, so that she felt wanted.  Needed.  Ironically, she sometimes lashed out when we expressed the very dependence on her that she had fostered in us.  More than a true need for us to be homeschooled was the need for her to have an identity outside of her children.  An identity that should have come from her relationship with my dad, and with friends her own age.  She needed to escape the burden of parenting for a time instead of embracing it even more fully and homeschooling us all.

I am not saying we should not have been homeschooled; but rather, homeschooling us should not have been the top priority.  She often screamed, “What about me? When do I get to do what I want to do?!?” when she got mad at us for needing her.  But the truth of the matter is this; she was too scared of nobody needing her to ever wander off and do something she wanted to do.  She was afraid that if she did wander off, she might return and find everyone had forgotten her, or worse: never even noticed she left in the first place.

This, then, is what I want to communicate: my entire childhood was shaped by events driven just as much by my mom’s need to be emotionally fulfilled as it was trying to give me what I needed in an education.

Possibly more.

The worst part is knowing she did not do this consciously, she simply failed to recognize what was going on and intervene.  This is not a ‘Fuck you, mom! Fuck you, dad!’ letter.  This is not an article to be used for arguing homeschooling is psychologically harmful and should therefore be overseen, controlled, or prevented by the government.  There is no political message here, no hint of animosity towards anyone; no purpose for saying any of this other than that it is the truth.

The truth.

Truth is never something I was good at hiding, or even wanted to hide.  I tell everyone who will listen that I would rather have a ‘fuck you!’ screamed in my face and punctuated with physical blows than have someone pretend to be my friend.  I do not care if I am physically assaulted; I care if I am told the truth.  Asshats are a dime a dozen; but honest people are virtually impossible to find.  Bluntness, that is.  People who throw social politeness under the bus in favor of calling it like it is.  The ‘ain’t no bullshit here, captain!’ kind of people.  There many honest people in the world, but few who will be blunt with you.

That is what I mean.

In order to avoid ending on a downer note, I will fully self-disclose that things have gotten so much better over the past few years I have been attending college.  Only my youngest brother and sister are still homeschooled, with my oldest sister having attended public school since 9th grade.  I do see my youngest brother struggle with many of the same things I did, but I know I am here to guide him through the confusion and pain that accompanies his upbringing.

More importantly, I know what helped me cope and have given him access to these means at a much younger age.  When I was growing up, I did not have anyone to reach out to about this.  My youngest brother can talk with me about this all; about how sometimes although our parents love us both very much, they do not act rationally and instead resort to violating their own rules and taking their emotional issues out on the children and use us to meet deep needs that we can never fullfill.  He can question me about why most people think the earth is billions of years old but he learns it is only several thousand.  I do not provide him with ‘the answers’, but ask questions to help him think through the issues on his own.

That is what true homeschooling should be: parents providing their children with an outlet to escape the biases and politics of public school without imposing their own biases and politics.  Because ultimately, that’s what homeschooling is: freedom.  Freedom to question authority, to question rules, to question the ‘no tolerance’ policies that are a virtual shitstorm in public schools.  My story is one of that freedom being unconsciously abused, but that same freedom can be used to free others from the abuses they may receive elsewhere.

As hinted at in my opening paragraph, eventually my parents figured a lot of their issues out and loosened the stranglehold conservative Christians had on their throats.  This legalism went to hell when our family became the black sheep of the congregation and the pastor and elders treated our family like shit.  We were accused of much, and treated like enemies instead of brothers and sisters in Christ like they claim to treat all believers.  What they failed to mention when you sign up is that their interpretation of the Bible only tells you to treat people as human if they think as you do and do not question what you demand of them.  Anyone who threatens their reputation, who is similar enough to them and then suddenly appears less than perfect, is quickly either intimidated to fall back into line or else cast out into the cold world to die a lonely and painful death.  Fortunately, our family pulled together and told them that while we appreciate their willingness to spend their entire lives with their heads on vacation in the wonderful world of Up-Your-Ass, our family preferred to admit we are living, breathing, feeling, fallible individuals who must address our shortcomings and forgive each other.

So yes, our family is no longer the perfect Christian, homeschooling family we once were. Thank God. And I mean that; I am both relieved to leave the bullshit and small-mindedness, and thankful to God for rescuing us from the bullshit.

As you can tell, I still believe in God. But not the Orthodox Presbyterian Church God that requires men to dominate women, for children to obey their parents without questioning what they are told to do, and for His followers to spend their time prior to dying and enjoying their life in blissful paradise feeling like shit because they believe happiness is automatically indicative of falling into sin.  Focusing on how fucked up you are, or others are, does nothing to solve the problem.  Even their own book tells them that much, but they still do not see despite claiming you do not see.  Slowly, their God died to me (not for me), and I can personally attest that this death did not occur on a cross.  It took place in my mind, after years of watching my family suffer the consequences of sucking it up when things got hard and pretending everything was alright.  However; this god did die at a cross.  Crossroad that is. The death of the OPC God was a crossroad where I switched paths.  Where our whole family switched paths.

I have never been more proud of our parents than when they essentially told our old OPC church to go fuck themselves. (This message was not communicated quite as bluntly, but the effect was the same).

In closing, I am not mad at my parents. I hold no bitterness for them, or anyone else, including the OPC church and their members.  I am still friends with many of them, and see the pleading looks in their eyes to come back when I occasionally visit.  But I see more than this.

Underneath the pleading for me to return to them I see another kind of pleading; a pleading for someone to rescue them from themselves.  As for me, I am never going back. Not permanently, although I do visit every once in a blue mooon. Having now experienced life in the open — in the sunlit world having emerged from Plato’s cave with the totalitarian forces striving to keep individuals locked away in the cave — I know what it is I will spend the rest of my life doing:

Fighting to free others from the blindness, from being emotionally used and feeling helpless to escape, whether it occurs while being homeschooled, public-schooled, or not schooled. Because using others, even unconsciously, to meet your needs is not right; and having gone through this myself, I find that I cannot wish it upon anyone else either.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We are Homeschooled.

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End of series.

Torching All That Is Sacred: Alexander Anon’s Story

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

Torching All That Is Sacred — One Child’s Emergence From a Totalitarian Environment: Alexander Anon’s Story

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

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In this series: Part One | Part Two

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As I start, I wish to be clear that this story is intended to convey my experience of the complex phenomenon that was my homeschooling experience, not make broad claims about homeschooling in general; and that within this narrative I perceive not villains but instead numerous individuals that were products of factors they either did not understand or were helpless to change.  What follows is a tale of how homeschooling efforts collided with conservative Christian values to create the perfect maelstrom of do’s and don’ts, and the resulting insecurities I was left with in the wake of destruction caused by the brain-washing and intimidation tactics utilized by the primarily homeschooling congregation of the local Orthodox Presbyterian Church our family attended.

I guess the best place to begin this story is to discuss the dynamics of my parents’ relationships with each other, their seven children, and their parents growing up.  My mother had a hard life growing up, with her parents fighting constantly and physical violence prevalent.  Her experiences in public school were not much better, as she has mentioned on various occasions that she felt isolated, unwanted, and ignored.  The three main things she learned growing up were: (1) you keep fighting even when nothing is alright; (2) if nothing is alright, you shut up and pretend everything is alright; and (3) people will never give you what you want unless you trick them into giving you what you want.  My father, on the other hand, appears to have had a much healthier childhood, although certainly no childhood is ever without its scarring moments.

Although they are virtually mum on the circumstances surrounding their dating and eventual marriage, as best I can surmise my mom wanted to escape her emotionally damaging life at home and my dad possessed the perfect combination of charm and wit necessary to distract her from her emotional wounds.  Underneath his charm and wit; however, was an anger that would flare up from time to time and remind my mom of the dad she was forced to accept ‘loved her in his own way’, but certainly never expressed it in a manner that made her feel loved or accepted by him.

It was into this environment, sometimes wonderfully loving, other times frighteningly turbulent, that our parents brought seven children, of which I am the second oldest.  For the most part, we grew up in a stable, loving place and had the typical American childhood everyone longs for.

We were also homeschooled.

Much of the driving force behind my mom’s decision to homeschool us, I believe, was wanting to shield us from the horrible experience she had with public school.  Although our family never really talked about it, there was an unspoken understanding that people in general are mean, morally bankrupt, and frightening.  While never outwardly communicated, I tuned in to this message that people do not care about you and will ridicule you, and internalized it so that my self-confidence was (and still is, in many areas) virtually non-existent.

To this day I struggle to believe people in my college classes, on the street, in church, and everywhere else I go could find something to like about me.  Because people just don’t like or accept others.  People were monsters.  They were the unknown, and the unknown was frightening.

Our parents were overprotective of us.  Out of love, of course; but still overprotective to the point of being constrictive.  Even as teenagers, we were prohibited from riding our bikes further than a block away from our house.  This severely limited the number of friends we could have.

I can only remember a handful of times our parents had non-family members over to our house, and we certainly were not allowed to go to others’ houses to play unless they lived only a few houses away.  From this all, the message was clear: people are scary.  Something to be avoided.  I still have high social anxiety to this day because of our mom’s fear of being hurt by others.

One particular incident stands out to me.  My older brother was watching over a couple kids at a summer camp as a counselor for several weeks, and had made several friends (he was always more outgoing than I).  After the first week, one of the female friends he had made at camp returned to her home and sent a friendly email to my brother, who was still at camp.  I remember our mom flipping out to our dad because she thought my brother had a girlfriend.  I read the email myself; it was harmless.  The girl was just being friendly.  Even worse; why was the idea of my older brother (at that time in his teens) having a girlfriend something to freak out over?  Why did this idea deserve such a harsh, negative reaction?  I still do not understand to this day, and yet the message could not have been clearer: people are something we avoid.

To be clear, I am not trying to suggest that all homeschooling families are like this; this is certainly not the case, as I personally know family after family that encouraged their children to have as many friends as possible.  However; in our family, having friends almost always seemed bad.  There were a few exceptions.  A homeschooling family moved in down the street from us when I was a young teenager, and our families became as close as possible without being related by blood.  To this day, the two oldest boys in their family are my best guy friends.  Their family moved away after less than a year in our neighborhood.  A few years later, I met another homeschool family at our church and eventually became good friends with the two oldest girls.  Being friends with girls was new to me, since the only previous female friend I had made attended a homeschool co-op that our family left just a few weeks after I finally started feeling comfortable interacting with her.

Besides unintentionally (I truly believe my parents did nothing out of bad intent) restricting my access to friends for the greater portion of my childhood, several other areas of my life were censored out of a need to please God.  This was most noticeable in the music I was allowed to listen to.

I had no interest in music until our local church offered to pay for one cd for every 20 Westminster Shorter Catechism questions I memorized.  Being a homeschooler with little else to do, I beasted this mental feat.  Every time I recited 20 catechism responses, our mom would drive us to the local bookstore, listen to music samples from the cd’s we wanted, and read printouts of the lyrics.  Almost nothing was Christian enough for her tastes.  Newsboys’ Thrive, with its song ‘It Is You’ and lyrics “holy, holy is our God Almighty/ holy, holy is his name alone” was not good enough.  Relient K’s Anatomy of Tongue and Cheek, with lyrics such as “Never underestimate my Jesus/ You’re telling me that there’s no hope/ I’m telling you you’re wrong” (For the Moments I Feel Faint) was not good enough.

You get the picture.

I used to cry every time we returned from the bookstore with my 10th choice cd; or worse, empty-handed after killing an entire afternoon in the store reviewing lyrics.  The point of mentioning this isn’t to generate pity, or talk bad about my mom who I love very much; I bring this up because I learned several very important lessons through this experience:

1. Persistence

If a cd was shot down, my mom would agree to listen to it the next time we went.  Several times she would cave on the third or fourth listen simply because I kept making her listen to it again.  This was not always the case, as Skillet’s Collide album was shot down no matter how hard I tried to get her to accept it as Christian rock.

2. Self-Motivation

No one was going to get me the album I wanted to listen to unless I put in the hard work, constructed arguments my mom was willing to accept for why I should be allowed to have it (usually revolving around why the lyrics were “Christian” lyrics), and didn’t stop the barrage of arguments until I had won or was shut down completely.  Even when a particular album was shot down, I would pick a similar sounding album and push for that, because I suspected that while she claimed to be judging albums based on lyrical content, her genre preferences were also a significant deciding factor.  In other words, I became a social scientist formulating and testing hypotheses because of this process.  I am currently a first year Master’s student studying forensic psychology, and intend to pursue a Ph.D. in criminology.  The skills I learned as a result of these unpleasant music-judging trips have been invaluable to me throughout my academic journey.

3. There Is Always A Way

After trying for several years to get specific albums and failing despite all my best hypothesis testing and revising, I finally stumbled onto the perfect solution without even intending to.  My parents gave us the opportunity to play music, and after a few failed years of learning piano (I did not appreciate the teacher’s mechanical playing style and wanted to play a specific genre of music she did not let me learn), I took up guitar.  The guitar teacher was amazing in so many ways, the most important of which was he alternated between learning how to play and teaching me how to play the songs I wanted to learn.  For this, it was necessary to bring in a recording of the song for him to play along with and figure out the notes.  At first, I would bring in Christian music my mom had let me get.  Then, because I was embarrassed that the guitar teacher did not know any of these songs, I started bringing in more “secular” songs I had recorded on a cassette tape from the radio.  One day, I got the bright idea to search online to see if I could listen to the songs.  Quite accidentally, I discovered a place to illegally download mp3’s of the any song I ever wanted.  Needless to say, I secretly binged and downloaded hundreds of albums this way.  After years of secret listening to music this way and fearing being found out, I finally broke the silence and reported that I had access to any music I wanted and desired to pay the artists money to actually legally own the cd’s.  After the shock wore off, my mom reasonably agreed that the Christian thing to do was to pay money to own them legally since she couldn’t stop me from listening to them anyway, as long as I didn’t buy any “Eminem.”

One of my pet peeves growing up, and that will still get me fired up when I hear my dad tell my youngest brother this, is the phrase “just stop the foolishness.”  This phrase was the buzzword for enjoying yourself, reveling in the absurd nature of something, or presenting something logically impossible.  In other words, it was the response used to prevent a child from being a child and utilizing their imagination.

Foolishness was a concept derived from the Bible (particularly Proverbs), and foolishness was to be avoided at all costs.  Six year olds laughing at farts was “foolishness”; but it was not “foolishness” when my dad wanted to crack a joke about farts.  It was only foolishness if a child tried to add something on to our father’s joke that our dad did not find amusing.  Then, magically, what was not foolish only a moment ago became foolish.  I know my parents did not intend to link enjoying yourself or being happy with punishment, but they did.  One minute I was laughing and having a good time, the next I was being rebuked for foolishness because I had tried to add something of value to the conversation.

Not only did this make me fearful of being happy; it discouraged me from speaking up, because speaking up can inexplicably lead to being punished.

To be continued.

Into the Real World: Ellen Cook’s Story

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Into the Real World: Ellen Cook’s Story

Ellen Cook is 18 years old and from California.

"Get out of the Christian bubble!"
“Get out of the Christian bubble!”

I feel like my parents were easily swayed into ideas they may not have agreed with. They made the decision to homeschool us when we were driving around our new neighborhood located in the Kern River Valley. They were so convinced because a couple young teens were riding horses with their mother, and they had mentioned what homeschooling was for them. We must have sat in our van on that dirt road for an hour or two. But this conversation resulted in my older sister’s journey into boys and teenage-hood. My 12 year old sister entered into 6 years of homeschool chaos, while me being 8 got to watch and wish that I had a life. My parents thought we could travel around and see historical and educational places in our area — get some hands on learning.

That rarely happened.

I am very lucky though; I was not homeschooled through high school (thank you Jesus). My sister has hated me, in a sense, since the day my parents said they wanted to enroll me in high school.

Something I always noticed in one of my sets of curriculum was little comics. The characters had weird names, like “Happy,” and they implied good morals and obeying God — which is good, I guess. But the one that will always stick out to me is one of a boy, “Pudgy,” earning money and giving it all to the offering in church. It struck me as very strange at 9 or 10 because all I wanted to spend my money on was candy. But now that I know what those homeschool companies are trying to do, it’s very unfair. Sure, giving to the church is not bad. But the money isn’t going directly to God, as implied when I read it.

I see now that the indoctrination is very strong with these Christian homeschool families, but maybe not mine. I know many homeschool parents that raised sin-committing rebels from their pure and Godly homes. Homeschooling did not work for most of the kids I knew. I realized this when they became 18 and had their first girlfriend or boyfriend. Our friends that are boys would come over to swim in our pool, and all the kids would have to cover up their swimsuits as to not attract sexual attention. We were Tweens! My sister and I didn’t know what a penis was!

What exposed me to the world was my best friend, a girl that moved in next door about a year or two after we moved there. She introduced me to Punk Rock, Tiger Beat, MTV (we didn’t have cable), hair dying, cursing, and everything else that makes me who I am today. I am so lucky to have met her, or else I would have been the weird homeschool girl in high school. I would have not survived. We even took her to our home school prom and she almost got us kicked out for sucking the helium out of balloons. All the home school moms freaked out and did not know what to do. It’s on Youtube! We were some rebels back then…

Now that I am older and have experienced more public school than just 3rd grade. I look back at my homeschooling years and I can see it was a manic decision by my parents, and it screwed up one of their children. My dad is bipolar and depressive, so our education was in his indecisive hands and it did not turn out pretty. But really, I am thankful for my short 5 years of homeschooling because I’ve learned that particular society may not be what I want to participate in, and that the Republican Party may not be the best just because they are the Christian party. I’ve learned more than enough about the Civil War, and got to run around outside when it snowed.

But yes, that’s a bit of my story. All I can say for other homeschool kids is find out things for yourself, listen to music besides Worship or Christian, and watch the news — get out of the Christian bubble! I am Catholic now, and I appreciate church now more than ever because I don’t feel judged or like a sinning teenager. I finally feel like going to church isn’t a joke, or mandatory to please my parents. And that is a blessing. But homeschooling never hurt my relationship with God — it was too safe. Getting out into the real world tested my relationship with God, and made it stronger.

We Need Advocates: Philosophical Perspectives’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team34 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-08-23 at 1

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “PhilosophicalPerspectives” is the author’s chosen pseudonym.

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In this series: Part One — We Need Advocates | Part Two — A Tool In Someone Else’s Culture War

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As a kid, I remember seeing national media stories about homeschool families like Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, who beat their daughter to death in 2010, or Banita Jacks, who in 2009 was convicted of murdering her four daughters.

I clearly remember having conversations with my mother about how “those people weren’t really homeschooling” and how our family and friends were getting it right. We talked about how they weren’t really part of any home school community, and their parents were just trying to get away from the responsibility they bore for the abuse they inflicted, by claiming the title “home schoolers.” The home school community distanced itself from these stories, claiming that the abuses of a few “nutjobs” shouldn’t impact the rights of the whole homeschool movement.

It’s been interesting to hear the same lines come up in response to the stories shared on this blog. In comments on other sites, I’ve read many things like, “you could find 30 abused kids in any school system!,” or “these kids’ parents were just crazy. That’s not what home schooling is really like!” It seems like many people invested in the homeschooling movement are reading this blog in the same way my mom read stories like the ones mentioned above — as extreme examples of abuse from people on the far fringes of the homeschool movement.  I’ve read comments that go so far as to dismiss these stories outright. More people, though, lament the suffering they read about, but make comments that distance themselves from the problem. These extreme cases are hard to catch, the sentiment goes, because these families never show up to homeschool groups or 4-H clubs or churches or anywhere we (homeschoolers) might be able to intervene. “These kids were totally isolated! It’s not our fault!” they declare, explicitly or implicitly.

This is misguided.

For many of us who are sharing our stories, our families were not on the fringes of the homeschooling movement — we were at its center. Our parents were the ones running the debate leagues, and founding the AWANA programs. We were the ones winning awards, respect, and acclaim. We are the poster children of the homeschooling movement.

And yet, we suffered serious abuse and neglect, and no one intervened on our behalf.

As a survivor, I started asking why. I was (almost constantly) involved in a myriad of extracurricular activities, and none of the adults in my life intervened in the neglect I experienced. They either didn’t notice, or didn’t care.

This is what isolation looks like in the homeschooling community.

I interacted with many adults outside of the homeschool movement, in many different contexts, and I honestly don’t think any of them had an inkling of what was really going on. Homeschoolers have always been trained to put on our most adult, most mature face to the outside world. This has to with the ways we’ve been socialized and the pressure we face to be walking proof of  the “success” of homeschooling — but that’s another post. Regardless, we’re excellent at being polite and reciting (often eloquently!) the ideas we’ve been taught. We therefore often make a very positive impression on outsiders — I can’t tell you how many times I was told how grown-up, how mature, how insightful I was when I was a tween. Most of the adults outside of the movement were so blown away by my irregularity (and my ability to discuss the classical origins of astronomical nomenclature) that they never asked deeper questions about my education or physical well-being, let alone about the emotional and spiritual abuse that was present in my home.

I also regularly interacted with adults within the homeschool movement, where parents should have been able to notice what was happening — and still, no one spoke up. Many of them didn’t (and still don’t) consider what many of us endured abuse — it’s just part of the process of “training up a child.” Many bought into the same vision of religious indoctrination and corporal punishment. The “us vs. them” mentality was huge, and “them” was often Child Protective Services. I’d still be surprised to hear of one home school parent reporting another. Even when the “moderate” parents didn’t agree with the techniques of the more fundamentalist ones, the “rights of the parent” continuously won out over the rights of the child. This line of reasoning is currently being used by the HSLDA to justify the refusal to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The combination of these factors created a unique culture that fosters and covers up or ignores the abuse and neglect that happens at the center of its community. The case against Sovereign Grace Ministries, an evangelical denomination that promotes homeschooling, is just one example. We’ve experienced it, and we’re hurt. There was a deep sense of community in the homeschool movement, and many of us, as kids, trusted deeply in its people and institutions. Now that I’m an adult reflecting on my experiences, I feel betrayed. The people I trusted perpetuated the systems of indoctrination that harmed me, and facilitated my parents’ neglect.

This is what isolation looks like in the homeschooling community.

The invitation that this blog presents to the homeschooling community is to begin to take abuse, neglect, and indoctrination seriously, and refuse to look the other way. The children of homeschooling need advocates, and our parents aren’t always looking out for our best interest. Neither is the HSLDA.

To be continued.

We Had To Be So Much More Amazing: Samantha Field’s Story

HA Editorial Team23 Comments

Samantha Field blogs at Defeating the Dragons, and she was recently featured in a Christianity Today story entitled, “Finding Faith After Spiritual Indoctrination.”

I’ve been reading the stories Homeschoolers Anonymous has published since it launched, and at first didn’t feel comfortable sharing my own experience with homeschooling, since it was unlike most of what I was reading. But, through reading these stories, it’s helped me come to grips with some of what I went through.

I’d like to start out by clarifying that my experience was fundamentally different– and yet, somehow, eerily the same. I spent most of my childhood in an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) Church, and for that reason we were never part of the larger homeschooling movements — at least not organizationally. We didn’t use PACES, I’d never even heard of ATI until I went to Pensacola Christian College, we never went to any conferences, I didn’t travel in debate. In fact, reading about these stories made me slightly jealous; because of the cult-like environment of the church I was raised in, I never had the opportunity to interact with anyone outside of my church. I had one friend — one — from the time I was 9 until I left for college at 17.

But, until recently, I would have said that my experience with homeschooling was a favorable one. I started studying logic in third grade, I started studying Latin and Greek in fourth grade, I started reading the classics of the literary canon at nine. I skipped fifth grade entirely — fifth and sixth grade in math. I always tested extraordinarily well — I started testing on the graduate level in seventh grade, and I got a nearly-perfect score on the verbal portion of the SAT (I deliberately answered one of the questions “wrong” because I felt that the question was asking for a “liberal” political opinion). When I went to college, I maintained a 4.0 GPA my freshman year, and made the Dean’s List for every semester thereafter. I never needed to study — in fact, attending classes always felt like I was being “spoon fed” my education, when I had grown used to learning everything I needed to know simply from the reading. I went to graduate school and got a Master’s degree in English — and, again, did very well academically.

It took me a long time to realize that the academic excess I experienced had its good and ugly moments. The good was that I was an excellent reader, and I became a fairly decent writer and editor. It also gave me a lot of time to study music, and that paid for my first year in college.

There are a few ugly sides, and the first was the extraordinary amount of pressure I felt academically. I imagine many, if not most, homeschoolers can attest to the unbelievable amount of expectations we had to live up to. We had to be so much more amazing than any other kind of education. My parents were immeasurably proud of my achievements, and they lovingly wanted to “show me off,” but the constant pressure to perform resulted in a sense that the pressure followed me everywhere– even into college. I felt like I was constantly and unceasingly being evaluated by everyone I knew. I became an overachiever — to the point where several of my professors repeatedly had to tell me to calm down, relax, and do less work or I was going to kill myself.

Another facet of how homeschooling failed me was in mathematics, and I think my experience is fairly standard. Both of my parents are incredibly intelligent — my father works in a STEM field, and my mother did very well in math. However, while I was in high school, neither of them had a college education (a sacrifice my mother made, ironically, in order to stay at home and homeschool us) — and I was surrounded by an attitude that women didn’t belong in STEM fields because we’re just not suited for it. Our brains aren’t wired that way. So, I grew up believing that part of my identity of being a “good, godly, Christian woman” was being terrible at math. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy, even though I excelled in geometry and musical theory (which somehow were “artsy” so I was “allowed” to be good at them). When I met my husband, some of our conversations centered on his insistence that I would be good at math if I ever tried — and my insistence that no, I wasn’t. Until, one day, he explained algebra to me on a road trip. And it made perfect sense– so much sense, in fact, that I wondered why it had seemed like complete gibberish before.

And some of the things that get so heavily praised in the homeschooling movement ended up being unhealthy for me in the long run. We were isolated– we called it “being called out” and “separate,” and we laughed at people who asked us about “socialization.” We went to Wal-Mart in the middle of the day, and someone would inevitably ask what I was doing there. I would say that I was homeschooled, and without exception they would ask if I was “special needs.” And then, inevitably, I’d have to mount a defense for homeschooling.

As I’ve moved into my adult life, I’m beginning to see how deep the influences go. While we weren’t involved in any type of official organization, I grew up familiar with the Pearls, the Wilsons, and the Vision Forum. I read Beautiful Girlhood and believed that daughters should stay at home until they’re married. Now, I find it incredibly difficult to interact with people in a group setting, and it has nothing to do with not being familiar with “pop culture” (although that is occasionally a factor). I am completely hopeless at reading people, I don’t understand basic social interactions, I can’t navigate basic things like class discussions — even though I am articulate and outgoing. I’m frequently disabled by self-consciousness and nerves, and find it difficult to find a balance between silence or speaking too much. I don’t know how to do simple things like create boundaries with people.

I’m moving toward healthiness, slowly. It’s difficult, and hard going, but it’s happening. And part of my recovery is recognizing that even though I pretty much had the “ideal” homeschooling experience, it was still unhealthy.

Looking Back At My Fundamentalist Homeschooling Past: Sheldon’s Story

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

The author of this piece writes under the pseudonym Sheldon at his blog, Ramblings of Sheldon. This piece was originally published on Reason Being on December 20, 2012. It is reprinted with Sheldon’s permission. He describes himself as “a former Christian fundamentalist” who “is now a semi-closeted agnostic” that writes about “his fundamentalist past, his beliefs now, and the cult known as the Independent Fundamental Baptist denomination, which his sister was a part of (and he also had some personal experience with).”

Recently, I have begun to start thinking about homeschooling, how I feel about it now, and how it has affected me in my life.

Two things have really gotten me started thinking about this. First, my sister decided to homeschool her children. And second, I read recently an article on the Patheos blog, Love Joy Feminism.

As I have talked about in the past, my sister was once a part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist cult — more specifically, the First Baptist Hammond/Hyles Anderson College complex. This complex was, until this summer, run by the infamous pastor Jack Schaap, who is now awaiting sentencing after a guilty plea on federal sexual abuse charges.

Thankfully, she left that group about 3 or 4 years ago. But she just traded a fundamentalist cult for fundamentalism lite (the Southern Baptist denomination). It’s a vast improvement from where she was, and both she and her kids are happy in this church. But I feel she’s dealing with what Lewis of Commandments of Men, the brilliant anti-cult/anti-fundamentalism blogger, calls the Halfway Houses effect.

Some people, like her, don’t want to give up fundamentalism entirely. They have come from such an extreme cult life background that even other fundamentalist lite groups like the Southern Baptist denomination, etc, feel refreshing. (Which is pretty damn sad when you think about it).

One of the ways she is going through the Halfway Houses effect is the decision to home school. I was just at her house in the Northwest Indiana suburbs of Chicago this past week, and she was showing me the curriculum she was using.

It was the same atrocious Accelerated Christian Education (A.C.E) curriculum we were raised with. I spent my whole school life with it, first in a IFB affiliated private school, then in home school. She spent from about 5th grade to graduation with A.C.E curriculum in that same private school, which is what unfortunately got her introduced to the Independent Fundamental Baptist cult, where she remained until recently.

(If you really want an eye opener, read some of the A.C.E survivor stories at the blog Leaving Fundamentalism, for just how bad A.C.E itself is, and how many of the schools who use it act towards their students).

I knew she had been using the curriculum for a while now, but to actually see those books sitting on her table, it was a mountain of flashbacks, and definitely not in a good way. I thought she would know better, after what she has been through, but I guess it all feels like home to her.

I could go on and on about the problems of fundamentalist home schooling and of the private school culture within those groups, but I think Libby Anne of Love Joy Feminism says it best. Libby Anne was raised up in a home in the Quiverfull movement. Her family’s beliefs were very similar to Independent Fundamental Baptist cult that my sister fell into head first. Like Quiverfull, the IFB also rejects birth control except for in extreme circumstances (such as a future pregnancy putting the wife’s life in danger).

Reading an article from her last week made me think about my current feelings on home schooling.

First of all, do I think home schooling in and of itself is harmful? No.

There are many families who do their best to educate their kids at home while exposing them to the world around them, and encouraging them to keep an open mind. There are even atheist families that home school.

There are many reasonable circumstances that would lead a family to home school their child, from having a child who has a serious physical illness, to having a job that causes a family to move often (such as one parent being a solider). Then there’s always the desire to have one’s children get one on one attention, to help them learn.

However, using homeschooling as a tool to isolate your children from the outside world is wrong. I’ll even go as far as to say it is emotional abuse. Fundamentalist groups deliberately use home schooling this way so that their children are rarely, if ever, exposed to people they don’t agree with politically or religiously, or to people who they feel are “evil” (such as people in the LGBT community).

When someone like this is isolated to such an extent, the basic social skills that most of us learn at a very early age are not developed. I will not say that this was the only cause for the problems that I have now in relating to people. It’s more than likely something I was born with, but this isolation only made far worse.

Not only are social skills impaired, knowing how to deal with normal classroom life is affected, as well as things like changes that come by moving out of home. Libby Anne talks about coming to tears more times than she can remember in her attempts to adjust to living away from home after being in such an isolated environment. At least she had a solid group of people who helped her to work through the stress. In my case, it led to a nervous breakdown.

Simple things that everyone around me knew, such as where the little pop up desk was on the side of the auditorium style seats in most class rooms in that college, (or the fact they even existed), was unfamiliar to me, in so many thousands of ways, and people kept expecting me to know it all, and I didn’t. Just like Libby Anne, I didn’t know how to write a foot note for an academic paper.

All of this, combined with a cultural disconnect from other people, led to a miserable time and downright debilitating depression.  People who have never been through this don’t realize just how much everyday conversation and interactions are based on the culture around us. I love the way Libby Anne talks about this in a post on socialization:

I sometimes wonder if one reason so many home school parents cannot seem to understand the real meaning of the socialization question is that, having been socialized themselves, they cannot imagine what it would be like to not be.

They don’t understand what it feels like to be a foreigner in your own country. They don’t understand what it feels like to not be able to fit in. They don’t understand what it’s like to berobbed of the ability to be normal because they have the ability to be normal. Parents who home school may choose to be different, but their children have no such choice.

When I read this, I reflected on both my family, and all the families that I have encountered that home school, or send their kids to fundamentalist private schools, she’s right. All of them grew up in what could be considered normal families, attending public schools, usually with parents that were either non-Christian or were only casual followers of a religion. What’s even more ironic is that many of them were baby boomers who experienced the decadence of the 1970′s. They have no idea what this kind of isolation does to someone.

This isolation and this culture that is hostile to the outside world and everyone in it will cause two extremes in the people who were raised into it. Either people will be hesitant to leave, because it’s the only life and way of thinking that they know — a perpetual Stockholm syndrome, like my sister is experiencing. Or it will drive people to leave it, like I did.

Most people of younger generations who were raised in this system are fortunately going the same route I did. The hostility towards the outside world is one of the primary reasons why younger generations are leaving fundamentalism at a very fast pace. A 2011 study by Christian polling group Barna researched most of the top reasons listed for young people leaving the churches. They had something to do with their broader rejection of the outside world, and isolation from it (which is the major aim of the fundamentalist home schooling movement). Whether that is their rejection of science, hostility towards outsiders, or hatred of homosexuality, this isolationism is starting to disgust the people raised into it.

I can only hope that this trend continues.

Of Isolation and Community: Jeri Lofland’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

Jeri’s story was originally published on her blog Heresy in the Heartland. It is reprinted with her permission. The first part of Jeri’s contribution to HA is “Generational Observations.”

I took the bus to Willow Hill Elementary for kindergarten and first grade. At recess my friends and I would play hopscotch, jump rope, explore, or make-believe together. Occasionally, they would invite me to their homes to play or for a birthday party. I was active in Sunday School, too. Though I was too shy to say much to them, I knew many adults at church and in my neighborhood. My parents were part of a small fellowship group and the families did lots of things together: picnics, fireworks, a hayride, swimming at the lake.

When my parents became homeschoolers, our social circle tightened. Mom was afraid the state might “take us away” if anyone reported us. One sunny morning she hauled all of us to the grocery store at what seemed like the crack of dawn to get her shopping done before “school hours”. I still played with the kids next door, but only on designated “play days”. We had the same church friends for a while, and I looked up to my Sunday School teachers, but we left our church because some people there were displeasing God. Yes, it was confusing. I rarely attended Sunday School (or youth group) after that, even when we were in churches with other kids my age. Most of my socialization now was with other homeschoolers: sledding parties, picnics, occasional field trips and converging on fields and orchards to glean free produce.

As homeschooling gained popularity, we became less concerned about being put in foster care. But then my parents joined a new group: ATIA. The Advanced Training Institute (of America) was an elite level of membership for followers of Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life Principles (formerly Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts). My parents had attended his seminars for years. Now his homeschooling program offered a way to get the loyal, loving, godly family you always wanted. Financial freedom, stronger character, better health, and fulfilling family relationships included! Plus, all the educational materials, from math to language arts, were based directly on the Bible!

We moved across town that summer, to a farmhouse in the country. My dad started his own business: it was different to have him working from home all day. And we embarked on the new ATI adventure. Our social circled narrowed even more from that point, consisting of church acquaintances (we changed churches every few years) and conservative homeschooling friends. We saw my grandparents twice a year at most; while skeptical of many of our religious quirks, they tried not to rock the boat or criticize my parents to us kids. There were no trusted adults in my life that didn’t defend my parents’ beliefs and lifestyle choices.

We joined a larger evangelical church and my parents were admired for their dedication. With six children now, we could really fill up a pew.  Now in my mid-teens, I longed to make friends but had little in common with my peers there. Many of their activities (movies, concerts, parties, sports, even jobs) were forbidden in my family. There were hardly any other homeschoolers.  I looked forward to ATI conferences where I could meet others my age that dressed, behaved, and thought like I did. A few became penpals and are still friends today.

Later, we moved to even more conservative churches where homeschooling was the norm.  At home, there were babies to change, toddlers to feed, and children to educate; my help was sorely needed, and often appreciated. I had a friend at church, and meeting for lunch together was a rare and special treat.  There were no boyfriends, no dates. St. Paul said we should be content with food and clothing. I had a bed and three meals a day and could earn a little spending money from my dad besides. Now in my 20’s, I tried to use my loneliness to push me closer to God. I tried to mentally prepare for a life of singleness if necessary, while yearning for a soulmate of my own.

I was 22 when I moved out of state to work (unpaid) for one of Gothard’s “ministries”. My social network was limited to other cult members (we attended only churches that had been “approved” by the leadership and shopping outings were on an as-needed basis). Chores at the center were mandatory, as was scripture memory and attendance of daily morning Bible studies. Still, I made new friends from all over the country and savored the chance to live and work with peers.

After six months of volunteering for room and board, the law dictated that the Institute put me on the payroll. With only $13 left in my checking account, I was relieved to hear this! I was a minimum-wage employee for one year, moving from the Oklahoma center to the Indianapolis compound to the “Headquarters” campus in Illinois, working in three different departments before I was summarily fired because Gothard felt my 20-year-old brother threatened his authority. My parents called me late one night to tell me that Bill Gothard wanted them to pick me up the next morning and take me home to Michigan. He didn’t tell me himself, nor did my boss. Being ignorant of life “on the outside”, I had no idea how abnormal this was, but it hurt like hell. I started packing my belongings. My dad arrived at noon, I shook hands with the man I would marry two years later, and we headed “home”.

After a year and a half of full-blown work for the cult, this trip was surreal—like going back in time. I sipped my Arby’s Jamocha shake and tried to sort out what was happening.  I felt discarded, displaced, separated from friends without a chance to say goodbye. For weeks, I cried myself to sleep. I was in a place I did not want to be, and I’d had no say in the decision. In my grief, I found comfort in stroking one of the new barn kittens; it died. My mom miscarried what would have been a 12th baby. We heard that another young man who had also been exiled from the cult had drowned on the Fourth of July. The ATI director left his wife for his secretary. The whole world was going crazy and it was taking me with it.

Over the next year, I started taking more responsibility for my own life. I had my first job interview, worked part-time, visited other church groups, began to consider college courses, and applied for short-term placement with an overseas missions organization (Wycliffe Bible Translators). I spent a summer studying linguistics at the University of North Dakota and meeting all kinds of cool people from around the world. I loved college, even the exams! Away from my parents and the cult for the first time in my life, I bought my first pair of jeans, my first pair of shorts. I went to the movie theater with friends! I had my first sip of wine, my first taste of beer. I explored different churches, and enjoyed music that had once been forbidden. I spent time with guys who intrigued me, and turned down a guy who didn’t. I played my heart out on the piano. When my parents tried to exert control over my [male] friendships from hundreds of miles away, I was conflicted. I cried, but I complied.

In the fall, I flew to the Philippines where I spent ten difficult yet glorious months learning from the best mentors I could have asked for. The Wycliffe base at Nasuli was a humming multi-cultural haven set in a natural paradise. Though I assisted the missionary-linguists in their work, mostly I was being healed. From the security of friends and coworkers who loved and accepted me, I began dissecting my past and daring to think for myself. Tentatively, then with greater confidence, I let myself question the cult. I let go of deeply-embedded fears. I allowed myself to grieve over my experience with the Institute. I saw what a respectful, caring community looked like.

Nasuli was so unlike the churches and training centers I’d been part of. Here, individuality was valued; the group drew strength from diversity of opinion and expression. Instead of pasting a smile on the surface, these men and women spoke honestly of their emotional experience, both positive and negative. Rather than demanding perfection and informing on those who failed to measure up, these people tolerated each other, quirks and all, often making excuses for a neighbor’s idiosyncrasies. And nobody ever minded having fun.

Generational Observations: Jeri Lofland’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team21 Comments

Generational Observations: Jeri Lofland’s Story, Part One

Jeri’s story was originally published on her blog Heresy in the Heartland. It is reprinted with her permission. The second part of Jeri’s contribution to HA is “Of Isolation and Community.”

Someone asked me about the long-term effects of homeschooling vs. public education, and it got me thinking. I won’t consider secular private education in this article, mostly because I don’t have firsthand experience.  I have enjoyed teaching my young children at home, but we have decided to send them to public school while they are still in the elementary grades because of our observations over a generation of homeschooling.

Effects on Society

Certainly homeschooling promotes elitism. Even without religious motivation, announcing that you can get a better education from your mother than from certified degreed professionals has an air of snobbery. Socially, the kids can hardly escape the inference that they are too good (or smart, or rich) to rub shoulders with the inferior proletariat, especially when they are repeatedly told their home experience is superior. Latin for kindergarteners, anyone?

Public school introduces children to others who are like, yet unlike, them at the same time. It broadens their understanding by allow them to work and play alongside real people of other races, other religions, other languages and backgrounds. When conflicts arise, involved parents have an opportunity to encourage cooperation, sensitivity, and compassion, as well as personal boundaries. My children are learning to respect diversity in a way that would be impossible if they only played with kids from their own neighborhood. And they see that excellence is a personal choice independent of circumstances.

Our public school welcomes parental involvement. Teachers are thrilled to have parents volunteer in the classroom and the principal has always had an open door when I stopped in with a question or concern. When I spend an hour helping my daughter’s classmates practice multiplication, I multiply the teacher’s efforts and support the cause of education far beyond my own children. Our school truly belongs to the community and it is what the community makes it.

Government policies and education budgets now affect my children directly, so I have heightened interest in the issues. I better understand what educators do, helping me relate to a much larger group of society. When teachers and professors in my book club begin to discuss particular stresses on public education, I can participate. Rather than supporting divisions based on class and ideology, I can connect differing perspectives to broaden people’s view of the big picture.

Effects on Students

I maintain that it is neither normal nor traditional for boys to spend their days under the tutelage of their mother after they reach double digits. In the days of the pioneer, a boy might grow up isolated and self-taught. He was prepared to explore the frontier, self-reliant and independent. Those are hardly the skills needed by adults today.

It would be interesting to hear from men how they think homeschooling affected them emotionally. My hunch is that all that time at home with Mom often stunted their decision-making and negotiating skills and either increased their susceptibility to manipulation or their ability to manipulate, or both.

Boys–and girls in contemporary society–need to learn goal-setting and negotiating skills. School exposes them to a range of leadership styles and personalities and varied levels of accountability. It helps them build a portfolio of social skills (and coping mechanisms) that can serve them in the work force when they have to deal with cranky managers, lazy teammates, and charting their own professional course.

Even in modern homeschooling, with its drama groups, advanced math co-op classes, and sports teams, families tend to be overly flexible, to lack commitment to schedules, and to make sacrifices for one child at the expense of the others. In spite of its flaws, the school system does allow for a more level playing field that offers individual choice and rewards accordingly.

Effects on Family Dynamics

Family dynamics are the primary reason I decided against long-term homeschooling. Put simply, my daughter appreciates me much more when she doesn’t have to spend all day with me! Though we spend less time together, we use that time more efficiently, deepening our relationship and helping her develop emotionally and socially. Homeschooling strains the parent-child relationship unnecessarily. It is unfair to a teenager for one or two adults to hold the keys to his education and grades as well as his: social life, access to transportation, food choices, access to employment, daily schedule, recreation, healthcare, and moral guidance. This absolute power tends to corrupt parents, or simply exhaust them.

How many moms have “burned out” on homeschooling, devoting themselves to their children’s needs or success while ignoring their own? If she has her own dreams, the teaching parent may resent the inefficiency of spending so many years as a caregiver and educator for a handful of children, when she could be pursuing a satisfying career while sharing the educational responsibility with professionals who chose the job. The early homeschool movement seems to have coincided with an era when technology and a stronger economy had recently reduced the load on stay-at-home moms. Homeschooling may be a healthy alternative to watching soap operas, but it can be a real financial hardship for some parents–contributing to marriage and family stress.

Adolescence is a time for widened horizons, a time to experiment with choices and learn specific cause-and-effect sequences, with the home as a physical and emotional safety net. When teachers reinforce what parents have been telling their kids, the whole family benefits. Feedback at regular intervals gives kids a chance to test different approaches to learning and meeting goals. When they struggle in one area (academics, social relationships, or family issues, for example), they can lean on other networks for support and hopefully build confidence by succeeding in something else.

As the product of homeschooling, and a homeschooling parent myself, I think the benefits of homeschooling are usually overstated. Certainly religious motivations have driven the movement’s growth, but weighing the social and educational results does not convince me that homeschooling prepares people to better thrive in their society.

But What About Socialization?

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on October 10, 2011.

"Socialization matters. It is not a bogeyman or a silly question."
“Socialization matters. It is not a bogeyman or a silly question.”

This is probably the most common question homeschoolers get. As a child, I was well schooled in how to reply to it. “Do you have any idea how many friends I have?” “Segregating children by age group is not a natural form of socialization.” “Socialization is just a code word for peer pressure.”

Today, I read blogs and articles by homeschoolers using these same arguments and insisting that socialization is no problem at all, and I want to scream. More than that, I want to bang my head against the wall.

You see, socialization matters. It is not a bogeyman or a silly question. It is important. And, it is an issue about which I am very passionate.

I arrived at college after being homeschooled through high school. I had had plenty of friends across a variety of age groups. I had been in homeschool co-ops and clubs, including a speech club. I had gone to political events and had spoken with reporters. I was articulate, well spoken, and outgoing. I thought I was socialized. I wasn’t.

The truth is, my first year of college was extremely painful. I had no idea how to interact with people who were different from me. I had no idea how to take criticism. I had no idea how to interact with those around me. I had no idea how to handle myself around large groups of people, or how to act in the ordinary social situations that come up at a large school. I had no idea how to handle someone not liking me. I had no idea how to function in a diverse society. I was incredibly awkward and felt extremely lost, and I cried more than you want to know.

You see, socialization is not about being able to carry on a sentence. Socialization isn’t about being able to make a friend. Socialization is about interacting with people who are different from you. It’s about learning how to deal with the bully or the “mean girl.” It’s about learning how to handle having people not like you. It’s about feeling put down by cliques, but learning to deal with it and surviving. It’s about growing a tough skin. It’s about handling playground politics. It’s about being friends with people who disagree with you.

There is a second issue here too. Homeschooling made me into a cultural misfit. The things the girls I met in college talked about, I didn’t understand. The things they were excited about, I was ignorant of. I experienced – and still experience – a huge cultural disconnection. I’m not saying I wanted to conform or just be a clone of the girls I met in college, but I would have at least liked to understand what made them tick and to have been able to communicate with them on this level. As it was, I couldn’t. I didn’t understand their culture, I had no common experiences with them, I had no basis for communication or identification. I was an outsider looking in.

Wikipedia defines socialization as follows:

Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies. It may provide the individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within their own society; a society develops a culture through a plurality of shared norms, customs, values, traditions, social roles, symbols and languages. Socialization is thus ‘the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained’.

You see, socialization has nothing to do with whether you can make friends or hold a conversation. Socialization is about cultural understanding and cultural knowledge. It’s about having shared experiences and a shared system of symbols and languages. It’s about having things in common with those around you. It’s about a common culture. This is why public schools play such an important role in the socialization of our nation’s young. Public schools pass on our common traditions and disseminate our common culture.

In my experience, homeschoolers who laugh at the socialization question don’t have any idea what socialization actually is. They don’t understand the question, and they therefore bungle their answer. And every time I read another homeschool blog or website laughing off the socialization question, I want to bang my head against a wall.

Now, there are some who would say that, as such, socialization is a bad thing. They would argue that socialization is designed to turn children into robots. The problem with this argument is that socialization is not so much about conformity as about shared meaning and common knowledge. A person doesn’t have to accept every cultural value or live the way culture expects in order to be socialized. Instead, a well socialized individual simply needs to understand these things. Having a common culture and common experiences and traditions doesn’terase our differences, it holds us together as a nation despite our differences.

Similarly, there are those who would argue that segregating children by age is not a good way to socialize. These individuals generally point out that public schools are a recent phenomenon and that children used to be socialized in their families and home communities. But this misses the point. Public schools may be a recent phenomenon, but they are still our reality. I understand that many people wish they could return to the past in some aspect or another, but the reality is that we have to live in and work within the present. Proclaiming that children used to be socialized differently is not going to change the fact that this is how children are socialized today. Wishing for the past does not erase the present.

Interestingly, the people I met in college were not the mindless conformers I had been taught to expect coming out of public schools, not in the least. Rather, they were intelligent, confident, and independent. The made a lie of my parents’ claims that public schools are factories that turn children into robots. It’s simply not true. Public schools don’t rob children of their individuality or dumb them down. Socialization isn’t about enforced conformity or pushing children into molds or turning out robots. Indeed, the friends I made in college, every one of them public schooled, were – and continue to be – inspirations to me. They knew how to handle themselves and they understood how to interact with those around them. The were confident and comfortable, and I envied them.

I sometimes wonder if one reason so many homeschool parents cannot seem to understand the real meaning of the socialization question is that, having been socialized themselves, they cannot imagine what it would be like to not be. They don’t understand what it feels like to be a foreigner in your own country. They don’t understand what it feels like to not be able to fit in. They don’t understand what it’s like to be robbed of the ability to be normal because they have the ability to be normal. Parents who homeschool may choose to be different, but their children have no such choice.

Those who are homeschooling for other reasons other than “sheltering” their children don’t get a free pass here. While their children will likely have an easier time adjusting than I did, they will still almost certainly face many of the same problems. The socialization issue is not specific to homeschoolers who shelter their children, but is, rather, common to all homeschoolers. These other homeschoolers, like their more sheltered counterparts, will also not have to learn to handle playground politics and will certainly not have the common experiences of pep rallies or bad social studies teachers. There is some element of dealing with other people that they will miss and a piece of our common culture they will not experience. And while homeschool parents may not see these things as important, their children, like me, may disagree.

Am I arguing that no one should ever homeschool? Not necessarily. I don’t know every situation, and every family is different. I would not presume to speak for every family. What I am arguing is that parents who homeschool need to take the socialization question seriously rather than laughing it off. They need to be aware of the potential socialization problems their children may face and take steps to mitigate them. Most of all, homeschool parents need to understand what socialization is and why it is important, and they need to be fully aware of what they are doing when they remove their children from the public schools.

Socialization is actually the #1 reason I will be putting my daughter in public school when she turns five. Honest.

Note: If you are a homeschooler and you dislike what you have read here, please don’t get all defensive. I am not trying to judge, simply to share my experiences. I was homeschooled. I have been there. I was not isolated or kept in a closet, I had plenty of friends and was involved in plenty of co-ops, but I was nevertheless not socialized, and I regret that. The fact is, socialization does matter. Rather than getting upset and defensive, please just take my perspective and opinion for what it is.