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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMental illness, ignorance, fear and ultra-conservatism - The Homeschool Apostates
http://prospect.org/article/homeschool-apostates#.UqDB6qPchzE.facebook10 P.M. on a Sunday night in May, Lauren and John,* a young couple in the Washington, D.C., area, started an emergency 14-hour drive to the state where Lauren grew up in a strict fundamentalist household. Earlier that day, Lauren’s younger sister, Jennifer, who had recently graduated from homeschooling high school, had called her in tears: “I need you to get me out of this place.” The day, Jennifer said, had started with another fight with her parents, after she declined to sing hymns in church. Her slight speech impediment made her self-conscious about singing in public, but to her parents, her refusal to sing or recite scripture was more evidence that she wasn’t saved. It didn’t help that she was a vegan animal-rights enthusiast.
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Mixed with the control was a lack of academic supervision. Lauren says she didn’t have a teacher after she was 11; her parents handed her textbooks at the start of a semester and checked her work a few months later. She graded herself, she says, and rarely wrote papers. Nevertheless, Lauren was offered a full-ride scholarship to Patrick Henry College in Virginia, which was founded in 2000 as a destination for fundamentalist homeschoolers. At first her parents refused to let her matriculate, insisting that she spend another year with the family. During that year, Lauren got her first job, but her parents limited the number of hours she could work.
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In Washington, that new support network immediately kicked in. Through an informal group of young women who broke away from fundamentalist families, Lauren had become friends with Hännah Ettinger, who writes “Wine & Marble,” a blog about transitioning out of fundamentalist culture. When Lauren told her the story of Jennifer’s rescue, Ettinger posted a brief account. She asked readers to chip in to defray Jennifer’s costs of starting over: buying a computer, acquiring normal clothes, applying for community college. Within the first day, the blog’s readers donated almost $500. Then a new website, run by another former homeschooler, linked to Ettinger’s appeal, and within a few days, close to $11,000 had been donated.
It was a surprise, but it was hardly a fluke. Jennifer’s rescue coincided with the emergence of a coalition of young former fundamentalists who are coming out publicly, telling their stories, and challenging the Christian homeschooling movement. The website that linked to Jennifer’s story was Homeschoolers Anonymous, launched in March by two homeschool graduates, Ryan Stollar and Nicholas Ducote. Their goal was to show what goes on behind closed doors in some Christian homeschooling families—to share, as one blogger puts it, “the stories we were never allowed to talk about as children.”
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GreenPartyVoter
(72,378 posts)
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)That tells us several things. Humans have an inate idea of right and wrong and these fundies' ideas are finally being exposed as fucking crazy.
LadyHawkAZ
(6,199 posts)Who could have ever predicted that would happen?
Oh wait, just about everyone way back when "Homeschool" first became a popular word. Never mind.
greatlaurel
(2,004 posts)I have some experience in dealing with home schoolers in the area where I live. The children are damaged beyond repair in many cases. Some of the parents are not monsters, but are brainwashed by their churches into isolating their children. Some parents are just too lazy to send the kids to school or pull them out of school when they get investigated for abuse or neglect. Home schooling is a godsend for abusers, sexual predators and crazy parents. Many home schoolers in my area buy their materials from Bob Jones University so they do not get any real academic material. It is all bible based hogwash.
One family has a number of children and the oldest child has a fairly common speech problem that could be easily fixed in our public school with our highly competent speech pathologist. Unfortunately, the child is getting no help, the parents are oblivious to the problem and the younger children all copy the oldest child's speech pattern. They are very difficult to understand when you talk to the children. It is heartbreaking.
Most of these children are isolated and kept from learning about their world and are whisked away from any group that may challenge their belief system. An example would be the 4H books for dog projects discuss the evolution and domestication of dogs. The home schoolers tend not to buy the books or have the kids participate in the knowledge based projects, so they do not have to learn real facts.
We are going to have a large number of children in the next 5 to 10 years who are nearly illiterate due to this home schooling craze. Another big problem for the public schools are when the parents end up sending the kids to school, the children are so far behind it destroys the testing percentages and the schools' rankings drop and then loose funding.
What a mess.
mike_c
(36,281 posts)My ex and I are both atheists. We home schooled our daughter (who now holds advanced degrees in cognitive science and adult education and works as a librarian for the NHS in England) because she requested it. She not only excelled academically, but also in personal development and athletics-- all self motivated. She easily maintained eligibility for a full ride HOPE scholarship throughout her undergrad studies. Sorry, I could go on-- I'm obviously quite proud of her.
Home schooling was apparently right for her. It had nothing to do with religious indoctrination, although a happy side effect of a good education seems to be rejection of magical thinking, so she's no more religiously inclined than her parents.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)to break from this damaging phenomenon. It strikes close to home for me. I have a brother who's family is deeply entrenched in the home school, no vaccination, separation from government, apocalypse, weapons stash to fend off the mark of the beast and all that mind wasting delusion. Arranged marriages, seclusion... There has to be a way out and it has to be from within. It is good news. Hope it travels and frees a lot of young people from bondage to enlightenment.
YarnAddict
(1,850 posts)Most, if not all, were pretty conservative Christians, although not nearly as extreme as the families in this article. They utilized a wide variety of teaching methods--from John Holt's theories to purchased curricula. Nearly all became healthy, happy, productive, mature adults. The most extreme exception was the daughter of a certified teacher.
One of my friends started homeschooling her daughters when one was having serious learning problems. The teacher was mystified, stating that as parents my friend and her husband were doing all the right things. The girls were withdrawn from public school, and my friend did some exploration into alternative learning styles, and found that her daughter simply didn't learn in the conventional way. She employed different methods, can't remember exactly what they were, but the girl ended up being happier, less stressed, healthier, etc.
This was in the early to mid-90's in Michigan, which at the time was very homeschooling unfriendly. My friend was in touch with HSLDA, to help her cope with things like social workers and school counselors parking in her driveway, and "observing" her and her children through the windows. Creepy beyond belief.
Anyway, I support homeschooling, and believe that these examples in this article are far from the norm.
lindysalsagal
(20,692 posts)home schooled children get some exposure to public school kids, so they can reach out for help.