Saturday, December 07, 2013

How Fundamentalism took over the homeschooling movement in America.

Courtesy of American Prospect:  

Homeschooling didn’t begin as a fundamentalist movement. In the 1960s, liberal author and educator John Holt advocated a child-directed form of learning that became “unschooling”—homeschooling without a fixed curriculum. The concept was picked up in the 1970s by education researcher Raymond Moore, a Seventh-Day Adventist, who argued that schooling children too early—before fourth grade—was developmentally harmful. Moore’s message came at a time when many conservative Christians were looking for alternatives to public schools. Moore’s work reached a massive audience when Focus on the Family founder and Christian parenting icon James Dobson invited him onto his radio show for the first time in 1982. Dobson would become the most persuasive champion of homeschooling, encouraging followers to withdraw their children from public schools to escape a “godless and immoral curriculum.” For conservative Christian parents, endorsements didn’t come any stronger than that. 

Over the next two decades, homeschooling boomed. Today, perhaps as many as two million children are homeschooled. (An accurate count is difficult to conduct, because many homeschoolers are not required to register with their states.) Homeschooling families come from varied backgrounds—there are secular liberals as well as Christians, along with an increasing number of Muslims and African Americans—but researchers estimate that between two-thirds and three-fourths are fundamentalists. 

Among Moore and Dobson’s listeners during that landmark broadcast was a pair of young lawyers, Michael Farris and Michael Smith, who the following year would found the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). With Moore’s imprimatur and Dobson’s backing, Farris and Smith started out defending homeschooling families at a time when the practice was effectively illegal in 30 states. As Christians withdrew their children from public school, often without requesting permission, truancy charges resulted. The HSLDA used them as test cases, challenging school districts and state laws in court while lobbying state legislators to establish a legal right to homeschool. By 1993, just ten years after the association’s founding, homeschooling was legal in all 50 states. 

What many lawmakers and parents failed to recognize were the extremist roots of fundamentalist homeschooling. The movement’s other patriarch was R.J. Rushdoony, founder of the radical theology of Christian Reconstructionism, which aims to turn the United States into an Old Testament theocracy, complete with stonings for children who strike their parents. Rushdoony, who argued that democracy was “heresy” and Southern slavery was “benevolent,” was too extreme for most conservative Christians, but he inspired a generation of religious-right leaders including Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. He also provided expert testimony in early cases brought by the HSLDA. Rushdoony saw homeschooling as not just providing the biblical model for education but also a way to bleed the secular state dry. 

With support from national leaders, Christian homeschoolers established state-level groups across the country and took over the infrastructure of the movement. Today, when parents indicate an interest in homeschooling, they find themselves on the mailing lists of fundamentalist catalogs. When they go to state homeschooling conventions to browse curriculum options, they hear keynote speeches about biblical gender roles and creationism and find that textbooks are sold alongside ideological manifestos on modest dressing, proper Christian “courtship,” and the concept of “stay-at-home daughters” who forsake college to remain with their families until marriage. 

HSLDA is now one of the most powerful Christian-right groups in the country, with nearly 85,000 dues-paying members who send annual checks of $120. The group publicizes a steady stream of stories about persecuted homeschoolers and distributes tip sheets about what to do if social workers come knocking. Thanks to the group’s lawsuits and lobbying, though, that doesn’t happen often. Homeschooling now exists in a virtual legal void; parents have near-total authority over what their children learn and how they are disciplined. Not only are parents in 26 states not required to have their children tested but in 11 states, they don’t have to inform local schools when they’re withdrawing them. The states that require testing and registration often offer religious exemptions. 

The emphasis on discipline has given rise to a cottage industry promoting harsh parenting techniques as godly. Books like To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl promise that parents can snuff out rebellious behavior with a spanking regimen that starts when infants are a few months old. The Pearls claim to have sold nearly 700,000 copies of their book, most through bulk orders from church and homeschooling groups. The combination of those disciplinary techniques with unregulated homeschooling has spawned a growing number of horror stories now being circulated by the ex-homeschoolers—including that of Calista Springer, a 16-year-old in Michigan who died in a house fire while tied to her bed after her parents removed her from public school, or Hana Williams, an Ethiopian adoptee whose Washington state parents were convicted in September of killing her with starvation and abuse in a Pearl-style system. Materials from HSLDA were found in the home of Williams’s parents. 

I know from experience that there are few topics that elicit as an emotional response from my readers as that of homeschooling.  However I am also compelled to bring these facts to your attention, because this is how many Fundamentalists are undermining education in this country, isolating their children from their communities, and keeping social services from discovering harmful activities happening within their homes.

I have had some contact with children who were home schooled in the past, and most of them were seemingly quite well adjusted. Others exhibited symptoms of isolation, paranoia, and social awkwardness.

However the fact remains that there is a very purposeful agenda within the home school community, and it is NOT to better educate our children.

25 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:35 AM

    The Palins are a fine example of the results of fundy home schooling. Seeing more and more of that family and what they all became is great. Their jobs and how none of them can demonstrate any stability. Especially since they can't stop lying and all the denial they teach and breed. They are a text book case for the scary life threatening disease we can see so clearly now.

    Here are more people that are blinded by denial and will do nothing for her except gush their repetious sugary sweet brainwashed moosepoops.

    https://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin/photos_stream

    I hope she post more of those people that look so happy and say they love her while they are killing her softly. The world is full of passive aggressive and now so much hate (albeit hidden when blind) from her very own base. She asks for it. It couldn't happen to a more suitable person.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Anonymous12:53 PM

      The Palins are not fundy home schoolers. They are not home schoolers at all. They take the easiest way out possible and that means dropping out of school and sliding through with a weak GED.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous6:24 AM

    I know it's bad, but when I hear of someone home-schooling their children, I sort of assume it is to hide child abuse, incest or whack religious beliefs. So I guess the Xians won.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:40 AM

      Then you are an idiot. When someone doesn't put a two year old in daycare, do you think that? But I guess I understand, when I hear of someone putting a kid in Catholic school, I think "pedophile supplying parent."

      Delete
    2. It's a common mistake. It's a convenient and comfortable place for many people to believe THOSE people abuse and neglect their children. Usually these folks also think every stranger is out to hurt them and their family and school is fantastic. Stereotypes are so much fun, you don't have to think.

      Delete
  3. Anonymous6:25 AM

    Sarah Palin don't take no shit from no one. She did those heathen educators one better. No traditional school for the Palin kids! No home schooling for the Palin kids! No one's gonna tell Sarah Palin's kids how to get educated! Cuz WORDS MATTER!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous7:23 AM

    OT - WHO is the 9/10 year old boy on Levi Johnston's FB page?

    Is that Trenton? or an old picture of Levi?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:51 AM

      link?

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:18 AM

      Levi's FB is so nice and authentic. The contrast of Bristol FB and blog is something else. Interesting how each handled "Thanksgiving". I guess Bristol was on her fling in Los Angeles, doing a boytoy and dragging Tripp along on the ride. Chuck Heath Jr.'s Thanksgiving was the winner LOL!!!!!

      Delete
  5. Anonymous8:08 AM

    There's a popular religious right blogger in my town. He's home schooled. His posts about homeschooling are full of amusing Onion-esque irony. His words say home schooling is the only way to edumacate your children, but his grammar says home schooling does not work! He apparently aspires to be a serious writer, which is just sad, actually.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Anonymous8:41 AM

      And the same thing could be said about a large percentage of public system schooled students. Your point?

      Delete
    2. Anonymous10:39 AM

      I know a fundy homeschool family and their 11-year old reads at a second grade level. He's the type of kid that needs professional attention yet the mother/teacher lavishes her learning time on the older son who is much more intelligent and is easier to "teach" while the younger one languishes in his bad behavior and bubble of ignorance, which ends up frustrating him thus making him even more ill behaved. Oh, and there are three more behind them being "home schooled".

      Delete
  6. Anonymous8:33 AM

    However the fact remains that there is a very purposeful agenda within the CHRISTIANIST home school community, and it is NOT to better educate our children.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous9:45 AM

      Absolutely. Speaking as an atheist, liberal former-homeschooling parent (kiddo's in college now), it's very, very hard to socialize a child in the homeschooling community unless you want to be surrounded by fundagelical freaks. We ended up mostly socializing with public schooled kids because they lived in the real world, saw real movies, did real things.

      Delete
  7. Anonymous8:35 AM

    It's the Christian version of a Madrasa. Hey, what will it be like for these kids in 20yrs? Uneducated and a minority in a country that is becoming more and more secular and progressive. Maybe if liberals push back enough we can get all of them to emigrate to Uganda and create their own version of Christian Zionism...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous9:43 AM

    Better than any public school

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Anonymous12:51 PM

      Our public schools are outstanding.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12:57 PM

      I'd put my kids' public schools up against any private school any day.

      And our school can't just kick out kids who have behavior problems or special needs like so many private schools.

      Delete
  9. Anonymous10:35 AM

    Great, generations of fundy "educated" homeschool kids who can't attend real colleges and enter the workforce. Just what America needs, more welfare and food stamp recipients. All because these children were kept too ignorant to ever fight for themselves in the real world. Thanks fundy parents. I hope that you don't mind your ill educated spawn living in your basement forever.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous11:03 AM

    Well, my kid first went to Montessori schools through sixth grade, and then SHE chose home schooling/unschooling. We did not follow any curriculum, followed her interests (which were VERY diverse...), but made sure she at least knew what they were doing in public school (she had friends her age who were in public school, and I would borrow their books at the beginning of the school year to check them out).
    At age twelve, she wrote the manual for the biology department at a science center, and she was teaching college age kids about veterinary care. At age fifteen, she decided to try college. Now, she is a successful MBA graduate, and holds a great position in an international firm.
    We did the John Holts unschooling, NO religious freakishness (she did, however, study MANY religions during her unschooling time, and can talk about religion with the best of them.)
    She is a very, very well-rounded person.

    Just wanted to put this out there as a contrast to the religious freaks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous12:50 PM

      Great for you and your daughter (I mean it). She is obviously exceptional. Unfortunately, the vast majority of kids who are home schooled (and I'm not just talking about those home schooled for religious reasons), don't do nearly as well.

      Delete
    2. Facts? Links to support your contention that "the vast majority of kids who are home schooled don't do nearly as well"? Nah, don't need those I guess.
      I also homeschooled, no formal education until college and they are both doing well.
      I wish folks would get off the stereotypes. If you have questions, ask.

      Delete
  11. I don't care what the percentages are. If you homeschool your kid, I'm assuming you are a right wing fundamentalist nut job.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous3:30 PM

    Here in central PA we homeschool (I my kids, my daughter hers) so that they LEARN evolution, diversity, art, history, language, culture, etc. Our schools are mainly run by fundy school board members and more than 3/4 the teachers, students & parents are fundies. The only escape is... progressive homeschoolers. And they are GROWING. And, their kids are socialized and travel and other cool shit, to boot.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous3:33 PM

    PS for socialization - our kids took and taught figure skating, played on an ice hockey team, volunteered at a living history museum teaching classes, took college course from age 14, went o 4H camp, served on a National Geographic Committee, etc. There are LOTS of ways to socialize. Adults do it every day.

    ReplyDelete

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