Fringe of the fringe
May 30, 2023 7:56 PM Subscribe
Aaron and Christina had never attended school when they were children. Until a few days earlier, when Round Hill Elementary held a back-to-school open house, they had rarely set foot inside a school building. Both had been raised to believe that public schools were tools of a demonic social order, government “indoctrination camps” devoted to the propagation of lies and the subversion of Christian families. Christina and Aaron were supposed to advance the banner of that movement, instilling its codes in their children through the same forms of corporal punishment once inflicted upon them. Yet instead, along with many others of their age and upbringing, they had walked away.
It's interesting but remember that they live in a very prosperous area with a very good public school system, so it was easy to lose that religion. I wonder what happens to those who don't want to provide a harsh Christian home education but also have more secular doubts about the local public schools.
posted by kingdead at 8:39 PM on May 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 8:39 PM on May 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
ngaiotonga, I'm quite interested in what you might say, and I hope this turns out to be a safe enough space for you.
Meanwhile, my story is that I went to a relatively good public school-- which is to say that I had a lot of training in enduring boredom and killing time and I was bullied, though almost entirely emotionally. At age 70, I'm far from fully recovered from it. Home schooling would have been worse, but wasn't considered.
Home schooling covers a huge range. Some of it is much better than conventional schooling, some of it is horribly abusive.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:45 PM on May 30, 2023 [26 favorites]
Meanwhile, my story is that I went to a relatively good public school-- which is to say that I had a lot of training in enduring boredom and killing time and I was bullied, though almost entirely emotionally. At age 70, I'm far from fully recovered from it. Home schooling would have been worse, but wasn't considered.
Home schooling covers a huge range. Some of it is much better than conventional schooling, some of it is horribly abusive.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:45 PM on May 30, 2023 [26 favorites]
He knew that the term parents in the movement casually used for discipline, “spankings,” did not capture the childhood terror of being struck several times a week — sometimes more, sometimes less — with what he describes as a shortened broomstick for disobeying commands or failing to pay attention to his schoolwork.
Had to tap out here. This kind of shrieking, several minutes’ protracted beating with short, wooden instruments multiples times daily for the most minute or sometimes entirely illusory of failings was completely normal in the evangelical community I came up in. Every single dude I went to (private, religious) grade school with had the same outcome as they grew older: escalation to punches, then beatings and chokings into unconsciousness on a semi-regular basis and then finally getting big enough to hit back, whereupon in every single case - mine included - their parents immediately called the cops on them from the first returned blow.
Fucking cowards.
Required family counseling -> “she said it’s our fault for disciplining you! We’re getting a Christian family counselor” -> “the problem is your unwillingness to accept your parents’ god-ordained authority …and also demonic possession” (Yes, seriously. Actual quote. This woman was, somehow, licensed by the state of New York for family counseling and social work).
It’s worth mentioning this is not strictly a parents-on-children thing. Generally speaking any adult (preferably male) in the congregation is expected to immediately enforce similarly with children outside their family. It’s pretty rare, but there’s always a few male teachers (and one absolutely terrifying woman, IME), or a few male youth group leaders just itching to branch out from hitting their own kids. Every kid learned to avoid them pretty quickly, to the limited extent possible.
This wasn’t in backwoods Alabama but in the wealthiest suburbs in upstate New York - a 50/50 mix of upper middle class and multi-million-dollar mansions (in the early 90s) about a 15-minute commute from the various government/capital buildings in Albany. Lots of doctors, lawyers, and professionals employed by the state. Thousands upon thousands of kids (religious private schools in any metro region share bus systems, usually state-funded or subsidized, so the above reflects norms within the evangelical communities of several school districts).
I fucked off to college and immediately became an atheist. My family refused to allow my younger brother to attend the public high school I went to as a direct result (my sister was nearly finished and well on her way to becoming a missionary in any event). Home schooling was considered but in the end the sprawling joint church/private religious grade school we all attended spun up its own high school just in time.
Much of the extended family and a lot of the other families I grew up with are homeschooling now. Within that community it’s generally reserved for when the private religious schools aren’t considered religious enough, so all the more terrifying that it’s become much more popular. I know I wasn’t the only one who came out of all that with deep bitterness regarding the physical abuse, so I have some hope that at least a couple of the smaller immediate families in the clan or maybe some of my friends growing up are free of all this shit. A small hope.
And of course, when I said some negative things about homeschooling elsewhere on this site I was told that public schooling was worse and that I was promoting dangerous rhetoric. It’s true my numbers weren’t very good - my off-the-cuff “in my experience 90% of the time” was wrong - the two studies I could find both suggested it was in the neighborhood of 70%.
The only right number would be 0%. These are the rocks under which all kinds of hideous shit festers. Whatever its utility in other cultures, this is bedrock foundation of the christofascist hate pipeline.
posted by Ryvar at 9:27 PM on May 30, 2023 [142 favorites]
Had to tap out here. This kind of shrieking, several minutes’ protracted beating with short, wooden instruments multiples times daily for the most minute or sometimes entirely illusory of failings was completely normal in the evangelical community I came up in. Every single dude I went to (private, religious) grade school with had the same outcome as they grew older: escalation to punches, then beatings and chokings into unconsciousness on a semi-regular basis and then finally getting big enough to hit back, whereupon in every single case - mine included - their parents immediately called the cops on them from the first returned blow.
Fucking cowards.
Required family counseling -> “she said it’s our fault for disciplining you! We’re getting a Christian family counselor” -> “the problem is your unwillingness to accept your parents’ god-ordained authority …and also demonic possession” (Yes, seriously. Actual quote. This woman was, somehow, licensed by the state of New York for family counseling and social work).
It’s worth mentioning this is not strictly a parents-on-children thing. Generally speaking any adult (preferably male) in the congregation is expected to immediately enforce similarly with children outside their family. It’s pretty rare, but there’s always a few male teachers (and one absolutely terrifying woman, IME), or a few male youth group leaders just itching to branch out from hitting their own kids. Every kid learned to avoid them pretty quickly, to the limited extent possible.
This wasn’t in backwoods Alabama but in the wealthiest suburbs in upstate New York - a 50/50 mix of upper middle class and multi-million-dollar mansions (in the early 90s) about a 15-minute commute from the various government/capital buildings in Albany. Lots of doctors, lawyers, and professionals employed by the state. Thousands upon thousands of kids (religious private schools in any metro region share bus systems, usually state-funded or subsidized, so the above reflects norms within the evangelical communities of several school districts).
I fucked off to college and immediately became an atheist. My family refused to allow my younger brother to attend the public high school I went to as a direct result (my sister was nearly finished and well on her way to becoming a missionary in any event). Home schooling was considered but in the end the sprawling joint church/private religious grade school we all attended spun up its own high school just in time.
Much of the extended family and a lot of the other families I grew up with are homeschooling now. Within that community it’s generally reserved for when the private religious schools aren’t considered religious enough, so all the more terrifying that it’s become much more popular. I know I wasn’t the only one who came out of all that with deep bitterness regarding the physical abuse, so I have some hope that at least a couple of the smaller immediate families in the clan or maybe some of my friends growing up are free of all this shit. A small hope.
And of course, when I said some negative things about homeschooling elsewhere on this site I was told that public schooling was worse and that I was promoting dangerous rhetoric. It’s true my numbers weren’t very good - my off-the-cuff “in my experience 90% of the time” was wrong - the two studies I could find both suggested it was in the neighborhood of 70%.
The only right number would be 0%. These are the rocks under which all kinds of hideous shit festers. Whatever its utility in other cultures, this is bedrock foundation of the christofascist hate pipeline.
posted by Ryvar at 9:27 PM on May 30, 2023 [142 favorites]
I was in a fundamentalist Christian school up through 8th grade run by the church we attended. It was pretty small -- 20 or 30 kids at first, maybe, ranging from elementary school through high school. At it's highest attendance there may have been 50 or 60. Many of the other children in the church were home schooled, but they mostly used the same educational materials we did in their much more isolated environment. The school maintained the same philosophy of physical abuse, meted out by the church's pastor and assistant pastor. All of the language around "chastisement" in this article is acutely familiar: being a traumatized, neurodivergent child frequently mapped to "willful disobedience" according to someone, be they a stepfather or pastor.
Reading that familiar, twisted terminology for child abuse really just ... I probably shouldn't have read this article. The school part of the church closed some time ago. The church is still there. I shouldn't have looked it up online. Everyone in leadership now was there then -- they stayed and rose through the ranks. The pastor from my childhood is dead. The assistant pastor moved on to a different church. He spoke at my mother's funeral (she got back in touch with him a few years earlier, and it's what she would have wanted) put his arm around me and introduced himself as an old friend of mine to someone else who was there. My best friend was there with me; she could see my rage.
Anyway, much of the education was the same. At the time we generally held that the universe was 5 to 7 thousand years old. That dinosaurs were either on the ark or hoaxes buried by the devil to lead us astray. I very specifically remember realizing in a high school history class that the extent of my knowledge of the Vietnam War was a single paragraph that had something to do with stamping out godless communism.
I wasn't expecting to think about any of this today. I'm going to stop and make dinner now.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:33 PM on May 30, 2023 [67 favorites]
Reading that familiar, twisted terminology for child abuse really just ... I probably shouldn't have read this article. The school part of the church closed some time ago. The church is still there. I shouldn't have looked it up online. Everyone in leadership now was there then -- they stayed and rose through the ranks. The pastor from my childhood is dead. The assistant pastor moved on to a different church. He spoke at my mother's funeral (she got back in touch with him a few years earlier, and it's what she would have wanted) put his arm around me and introduced himself as an old friend of mine to someone else who was there. My best friend was there with me; she could see my rage.
Anyway, much of the education was the same. At the time we generally held that the universe was 5 to 7 thousand years old. That dinosaurs were either on the ark or hoaxes buried by the devil to lead us astray. I very specifically remember realizing in a high school history class that the extent of my knowledge of the Vietnam War was a single paragraph that had something to do with stamping out godless communism.
I wasn't expecting to think about any of this today. I'm going to stop and make dinner now.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:33 PM on May 30, 2023 [67 favorites]
Same. And same, just one of the larger ones (~300 kids in K-8th). Hugs.
posted by Ryvar at 9:38 PM on May 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Ryvar at 9:38 PM on May 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
My wife and I (mainly my wife) homeschooled our kids for the first couple of years (our eldest started public school in fourth grade). Unlike so many others, we had no objection to the content of public school, but our memories were mostly of being bored and being corrected for working too far ahead or too creatively. Our only objective in homeschooling was to give the best education we possibly could.
We eventually stopped for a couple of reasons.
One reason was that while the kids were way above grade level in knowledge such as history and understanding of the natural world, we struggled with teaching skills like reading and math.
The other reason was that it was almost impossible to find (for lack of a better term) normal people in the homeschooling community. We managed to avoid the kinds of conservative fundamentalists that are so prevalent, but constantly ran into other cults like the Waldorf adherents who shunned us when they visited and saw plastic toys in the house (the horror!).
In a lot of ways, I think we were doing the right thing for our kids, but every other family we encountered was probably damaging their children in one way or another.
Even though we had a positive experience with our kids (if not other families), I'd be fine if homeschooling were removed as an option.
posted by Ickster at 10:17 PM on May 30, 2023 [46 favorites]
We eventually stopped for a couple of reasons.
One reason was that while the kids were way above grade level in knowledge such as history and understanding of the natural world, we struggled with teaching skills like reading and math.
The other reason was that it was almost impossible to find (for lack of a better term) normal people in the homeschooling community. We managed to avoid the kinds of conservative fundamentalists that are so prevalent, but constantly ran into other cults like the Waldorf adherents who shunned us when they visited and saw plastic toys in the house (the horror!).
In a lot of ways, I think we were doing the right thing for our kids, but every other family we encountered was probably damaging their children in one way or another.
Even though we had a positive experience with our kids (if not other families), I'd be fine if homeschooling were removed as an option.
posted by Ickster at 10:17 PM on May 30, 2023 [46 favorites]
I read the article this morning and have been thinking about it all day: so much to comment but I'll keep it short and light. I support all school types (ok, maybe not charters but homeschooling, yes!) That said, I'm so glad the parents were brave enough to try public schools and I'm so happy it's been a positive experience. I especially like the family photos and how happy their daughter looks at school! Public schools have been so vilified lately that many people seem to have forgotten that the whole point of schools is to help families, namely work together with parents as a team for their child's success. I hope other parents in a similar situation who have been hesitant to try their local school read this article and consider it! My comment is all Pollyannaish; I know there is so much more to it but as a public schoolteacher in their region, the happy end warms my heart.
posted by smorgasbord at 10:18 PM on May 30, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by smorgasbord at 10:18 PM on May 30, 2023 [20 favorites]
> In a lot of ways, I think we were doing the right thing for our kids, but every other family we encountered was probably damaging their children in one way or another.
Ickster, I want to gently push back on this comment. All homeschooling parents think that. All of the ones I've met, without exception, including the objectively weird and abusive ones, think that they are doing right by their kids and it's the other homeschoolers who are weird and/or abusive. I hope you're right that it was the right thing for your kids, but that's kind of up to your kids to decide.
posted by ngaiotonga at 10:29 PM on May 30, 2023 [41 favorites]
Ickster, I want to gently push back on this comment. All homeschooling parents think that. All of the ones I've met, without exception, including the objectively weird and abusive ones, think that they are doing right by their kids and it's the other homeschoolers who are weird and/or abusive. I hope you're right that it was the right thing for your kids, but that's kind of up to your kids to decide.
posted by ngaiotonga at 10:29 PM on May 30, 2023 [41 favorites]
The Pearls advocate hitting children with tree branches, belts and other “instruments of love” to instill obedience, and recommend that toddlers who take slowly to potty training be washed outdoors with cold water from a garden hose. Their book advocates “training sessions” in which infants, as soon as they are old enough to crawl, are placed near a desired object and repeatedly struck with a switch if they disobey commands not to touch it.
How are these authors and every single parent who followed their advice not in prison for the rest of their lives?
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:39 PM on May 30, 2023 [56 favorites]
How are these authors and every single parent who followed their advice not in prison for the rest of their lives?
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:39 PM on May 30, 2023 [56 favorites]
White privilege. Seriously.
posted by Ryvar at 10:44 PM on May 30, 2023 [38 favorites]
posted by Ryvar at 10:44 PM on May 30, 2023 [38 favorites]
This kind of shrieking, several minutes’ protracted beating with short, wooden instruments multiples times daily for the most minute or sometimes entirely illusory of failings was completely normal in the evangelical community I came up in.
It doesn't excuse the fascism, etc., but I sometimes do wonder how much of the present death cult-ism is fundamentally a trauma response. The yearning to feel, however briefly and unbelievably, the favor of an unstable authority figure, as demonstrated by his abusing someone else. I've watched this play out in my own extended family, and it's been ugly.
posted by praemunire at 10:49 PM on May 30, 2023 [73 favorites]
It doesn't excuse the fascism, etc., but I sometimes do wonder how much of the present death cult-ism is fundamentally a trauma response. The yearning to feel, however briefly and unbelievably, the favor of an unstable authority figure, as demonstrated by his abusing someone else. I've watched this play out in my own extended family, and it's been ugly.
posted by praemunire at 10:49 PM on May 30, 2023 [73 favorites]
It doesn't excuse the fascism, etc., but I sometimes do wonder how much of the present death cult-ism is fundamentally a trauma response.
I agree. In this country, every aspect of the "Christian" homeschooling practice described in the article would be illegal, and the children would be treated as traumatic victims. (I'm not saying all here is good, from there on, things may get dark rapidly). But yes, The generally fearful and authoritarian approach to life is a very common and natural reaction after childhood trauma.
posted by mumimor at 11:03 PM on May 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
I agree. In this country, every aspect of the "Christian" homeschooling practice described in the article would be illegal, and the children would be treated as traumatic victims. (I'm not saying all here is good, from there on, things may get dark rapidly). But yes, The generally fearful and authoritarian approach to life is a very common and natural reaction after childhood trauma.
posted by mumimor at 11:03 PM on May 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
This kind of story makes me think about my own upbringing in a subculture like this, which was, surprisingly, pretty boring. I got spanked by my father exactly once, and it was very halfhearted come to think of it, because maybe I was an absurdly easygoing child in some ways? My parents were in Evangelical churches, but it feels like it was in name only. My Dad goes to churches like that to this day, but I feel like he's still an all-talk kind of church-goer.
It is weird. I expect he sees it as a moral failing, but honestly it's exactly the kind of thing that causes me to love him, even though he definitely has his faults. I kind of hope there really is a Heaven, and he gets in, not because he adhered to that kind of dogma, but because he rejected it in his own way.
posted by JHarris at 11:19 PM on May 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
It is weird. I expect he sees it as a moral failing, but honestly it's exactly the kind of thing that causes me to love him, even though he definitely has his faults. I kind of hope there really is a Heaven, and he gets in, not because he adhered to that kind of dogma, but because he rejected it in his own way.
posted by JHarris at 11:19 PM on May 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
Okay, here goes nothing. Disclaimers: I'm in New Zealand and I'm under 30 so if my references seem a bit off to you, I'm young and foreign, don't @ me. I'll try to avoid including observations about 'raised by 2 late diagnosed neurodivergent people' and 'yeah parents are Christians who are considered conservative here' (for reference, New Zealand's mainstream right-wing party is slightly left of US Democrats, so bear that in mind) and 'am almost certainly neurodivergent myself' and focus on stuff that was definitely the homeschooling.
My experience of homeschooling wasn't an abusive hellscape, though I was aware of people who did have that experience. My parents are both educated professionals who had the vague plan that their kids would go to uni too, so we were pretty well insulated from unschooling, but, of course, knew people who did that too. And ACE. I knew American-style fundies but they were unusual. We were homeschooled because we moved house a lot when I was little, mostly from one low-decile school zone to another, changing schools multiple times a year would have sucked, and unzoned private schools were economically unviable for that many kids.
My parents did have copies of most of the Pearl books and others in that genre; I read them more than Mum did. They never really applied the books at all, so yay?
Above Rubies was around, I read those too (let's be real, I read everything, I was reading unaccompanied at four and devoured books like a starving vacuum cleaner thereafter) and a lot of what they had to say was in hindsight both outrageous and damaging. Mum skimmed them but disagreed with a lot, as I only found out a few months ago - that was kind of a revelation because I'd always been under the impression she agreed with or at least condoned every book in the house (she policed my library books to exclude Star Trek and Marvel from the premises, so the notion wasn't that far off).
A lot of the holes were in random normal-people stuff that 'everybody knows'. Because if Mum or Dad didn't know it, or didn't think to tell me it, I just didn't know, generally. F'rex, I was nine before I learned it wasn't acceptable to smack people on the butt to get them to move out the way. Nobody thought to mention that until a (regular-schooled) girl took me aside at an after-school community event and explained 'good touch and bad touch' with more sensitivity than most people several times her age would have had. I think about her a lot.
I've been non-consensually struck..like four times to my memory. Parents didn't like it but knew the books said to spank your kids so for major misbehavior they'd scold very calmly and do a single token smack. I wouldn't class it as violence, but after meeting Good-touch-bad-touch Girl I really hated it. Mostly I just did as I was told and things worked out. Friends had 'the stick' which was a piece of broomstick and got used less than once a week in a household of six kids. New Zealand's anti-smacking legislation made 0 difference to any homeschoolers I knew, because a) it wasn't for us, it was to eliminate the 'oh just discipline' defense when a kid was found beaten to death as happened and happens more often than it should, and b) most kids were raised to be scared of CYFS taking them away so wouldn't ever have mentioned being spanked even if asked directly.
Academically I did fine, it was a bit of a meandering path and I got to uni about a year later than many regular-school kids my age, but I don't regret that; for one thing I was overseas (Dad's job; he took us all along because it was a three-year contract) and for another I didn't know anyone anyway so not hanging out with my school leavers class was no big deal. I was largely self-taught on STEM because Mum didn't know and Dad didn't have time so it was like 'here is a large stack of books and there is the library, go learn'. Solid grades at uni, mostly hung out with the LARP misfits because they were weird too. STEM degree and masters, so everyone expects me to be a bit off-piste and I can hide the homeschool quirks behind the scientist quirks.
At the moment the main impact on my life has been that I have random knowledge gaps (the phases of the moon aren't earth's shadow falling on it, I learned last week, and most of the songs in Moulin Rouge are covers, I learned last year) and there are topics I carefully don't have an opinion on because I inherited my Mum's opinion and later found out it was kinda screwy, so I'm recalibrating. F'rex, Mum was/is ardently Zionist (we're not Jewish) and I got a lot of heavily pro-Israel stuff as a kid, and a lot of equating Jewishness with Israel... and some (in hindsight objectively gross) gentile-Christians-cosplaying-Jews stuff that I'm not proud of. I'm avoiding I/P discussions until I have time to gather data and make my own opinion.
So far I've fairly well kicked homophobia (being queer myself has helped, but I used to be really awful), young-earth creationism, Biblical literalism, and a lot of gender essentialism. I'm still working on transphobia. I'm a lot more lefty than my parents but interestingly still Christian. Mum was and is surprisingly feminist, certainly more so than most of my friends parents (particularly my ex's parents who paid for their sons to go to college but not their daughters, and kicked her out when they found out she was gay and struggling with her mental health, which, what the frick.)
In conclusion, homeschooling worked well for me and my less social siblings, slightly less well for my more social siblings, and I have no idea if I would have done better in school but I can't change it now. Please try not to be dicks about my parents, I love them a lot and they did pretty good overall.
posted by ngaiotonga at 12:00 AM on May 31, 2023 [52 favorites]
My experience of homeschooling wasn't an abusive hellscape, though I was aware of people who did have that experience. My parents are both educated professionals who had the vague plan that their kids would go to uni too, so we were pretty well insulated from unschooling, but, of course, knew people who did that too. And ACE. I knew American-style fundies but they were unusual. We were homeschooled because we moved house a lot when I was little, mostly from one low-decile school zone to another, changing schools multiple times a year would have sucked, and unzoned private schools were economically unviable for that many kids.
My parents did have copies of most of the Pearl books and others in that genre; I read them more than Mum did. They never really applied the books at all, so yay?
Above Rubies was around, I read those too (let's be real, I read everything, I was reading unaccompanied at four and devoured books like a starving vacuum cleaner thereafter) and a lot of what they had to say was in hindsight both outrageous and damaging. Mum skimmed them but disagreed with a lot, as I only found out a few months ago - that was kind of a revelation because I'd always been under the impression she agreed with or at least condoned every book in the house (she policed my library books to exclude Star Trek and Marvel from the premises, so the notion wasn't that far off).
A lot of the holes were in random normal-people stuff that 'everybody knows'. Because if Mum or Dad didn't know it, or didn't think to tell me it, I just didn't know, generally. F'rex, I was nine before I learned it wasn't acceptable to smack people on the butt to get them to move out the way. Nobody thought to mention that until a (regular-schooled) girl took me aside at an after-school community event and explained 'good touch and bad touch' with more sensitivity than most people several times her age would have had. I think about her a lot.
I've been non-consensually struck..like four times to my memory. Parents didn't like it but knew the books said to spank your kids so for major misbehavior they'd scold very calmly and do a single token smack. I wouldn't class it as violence, but after meeting Good-touch-bad-touch Girl I really hated it. Mostly I just did as I was told and things worked out. Friends had 'the stick' which was a piece of broomstick and got used less than once a week in a household of six kids. New Zealand's anti-smacking legislation made 0 difference to any homeschoolers I knew, because a) it wasn't for us, it was to eliminate the 'oh just discipline' defense when a kid was found beaten to death as happened and happens more often than it should, and b) most kids were raised to be scared of CYFS taking them away so wouldn't ever have mentioned being spanked even if asked directly.
Academically I did fine, it was a bit of a meandering path and I got to uni about a year later than many regular-school kids my age, but I don't regret that; for one thing I was overseas (Dad's job; he took us all along because it was a three-year contract) and for another I didn't know anyone anyway so not hanging out with my school leavers class was no big deal. I was largely self-taught on STEM because Mum didn't know and Dad didn't have time so it was like 'here is a large stack of books and there is the library, go learn'. Solid grades at uni, mostly hung out with the LARP misfits because they were weird too. STEM degree and masters, so everyone expects me to be a bit off-piste and I can hide the homeschool quirks behind the scientist quirks.
At the moment the main impact on my life has been that I have random knowledge gaps (the phases of the moon aren't earth's shadow falling on it, I learned last week, and most of the songs in Moulin Rouge are covers, I learned last year) and there are topics I carefully don't have an opinion on because I inherited my Mum's opinion and later found out it was kinda screwy, so I'm recalibrating. F'rex, Mum was/is ardently Zionist (we're not Jewish) and I got a lot of heavily pro-Israel stuff as a kid, and a lot of equating Jewishness with Israel... and some (in hindsight objectively gross) gentile-Christians-cosplaying-Jews stuff that I'm not proud of. I'm avoiding I/P discussions until I have time to gather data and make my own opinion.
So far I've fairly well kicked homophobia (being queer myself has helped, but I used to be really awful), young-earth creationism, Biblical literalism, and a lot of gender essentialism. I'm still working on transphobia. I'm a lot more lefty than my parents but interestingly still Christian. Mum was and is surprisingly feminist, certainly more so than most of my friends parents (particularly my ex's parents who paid for their sons to go to college but not their daughters, and kicked her out when they found out she was gay and struggling with her mental health, which, what the frick.)
In conclusion, homeschooling worked well for me and my less social siblings, slightly less well for my more social siblings, and I have no idea if I would have done better in school but I can't change it now. Please try not to be dicks about my parents, I love them a lot and they did pretty good overall.
posted by ngaiotonga at 12:00 AM on May 31, 2023 [52 favorites]
Ryvar, The Great Big Mulp, jesus fucking christ.
posted by bendy at 12:12 AM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by bendy at 12:12 AM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm a child advocate, survivor and have a degree in children's law. I started a hedge fund to protect abused children's money and the first people who were pissed and eager to talk were (the bad kind of it) homeschooled kids and adoptees. So much hidden abuse when there isn't a resource group so the kids have access to other families and ideas.
posted by lextex at 12:21 AM on May 31, 2023 [34 favorites]
posted by lextex at 12:21 AM on May 31, 2023 [34 favorites]
and most of the songs in Moulin Rouge are covers, I learned last year
I'm so sorry you had to be exposed to Moulin Rouge.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:23 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
I'm so sorry you had to be exposed to Moulin Rouge.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:23 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
I hope you're right that it was the right thing for your kids, but that's kind of up to your kids to decide.
They're all in their 20s and the two who remember it do so fondly. They know school was good, but know that they lost some freedom to explore.
posted by Ickster at 12:25 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
They're all in their 20s and the two who remember it do so fondly. They know school was good, but know that they lost some freedom to explore.
posted by Ickster at 12:25 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Huh. As someone who grew up in the fringe of the fringe of the fringe in a cult that viewed even Christian Schools as evil and part of the system and everything that is wrong with the world, I read this with interest.
We were taught a cobbled together curriculum of heavily edited Christian teaching materials and the rambling writings of our founder by elders in the cult. There was no schooling after the age of 13 as high school-level subjects were beyond the teaching abilities of the grownups, much less university, which was considered the alter to the temple of Moloch (really) and a portal to hell.
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 12:31 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
We were taught a cobbled together curriculum of heavily edited Christian teaching materials and the rambling writings of our founder by elders in the cult. There was no schooling after the age of 13 as high school-level subjects were beyond the teaching abilities of the grownups, much less university, which was considered the alter to the temple of Moloch (really) and a portal to hell.
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 12:31 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
I read this article this afternoon and was impressed by the Beall’s journey to overcome their upbringings and escape. I’ve met several people in the last decade who’ve left one church or another and it always amazes me how the churches have established and enforced such ridiculously illogical beliefs. It’s true that the spiritual aspect of religion leaves a lot of wiggle room in the facts about deities or responsibilities or sin, but the logic around something as fundamental as child abuse doesn’t fit into any gray area as far as I’m concerned. I was so pleased when the husband contemplated a time when he ‘should’ “spank’ his son and said, “I’ll just skip that part.”
posted by bendy at 12:48 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by bendy at 12:48 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
Mainstream school needs to offer way more diversity for different kids to fill what non-cult homeschoolers need, individual attention, flexible schedules and support for kids with a range of conflicting needs. I am super super lucky that my current homeschooling kid's current school is willing to have her mix up tuition, self-paced learning, homeschool with me and occasional classroom time to create a solution for her, but it took a lot of paperwork and meetings to get here. Reading this, I am reminded to be glad there's so much oversight.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:11 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:11 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
praemunire , Alice Miller's _For Your Own Good_, is about how cruelty to children led to Hitler and Hitler's Germany. I don't know how well the theory has held up.
There was a fad in Germany for advice to parents saying to break the child's will, starting at six months-- the ideal, enforced by fear of disobedient children, was to have children who were completely compliant to all commands from the parents and who didn't resist any punishment, so matter how harsh.
As I recall, this was all completely secular.
It was my first exposure to the idea that advice to parents might be completely made up.
Hitler's step-father went with this advice, and so did a lot of parents from that generation. So they found the idea of authoritarian leadership very plausible.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:26 AM on May 31, 2023 [9 favorites]
There was a fad in Germany for advice to parents saying to break the child's will, starting at six months-- the ideal, enforced by fear of disobedient children, was to have children who were completely compliant to all commands from the parents and who didn't resist any punishment, so matter how harsh.
As I recall, this was all completely secular.
It was my first exposure to the idea that advice to parents might be completely made up.
Hitler's step-father went with this advice, and so did a lot of parents from that generation. So they found the idea of authoritarian leadership very plausible.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:26 AM on May 31, 2023 [9 favorites]
Their book advocates “training sessions” in which infants, as soon as they are old enough to crawl, are placed near a desired object and repeatedly struck with a switch if they disobey commands not to touch it.I had to stop reading the article when I got to this. It's child abuse, plain and simple. Anyone who does this deserves to be in jail and their children raised in an environment where they're not beaten on a regular basis.
posted by tommasz at 5:42 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
I just want to chime in here, because threads about the horror of homeschooling often forget how awful public schooling can be. I was bullied for years. My parents tried to stop it by talking to the schools/teachers multiple times. Eventually I learned help wasn’t coming and stopped telling them because I didn’t want them to worry. Ended up with severe depression and anxiety as an adult (partly genetic, but clearly also partly this). I was also constantly bored. (Turns out I’m neurodivergent.). If homeschooling, or even distance learning, had been an option, I’d have been ecstatic. Which is why every time homeschooling comes up, I argue for stricter regulations so we know kids are learning some basic facts about reality and, y’know, not being abused. HSLDA is the primary reason those laws don’t exist, and they need to be stopped, but that doesn’t mean we need to get rid of this option. I’d never leave a kid to the wilds of public schools. When you put people (even very young people) in a position where they have no power, they create hierarchies so they can have power over someone else powerless. Never really had social problems in other spaces (camp, etc.), even as the fat weird kid, so I’m pretty sure it’s the authoritarianism-lite of a school situation that does it. If you think schools aren’t authoritarian: How long would you stay at a job where you needed permission to pee?
posted by vim876 at 5:54 AM on May 31, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by vim876 at 5:54 AM on May 31, 2023 [22 favorites]
growing up in the south this all, despite being horrible, sounds pretty par for the course. it’s still legal to beat children in *public school* in many states. nobody can tell you what any of it has to do with christianity but i learned at a young age the more church going, the more likely they hit their children.
posted by dis_integration at 6:07 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 6:07 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
The only parents I know who have been successful with homeschooling were themselves trained educators with experience teaching, access to resources, and compatible work schedules (they are almost all college professors).
Homeschooling is extremely hard work, and extremely difficult even for parents with the best of intentions. It would be nice if public schools could provide support, but they're already overburdened and underfunded. They also can't provide assistance and oversight to the non-religious homeschoolers without also giving it to the religious ones, and that's definitely something they don't want to do.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:13 AM on May 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
Homeschooling is extremely hard work, and extremely difficult even for parents with the best of intentions. It would be nice if public schools could provide support, but they're already overburdened and underfunded. They also can't provide assistance and oversight to the non-religious homeschoolers without also giving it to the religious ones, and that's definitely something they don't want to do.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:13 AM on May 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
vim876, I'm so sorry. When I started public school there was still a strap on the wall for the "bad boys" (girls got the ruler instead.) Just so you know, while there are still bullying issues and school is bad for some people, in my kids' school board it's against the regulations to withhold trips to the bathroom, so there has been some improvement.
Anyways, I came in to say that I'm not really a fan of homeschooling for a lot of reasons, informed by anecdata in my family...but I support it as an option, provided there's some accountability and oversight.
That said, it's the fundamentalist Christianity and the child abuse that is the problem, not homeschooling. I was sent "To Train Up A Child" by a family member and it was horrific.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:14 AM on May 31, 2023 [9 favorites]
Anyways, I came in to say that I'm not really a fan of homeschooling for a lot of reasons, informed by anecdata in my family...but I support it as an option, provided there's some accountability and oversight.
That said, it's the fundamentalist Christianity and the child abuse that is the problem, not homeschooling. I was sent "To Train Up A Child" by a family member and it was horrific.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:14 AM on May 31, 2023 [9 favorites]
how cruelty to children led to Hitler and Hitler's Germany. I don't know how well the theory has held up.
There was a fad in Germany for advice to parents saying to break the child's will, starting at six months
Everything I experienced as laid out in my comment above - and this in no way excuses it - was according to all living witnesses a pale shadow of what my old man received. My late grandfather’s childhood? Nazi Germany, the Hitlerjugend, allied civilian bombing campaign, and then (and from what he said this was actually far more traumatic) the Russian occupation of East Germany.
And in their defense: both my grandparents raised their children and grandchildren (we were much more a communal, clan structure than is typical for Americans) to vehemently hate fascism and racism, anti-Semitism in particular. They at least got that much right.
But this shit was present in both sides of the extended family. It was present in the families of every kid at my church/school (same building, same Board of Elders).
So yeah, I do see a kind of ideological throughline here, but it’s clearly not what’s in any meaningful sense responsible for how widespread it is in the US. If I had to point the finger? The “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” mindset produces a frustration that links up with white supremacist cultural frustration. The lie that skin color alone should entitle people to a degree of privilege, and not seeing that reflected in their own lives because they aren’t rich and this is US capitalism. From those foundations: anger, the roots of US police culture, the American brand of evangelical fundamentalism, and Fox News/Trump.
And as my grandmother who also grew up in Hitler’s Germany will tell you: there’s a lot of similarity to the Nazis there as well.
posted by Ryvar at 6:20 AM on May 31, 2023 [13 favorites]
There was a fad in Germany for advice to parents saying to break the child's will, starting at six months
Everything I experienced as laid out in my comment above - and this in no way excuses it - was according to all living witnesses a pale shadow of what my old man received. My late grandfather’s childhood? Nazi Germany, the Hitlerjugend, allied civilian bombing campaign, and then (and from what he said this was actually far more traumatic) the Russian occupation of East Germany.
And in their defense: both my grandparents raised their children and grandchildren (we were much more a communal, clan structure than is typical for Americans) to vehemently hate fascism and racism, anti-Semitism in particular. They at least got that much right.
But this shit was present in both sides of the extended family. It was present in the families of every kid at my church/school (same building, same Board of Elders).
So yeah, I do see a kind of ideological throughline here, but it’s clearly not what’s in any meaningful sense responsible for how widespread it is in the US. If I had to point the finger? The “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” mindset produces a frustration that links up with white supremacist cultural frustration. The lie that skin color alone should entitle people to a degree of privilege, and not seeing that reflected in their own lives because they aren’t rich and this is US capitalism. From those foundations: anger, the roots of US police culture, the American brand of evangelical fundamentalism, and Fox News/Trump.
And as my grandmother who also grew up in Hitler’s Germany will tell you: there’s a lot of similarity to the Nazis there as well.
posted by Ryvar at 6:20 AM on May 31, 2023 [13 favorites]
I was so pleased when the husband contemplated a time when he ‘should’ “spank’ his son and said, “I’ll just skip that part.”
and
There was a fad in Germany for advice to parents saying to break the child's will, starting at six months-- the ideal, enforced by fear of disobedient children, was to have children who were completely compliant to all commands from the parents and who didn't resist any punishment, so matter how harsh.
My ex was German, and when our child was a baby with almost no language, he once set out to smack her because of something I don't even remember at the dinner table. I caught his wrist and informed him that if he even touched her, he would never, ever see her again.
Just to say that de-nazification didn't end that mindset, at all. But strict anti-child abuse laws here did. And, not to defend him, but I feel that he and his parents and siblings had no idea about how to communicate non-verbally with babies and toddlers without violence. Unfortunately, abuse breeds abuse.
That said, my own parents and stepparents were very conservative and brought up with the concept that physical punishment was necessary, but like many mentioned above felt uncomfortable with it. I don't remember ever being smacked by my dad.
On preview: waves at Ryvar...
posted by mumimor at 6:30 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
and
There was a fad in Germany for advice to parents saying to break the child's will, starting at six months-- the ideal, enforced by fear of disobedient children, was to have children who were completely compliant to all commands from the parents and who didn't resist any punishment, so matter how harsh.
My ex was German, and when our child was a baby with almost no language, he once set out to smack her because of something I don't even remember at the dinner table. I caught his wrist and informed him that if he even touched her, he would never, ever see her again.
Just to say that de-nazification didn't end that mindset, at all. But strict anti-child abuse laws here did. And, not to defend him, but I feel that he and his parents and siblings had no idea about how to communicate non-verbally with babies and toddlers without violence. Unfortunately, abuse breeds abuse.
That said, my own parents and stepparents were very conservative and brought up with the concept that physical punishment was necessary, but like many mentioned above felt uncomfortable with it. I don't remember ever being smacked by my dad.
On preview: waves at Ryvar...
posted by mumimor at 6:30 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
When my son started public school in 2008 in Union County, North Carolina, corporal punishment was still legal and practiced there. The local newspaper did a study and found out that, surprise surprise, it was disproportionately used on Black children and children with disabilities. The school board banned it not too long after that, against some shockingly bitter opposition. Some people are just desperate to beat kids.
posted by Daily Alice at 6:40 AM on May 31, 2023 [26 favorites]
posted by Daily Alice at 6:40 AM on May 31, 2023 [26 favorites]
No, I don't think the German history with advice leading to abusive parents has a direct connection to the American version, just that there's a structural similarity.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:42 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:42 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Everything I experienced as laid out in my comment above - and this in no way excuses it - was according to all living witnesses a pale shadow of what my old man received.
I always want to be cautious with sweeping historical generalizations, but I genuinely believe that the latter half of the twentieth century may be the first time in Western history that there has been a widespread (though hardly all-encompassing) rejection of the idea that it is acceptable to physically discipline your kids, especially in a serious or regular/non-emergency way. I don't love everything about stereotypical 21st-century Western parenting, but I think we're running an important demonstration here.
posted by praemunire at 7:35 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
I always want to be cautious with sweeping historical generalizations, but I genuinely believe that the latter half of the twentieth century may be the first time in Western history that there has been a widespread (though hardly all-encompassing) rejection of the idea that it is acceptable to physically discipline your kids, especially in a serious or regular/non-emergency way. I don't love everything about stereotypical 21st-century Western parenting, but I think we're running an important demonstration here.
posted by praemunire at 7:35 AM on May 31, 2023 [16 favorites]
How long would you stay at a job where you needed permission to pee?
Uhhh. Not meaning to derail but...most people actually spend their entire lives in some version of that job?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:40 AM on May 31, 2023 [29 favorites]
Uhhh. Not meaning to derail but...most people actually spend their entire lives in some version of that job?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:40 AM on May 31, 2023 [29 favorites]
the latter half of the twentieth century may be the first time in Western history that there has been a widespread (though hardly all-encompassing) rejection of the idea that it is acceptable to physically discipline your kids
While I certainly agree with the essence of your comment, I wonder if it is really the case in practice. I wonder if the majority ever "disciplined" their children historically. If you have to write creeds about something, it is probably not normal. So while we have a lot of (mostly religious) literature about discipline in education that might well be because normal people didn't see it as a thing. Because I am at the very last end of corporeal punishment in this country and that was in my early teens, my memories are vague. But I felt it was all about Christian fundamentalists and drunk people.
posted by mumimor at 8:44 AM on May 31, 2023
While I certainly agree with the essence of your comment, I wonder if it is really the case in practice. I wonder if the majority ever "disciplined" their children historically. If you have to write creeds about something, it is probably not normal. So while we have a lot of (mostly religious) literature about discipline in education that might well be because normal people didn't see it as a thing. Because I am at the very last end of corporeal punishment in this country and that was in my early teens, my memories are vague. But I felt it was all about Christian fundamentalists and drunk people.
posted by mumimor at 8:44 AM on May 31, 2023
Just to say that de-nazification didn't end that mindset, at all. But strict anti-child abuse laws here did. And, not to defend him, but I feel that he and his parents and siblings had no idea about how to communicate non-verbally with babies and toddlers without violence. Unfortunately, abuse breeds abuse.
Let's be a little careful with sweeping generalizations, yes. I know several Gen X German parents who are exemplary and would not harm a hair on their children's head.
I agree with praemunire that the widespread rejection of physical violence as a way to discipline children is pretty recent in the West.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:44 AM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
Let's be a little careful with sweeping generalizations, yes. I know several Gen X German parents who are exemplary and would not harm a hair on their children's head.
I agree with praemunire that the widespread rejection of physical violence as a way to discipline children is pretty recent in the West.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:44 AM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
When my son started public school in 2008 in Union County, North Carolina, corporal punishment was still legal and practiced there. The local newspaper did a study and found out that, surprise surprise, it was disproportionately used on Black children and children with disabilities. The school board banned it not too long after that, against some shockingly bitter opposition. Some people are just desperate to beat kids.
In the late-90s, my elementary school had a permission slip to allow beating (uh, disciplining?) kids. My parents didn't sign it, but I still remember the one time someone got physically punished in front of the class. I still feel some kind of way about it; it was really harrowing. As an adult, I'm actually more freaked out about the kind of adult who signs up to dole out physical punishments like that.
I was glued to every word of that article. I grew up in a place/time where it felt like everyone was a "born again" Christian. Even though I went to public school, I would occasionally meet home schooled kids socially. All (95%+?) of the homeschooled kids were of the extremely Christian variety, but most were really nice. It's reassuring to read that a parent with that background looked seriously at what he learned, starting with "beat your kid," and decided to take a pass on it. I hope some of the people I knew in my youth ended up like this couple.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:56 AM on May 31, 2023 [9 favorites]
In the late-90s, my elementary school had a permission slip to allow beating (uh, disciplining?) kids. My parents didn't sign it, but I still remember the one time someone got physically punished in front of the class. I still feel some kind of way about it; it was really harrowing. As an adult, I'm actually more freaked out about the kind of adult who signs up to dole out physical punishments like that.
I was glued to every word of that article. I grew up in a place/time where it felt like everyone was a "born again" Christian. Even though I went to public school, I would occasionally meet home schooled kids socially. All (95%+?) of the homeschooled kids were of the extremely Christian variety, but most were really nice. It's reassuring to read that a parent with that background looked seriously at what he learned, starting with "beat your kid," and decided to take a pass on it. I hope some of the people I knew in my youth ended up like this couple.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:56 AM on May 31, 2023 [9 favorites]
All homeschooling parents think that. All of the ones I've met, without exception, including the objectively weird and abusive ones, think that they are doing right by their kids and it's the other homeschoolers who are weird and/or abusive.
And every charter school parent I've met, even the non-religious ones, have a downright evangelical left-behind sort of view of the traditional public school system. Whether charter schools or homeschooling, it's amazing how fast using alternative education options can morph into a zero-sum game where you begin to think of yourself as one of the elect few who made the right decision and everyone else is just a sheeple sending their kids to the sheeple factory.
But then again, that's education. Getting your kids the best education means they'll be better prepared to beat other kids at getting accepted to the best colleges which will mean access to the best careers. It really is the fucking Hunger Games.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:56 AM on May 31, 2023 [12 favorites]
And every charter school parent I've met, even the non-religious ones, have a downright evangelical left-behind sort of view of the traditional public school system. Whether charter schools or homeschooling, it's amazing how fast using alternative education options can morph into a zero-sum game where you begin to think of yourself as one of the elect few who made the right decision and everyone else is just a sheeple sending their kids to the sheeple factory.
But then again, that's education. Getting your kids the best education means they'll be better prepared to beat other kids at getting accepted to the best colleges which will mean access to the best careers. It really is the fucking Hunger Games.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:56 AM on May 31, 2023 [12 favorites]
> The only parents I know who have been successful with homeschooling were themselves trained educators with experience teaching, access to resources, and compatible work schedules (they are almost all college professors).
This matches my experience. My homeschooling was suggested to my parents by the one gifted teacher in the backwater place I grew up. The other homeschoolers we encountered would have been better off back in the schools, sad as they were. Virginia did enforce a basic standard, though: every couple of years homeschooled kids had to come in and pass standardized tests to show that they were at grade level. If they didn't pass, back to school they went.
In my case...well, how many people learned to scan Latin epic poetry from their Cambridge trained father while sitting on the deck of their house the same man had built in the Appalachian mountains? Same one who taught me physics and calculus. My mother taught me French, Italian, Latin, and art history, and how to write. I'm the tiny fraction of a percent for whom homeschooling was amazing, but I still think that we would be better off with massively more funding for US schools and largely removing homeschooling.
posted by madhadron at 9:13 AM on May 31, 2023 [19 favorites]
This matches my experience. My homeschooling was suggested to my parents by the one gifted teacher in the backwater place I grew up. The other homeschoolers we encountered would have been better off back in the schools, sad as they were. Virginia did enforce a basic standard, though: every couple of years homeschooled kids had to come in and pass standardized tests to show that they were at grade level. If they didn't pass, back to school they went.
In my case...well, how many people learned to scan Latin epic poetry from their Cambridge trained father while sitting on the deck of their house the same man had built in the Appalachian mountains? Same one who taught me physics and calculus. My mother taught me French, Italian, Latin, and art history, and how to write. I'm the tiny fraction of a percent for whom homeschooling was amazing, but I still think that we would be better off with massively more funding for US schools and largely removing homeschooling.
posted by madhadron at 9:13 AM on May 31, 2023 [19 favorites]
I used to work at a tiny gem and mineral museum in Asheville, NC. Homeschooling groups would regularly come in; they were always depressing but the one I remember best is the one with older kids, like, in the mid to late teens. The homeschool mom in charge could not do the simple math to figure out the admission fees. As in, you have 12 people at $4 each and 5 people at $6 each, how much is that? She got completely confused and called over a teenager to help. He laboriously figured it out while I was standing there in shock. I have never forgotten it. My fourth grader, who was by no means a math whiz, could have done it more quickly and this woman was teaching?
I was already on the ban the Christian homeschools or at the very damn least police them camp - I think it was the field trip where all the little girls were wearing long calico dresses that did me in - but that was the final straw for me.
I know people who homeschooled their children and did a great job. I have seen wonderful homeschooling groups and I don't care: this should be illegal or extremely rare and carefully monitored. The abuse is massive and mind boggling. I have been an educator; I know the public schools are often a hot mess. But at least there is some diversity and the possibility that a child will meet someone who says, your mom breaks wooden spoons on your butt every day? That's not okay.
My tiny daughter's pediatrician gave me that horrible manual of child abuse Dare to Discipline book when she was about 16 months old in 1985. "She has a strong spirit," he said, "You'll have to break that." I never went back; I was so horrified. I wish I'd reported him but I was very young and didn't even think in those terms. When I worked at the used bookstore many years later I threw all the copies of that book - and the rest of the Christian beat your children nearly to death parenting oeuvre; there's a lot of them - away.
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:34 AM on May 31, 2023 [67 favorites]
I was already on the ban the Christian homeschools or at the very damn least police them camp - I think it was the field trip where all the little girls were wearing long calico dresses that did me in - but that was the final straw for me.
I know people who homeschooled their children and did a great job. I have seen wonderful homeschooling groups and I don't care: this should be illegal or extremely rare and carefully monitored. The abuse is massive and mind boggling. I have been an educator; I know the public schools are often a hot mess. But at least there is some diversity and the possibility that a child will meet someone who says, your mom breaks wooden spoons on your butt every day? That's not okay.
My tiny daughter's pediatrician gave me that horrible manual of child abuse Dare to Discipline book when she was about 16 months old in 1985. "She has a strong spirit," he said, "You'll have to break that." I never went back; I was so horrified. I wish I'd reported him but I was very young and didn't even think in those terms. When I worked at the used bookstore many years later I threw all the copies of that book - and the rest of the Christian beat your children nearly to death parenting oeuvre; there's a lot of them - away.
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:34 AM on May 31, 2023 [67 favorites]
…Dare to Discipline…
When I worked at the used bookstore many years later I threw all the copies of that book - and the rest of the Christian beat your children nearly to death parenting oeuvre; there's a lot of them - away.
That’s the one. For me and a lot of my Xennial / elder Millenial peers, at least. Every friend’s home I went to had a copy on the shelf, alongside all the other James Dobson / Focus on the Family shit.
I am convinced my childhood best friend John’s suicide was - more than anything else - a direct result of that book.
Thank you for doing that.
posted by Ryvar at 9:55 AM on May 31, 2023 [35 favorites]
When I worked at the used bookstore many years later I threw all the copies of that book - and the rest of the Christian beat your children nearly to death parenting oeuvre; there's a lot of them - away.
That’s the one. For me and a lot of my Xennial / elder Millenial peers, at least. Every friend’s home I went to had a copy on the shelf, alongside all the other James Dobson / Focus on the Family shit.
I am convinced my childhood best friend John’s suicide was - more than anything else - a direct result of that book.
Thank you for doing that.
posted by Ryvar at 9:55 AM on May 31, 2023 [35 favorites]
“People who think the public schools are indoctrinating don’t know what indoctrination is. We were indoctrinated,” Aaron says. “It’s not even comparable.”Grandma always said, you judge others by yourself.
Much of the extended family and a lot of the other families I grew up with are homeschooling now.
Yeah, the religious primary school I attended closed a while ago, because the families it served have all started homeschooling. It's cheaper to just buy the curriculum, which can then be re-used on younger kids.
Mainstream school needs to offer way more diversity for different kids to fill what non-cult homeschoolers need...
If only the funding was there.
I just want to chime in here, because threads about the horror of homeschooling often forget how awful public schooling can be. I was bullied for years. My parents tried to stop it by talking to the schools/teachers multiple times. Eventually I learned help wasn’t coming and stopped telling them because I didn’t want them to worry. Ended up with severe depression and anxiety as an adult (partly genetic, but clearly also partly this). I was also constantly bored.
Hard same. I think I would have thrived on the kind of nurturing secular homeschooling I've seen some of my peers give their children. I'm an old lady and I still haven't recovered from a lot of the trauma I experienced at public school.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:06 AM on May 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
I've been a university professor for 25 years. Every year, I teach a section of a mandatory class called "Transcultural Perspectives", a 1-credit course designed to be an easy A and fun. Go learn about some cool shit some other group has done: the section I teach is about scientific and technological progress in the early centuries of Islam. We learn that Copernicus totally stole the idea of the heliocentric solar system from Syrian astronomers, we learn about Ibn Haytham having to pretend he was crazy and inadvertently discovering the science of optics... all kinds of fun stuff. It's easily the most fun class I teach.
What I have learned is that homeschooled students are The Worst. There are four simple assignments in this class, and they can't do a goddamned one of them right or on time. Not all of them are fundie Christians, but most are, and they'll stand up in class while I'm on a roll with some amusing anecdote about life at the caliphal court and start screeching about devil worship and shit. It's crazy. They're so *mad* that they have to take this class. They *always* ask for extensions because mommy would have given them extra time. They don't believe the fucking earth is round. I don't get them in my regular classes because the topic is too hard and too secular, but I've come to dread teaching this class because there will be six or so students out of 100 who will just make the whole thing unpleasant.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 10:09 AM on May 31, 2023 [63 favorites]
What I have learned is that homeschooled students are The Worst. There are four simple assignments in this class, and they can't do a goddamned one of them right or on time. Not all of them are fundie Christians, but most are, and they'll stand up in class while I'm on a roll with some amusing anecdote about life at the caliphal court and start screeching about devil worship and shit. It's crazy. They're so *mad* that they have to take this class. They *always* ask for extensions because mommy would have given them extra time. They don't believe the fucking earth is round. I don't get them in my regular classes because the topic is too hard and too secular, but I've come to dread teaching this class because there will be six or so students out of 100 who will just make the whole thing unpleasant.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 10:09 AM on May 31, 2023 [63 favorites]
I read the whole thing (my childhood trauma took a more magnet-schooled, less-anti-intellectual, mostly less-physical form) and…wow. I just want to hug Christina and Aaron. They seem like amazing, compassionate, thoughtful parents, and I can’t begin to imagine the bravery it took to do what they did.
I went back to my (progressive, high/Liturgical, egghead-filled) church for the first time in three years last Sunday. That’s a long lapse, and I’m certainly no authority.
But.
If what these young, bold parents are doing for their kids and their world isn’t the real point of what Jesus was on about, I don’t know what the hell is. Reading about them filled my heart with hope.
posted by armeowda at 10:11 AM on May 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
I went back to my (progressive, high/Liturgical, egghead-filled) church for the first time in three years last Sunday. That’s a long lapse, and I’m certainly no authority.
But.
If what these young, bold parents are doing for their kids and their world isn’t the real point of what Jesus was on about, I don’t know what the hell is. Reading about them filled my heart with hope.
posted by armeowda at 10:11 AM on May 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
That was a valuable article. Thanks for posting it.
I was watching an interview with someone who had grown up in one of these hardline sects, and he made an interesting point: Leaders like Bill Gothard are creating a sort of "meta-cult", where the goal is to give parents the tools to make their family into a little cult.
So all the stuff that cult leaders do to keep their followers in line, that's what you teach parents to do with their own children. You end up with a whole bunch off little cult cells under the umbrella of the larger movement.
posted by clawsoon at 10:44 AM on May 31, 2023 [18 favorites]
I was watching an interview with someone who had grown up in one of these hardline sects, and he made an interesting point: Leaders like Bill Gothard are creating a sort of "meta-cult", where the goal is to give parents the tools to make their family into a little cult.
So all the stuff that cult leaders do to keep their followers in line, that's what you teach parents to do with their own children. You end up with a whole bunch off little cult cells under the umbrella of the larger movement.
posted by clawsoon at 10:44 AM on May 31, 2023 [18 favorites]
Y'know when multiple people ITT choose to share their painful stories of mental and physical abuse at the hands of authority figures and the suffering that entailed, maybe less of the pushback with the whole 'The only moral homeschooling is my homeschooling'/'Let me toss my pithy anecdote on the fire while people are sharing painful and personal trauma'/'It worked for me, what is wrong with you?' stuff?
TIA
posted by Sphinx at 10:53 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
TIA
posted by Sphinx at 10:53 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
The long term story seems to be something like: A few decades ago, some liberal parents thought that public schools were too harsh and their children didn't learn enough, so they homeschooled. As public schools changed over the decades, some conservative parents came to think that public schools were not harsh enough and their children were learning too much, so they homeschooled.
posted by clawsoon at 10:59 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 10:59 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
I wonder if the majority ever "disciplined" their children historically. If you have to write creeds about something, it is probably not normal.
It's true that child-rearing practices are largely ephemeral, and if you feel the urge to codify something, it's probably not being rigorously carried out, but the overall level of acceptance of physical violence from (perceived) superior to inferior in almost any context in the West even just a century ago was so much higher than it is now. I don't think that historically most parents raised their children the way abusive homeschoolers do today, or were universally enthusiastic about using violence on kids, but I do think "corporal punishment" was part of the toolkit of childrearing in a way that is not generally the case today. Smaller families, greater resources per child, less involvement with authoritarian outside systems that might inflict drastic consequences on a "misbehaving" child or their affinities: all of these have made it significantly easier for parents to manage their children without resorting to the harshest methods. I grew up in a poor, majority black neighborhood and I've often noticed how much more my friends and acquaintances from that era still accept corporal punishment, but of course those are the families most likely to still be feeling such stresses the most.
posted by praemunire at 11:14 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's true that child-rearing practices are largely ephemeral, and if you feel the urge to codify something, it's probably not being rigorously carried out, but the overall level of acceptance of physical violence from (perceived) superior to inferior in almost any context in the West even just a century ago was so much higher than it is now. I don't think that historically most parents raised their children the way abusive homeschoolers do today, or were universally enthusiastic about using violence on kids, but I do think "corporal punishment" was part of the toolkit of childrearing in a way that is not generally the case today. Smaller families, greater resources per child, less involvement with authoritarian outside systems that might inflict drastic consequences on a "misbehaving" child or their affinities: all of these have made it significantly easier for parents to manage their children without resorting to the harshest methods. I grew up in a poor, majority black neighborhood and I've often noticed how much more my friends and acquaintances from that era still accept corporal punishment, but of course those are the families most likely to still be feeling such stresses the most.
posted by praemunire at 11:14 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
I grew up in a secular household, and attended non-charter public schools. My mom spanked me *once* for wandering into the street. I now teach Ethnic Studies in high school.
I tried to read the article, but I couldn't get past "Breaking a Child's Spirit". One of the most wonderful things about my teenage children is that they are willful and creative, and they argue. (Maybe a few too many f-bombs at the dinner table, but they are still awesome.)
posted by dfm500 at 11:37 AM on May 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
I tried to read the article, but I couldn't get past "Breaking a Child's Spirit". One of the most wonderful things about my teenage children is that they are willful and creative, and they argue. (Maybe a few too many f-bombs at the dinner table, but they are still awesome.)
posted by dfm500 at 11:37 AM on May 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's true that child-rearing practices are largely ephemeral, and if you feel the urge to codify something, it's probably not being rigorously carried out, but the overall level of acceptance of physical violence from (perceived) superior to inferior in almost any context in the West even just a century ago was so much higher than it is now.
I've got a half-baked theory (which I'm sure isn't original to me) that a lot of it can be tied to the revival of enslavement and enserfment in Europe from the ~1500s onward. After the relaxed "Merrie England" stuff of the High Middle Ages, the idea started spreading - often carried by religious intensification - that discipline and hard work were the most important things. People higher in a hierarchy had an obligation to use violence on those under them in order to enforce that discipline and prompt that hard work. Bullwhips got very popular all over the world.
The low point was probably sometime in the 1700s, perhaps on the day that John Wesley gave his sermon On Obedience to Parents ("begin this great work before they can run alone, before they can speak plain, or perhaps speak at all... let a child, from a year old, be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly..."), and we've been slowly, slowly recovering.
posted by clawsoon at 11:47 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
I've got a half-baked theory (which I'm sure isn't original to me) that a lot of it can be tied to the revival of enslavement and enserfment in Europe from the ~1500s onward. After the relaxed "Merrie England" stuff of the High Middle Ages, the idea started spreading - often carried by religious intensification - that discipline and hard work were the most important things. People higher in a hierarchy had an obligation to use violence on those under them in order to enforce that discipline and prompt that hard work. Bullwhips got very popular all over the world.
The low point was probably sometime in the 1700s, perhaps on the day that John Wesley gave his sermon On Obedience to Parents ("begin this great work before they can run alone, before they can speak plain, or perhaps speak at all... let a child, from a year old, be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly..."), and we've been slowly, slowly recovering.
posted by clawsoon at 11:47 AM on May 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
I liked this article.
I think it’s possible to view separatist Christian homeschooling as problematic without assuming that all homeschooling shares the properties that make it so. We’ve been down this road before on the blue, of course.
I think I’m in agreement with the passionate anti homeschool crowd that children are owed a comprehensive education. The question is really, what do you do if your local school options all say, ehhh, no thanks? Someone needs to step in. I’d rather we have a system that acknowledges the imperfections of real life, and puts some boundaries around it, than a zero tolerance version that decrees such unpleasantness beyond imagining. Like a needle exchange.
posted by eirias at 1:49 PM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think it’s possible to view separatist Christian homeschooling as problematic without assuming that all homeschooling shares the properties that make it so. We’ve been down this road before on the blue, of course.
I think I’m in agreement with the passionate anti homeschool crowd that children are owed a comprehensive education. The question is really, what do you do if your local school options all say, ehhh, no thanks? Someone needs to step in. I’d rather we have a system that acknowledges the imperfections of real life, and puts some boundaries around it, than a zero tolerance version that decrees such unpleasantness beyond imagining. Like a needle exchange.
posted by eirias at 1:49 PM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've probably talked about this here before, but I was homeschooled for most of what would be middle school or junior high depending on your local terms.
It was a really bare bones (and likely fringe and/or religious oriented) umbrella program that you subscribed to and they send out some really minimal general education homework and tests.
The whole reason why we did it is because I was definitely not having a good time in public school. I wasn't just unchallenged but was also getting bullied, abused and - let's not mince words here - getting the shit kicked out of me in totally appalling ways on a daily basis, including sometimes by teachers.
In hindsight, oh duh, I'm on the spectrum, I had untreated ADHD, I was trans and I didn't even know what that was and wouldn't really find out about that until many years later.
And on top of all that I was a mouthy, insufferable know-it-all and likely very annoying kind of kid.
Because I was sincerely and earnest confused by the whole experience of being gifted, being told I was gifted, not even knowing what the fuck gifted even meant and I was increasingly confused, irritated and frightened by how everyone around me - including or especially adults or teachers - seemed to be not very bright and the growing existential dread about what that all meant.
Not from a position of superiority. Because honestly, I felt like a dumbass, and even back then I knew that being naturally bright or smart is just one part of being a good or at least functional human being, and it's not even the most important part.
But actual confusion and some trauma about all of that because I'd be constantly correcting teachers about things I thought were super basic common knowledge like, oh, the sun does not revolve around the Earth.
I absolutely chafed at and was actively insulted by a lot of 80s era public education practices. To this day the word "must" is a weird trigger word for, and it stems from the phrasing on scantron tests and other paperwork, as in "You MUST use a #2 pencil to fill out this test" and that wasn't true. You could use darker art pencils like an HB or B or something just fine and it was even easier than a #2 pencil, because it's a nicer pencil.
As early as the 2nd to 3rd grade I had a mouth on me, and had a lot of very loud vocal disagreements and open rebellion with teachers. I was a probably a traditional or old school teacher's worst nightmare.
I remember super heated exchanges and conflict "You need to learn how to hand-write properly!" "Why? I can touch type already."
Or "You need to memorize your multiplication tables!" "Why? I have a calculator on my wrist and I'd like to memorize something more useful or interesting!" "Computers are a fad!" "Computers aren't a fad! There's one in your car and you don't even know it! You're just old!"
That one got me dragged out of the room by my actual ear and locked in the office supply and junk room for the rest of the day and given the punitive task of copying pages out of the dictionary, which, yeah, no. But I'll happily sit here and read the dictionary and eat the leftover fundraiser candy I found in the filing cabinet, that's totally cool.
I will note that the same teacher later invited me to her home on a weekend so I could show her and her husband how to use their new computer - "Hey, cool, you got a TI/99 4A with the speech synthesis module!" - and she eased up on me after that.
Being an annoying know it all isn't an excuse for the bullying and abuse but it definitely didn't help anything, either. I was the greenest of the proverbial green monkeys and ended up get punched a whole lot.
Anyway, I was always a voracious and relentless learner and self-teacher. So my mom pulled me out of school and subscribed to this totally fringe homeschool by mail program and outside of having me run through the incredibly easy tests she basically turned me loose.
What I did have was a bicycle and a library card to a totally epic and legendary library in a place it wouldn't normally exist if it wasn't for an oil baron trust. It was bigger than many major metropolitan libraries that I've visited in years since. The main library I believe, is bigger in square footage and total book count than Seattle's main public library.
It was absolutely massive. Something like 300-500k books over 6-7 floors, each floor was probably in the 20-30k sq foot range, plus periodicals, microfiche, maps and media and satellite/specialty sections off of the main floors.
The science fiction section alone took up something like 100 linear feet of 5 deck library shelving on both sides. I regret not reading more of it because they basically had almost everything you could think of published to date.
The non-fiction section was like 2-3 floors. And part of the non-fiction was the largest collection of technical manuals, STEM textbooks, engineering guides and that sort of thing that I've seen in one place in my entire life, and I've been to some cool industry/commerce libraries and museums.
Chilton car manuals, like all of the, industrial engineering books and guides. They had aerospace engineering things like NACA airfoil libraries that's just a big encyclopedia of airfoil types and shapes. Almost all kinds of engines, including soe heavy stuff about jet engines and turbojets. Automation. Robotics. Semiconductor reference books. Electronics and circuit design. Computer graphics. Audio/Video/Media texts and references. Lots of math texts and textbooks, biology and sciences. I remember devouring a couple of books about power infrastructure and power plants.
The library itself was also absolutely lovely, a sort of art deco meets 70s Brutalist temple of concrete, burnished metal and chrome filled with plants and skylights, whole floors of study nooks, reading areas populated with fountains and plants and private couches on sculptural platforms like something out of an art museum.
t was also a very modern library even for the 80s with touch screen WYSE data terminals and a fully computerized catalog, barcode based self-check out, a rather large computer lab and more.
It was cool and a pleasantly dark like a library should but with a lot of soft ambient natural light due to the open platform inside a building shell design where the main floors and library stacks were essentially floating islands connected to the rest of the library with ramps, catwalks, stairs and elevators.
And for a couple of glorious pre-teen years it was all mine. I had my bike, a backpack full of books, a sack lunch or some lunch money and it was practically perfect.
I won't say it was all good, though. I definitely feel like I have some holes in my general education, as well as educational discipline. But on the other hand I have doubts the public education available to me would have changed that very much.
And then my dad convinced me that i needed to go back to high school to toughen up and be more socialized (he wasn't wrong) but it's not an accident or coincidence this is also when I discovered punk rock, bad haircuts and the arts and crafts of rebellion.
Anyway, I wish there was more home schooling like all of the above or just better secular home schooling. Public school isn't (or wasn't) for everyone.
posted by loquacious at 2:31 PM on May 31, 2023 [33 favorites]
It was a really bare bones (and likely fringe and/or religious oriented) umbrella program that you subscribed to and they send out some really minimal general education homework and tests.
The whole reason why we did it is because I was definitely not having a good time in public school. I wasn't just unchallenged but was also getting bullied, abused and - let's not mince words here - getting the shit kicked out of me in totally appalling ways on a daily basis, including sometimes by teachers.
In hindsight, oh duh, I'm on the spectrum, I had untreated ADHD, I was trans and I didn't even know what that was and wouldn't really find out about that until many years later.
And on top of all that I was a mouthy, insufferable know-it-all and likely very annoying kind of kid.
Because I was sincerely and earnest confused by the whole experience of being gifted, being told I was gifted, not even knowing what the fuck gifted even meant and I was increasingly confused, irritated and frightened by how everyone around me - including or especially adults or teachers - seemed to be not very bright and the growing existential dread about what that all meant.
Not from a position of superiority. Because honestly, I felt like a dumbass, and even back then I knew that being naturally bright or smart is just one part of being a good or at least functional human being, and it's not even the most important part.
But actual confusion and some trauma about all of that because I'd be constantly correcting teachers about things I thought were super basic common knowledge like, oh, the sun does not revolve around the Earth.
I absolutely chafed at and was actively insulted by a lot of 80s era public education practices. To this day the word "must" is a weird trigger word for, and it stems from the phrasing on scantron tests and other paperwork, as in "You MUST use a #2 pencil to fill out this test" and that wasn't true. You could use darker art pencils like an HB or B or something just fine and it was even easier than a #2 pencil, because it's a nicer pencil.
As early as the 2nd to 3rd grade I had a mouth on me, and had a lot of very loud vocal disagreements and open rebellion with teachers. I was a probably a traditional or old school teacher's worst nightmare.
I remember super heated exchanges and conflict "You need to learn how to hand-write properly!" "Why? I can touch type already."
Or "You need to memorize your multiplication tables!" "Why? I have a calculator on my wrist and I'd like to memorize something more useful or interesting!" "Computers are a fad!" "Computers aren't a fad! There's one in your car and you don't even know it! You're just old!"
That one got me dragged out of the room by my actual ear and locked in the office supply and junk room for the rest of the day and given the punitive task of copying pages out of the dictionary, which, yeah, no. But I'll happily sit here and read the dictionary and eat the leftover fundraiser candy I found in the filing cabinet, that's totally cool.
I will note that the same teacher later invited me to her home on a weekend so I could show her and her husband how to use their new computer - "Hey, cool, you got a TI/99 4A with the speech synthesis module!" - and she eased up on me after that.
Being an annoying know it all isn't an excuse for the bullying and abuse but it definitely didn't help anything, either. I was the greenest of the proverbial green monkeys and ended up get punched a whole lot.
Anyway, I was always a voracious and relentless learner and self-teacher. So my mom pulled me out of school and subscribed to this totally fringe homeschool by mail program and outside of having me run through the incredibly easy tests she basically turned me loose.
What I did have was a bicycle and a library card to a totally epic and legendary library in a place it wouldn't normally exist if it wasn't for an oil baron trust. It was bigger than many major metropolitan libraries that I've visited in years since. The main library I believe, is bigger in square footage and total book count than Seattle's main public library.
It was absolutely massive. Something like 300-500k books over 6-7 floors, each floor was probably in the 20-30k sq foot range, plus periodicals, microfiche, maps and media and satellite/specialty sections off of the main floors.
The science fiction section alone took up something like 100 linear feet of 5 deck library shelving on both sides. I regret not reading more of it because they basically had almost everything you could think of published to date.
The non-fiction section was like 2-3 floors. And part of the non-fiction was the largest collection of technical manuals, STEM textbooks, engineering guides and that sort of thing that I've seen in one place in my entire life, and I've been to some cool industry/commerce libraries and museums.
Chilton car manuals, like all of the, industrial engineering books and guides. They had aerospace engineering things like NACA airfoil libraries that's just a big encyclopedia of airfoil types and shapes. Almost all kinds of engines, including soe heavy stuff about jet engines and turbojets. Automation. Robotics. Semiconductor reference books. Electronics and circuit design. Computer graphics. Audio/Video/Media texts and references. Lots of math texts and textbooks, biology and sciences. I remember devouring a couple of books about power infrastructure and power plants.
The library itself was also absolutely lovely, a sort of art deco meets 70s Brutalist temple of concrete, burnished metal and chrome filled with plants and skylights, whole floors of study nooks, reading areas populated with fountains and plants and private couches on sculptural platforms like something out of an art museum.
t was also a very modern library even for the 80s with touch screen WYSE data terminals and a fully computerized catalog, barcode based self-check out, a rather large computer lab and more.
It was cool and a pleasantly dark like a library should but with a lot of soft ambient natural light due to the open platform inside a building shell design where the main floors and library stacks were essentially floating islands connected to the rest of the library with ramps, catwalks, stairs and elevators.
And for a couple of glorious pre-teen years it was all mine. I had my bike, a backpack full of books, a sack lunch or some lunch money and it was practically perfect.
I won't say it was all good, though. I definitely feel like I have some holes in my general education, as well as educational discipline. But on the other hand I have doubts the public education available to me would have changed that very much.
And then my dad convinced me that i needed to go back to high school to toughen up and be more socialized (he wasn't wrong) but it's not an accident or coincidence this is also when I discovered punk rock, bad haircuts and the arts and crafts of rebellion.
Anyway, I wish there was more home schooling like all of the above or just better secular home schooling. Public school isn't (or wasn't) for everyone.
posted by loquacious at 2:31 PM on May 31, 2023 [33 favorites]
growing up in the south this all, despite being horrible, sounds pretty par for the course. it’s still legal to beat children in *public school* in many states. nobody can tell you what any of it has to do with christianity but i learned at a young age the more church going, the more likely they hit their children.Wait, seriously? "Spare the rod, spoil the child". Not the exact wording, but it's in there several different times, with pretty unmistakable context in some of those cases.
I'm glad that it's one of the things from the Bible that decent Christians choose to ignore and/or claim no longer applies post-Christ, but it's undeniably there, and it has always seemed to me that it's very popular among the... uh... not-so-decent Christian crowd. I'd be amazed if it were really true that nobody who thought the idea was a good one could or would quickly pop it off upon demand.
posted by Flunkie at 2:37 PM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
"spare the rod, spoil the child" is from Butler's Hudibras, a satirical poem.
There's some stuff about "the rod" in Proverbs. Proverbs is old testament, and Christ declared a new testament. The old laws are out, and Christianity has always picked what it cares about in them vs what it wants to ignore (you certainly can eat all the cloven hoofed meat you want as a Christian). I think it's pretty arguable whether corporal punishment of children is something that fits well at all with say, the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount.
posted by dis_integration at 2:45 PM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
There's some stuff about "the rod" in Proverbs. Proverbs is old testament, and Christ declared a new testament. The old laws are out, and Christianity has always picked what it cares about in them vs what it wants to ignore (you certainly can eat all the cloven hoofed meat you want as a Christian). I think it's pretty arguable whether corporal punishment of children is something that fits well at all with say, the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount.
posted by dis_integration at 2:45 PM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
At the moment the main impact on my life has been that I have random knowledge gaps
This is a slight derail, but I thought it might help reassure people a bit... everyone has those knowledge gaps, it's just that they're more visible, perhaps, to homeschoolers than most people. The whole history of Yahoo Answers was a testament to that fact, it might be gone now but the knowledge gaps remain, they'll always be with us. Whenever I encounter one in my own knowledge I feel a little comforted by that recognition, although it still feels pretty bad honestly. (I was also homeschooled for a bit, and went to a Christian private school later that used the ACE curriculum, but I also had the advantage of being independently interested in STEM areas so it kind of balanced out.)
posted by JHarris at 2:47 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is a slight derail, but I thought it might help reassure people a bit... everyone has those knowledge gaps, it's just that they're more visible, perhaps, to homeschoolers than most people. The whole history of Yahoo Answers was a testament to that fact, it might be gone now but the knowledge gaps remain, they'll always be with us. Whenever I encounter one in my own knowledge I feel a little comforted by that recognition, although it still feels pretty bad honestly. (I was also homeschooled for a bit, and went to a Christian private school later that used the ACE curriculum, but I also had the advantage of being independently interested in STEM areas so it kind of balanced out.)
posted by JHarris at 2:47 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
dis_integration, yes, yes, as I said, "not the exact wording", and as I said, I'm glad that it's one of the things that decent Christians choose to ignore and/or claim no longer applies post-Christ.
posted by Flunkie at 2:48 PM on May 31, 2023
posted by Flunkie at 2:48 PM on May 31, 2023
Proverbs is old testament, and Christ declared a new testament. The old laws are out, and Christianity has always picked what it cares about in them vs what it wants to ignore (you certainly can eat all the cloven hoofed meat you want as a Christian).
Paul made it pretty clear in Galatians 5: Anything fun is still forbidden.
I think it's pretty arguable whether corporal punishment of children is something that fits well at all with say, the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount.
Unfortunately, the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount hasn't often been the Christianity of the Church. The Christianity of the Epistles, where the goal was much more to build a respectable institutional reputation, has had a much bigger impact on Christian-childrearing-as-practised. "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord."
posted by clawsoon at 3:03 PM on May 31, 2023 [5 favorites]
Paul made it pretty clear in Galatians 5: Anything fun is still forbidden.
I think it's pretty arguable whether corporal punishment of children is something that fits well at all with say, the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount.
Unfortunately, the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount hasn't often been the Christianity of the Church. The Christianity of the Epistles, where the goal was much more to build a respectable institutional reputation, has had a much bigger impact on Christian-childrearing-as-practised. "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord."
posted by clawsoon at 3:03 PM on May 31, 2023 [5 favorites]
Oh hey me too! I went to Bob Jones Elementary School for a few years, was homeschooled through junior high, then went to a tiny Christian school for high school.
I don't know if I would have done well in a public junior high school in Florida as an overweight nerd, but homeschool was damaging too--I basically watched a bunch of the A Beka videos unsupervised because my brother needed more direct attention than me to stay on task. Although I did a fair amount of watching shitty daytime TV when no one was looking.
Thank god for the Internet though, I struggle to imagine how badly my life would have turned out if my perspective had not been broadened through online interactions with decent people.
posted by JDHarper at 3:20 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I don't know if I would have done well in a public junior high school in Florida as an overweight nerd, but homeschool was damaging too--I basically watched a bunch of the A Beka videos unsupervised because my brother needed more direct attention than me to stay on task. Although I did a fair amount of watching shitty daytime TV when no one was looking.
Thank god for the Internet though, I struggle to imagine how badly my life would have turned out if my perspective had not been broadened through online interactions with decent people.
posted by JDHarper at 3:20 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
The discussion of Nazis and the Sermon on the Mount has an interesting overlap: One of the groups of Christians who took parts of the Sermon on the Mount very seriously, seriously enough to get themselves kicked out of various parts of Europe, also gave Hitler his only majority vote in a free election. They voted for him (tying back nicely to the topic of the thread) mostly because he promised to bring back "traditional family values" and strict childhood discipline, just like Menno wanted.
posted by clawsoon at 3:45 PM on May 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 3:45 PM on May 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
At the moment the main impact on my life has been that I have random knowledge gaps
I went to five different elementary schools, each of which apparently had their own ideas on when to teach what. To this day I don't know Celsius from Fahrenheit without looking it up, but if you ever need a 20-minute presentation on Eli Whitney and his cotton gin, I'm ready to go with no preparation. I taught myself to write in cursive. Each one of those schools used a different term for the bathroom, and even the teachers would roundly mock me for forgetting and using the wrong one.
Re: corporal punishment in public schools, I was just remembering the scene in one of the Little House books where the older boys came back to school after harvest time and the teacher used a literal whip on them when he couldn't keep their attention.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:49 PM on May 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
I went to five different elementary schools, each of which apparently had their own ideas on when to teach what. To this day I don't know Celsius from Fahrenheit without looking it up, but if you ever need a 20-minute presentation on Eli Whitney and his cotton gin, I'm ready to go with no preparation. I taught myself to write in cursive. Each one of those schools used a different term for the bathroom, and even the teachers would roundly mock me for forgetting and using the wrong one.
Re: corporal punishment in public schools, I was just remembering the scene in one of the Little House books where the older boys came back to school after harvest time and the teacher used a literal whip on them when he couldn't keep their attention.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:49 PM on May 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
So all the stuff that cult leaders do to keep their followers in line, that's what you teach parents to do with their own children. You end up with a whole bunch off little cult cells under the umbrella of the larger movement.
Say what you will about the goofy and woo parts of Wilhelm Reich but this notion was pretty central to the ideas laid out in The Mass Psychology of Fascism
posted by treepour at 3:59 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Say what you will about the goofy and woo parts of Wilhelm Reich but this notion was pretty central to the ideas laid out in The Mass Psychology of Fascism
posted by treepour at 3:59 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've been trying to think of a way to make a FPP about the work of Jenny Scaramanga, who has a Facebook group for survivors of the ACE, or "Accelerated Christian Education" curriculum, and has written a paper on its effects, but I've exchanged messages with her on Facebook so I might be "too close" to her for the MeFi front page friend-link policy. Posting a link to her paper here might be okay though, if I can find one.
posted by JHarris at 4:57 PM on May 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 4:57 PM on May 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
Please ignore this comment if it is too much of a derail.
Wait, seriously? "Spare the rod, spoil the child". Not the exact wording, but it's in there several different times, with pretty unmistakable context in some of those cases.
"Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord."
Flunkie, Clawsoon--can you point me to verses in the Bible that refer to corporal punishment for children? Is 'obey your parents in everything' really the most spot-on verse?
I ask because it can be difficult to distinguish between the actual contents of the Bible and the folklore and popular culture that grows up around it--as with any religion or other significant institution.
posted by tumbling at 6:39 PM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Wait, seriously? "Spare the rod, spoil the child". Not the exact wording, but it's in there several different times, with pretty unmistakable context in some of those cases.
"Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord."
Flunkie, Clawsoon--can you point me to verses in the Bible that refer to corporal punishment for children? Is 'obey your parents in everything' really the most spot-on verse?
I ask because it can be difficult to distinguish between the actual contents of the Bible and the folklore and popular culture that grows up around it--as with any religion or other significant institution.
posted by tumbling at 6:39 PM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Flunkie, Clawsoon--can you point me to verses in the Bible that refer to corporal punishment for children? Is 'obey your parents in everything' really the most spot-on verse?First question, yes. Second question, no.
There's actually a list of some of them in the article; they were given (apparently intended as examples of "correct" parental behavior) to the Bealls during a course on parenting that they were taking. Here are the ones that the instructor chose to use:
Proverbs 13:24: He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.
Proverbs 19:18: Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.
Proverbs 22:15: Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
Proverbs 23:13-14: Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
Proverbs 29:15: The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
The quotes I've written are from the KJV; the instructor apparently used some other Bible, so you can see their chosen wording in the article itself (the handout with them is one of the pictures).
posted by Flunkie at 7:31 PM on May 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
The root discipline Middle English (in the sense ‘mortification by scourging oneself’): via Old French from Latin disciplina ‘instruction, knowledge’, from discipulus (see disciple). I think Discipline, in the sense of teaching and logical, natural consequences is a good thing. But I am so skeeved out by people who promote hitting kids, from the bullshit with babies - Babies! - to adulthood. Kids can push your buttons and annoy you until every nerve is shredded, so if you ever smacked a kid, I'm not judging. But to recommend it as beneficial is so fucked up.
I knew a family, friends of relatives, who had a 6 year old son who was neurotic and weird, and a darling 3 year old girl, cherished and cosseted. They had a special stick, a plastic rod, probably from blinds, for hitting that boy, the girl was not hit. My Mom used to make us come with her to pick a switch she would use on us from the forsythia bush. (late 50s). It was fucked up. Teach kids, don't hit them.
I liked the article, esp. where the husband became an atheist. Yes, Extreme Religious people have more babies to take over the world. They choose to deny reality, like evolution, science, etc., and demand that your kids learn that denial and made-up nonsense. They are intolerant and controlling. Progress generally wins, but with great cost.
posted by theora55 at 8:19 PM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I knew a family, friends of relatives, who had a 6 year old son who was neurotic and weird, and a darling 3 year old girl, cherished and cosseted. They had a special stick, a plastic rod, probably from blinds, for hitting that boy, the girl was not hit. My Mom used to make us come with her to pick a switch she would use on us from the forsythia bush. (late 50s). It was fucked up. Teach kids, don't hit them.
I liked the article, esp. where the husband became an atheist. Yes, Extreme Religious people have more babies to take over the world. They choose to deny reality, like evolution, science, etc., and demand that your kids learn that denial and made-up nonsense. They are intolerant and controlling. Progress generally wins, but with great cost.
posted by theora55 at 8:19 PM on May 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
Reminds me of how they used to "break" horses to train/control them vs. the more modern methods.
posted by aleph at 8:47 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by aleph at 8:47 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Proverbs 23:13-14: Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
Translating from the original Just After the Bronze Age Collapse context:
Dude, the moment your kid steps outside the house, his behavior can be answered by lethal means. Do what it takes to prevent his being chastised by an angry mob, who'll be using far worse means than the rod.
This is like stopping your kid from sticking a screwdriver into the electric socket. If it takes corporal punishment, you use corporal punishment. If you failed to stop the behavior with gentler means, then arguably you failed as a parent, but parental failure comes in degrees.
So, for behavior that doesn't come close to the screwdriver and socket? Anyone who cites that verse to justify that daily spanking should be sentenced to spend a year living like it's just after the Bronze Age Collapse.
posted by ocschwar at 9:56 PM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Translating from the original Just After the Bronze Age Collapse context:
Dude, the moment your kid steps outside the house, his behavior can be answered by lethal means. Do what it takes to prevent his being chastised by an angry mob, who'll be using far worse means than the rod.
This is like stopping your kid from sticking a screwdriver into the electric socket. If it takes corporal punishment, you use corporal punishment. If you failed to stop the behavior with gentler means, then arguably you failed as a parent, but parental failure comes in degrees.
So, for behavior that doesn't come close to the screwdriver and socket? Anyone who cites that verse to justify that daily spanking should be sentenced to spend a year living like it's just after the Bronze Age Collapse.
posted by ocschwar at 9:56 PM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Fringe of the fringe
what if mainstream? (state religion; comparative religious studies, ed.)
The Israeli government has approved new privileges for the ultra-Orthodox: "in the long run they will transform Israel from an advanced and prosperous country to a backward country in which large parts of the population will lack the basic skills for life in the 21st century."
what if mainstream? (state religion; comparative religious studies, ed.)
The Israeli government has approved new privileges for the ultra-Orthodox: "in the long run they will transform Israel from an advanced and prosperous country to a backward country in which large parts of the population will lack the basic skills for life in the 21st century."
Last Wednesday the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, approved the national budget for the period 2023-2024: the text received 64 votes in favor from the entire coalition that supports the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu and 56 against, and was criticized by economists and opposition parties.[1,2] The criticisms mainly concerned the coalition funds, an allocation of 13.7 billion shekels (3.4 billion euros) intended for ultra-Orthodox Jewish institutions. The schools that will receive them, the yeshivotare independent of the Israeli Ministry of Education and many do not teach secular subjects, i.e. all those subjects that do not concern the learning of sacred texts and subjects, such as mathematics, science and English...posted by kliuless at 12:43 AM on June 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
The ultra-Orthodox – called haredim in Hebrew – are Israeli citizens who adhere to the most conservative doctrines of Judaism, following its strictest and most literal interpretations. Their life revolves around the community, prayer and the study of sacred texts: as children they enter religious schools which they continue to attend even as adults. Not working, they survive mostly on donations or government subsidies. The particular privileged status they enjoy dates back to the foundation of the state of Israel: the government of Ben Gurion (the first prime minister in the history of the country) believed that their contribution was fundamental for the formation of a national entity of a Jewish nature, and guaranteed them a series of concessions that have been maintained and extended over the years... According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the Haredim currently represent 13% of the population (1.28 million people) and are the group that is growing the fastest among all: they are expected to reach 16% in 2030.[3]
Proverbs 13:24...
Turns out that Solomon was something of an asshole.
posted by mikelieman at 12:47 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Turns out that Solomon was something of an asshole.
posted by mikelieman at 12:47 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Turns out that Solomon was something of an asshole.
Well, he was a flawed human being, and that is the beauty of it. If anyone takes his words as god's command, they have misunderstood the book.
posted by mumimor at 3:07 AM on June 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, he was a flawed human being, and that is the beauty of it. If anyone takes his words as god's command, they have misunderstood the book.
posted by mumimor at 3:07 AM on June 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Y'know when multiple people ITT choose to share their painful stories of mental and physical abuse at the hands of authority figures and the suffering that entailed, maybe less of the pushback with the whole 'The only moral homeschooling is my homeschooling'/'Let me toss my pithy anecdote on the fire while people are sharing painful and personal trauma'/'It worked for me, what is wrong with you?' stuff?
The issue is that either you are home-schooled or you go to school. People have shared their painful stories of abuse as part of home schooling... but others have shared their painful stories of abuse at schools. Ordinarily, in cases where we didn't have an excluded middle, you could say that the latter should maybe not be in this thread to make room for the former and to avoid what-aboutism but because every child either does or doesn't attend school, to praise one is to denigrate the other, to ban one is to mandate the other, and therefore I think it is appropriate to also hear from people who have suffered in schools and for whom homeschooling was salvation.
posted by atrazine at 4:26 AM on June 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
The issue is that either you are home-schooled or you go to school. People have shared their painful stories of abuse as part of home schooling... but others have shared their painful stories of abuse at schools. Ordinarily, in cases where we didn't have an excluded middle, you could say that the latter should maybe not be in this thread to make room for the former and to avoid what-aboutism but because every child either does or doesn't attend school, to praise one is to denigrate the other, to ban one is to mandate the other, and therefore I think it is appropriate to also hear from people who have suffered in schools and for whom homeschooling was salvation.
posted by atrazine at 4:26 AM on June 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
There are yet more verses from Ecclesiasticus/Book of Sirach, which aren't relevant in the modern Protestant context being talked about in the article, but which do agree with the beat-your-child thrust of Proverbs:
This makes me think of Graeber and Wengrow talking about how common it was for North American colonists who had experience Indigenous society to stay there and not want to come back. I'm not sure about every Indigenous society, but a major attraction of the Iroquois was that they didn't beat any members of the group. Parents didn't beat children, husbands didn't beat wives, military leaders didn't beat warriors. If you wanted someone to do something, you had to convince them with your words.
Like all hardline conservative Christians, the Jesuits who preached to them were convinced that this was a Satanic approach to childrearing.
posted by clawsoon at 6:00 AM on June 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
An horse not broken becometh headstrong: and a child left to himself will be wilful. Cocker thy child, and he shall make thee afraid: play with him, and he will bring thee to heaviness. Laugh not with him, lest thou have sorrow with him, and lest thou gnash thy teeth in the end. Give him no liberty in his youth, and wink not at his follies. Bow down his neck while he is young, and beat him on the sides while he is a child, lest he wax stubborn, and be disobedient unto thee, and so bring sorrow to thine heart.Also an interesting tie-in there with aleph's comment about "breaking" horses.
This makes me think of Graeber and Wengrow talking about how common it was for North American colonists who had experience Indigenous society to stay there and not want to come back. I'm not sure about every Indigenous society, but a major attraction of the Iroquois was that they didn't beat any members of the group. Parents didn't beat children, husbands didn't beat wives, military leaders didn't beat warriors. If you wanted someone to do something, you had to convince them with your words.
Like all hardline conservative Christians, the Jesuits who preached to them were convinced that this was a Satanic approach to childrearing.
posted by clawsoon at 6:00 AM on June 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
As promised, here's that article from Jenna Scaramanga about ACE.
posted by JHarris at 7:50 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 7:50 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Jenna says that this version on the site Friendly Atheist is friendlier to a non-academic reader.
posted by JHarris at 7:53 AM on June 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 7:53 AM on June 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
The Israeli government has approved new privileges for the ultra-Orthodox: "in the long run they will transform Israel from an advanced and prosperous country to a backward country in which large parts of the population will lack the basic skills for life in the 21st century."
The thing about the long run is that you have to get through the short term to make it there, and given how Jewish Israeli society is slowly-but-surely fracturing over the issues ultra-Orthodox jews present that is by no means a sure thing. The resentment that non-Haredim Israeli Jews feel for Haredim is real and it is increasing, because they consider (not unfairly) the majority of Haredim to be freeloaders. For the past couple decades that conflict has been muted because conservative non-Haredim Jews were able to agree with Haredim that it was more important to subjugate Palestinians, but as Haredim numbers increase even that won't serve to gloss over the problem that soon, about a fifth of the entire country will expect - and indeed demand - the other eighty percent to pay for literally their entire lives, which is simply not sustainable in any way.
posted by mightygodking at 9:13 AM on June 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
The thing about the long run is that you have to get through the short term to make it there, and given how Jewish Israeli society is slowly-but-surely fracturing over the issues ultra-Orthodox jews present that is by no means a sure thing. The resentment that non-Haredim Israeli Jews feel for Haredim is real and it is increasing, because they consider (not unfairly) the majority of Haredim to be freeloaders. For the past couple decades that conflict has been muted because conservative non-Haredim Jews were able to agree with Haredim that it was more important to subjugate Palestinians, but as Haredim numbers increase even that won't serve to gloss over the problem that soon, about a fifth of the entire country will expect - and indeed demand - the other eighty percent to pay for literally their entire lives, which is simply not sustainable in any way.
posted by mightygodking at 9:13 AM on June 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
The library that loquacious describes above sounds like heaven, and as a young neurodivergent kid I used to dream about being able to explore a world of knowledge like that instead of being tortured with pointless busywork at school. But even the kids whose parents weren't abusive members of cults seem to often fall short in homeschooling. If you were lucky enough to have parents who were polymaths with genuine pedagogic skills that they didn't go pro with for some reason, great, but that's just another branch of the Lucky Sperm Club. And at least teachers and school administrators can, theoretically, be held to standards to some degree, as opposed to bad (in whatever way) homeschoolers.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:23 PM on June 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:23 PM on June 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
My primary school used ACE, and I tested between two and four years ahead of grade level in every subject when I transferred to public school.
To be fair, however, ACE's weakest points are science and history, and in primary school you're generally not working at the level where that's going to be a problem. And the teachers at our school, unlike untrained homeschooling parents, put in a lot of effort with supplemental activities.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:43 PM on June 1, 2023
To be fair, however, ACE's weakest points are science and history, and in primary school you're generally not working at the level where that's going to be a problem. And the teachers at our school, unlike untrained homeschooling parents, put in a lot of effort with supplemental activities.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:43 PM on June 1, 2023
I'm 56 years old now I feel a lot different about my parent's saying "Well, we didn't abuse you" when any criticism of their child rearing practices came up. I used to think that was a really low bar to set. Experience has taught me that was actually too high a bar for an awful lot of parents. Yeesh.
posted by srboisvert at 5:29 PM on June 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 5:29 PM on June 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
As public schools changed over the decades, some conservative parents came to think that public schools were not harsh enough and their children were learning too much, so they homeschooled.
IIRC, wasn’t school just mandatory until the 80s or so?
posted by Melismata at 7:08 PM on June 1, 2023
IIRC, wasn’t school just mandatory until the 80s or so?
posted by Melismata at 7:08 PM on June 1, 2023
Man, hearing other people's homeschooling experiences is so wild. We were homeschooled all across the US, including extremely liberal cities, the South, and rural Midwest, and everyone we hung out with was fine? By that I mean, there were very obvious reasons none of us were in school, usually disability-related, but abusers and rabid hippies were both very thin on the ground. Perhaps the learning-disability homeschoolers just didn't overlap with either of those groups much?
In a lot of ways, I think we were doing the right thing for our kids, but every other family we encountered was probably damaging their children in one way or another.
It's not possible to raise a kid perfectly; no one gets out of childhood without some damage. EVERY parent is probably damaging their kids in one way or another, that's just life. That parents sometimes screw up is not a judgement on their parenting overall.
There were certainly people, homeschooling and non-homeschooling, who had all kinds of opinions on how my parents were teaching and raising me. We were being homeschooled because we could not have survived a typical childhood, and my parents were doing the right things no matter what it looked like from the outside.
The only parents I know who have been successful with homeschooling were themselves trained educators with experience teaching, access to resources, and compatible work schedules (they are almost all college professors).
I agree resources and mental flexibility is a big part of it. Neither of my parents were trained educators, but they were mentally flexible and had advanced degrees, both of which gave them a huge leg up once we got past learning how to count. They were also willing and able to hire trained educators; several of the homeschooling groups we were in regularly hired tutors who were willing to give group discounts, or bought school curriculums to share around.
posted by Ahniya at 11:23 PM on June 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
In a lot of ways, I think we were doing the right thing for our kids, but every other family we encountered was probably damaging their children in one way or another.
It's not possible to raise a kid perfectly; no one gets out of childhood without some damage. EVERY parent is probably damaging their kids in one way or another, that's just life. That parents sometimes screw up is not a judgement on their parenting overall.
There were certainly people, homeschooling and non-homeschooling, who had all kinds of opinions on how my parents were teaching and raising me. We were being homeschooled because we could not have survived a typical childhood, and my parents were doing the right things no matter what it looked like from the outside.
The only parents I know who have been successful with homeschooling were themselves trained educators with experience teaching, access to resources, and compatible work schedules (they are almost all college professors).
I agree resources and mental flexibility is a big part of it. Neither of my parents were trained educators, but they were mentally flexible and had advanced degrees, both of which gave them a huge leg up once we got past learning how to count. They were also willing and able to hire trained educators; several of the homeschooling groups we were in regularly hired tutors who were willing to give group discounts, or bought school curriculums to share around.
posted by Ahniya at 11:23 PM on June 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
but it’s clearly not what’s in any meaningful sense responsible for how widespread it is in the US
Historically, the largest number of total immigrants to the US are from Germany, but because of WWII, Americans have real amnesia about the depth of our German roots, culturally: e.g., there were around 450 daily German-language newspapers published in the US through 1941; by 1942, like three were left. Unlike Japanese-Americans, German-Americans could just stop speaking German and “pass” as non-immigrant, and the strong threads of German-ness in American culture were dropped or laundered or renamed, to scrub any obvious German influence. But the US remains to a strong degree influenced by its German cultural roots, good and bad, whether we acknowledge it or not.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:17 AM on June 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
Historically, the largest number of total immigrants to the US are from Germany, but because of WWII, Americans have real amnesia about the depth of our German roots, culturally: e.g., there were around 450 daily German-language newspapers published in the US through 1941; by 1942, like three were left. Unlike Japanese-Americans, German-Americans could just stop speaking German and “pass” as non-immigrant, and the strong threads of German-ness in American culture were dropped or laundered or renamed, to scrub any obvious German influence. But the US remains to a strong degree influenced by its German cultural roots, good and bad, whether we acknowledge it or not.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:17 AM on June 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's certainly not just a German thing. The John Wesley sermon I linked to upthread is about as English as it gets. There's an old stereotype of German authoritarianism contrasted with English freedom, but part of the reason that the Holy Roman Empire was ridiculed was that it was a relatively open society at a time when the fashion was for authoritarian imperialism. Yes, the Prussians were famously authoritarian, but they were only one part of a diverse culture. And you could spend all day listing the tools of authoritarianism that the English and Anglo-Americans developed in all of their imperial ventures abroad and in their development of industrial capitalism at home...
posted by clawsoon at 1:05 PM on June 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 1:05 PM on June 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
LooseFilter: basically correct, although much of that anti-German sentiment dates back to World War I, in which quite a few WASPs diverted their ethnic hatred from the Irish onto German-Americans--the huge irony being, of course, that the Kaiser and George V were cousins, and looked like brothers. It got revived in the Deuce, although that was preceded by the formation of the German-American Bund, sympathetic utterances by the likes of Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, etc.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:20 PM on June 3, 2023
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:20 PM on June 3, 2023
My impression is that harsh child-rearing started at somewhat older ages in Victorian (?) England (age 2? age 5?) than the German approach from _For Your Own Good), but it wasn't all that different.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:36 PM on June 3, 2023
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:36 PM on June 3, 2023
anti-German sentiment dates back to World War I
My mother, several decades after WWII ended, dated a German guy. Her mother (my grandmother) would sometimes refer to him as "the Kaiser".
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:42 PM on June 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
My mother, several decades after WWII ended, dated a German guy. Her mother (my grandmother) would sometimes refer to him as "the Kaiser".
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:42 PM on June 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
this should be illegal or extremely rare and carefully monitored
This is my strong belief. I narrowly escaped being fully homeschooled in this tradition after a brief attempt at it went poorly. My parents were (are) young earth creationists and huge fans of focus on the family - I remember Dare to Discipline and the Strong-Willed Child being on the bookshelf and regularly referred to (my mom told me that the latter one was about me, which I took as a compliment but it was not intended to be one). They weren't very high on the physical abuse scale, especially compared to others described here, but we were spanked heavily and often, and regularly hit with plastic spatulas because my mom's bare-hand spankings weren't painful enough to scare us into obeying - I remember at least one spoon breaking. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was a saying that we were very familiar with from the people we knew growing up (all friends and family were very religious).
I sometimes wonder where I would be now if I had been homeschooled my whole life like my mom desperately wanted. I was explicitly told even as a child that the goal of homeschooling was to protect me from learning ideas from the devil. The people I've seen experience that have not had good outcomes.
Education might be the most important part of raising a child. It can't be entrusted to parents with zero oversight, even if some parents do a wonderful job with it (and of course, a far larger number sincerely but mistakenly believe that they do). The damage potential is too high.
posted by randomnity at 12:05 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is my strong belief. I narrowly escaped being fully homeschooled in this tradition after a brief attempt at it went poorly. My parents were (are) young earth creationists and huge fans of focus on the family - I remember Dare to Discipline and the Strong-Willed Child being on the bookshelf and regularly referred to (my mom told me that the latter one was about me, which I took as a compliment but it was not intended to be one). They weren't very high on the physical abuse scale, especially compared to others described here, but we were spanked heavily and often, and regularly hit with plastic spatulas because my mom's bare-hand spankings weren't painful enough to scare us into obeying - I remember at least one spoon breaking. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was a saying that we were very familiar with from the people we knew growing up (all friends and family were very religious).
I sometimes wonder where I would be now if I had been homeschooled my whole life like my mom desperately wanted. I was explicitly told even as a child that the goal of homeschooling was to protect me from learning ideas from the devil. The people I've seen experience that have not had good outcomes.
Education might be the most important part of raising a child. It can't be entrusted to parents with zero oversight, even if some parents do a wonderful job with it (and of course, a far larger number sincerely but mistakenly believe that they do). The damage potential is too high.
posted by randomnity at 12:05 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
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