Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on December 14, 2015.
I was four years old.
We were visiting my dad’s childhood home in New York, and we went to the house of an elderly lady who used to be his neighbor. She had a caretaker, a single mom homeschooling her son, who was around my age.
My favorite TV show was Barney the Dinosaur, my only 30 minutes of live television once a week. I also played my Barney’s Favorites cassette tape every day and I knew all of the songs by heart.
The little boy and I started chattering and playing on the floor, and I sang “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” for him and his mom, very enthusiastically, with all of the hand motions and marching.
“Do your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie ’em in a knot? Can you tie ’em in a bow? Can you throw ’em o’er your shoulder Like a continental soldier Do your ears hang low?”
His mother turned to my mom and said, “Isn’t this why we don’t send them to public school, so they won’t be exposed to garbage like this?”
I remember this deep sense of shame and wanting to crawl under the carpet. I felt like I’d humiliated my mom and I wondered what was so terrible about my song. I think the little boy’s mom called him to come sit on the couch next to her, away from me, and we weren’t allowed to play together the rest of the visit.
This was the first time that I was that child, the bad influence.
Usually it was my parents keeping me away from other children that could lead me astray. This time, they hid their children from me. My mom didn’t understand at all why the other mother objected to the song.
The fear would follow me for years.
Later on in my teens, we ended up in a church with mostly other homeschooling families, some of them Quiverfull. All the other churches we’d gone to before were mainline denominations, and their children went to public school. But homeschooling was becoming more common by 2004.
I’d hear stories from the other families, pick up things in snatches of conversation.
My sister got a craft book for her eighth birthday party, the only party she ever invited friends to since we stayed to ourselves. The other children said, “Oh, look there’s a witch on this page! We’ll have to cover that up.” Their mom glanced over and said, “Oh yeah, you can just cut out black construction paper and glue it over those pages like we do at our house.”
I called my Bible Buddies partner during the week, we got into a theological discussion, and I asked, “Well, have you ever read Narnia?” “No,” she answered. “My parents don’t like that they talk about magic, and they think it’s too confusing for children to read about Jesus as a lion.” I explained that magic is like a substitute for divine power both in creation and redemption, and I read her some dialogue between Aslan and the Pevensie children. She said she thinks it’s probably safer not to read it and seemed uncomfortable, and I dropped the subject.
A homeschool mom traded some used A Beka textbooks with our family. The pages of the only Greek myth in the 8th grade literature book were stapled together.
“Why should they learn about pagan literature when they could be reading the Bible?”
My dad bought clearance books and films from the Focus on the Family bookstore. He sent the kids Ten Commandments VHS series to a Quiverfull family we knew with 13 kids. My mom explained to their parents that the only time there is music with a beat in the series is the scene where the characters worship false idols.
I was always watchful around the other families, struggling to balance being honest about the books and movies I enjoyed but with the fear of not being allowed to talk to the other teens if I’m considered a “bad influence.” In this patriarchal world, if one of the parents decided I’m not spiritual enough or too worldly, I might not be given space to defend myself.
I know because it happened to others. Teens and young adults were called into the pastor’s office and questioned about their music preferences, asked to stop hanging out with their children.
Because, you know. This is why we don’t send our kids to public school.
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Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on January 3, 2016.
Back in high school, I used to love Andrée Seu Peterson’s column. I read her pieces first when our copy of World magazine arrived in the mail every week. She always made me think because she was less conservative than my homeschool textbooks, and I admired her writing style.
I haven’t read World magazine since I moved out–the subscription is expensive and I’ve had too much reading for college. Last year, though, I read about her problematic column on bisexuality in posts from Libby Anne and Samantha Field.
But in her article “Houses Taken Over”in the Nov. 14, 2015 issue, Peterson argues government oversight like food safety guidelines and background checks for child care are intrusive. She even suggests following such protocol is equivalent to Nazi Germany’s laws against Jewish people. Here we go again with Godwin’s law.
It was not long ago that the state cracked down on church homemade desserts here in Pennsylvania. The year was 2009, and as an elderly parishioner of St. Cecilia’s began unwrapping wares baked by fellow church members, a state inspector on the premises noticed that they were not store-bought and forbade their sale. It was the end of Mary Pratte’s coconut cream pie, Louise Humbert’s raisin pie, and Marge Murtha’s “farm apple” pie, as well as a tradition as old as church socials.
We Christians are a good lot, by and large. We know Romans 13 and desire to be model citizens. Would we have been sad but obedient when the 1933 “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” barred people of Jewish descent from employment in government? Would we have had searchings of heart but complied with the 1935 “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor” that interdicted marriage between Jew and German? Would we have sighed but acquiesced in 1938, when government contracts could no longer be awarded to Jewish businesses, and in October of that year when Jews were required to have a “J” stamped on their passports?
If the local church cannot be trusted to know its people well enough to decide who is fit for nursery duty, there is nothing much to say, except that we had better get back to a New Testament model where pastors knew their flock. If bakers of coconut cream pies are notoriously dangerous people, then we have brought these statist regulations on ourselves, and more’s the pity.
The woman sitting to my right at the ESL meeting said (not disapprovingly) that from now on if a junior high event takes place at someone’s house, a person must be present who has state clearance. I hazarded at that point that it looked like government intrusion, and no one said a word, as if I had passed gas and everyone pretended I had not. As if I were the kind of person who did not care about the children.
Peterson’s article fails to differentiate between Hitler’s laws, which discriminated against Jews based off propaganda, and laws to prevent child abuse, which only restrict people convicted of a heinous crime. She also sounds defensive, as if she finds regulations burdensome and cannot understand why no one else at her church agrees with her.
When I know that a church is following state and national guidelines, I feel safer being with that group of people. The church I recently joined requires a background check and a child protection training course for any volunteers, and I did not protest.
I actually told the nursery workers, “I’m really glad you do this.”
The 12 page booklet provides extensive definitions and examples of sex offender patterns and contrasts it with cultural stereotypes, as well as defining what is and is not appropriate protocol when working with children.
Peterson says in her column that background checks would mean less available childcare at her church.
The far-seeing ESL director realized the implications and judged that it would be prudent to scrap the baby-sitting: Fewer people would be willing to take the extra step of filling out the necessary forms. The resulting smaller pool of workers would mean that our ESL cadre would be in competition with the Women’s Bible Study ministry and the Sunday nursery ministry for manpower.
But the quiz at the end of my church’s child protection course is clear that the intent is not to prevent people from volunteering. Protecting children is the first priority.
Christians believe that Jesus said “If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6) If the church wants to follow this teaching, we need to be preventing child abuse through the best methods currently known.
Homeschool parents often argue that government involvement is a bad thing, and HSLDA actively encourages this. Slate magazine, the New York Times, and the Daily Beast have all reported on the lack of regulation. No accountability enables child abuse and educational neglect. This past Thanksgiving, KGOU’s article about homeschool regulation in Oklahoma was met with so much backlash from the homeschool lobby that an entire interview was withdrawn.
Societies have rules, at least in theory, so that their people can live in peace and be treated justly. Every community needs to protect the children and disadvantaged.
Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on December 13, 2015.
I grew up in the Village.
The first time I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 film, my head hurt and one of my roommates asked me if I was okay. I didn’t have words. Sometimes I find those books, those films that resonate so strongly with my own experience, that the bittersweet rush of knowing takes my breath away.
The Village became the movie that I showed all of my friends who’d been affected by a cult environment. As they started to question their high control group, I’d find a way to sneak a movie night with them.
It became our movie, something that we refer to when discussing our past.
There’s a few reasons for this:
1.) The whole thing was manufactured like a utopia to protect innocence.
Many of our parents chose homeschooling to create a new generation, protected from negative influences and intellectually superior to the rest of the world. But our parents grew up attending public schools, something we never experienced.
The elders in the Village came from the Towns, but none of their children can remember the outside world. This is the only life they know. Ivy Walker’s father says in a moment of crisis, “What was the purpose of our leaving? Let us not forget it was out of hope, of something good and right.”
When I was young, my dad told me his middle school classmates used to throw small knifes at each other in the playground and my mom remembers hash being passed around in bags around her Houston high school in the 70s. They and others who grew up in the 60s counterculture movement wanted a better life for their children and believed that removing them from the public schools was the answer.
Just like our parents often told us they’d done things they regretted growing up and we had a unique opportunity to be different, the elders in the Village keep a black box of memories, “so the evil of my past can be kept close and not forgotten.”
Mrs. Clark’s sister, Mrs. Hunt’s husband, and Mr. Walker’s father all died through violence and tragedy. Edward Walker tells his daughter Ivy, “It is a darkness I wished you would never know. There is not one person in this town who has not been so shaken that they questioned the value of living at all.” Ivy says, “I am sad for you, Papa, and for the other elders.”
2.) They sought protection from evil in the ways of the past.
In The Village, a history professor decides to take a group of people and recreate 1840s pioneer America. In the 90s conservative Christian homeschooling movement, our moms taught us to sew our own clothes and we all wore homemade skirts and dresses.
I wore one of my pioneer dresses nearly every day when I was 12-14 and pretended that I lived in the colonial era. I checked out and devoured every historical book on the colonial period and Civil War that my mom would allow from the local library.
A friend once said, “I get why they wanted this life for you guys, they meant well. But it turned out to be the Little House on the Prairie fan convention from hell.”
3.) They used euphemisms and emotional repression to ward off what they most feared.
Growing up homeschooled, we didn’t get sex education. Purity culture often adopted a “see no sexy things, hear no sexy things, speak no sexy things” approach. One of my friends never heard the words penis and vagina until college. I was told that dancing was basically “a vertical expression of a horizontal desire,” something to be avoided.
This kind of approach extended to anything considered “evil” or a “bad influence,” including peers, extended family members, and movies or TV shows with magic or profanities. Often, the avoidance became obsessive over time. The circle of safety was ever narrowing.
The settlers in The Village use phrases like “Those We Don’t Speak Of” to refer to the creatures in Covington Woods, or “The Old Shed That is Not To Be Used” for a shack on the edge of town. Red is the bad color, yellow is the safe color. In the opening scenes, two girls sweeping on a porch run out to the yard to uproot and bury a red flower.
Later, Ivy tells Noah, a young man with a mental disability, “This color attracts Those We Don’t Speak Of. You ought not to pick that color berry anymore.” When the villagers find skinned carcasses of livestock, the schoolchildren assume, “Those We Don’t Speak Of did it.”
The light as well as the darkness in humanity becomes repressed, and this affects romantic attraction. Ivy knows Lucius cares deeply for her but won’t act on it. She tells him, “Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do so that others won’t know we want to do them.”
There’s a parallel scene when Lucius tells his mother that Mr. Walker is in love with her.
“He hides, too. He hides his true feelings for you.”
“What makes you think he has feelings for me?”
“He never touches you.”
When Ivy chooses to travel through the woods in spite of the creatures, the other young men sent to protect her are too afraid to go against the rules. “Why have we not heard of these rocks before, why is it that you wear the cloak of the safe color? I cannot go with you, it is forbidden.”
We homeschoolers also had arbitrary rules and standards, always shifting according to the preferences of our authority figures. We were taught to “abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thess 5:22) and that “it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Eph 5:12).
Just like in many homeschool communities, Noah’s mental illness is dealt with by only natural remedies. Noah dies a monster, which seems to enable stigmatization of mental illness.
Noah becomes the example of what not to be for the other villagers. He becomes the creature, one of Those We Don’t Speak Of. He embodies the darkness that they sought to eliminate from their little world.
“Your son has made our stories real. Noah has given us a chance to continue this place if that is something we still wish for.”
But the one line that echoes in my mind when I think of how I grew up is this:
“I tell you this so you will see some of the reasons for our actions. Forgive us for our silly lies, Ivy, they were not meant to harm.”
Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on September 1, 2015.
Growing up homeschooled means you get a lot more time with your siblings than other kids. As an older sibling, it also means you have much more responsibility for them.
This set the pattern for some unhealthy dynamics. My first counselor after moving out said my dad’s insisting our only friends being immediate family members was incredibly codependent. Libby Anne writes about being an older child instructed to spank her younger siblings.
Parents expecting more of older siblings is typical in secular culture, but not usually with the same connotations like in fundamentalist homeschooling. As the oldest in my family, I heard things like:
A good older sibling sets the example for their younger brothers and sisters. Even if you don’t think they look up to you, they do. They watch your every move, and often, they’ll try to walk in your footsteps. So it’s important that you behave in ways that set a good example for them. Just like we look to Jesus to be our example, that we look to live how he lived and behave like he behaved, our younger siblings often look to us that way, too. — Taken from Christian Teen About
Statements like this put an excessive amount of pressure on older children.
We’re not just expected to protect younger siblings from danger, we’re responsible for their eternal salvation. And fundamentalist parents often manipulate this idea to check rebellion. To squash any behavior they didn’t like.
I couldn’t get angry if Dad was controlling and demanding, because that wasn’t having a meek and quiet spirit. Suffering without complaint was more like Christ, I was told, and a better example.
If I wore a fitted sweater, I was not being an example of modesty to my sister.
When I asked to have a curfew of midnight instead of 7:30 p.m. in college, I was not demonstrating submission to authority for my siblings.
My mom often said: “What will your little brother and sister think? They are always watching you. You know what Jesus said about those who lead little children astray. It would be better for you to have a millstone tied around your neck.”
So when Dad said things that hurt, when the house felt like a cage, when I thought of running away in the middle of the night, I didn’t. Because of my siblings. I was responsible for them.
When I thought my parents punished my brother and sister unfairly, I’d try to anger them into spanking me instead.
Junior year of college, I moved out because my parents said the alternative would be transferring to Bob Jones University. I went back and forth, uncertain what my decision would mean for my brother and sister. I’d be the first to leave home.
I told my professors that I wanted to be a good example for my siblings, that I didn’t want to run away or rebel if it would hurt them, that I’d go to Bob Jones if I had to, even if it killed me.
They told me that I could be a good example by moving out, that I could show my siblings that freedom was possible.
But I worried. I knew I couldn’t live at home anymore, but I still wanted to be a good big sister. That fall, I struggled to set limits as my parents barraged me with visits and phone calls, begging me to reconsider.
A couple of classmates, both named Cynthia, asked me what was wrong after one of our Saturday writers’ group meetings.
I gave my fears a voice. I didn’t understand taking care of yourself before helping other people. Fundamentalism taught me the reverse: don’t be selfish, sacrifice everything for others. Shouldn’t I just put up with my parents’ behavior for the sake of my siblings?
One of the Cynthias looked at me and the other Cynthia. She said, “Are you familiar with New Life Church’s teaching about confronting lies that you’ve believed? You identify the lie, you replace it with truth, and you pray against the power of the lie. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself for your siblings. You’re free to make your own choices.”
They each laid hands on me, praying with me that I’d heal and live in freedom.
I can’t save my siblings. All I can do is be a good human.
My little sister is going to BJU, and my little brother is a serious, quiet teenage boy. I lost contact with them for two years after leaving, so I can’t just speak my truth to them openly.
Many people like me who were raised in controlling environments tend to not get along with authority outside that context, breeding difficulties in maintaining employment and interacting within society.
But the older generations often discount why we’d react this way.
“You’re just a rebel. Someday you’ll grow up.”
“I guess your parents didn’t beat you enough. Nobody ever taught you respect.”
They don’t recognize that 20 somethings like us have negative experiences with authority figures.
What about children who were beaten by their parents, teenagers molested by youth group leaders? What about those of us convinced early on that we must kill any strong desires as worldly and evil and focus obsessively on self-sacrifice in preparation for our eventual martyrdom?
We’re not deviant just because. Usually we were wounded by someone who misused their power.
I’m able to balance my rebellion through boycotting video cards and candy bars. I find harmless, unusual outlets in which to be deviant. But society views my friends who deviate in larger ways as dysfunctional.
I’m not that different from them. I just happen to have a job and they don’t. But we feel the same way about authority.
Here’s some ways I think authority figures can be fair and ethical in dealing with people like us:
1.) Don’t make excessive rules or rules with discrepancies.
This is just asking for rebellion.
Like the student handbooks at Bob Jones University or Pensacola Christian College. They’re so exacting.
If you’re going to have policies like this:
“BJU takes a conservative approach to music. While students are at the University, our goal is to teach them to appreciate music that is spiritually edifying and culturally valuable. For the BJU student this precludes most of the music of our popular culture including rock, rap, jazz and country, as well as religious music that borrows from these styles. It also precludes any music that uses a discernible rock beat regardless of the style. In order to develop their spiritual and aesthetic discernment, BJU encourages students to listen to classical and light classical music and traditional sacred music. There is also a spectrum of music that falls outside light classical and traditional sacred music that is acceptable to listen to.” (p. 29)
Of course you’re also going to have to enforce them like this:
“BJU students are to listen to and bring to campus only music that meets our community standards. In addition, each member of the BJU family should carefully monitor music in movies, computer games, television programs, commercials, Internet sites, cell phone ringers, etc. To ensure personal accountability, students are not to listen to music with headphones. Students may use headphones in the residence hall study lounge for academic purposes, and resident supervisors may approve individual requests to use headphones for independent learning courses.” (pp. 29-30, 2011-2012 version)
BJU also bans several other extremely specific offenses like wearing Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister clothing, because of the brands’ “unusual degree of antagonism to Biblical morality,” (p. 33), and necklines lower than four finger widths below your collarbone, for modesty reasons (p. 32).
Similar themes surface in The Student Voice’s satirical Things You Won’t Do at PCC, which lists arbitrary items such as “own a fish” and “play a harmonica.”
Peter Gage, who published the Student Voice, the “underground” newsletter that sought to expose PCC’s flaws in the early 2000s, was sued by PCC for cybersquatting in 2013.
Because we grew up in home environments with their own specific rules, we used the rules to protect ourselves. That’s why discrepancies bother us, because then the authority becomes unpredictable. It’s survival instincts.
One company I worked for intentionally hid dress codes so the HR department could fire employees violating rules that were never properly explained.
When guidelines in the workplace are contradictory, I get panicky, waiting for unexpected punishment.
2.) Don’t invent punishments intended to harm. Consequences should seem natural.
Many fundamentalist parents will say, “I make my kid pull their jeans down, because if I spank them through their pants, it doesn’t hurt enough.” Or “The diaper is too much padding. They won’t remember what they did wrong unless it stings.” Or “My child talked back, so they lost their favorite doll / book. I had to find some way to get their attention.”
This strange idea circulates that the consequences have to be harsh, and it should hurt the child. I thought society frowned on cruel and unusual punishments. Also, the rest of the world doesn’t operate this way, as we found after childhood. But it still feels like it does.
After my last post, my friend Kathleen asked me how I thought parents should raise children.
I’d say they shouldn’t invent punishments that crush the child’s spirit, either physically or emotionally. Consequences should be preparation for adult responsibility, not calculated to inflict pain.
Children learn by doing.
You can tell them to pick up their toys so the dog doesn’t destroy them, but if they don’t listen and the dog shreds them, you don’t punish the child or the dog. And you can remind them not to walk in front of swings, but, unfortunately, they may have to get bonked in the head a couple of times.
I don’t think sheltering kids from these experiences is the answer. It’s just inhibiting their individual growth. The parents, seeking to protect the child from scraped knees, inflicts different wounds.
If I get to be a mom, I want to be their healer and guide, not their aggressor.
3) Allow for communication about the rules and how power is exercised.
My friend Shelby, who is a sociology grad student, developed a scale for my paranoia.
Source: fs.usda.gov
“1 = Everything’s cool; not liking the cameras at work, but otherwise cool; using video card freely; perhaps reading or beading between calls; browsing Internet sometimes; training the dictation program profile intermittently; still using instant messenger.
“2 = Not so cool; really avoiding cameras at work; may use video card, but does so reluctantly and wants to hide it from supervisors; more likely to read/bead between calls than browse Internet; training dictation profile more frequently (such as reading from book); still using instant messenger.
“3 = Much less cool; definitely suspicious of cameras at work; may use video card, but does so reluctantly and wants to hide it from supervisors (more likely to train dictation profile using the video as well); much more likely to read/bead between calls than to browse Internet; training profile exuberantly; still using instant messenger.
“4 = Definitely not cool; very suspicious of cameras at work; not using video card; may read/bead between calls, but only if also training dictation profile; not using Internet for anything unrelated to work; training profile vigorously; still using instant messenger.
“5 = Very anxious and jumpy; not using Internet for anything unrelated to work; not using instant messenger for anything unrelated to work; training dictation profile obsessively between calls.
It’s useful, because she can ask me how anxious I am on any given day, and I can give her a number, like 3.5.
I can report my paranoia like the local news reports the daily fire danger during the summer. This helps me communicate how I feel, how rational I am that day. It’s amusing, but I also become more self-aware.
Also, if authority figures are open to negotiation about the rules, I feel safer.
Homeschool alumni blogger Libby Anne wrote last month about how she’s more flexible with her children than her parents were. She explains:
“Growing up, my parents were very firm that “no” meant “no.” If we begged or tried to get them to change their minds, we would get in trouble. That was disobedience. More than that, they thought that if they were to “give in” to begging after already saying no, they would be allowing us children to rule them and would lose control of the family. So not only were we not allowed to beg, they also didn’t allow themselves to change their minds. That would have been showing weakness.“
And she points out that treating children this way isn’t a good model for adult relationships, with several examples, and concludes:
“My children and I exist in relationship with each other…. Yes, my children are young and in need of guidance and teaching. But part of that guidance and teaching is helping them learn to master things like compromise and negotiation.”
I relax and begin to trust authority again when they consider what I want and need, and are open to compromise.
We won’t remain rebels if we feel we are treated fairly.
