“If not for the Religious Exemption clause, my parents would have had to, at the very least, turn in my standardized test scores to the county officials. I think it would have strongly encouraged my parents to educate me better.”
Let me start off by saying I do not hate homeschoolers or homeschooling. It’s possible to homeschool children in a healthy way, with quality education, care, and socialization. It’s also possible to teach your children after your own beliefs without forcing them to agree with you. Rather than shame them into agreement, if you instead give your children freedom of belief, they will genuinely respect you as they grow. They will be able to actually consider issues themselves, becoming confident in their sense of personal identity.
Sadly, for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of children, homeschooling causes harm, from poor socialization to various forms of abuse. I think the only good thing that came out of my home-schooling was that my mother encouraged creativity in the realms of art and make-believe. Because I was allowed to escape into my worlds of playing-pretend, because I was allowed to become absorbed in creating fantastical stories, I somehow survived.
My parents decided to homeschool for religious reasons. They wanted to raise as many children as possible to become “strong Christian leaders.” In addition, they were concerned about safety, wanting to protect us from the bullying, violence, and early sexual encounters common to public school. Ironically, my siblings and I were not saved from those things. Rather, we were trapped in a closed environment that fostered these dangers.
Bullying? I had to watch one brother be sadistically and systematically bullied by another brother. Violence? Besides abuse from my brother, my mom threw things, broke things, frequently threatened to injure me, and occasionally followed through. (I won’t even go into the spanking topic.) How about early or inappropriate sexual encounters? Yep, we had incest and sexual harassment in varying degrees. My parents had the ability to stop these occurrences, but let them go on instead. So you see, I wasn’t protected at all.
There are plenty of things my parents did wrong by choosing to homeschool, but I’ll just briefly note two. The first is emotional abuse, mostly by my mother. The second is lack of good education: academic in some areas, and basic life knowledge in others.
In terms of emotional abuse, I suffered more than my siblings because of my curious, independent nature. I didn’t act ladylike enough, I asked questions, I dared to form my own opinions, and I complained when things were unfair. Therefore, I was punished, shamed, and manipulated by my parents until I hated myself so much that I truly wanted to die. The shame they fed me on was the only thing I had to define myself, as my parents also discouraged us kids from developing our own identities. We were supposed to be a singular unit, The Christian Family, led by the Patriarch and never disagreeing with what we were taught. The teachings were often morally disgusting (racism, bigotry, sexism), and there even problems with the way they tried to teach basic Christianity.
What do I mean by that? Well, plenty of people learn about their family’s faith without being forced into it, but I was not so lucky. My purpose was decided for me before I was born; in mom’s words, I was to be “a strong Christian influencing the world”, no matter what I thought about it. The fear tactic was used a lot, too. I had to live in constant terror of demonic possession, of accidentally sinning, and of God’s punishments.
If that isn’t bad enough, possibly the worst thing my parents did was intentionally isolate me. In order to preserve my morality, in their eyes, they kept me away from nearly all outside influences. I never remember not being lonely. Even the rare “friends” I was allowed to play with came from conservative homeschool families like mine. I could never open up to them because my mother obsessively watched us, never letting us leave her sight. I can still feel the frustration, confusion, and despair.
If you ask them now, my parents might claim that they didn’t isolate me intentionally. But there’s no doubt about it: no matter how I begged, I was not allowed to have friends. Only in college did I learn the real meaning of having a friend. That isn’t something that happens to a kid by accident.
It would take too long to write about all the educational deficits in my upbringing. To give you the general idea, though, all the textbooks for history were Revisionist. (That means the writer tried to make history seem a certain way by meticulously choosing events selectively, and/or just writing lies.) Because of their freedom under Virginia’s Religious Exemption clause, my parents only focused on teaching a handful of subjects: reading, writing, math, and a very inadequate introduction to science. I learned some history, but was never tested on it. Other important subjects like basic geography were left out entirely.
Let’s not forget the deficits in my education about “how to survive in the real world.” I had social phobia for a long time because I was never given the chance to practice dealing with people. As a result, I didn’t know how to order food for myself until very late, I would have panics over making simple phone calls, and I had no idea what was socially acceptable to say. Also, I was never taught how to budget money. I was never given a sex education, either.
Finally, let’s imagine how things might have turned out if there had been sufficient oversight of my homeschool education. If not for the Religious Exemption clause, my parents would have had to, at the very least, turn in my standardized test scores to the county officials. I think it would have strongly encouraged my parents to educate me better. Proper oversight may not have stopped abuses from occurring in my home. However, the abuses could have been openly discussed, and perhaps minimized, if only someone had ever come to check on us.
In public school, there are often resources available for someone concerned about abuse; at the very least, there are more people around, such as teachers, which a child could open up to. This is not the case for homeschoolers—at least those excused from all supervision by laws like Religious Exemption. We need to have more oversight in place. For example, a social worker could visit and interview a homeschool family once a year or so.
That’s just my two cents. I hope this honest testimonial helps shed some light on the issue of homeschool oversight.
Lynne A. was homeschooled in Virginia from the 1990s through the 2000s. Her family homeschooled under the state’s religious exemption clause. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 26 October, 2023 by CRHE
How Homeschooling Prepared Me for the Peace Corps
By Hännah Ettinger
The first time I set foot in a public school for academic reasons was the day I took the SAT. I was almost late because I’d run back into the house twice (pencils, calculator; lunch) and had turned into the wrong school parking lot (busses only for the elementary school next door, thanks to MapQuest). It was 2006. I’d found out I was taking the SAT just the night before.
I walked into the school hallway and panicked when I saw the sign about weapons on campus. I had a pocketknife in my backpack—I always did. I hoped no one would check. Next to the sign was a poster for Mean Girls, which was an ironic touch I wouldn’t appreciate until 2012 when I saw the movie for the first time.
And here I was: homeschooler goes to school. I jumped at my first bell, rolled my pencil off my slanted desk by accident, and couldn’t figure out how to gracefully tuck my bag into the wire cubby underneath my seat. I almost peed my pants waiting for the end of the essay time after I finished early, because I had forgotten that you can’t take bathroom breaks during a section and hadn’t gone during the lunch break.
The next time I entered a public school for academic reasons was this year, and this time I was teaching. In Kyrgyzstan. As an English language education volunteer.
The thing that surprised me most was not the culture shock or the students’ behavior or the barrage of questions I get from the other teachers. Instead I was surprised to discover how well prepared I was to work in this environment and in this sort of culture—and not by the training I received from Peace Corps. It was my 12 years of homeschool education that prepared me the most for thriving in this job.
Kyrgyz culture is highly family-focused, the result of generations of nomadic culture now settled into community-centered culture after Soviet organization and nationalization. Kyrgyz people are organically family-oriented in ways the new patriarchalists in American homeschooling can only fantasize about, and their communities are agrarian and place-driven in ways that would warm the cockles of Wendell Berry’s heart. I feel right at home.
I grew up as the oldest of 9 kids, mom’s right hand soldier in the day-to-day homeschool family fray, and was (as a little girl growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley) an avid reader of romantic agrarian novels—Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, Little Britches, etc. Living in a world where the social life revolves around what’s being harvested and canned right now, where everyone uses an outhouse, where you have to walk down the block to get water from the nearest well—it’s a world more familiar to me than most elements of American pop culture. I am more comfortable here among the sheep herds and bean fields of Talas than I was trying to find my way around the gilded halls of Las Vegas.
Homeschoolers have widely differing experiences, but perhaps one thing they have in common: the hurry up and wait schedule of a school education that is tied to the rhythms of family life. With your schooling dependent on your primary caregiver (usually) until a certain age when you’re able to self-direct and manage your attention and time well enough to be responsible for your own assignments, I ended up following mom around her day with my questions and textbooks.
“Mom,” I’d ask as she chopped vegetables, “why isn’t this long division problem working?” And she’d look over her knife and onion debris to my book on the counter and we’d talk it through while she kept cutting. I’d ask her to help me spell things while she folded laundry, read her drafts of my writing assignments while she nursed the baby. I worked on my math in the back seat of the van while she was in the grocery store, I read my science books in the back of the room during my dad’s evening community meetings for work. My education centered itself squarely around the higher priorities of family life.
When I arrived in country for my pre-service training for my time here as an education (Teaching English as a Foreign Language, or TEFL) volunteer, one of the first things we got told was that we’d have to adjust our habits as Americans to match those of our counterparts (the local teacher we’re assigned to work with and help support the professional development of), especially regarding our expectations for time management.
“First, think of everything you want to get accomplished in a month as if you were in America,” said a volunteer who’d been in country for a year already. “And that’s what you should expect to get done in a year.”
During training, we learned quickly to pace ourselves and slowly adjusted to “Kyrgyz time.” Here, if someone invites you for a dinner party and tells you to come at 6pm, it’s rude to show up any time before 8pm. Dinners during the summer months were regularly being served at 10 or 11 at night, and volunteers stressed over this, since our language lessons started at 8 or 9 in the morning and many of us were still struggling with the significant ripple effects of jet lag.
And then, we got sworn in and sent to our permanent sites. Most of us paired with teachers are working with female counterparts, and the women here are all married and closely tied to their obligations at home. Food preparation and housework and the kitchen garden and the children and helping out extended family members with anything that is traditionally considered “women’s work” all falls on them, and their work at school takes secondary priority. Teachers are regularly late to appointments or cancel lesson planning sessions (or even lessons themselves) due to their obligations at home.
My counterpart, a widow with a few sons in their late teens and early twenties, has been teaching for 25 years and gets to choose her work schedule at the school thanks to her seniority. She and I don’t have to negotiate with obligations to in-laws or a husband for our time to work together, which can be a struggle for other TEFL volunteers. But I still have to hurry up and wait to find time in her schedule to meet—in between her planning a wedding, canning relishes and jams for the winter, supervising the harvesting of the bean fields, and her popular social life as one woman in a tight communal membership of housewives and teachers and extended relatives in a small town in rural Kyrgyzstan.
For other volunteers, this is just another part of culture shock, something different to adjust themselves to. We got trained for this, and our program managers are supportive as we adjust and negotiate with the home-work balance of our counterparts to find equilibrium.
And I laugh–as I sip tea at my counterpart’s kitchen table while her phone buzzes nonstop on the bench beside her and her sons pop in and out asking when dinner will be ready and as she hops up from our lesson planning to fuss over the loaves of bread rotating through the little convection oven in the corner and stirs the soup and seals jars of compote—because I’ve just come back to the center of things again, negotiating education in the kitchen while the world revolves around a mother.
Hännah Ettinger is currently serving as a TEFL Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic.
Last Updated: 26 October, 2023 by CRHE
Lynne A.: “I wasn’t protected at all”
“If not for the Religious Exemption clause, my parents would have had to, at the very least, turn in my standardized test scores to the county officials. I think it would have strongly encouraged my parents to educate me better.”
Let me start off by saying I do not hate homeschoolers or homeschooling. It’s possible to homeschool children in a healthy way, with quality education, care, and socialization. It’s also possible to teach your children after your own beliefs without forcing them to agree with you. Rather than shame them into agreement, if you instead give your children freedom of belief, they will genuinely respect you as they grow. They will be able to actually consider issues themselves, becoming confident in their sense of personal identity.
Sadly, for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of children, homeschooling causes harm, from poor socialization to various forms of abuse. I think the only good thing that came out of my home-schooling was that my mother encouraged creativity in the realms of art and make-believe. Because I was allowed to escape into my worlds of playing-pretend, because I was allowed to become absorbed in creating fantastical stories, I somehow survived.
My parents decided to homeschool for religious reasons. They wanted to raise as many children as possible to become “strong Christian leaders.” In addition, they were concerned about safety, wanting to protect us from the bullying, violence, and early sexual encounters common to public school. Ironically, my siblings and I were not saved from those things. Rather, we were trapped in a closed environment that fostered these dangers.
Bullying? I had to watch one brother be sadistically and systematically bullied by another brother. Violence? Besides abuse from my brother, my mom threw things, broke things, frequently threatened to injure me, and occasionally followed through. (I won’t even go into the spanking topic.) How about early or inappropriate sexual encounters? Yep, we had incest and sexual harassment in varying degrees. My parents had the ability to stop these occurrences, but let them go on instead. So you see, I wasn’t protected at all.
There are plenty of things my parents did wrong by choosing to homeschool, but I’ll just briefly note two. The first is emotional abuse, mostly by my mother. The second is lack of good education: academic in some areas, and basic life knowledge in others.
In terms of emotional abuse, I suffered more than my siblings because of my curious, independent nature. I didn’t act ladylike enough, I asked questions, I dared to form my own opinions, and I complained when things were unfair. Therefore, I was punished, shamed, and manipulated by my parents until I hated myself so much that I truly wanted to die. The shame they fed me on was the only thing I had to define myself, as my parents also discouraged us kids from developing our own identities. We were supposed to be a singular unit, The Christian Family, led by the Patriarch and never disagreeing with what we were taught. The teachings were often morally disgusting (racism, bigotry, sexism), and there even problems with the way they tried to teach basic Christianity.
What do I mean by that? Well, plenty of people learn about their family’s faith without being forced into it, but I was not so lucky. My purpose was decided for me before I was born; in mom’s words, I was to be “a strong Christian influencing the world”, no matter what I thought about it. The fear tactic was used a lot, too. I had to live in constant terror of demonic possession, of accidentally sinning, and of God’s punishments.
If that isn’t bad enough, possibly the worst thing my parents did was intentionally isolate me. In order to preserve my morality, in their eyes, they kept me away from nearly all outside influences. I never remember not being lonely. Even the rare “friends” I was allowed to play with came from conservative homeschool families like mine. I could never open up to them because my mother obsessively watched us, never letting us leave her sight. I can still feel the frustration, confusion, and despair.
If you ask them now, my parents might claim that they didn’t isolate me intentionally. But there’s no doubt about it: no matter how I begged, I was not allowed to have friends. Only in college did I learn the real meaning of having a friend. That isn’t something that happens to a kid by accident.
It would take too long to write about all the educational deficits in my upbringing. To give you the general idea, though, all the textbooks for history were Revisionist. (That means the writer tried to make history seem a certain way by meticulously choosing events selectively, and/or just writing lies.) Because of their freedom under Virginia’s Religious Exemption clause, my parents only focused on teaching a handful of subjects: reading, writing, math, and a very inadequate introduction to science. I learned some history, but was never tested on it. Other important subjects like basic geography were left out entirely.
Let’s not forget the deficits in my education about “how to survive in the real world.” I had social phobia for a long time because I was never given the chance to practice dealing with people. As a result, I didn’t know how to order food for myself until very late, I would have panics over making simple phone calls, and I had no idea what was socially acceptable to say. Also, I was never taught how to budget money. I was never given a sex education, either.
Finally, let’s imagine how things might have turned out if there had been sufficient oversight of my homeschool education. If not for the Religious Exemption clause, my parents would have had to, at the very least, turn in my standardized test scores to the county officials. I think it would have strongly encouraged my parents to educate me better. Proper oversight may not have stopped abuses from occurring in my home. However, the abuses could have been openly discussed, and perhaps minimized, if only someone had ever come to check on us.
In public school, there are often resources available for someone concerned about abuse; at the very least, there are more people around, such as teachers, which a child could open up to. This is not the case for homeschoolers—at least those excused from all supervision by laws like Religious Exemption. We need to have more oversight in place. For example, a social worker could visit and interview a homeschool family once a year or so.
That’s just my two cents. I hope this honest testimonial helps shed some light on the issue of homeschool oversight.
Lynne A. was homeschooled in Virginia from the 1990s through the 2000s. Her family homeschooled under the state’s religious exemption clause. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 16 May, 2016 by CRHE
Katrina B.: “My parents sincerely tried their best”
“I believe oversight of homeschooling is a necessary starting point. I also encourage parents who are homeschooling to actively distinguish their roles as teacher and parent. I encourage them to learn about the effects of social contact on children’s brain development, and follow the recommendations of mental health professionals for each age group.”
Despite how hard homeschooling was for me, my parents sincerely tried their best. My mother sought external resources to supplement her teaching as I got older. I attended some classes offered privately for home schooled students. In what would have been my freshman year I attended two classes at a public high school. Unfortunately my mother was not comfortable with me making friends there, and though people asked me to hang out I never could. I started to avoid these situations so I wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse why I couldn’t. My two closest friends were both homeschooled girls like myself. We liked doing crafts and listening to the radio, picking our favorite bands.
Let me start by telling about the nearest success in my home schooled years. My craft of choice was beadwork—stitching tiny glass seed beads into fabric-like pieces. I made jewelry and small pouches out of these. After learning a new bead stitch from one of my homeschooled friends I started using beads to cover tiny glass bottles, the kind homeopathic remedies came in. For several years I’d participated in a holiday craft fair. One year I was placed next to a woman who sewed, crocheted, and beaded bags, purses, and amulet pouches. She had a full-time business and made her living selling what she made. We got along well even though she was middle-aged, and my mother asked her to mentor me.
We met once a week at my mentor’s house for about six months. She taught me how to contact the buyers of local stores and show them my beaded things. A New Age bookshop ordered a dozen beaded remedy bottles and I set to work filling the order. It took longer than I expected, and I was happy to deliver them and pick up a check. The bottles quickly sold out and the store contacted me to place another order. I wanted to fill the second order but I didn’t know if I could. My eyes were red and strained from so much tiny, focused work. I did not know what a business plan was and had not been taught to pay myself for my time. When I calculated my profits I turned out to be making less than $2/hour. No one talked to me about the possibility of raising my prices—or how to figure out what a reasonable price might be. My mentor was unable to advise me because her own business was in trouble as well as she faced competition from cheap imported goods.
None of the adults around me were able to discuss the challenges or issues that I encountered. My mother praised me but it fell flat because the problems hadn’t been addressed. She was unable to teach me to set goals, value my time, regroup, or look at the bigger picture. I did not learn case studies of successful companies. I was told only that overseas factories were both bad and run by bad people. It is not reasonable to expect parents or someone undergoing major business challenges to put the global economic situation in perspective for a teen. I don’t fault anyone for not having done this, but I do note that home schooling had no way of defining or rewarding success outside our family bubble.
At the time I was more concerned with finding social opportunities than running a business. My two homeschooled friends had gone to a concert of a favorite band and that I hadn’t been allowed to attend and I was devastated. I began pressing my mother to let me do more social things. She felt I did plenty already. I could not make her understand that I wanted a larger social life, and she decided my insistence was rebellion. I spent a lot of time alone in my bedroom. I imagined I’d be a cheerleader if I went to high school, but later I imagined I’d be one of the girls who cut class and looked cool smoking cigarettes in the parking lot. I didn’t have the opportunity to do either, or get any sense of my personality around others.
Although what bothered me most was the lack of social life, the business attempt and failure seems more significant. I was dejected about all of this. My mother tried to teach me both self-help and spiritual methods for dealing with it. While she had the best of intentions, her misapplication of self-help and spirituality was not appropriate. The problems I faced were real and solvable in the world. They did not originate inside of me.
The roles of parent and teacher are extremely different. I do not believe these roles should be the same. I am thankful to have had parents who cared about me and tried their best. Truly great parents know they can never be outgrown, and are secure in this. Truly great teachers enable their students to surpass them, they understand that a student who outgrows them is a sign of success. I did not realize this until I was an adult struggling to understand why my parents treated me as much younger than I was. It’s easy to write off high school traditions such as prom or graduation as meaningless, as I was taught they were, but I wonder if my parents would have benefited from these moments of growing up, and showing up, as I would have.
My parents started homeschooling me partway through first grade. My mother felt she was protecting me by homeschooling me. When I was seven and eight years old I asked to go to school and finally my mother agreed to let me “try” it. I spent the last few months of third grade and all of fourth grade in public school in Seattle. I sat in the front of the class with three other girls and we all did well: we raised our hands all the time, we got good grades, and we played at recess together. However my mother wanted to homeschool me again. Neither of my parents valued school, they saw only the negatives of their own experiences and were unaware of they ways it had benefited them or could have benefited me. My mother gave me a choice: I could get a puppy and home school to learn how to take care of it, or I could continue in public school. We had given away a dog when I was young and I’d wanted a puppy ever since. I chose the puppy.
My parents called themselves “liberal,” and while religious (Buddhists), they did not homeschool for religious reasons. If anything, a tension with and distrust of American society motivated my parents to keep me at home until my late teens. There was more emotion than politics in the way they talked about their views. Sometimes my mother would say we were “unschooling” when questioned, but this was incorrect. I was not directing my own learning; I was trying to manage my mother’s needs and my own.
She wanted me to succeed but she didn’t know how to prepare me for success. I was allowed to “try” school again for seventh grade, as a sophomore, and as an early college entrant at 17 years old. Fourth grade remained the only year I finished. Sometimes leaving school was my mother’s choice and sometimes it was mine. I was never encouraged to stick it out, but rather my decision to leave was always met with relief. The world outside our family made my mother uncomfortable. When I got to college I had no sense of time management or how to prepare for a test. Finishing things was difficult for me (when I finished things as a kid my parents and I would have to address what came next, a difficult question for everyone). I left the early entry college by choice—I was completely unmotivated to do anything but socialize. Several years later I applied to a college that specialized in art. I filled my first transcript ever with a year of good grades and then transferred to a general college that welcomed non-traditional students.
I feel lucky when I consider the opportunities I was afforded despite being home schooled. My parents had me take standardized achievement tests to keep up to my grade level in math and English, and they encouraged me to attend college. I believe oversight of homeschooling is a necessary starting point. I also encourage parents who are homeschooling to actively distinguish their roles as teacher and parent. I encourage them to learn about the effects of social contact on children’s brain development, and follow the recommendations of mental health professionals for each age group. Lastly, I encourage parents to do healthy and honest self-assessments of their own reasons for homeschooling at least once a year.
Katrina was home schooled in Washington State from 1988 to 2000. For additional thoughts and experiences of homeschooled alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 23 September, 2015 by CRHE
Q&A with Jennifer Mathieu, Author of Devoted
In her novel, Devoted, Jennifer Mathieu enters the world of Rachel, a dutiful homeschooled daughter and sister to five younger siblings. As Rachel’s mother struggles through depression, Rachel cares for and teaches her younger siblings, escapes into forbidden books, and begins to wonder about the world outside. She reads the blog of Lauren, an older girl who left their community, and Rachel begins to question whether she really wants the path that’s set out for her: marriage, childbirth, and an end to her education. Mathieu deftly paints a very sensitive — and very realistic — portrait of a young girl whose education has effectively ended but who has so much more that she wants to learn. CRHE’s Board Member Alisa Harris spoke with Jennifer Mathieu about her research, what she learned from talking with homeschool alumni, and how her own experience as an educator played into the novel. Note: this interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Alisa Harris: Did you have any connection to the homeschool community before you started researching? How much did you know?
Jennifer Mathieu: When I was growing up, I went to Catholic school my whole life. My family was a part of our community pool and there was a church community near us that got very involved. The pastor of the church was a college swimmer and became the coach of our community swim team. He brought his whole congregation with him. All of these children homeschooled. I had never known any homeschoolers in my life so every summer I would connect with these homeschooled kids and we would have fun in the summer and I would never see them during the school year. I remember I was always asking them why they were homeschooled. They would explain to me that it was part of their faith, that the Bible told them education was the responsibility of the parent. As a little girl, I remember feeling sorry for them because I felt like they lived for the summer. I felt like the summer was their time to have connections with a ton of other kids. That was my introduction and that’s where my curiosity began.
AH: What were your perceptions before you started your research and how did those perceptions change? What was the most surprising thing that you learned?
JM: I think something that I intuitively knew or sensed ended up being affirmed by my research. I thought that one of the challenges of being homeschooled, for some children, would be when they had outpaced whatever curriculum they were given. What would happen when they had a hunger to learn more and their parents couldn’t teach them? I remember doing science labs and chemistry labs that were super complicated, and we needed a chemistry lab. I remember thinking How would you do that? How would you complete certain things like that as homeschooler? That was affirmed for me in my research.
Even though it seems so obvious to me now, I had never thought about what a homeschooler would do if they were in an abusive situation. As a teacher, I have to report if a kid tells me anything. Lauren is being physically abused in the book. Who is she supposed to tell? I never thought about the fact that if your only world is this insular homeschool community, if you are being abused who do you have to tell?
AH: You did interviews and talked in-depth with homeschool students and alumni to research the book. Did you look for other types of data too?
JM: Something that I didn’t realize was that the laws were relaxed in the 1980s. I’m a former reporter, I’ve been a teacher for 10 years so the whole topic fascinates me on multiple levels. I was surprised at how easy it is to homeschool in some states. When I taught in public school I noticed there would be kids who would suddenly disappear and we would hear they’re being homeschooled. I would think, They’re getting homeschooled? I know that family and I’m a little bit concerned. Sometimes it was used as an excuse not to have to send the kid to school and that terrified me as an educator.
AH: In addition to writing novels, you’re an educator who teaches English to middle and high schoolers. How did that experience and profession shape your research and the questions you asked as you got to know homeschooled students?
JM: As an educator, what I brought to it was the experience of getting to see a child become excited about learning. I’ve taught students like Rachel who are just intuitively curious. In my mind, Rachel’s an exceptionally bright child. She had to be that smart to want to be able to learn as much as she wanted to learn. I felt that was her avenue out because she became so curious–that hunger to know was what helped her leave. I’ve taught children like that who are exceptionally and incredibly bright and there is such a hunger to learn. I watch students like that get accepted to Yale and University of Texas and they’re just going to flourish and I can’t wait. I say, “Please stay in touch — I want to find out what you do for the world.” As an educator I thought what would it be like if one of these blooming flowers were trapped and wasn’t allowed to bloom? She wants to blossom, she wants to learn.
I used to read obsessively. That was just one thing that I did and I remember thinking back on that when I was writing Rachel’s character. I thought What if that’s all that she had? As an educator I imagined my brightest stars and put them in this environment where they wouldn’t be allowed to shine, and that’s kind of how I wrote Rachel.
AH: The educational picture in the novel is complicated. On the one hand, Rachel is clearly a smart and motivated student who is gifted in math and computers. On the other hand, she doesn’t seem to receive very much instruction for her own education and spends most of her school time teaching her younger siblings. How did you decide to deal with Rachel’s education? Were you surprised at the extent to which some homeschoolers are basically self-taught?
JM: I was surprised to learn how much responsibility the older girls were given, especially in terms of instructing the little ones. There was an anecdote I read about a man, a father talking about how his 9-year-old daughter didn’t know how to read. He acknowledged that would make people uncomfortable but she was learning everything she needed to learn to be a wife and mother. I remember reading it and my blood just ran cold. I was so shocked.
I am a licensed educator in the state of TX. My teaching certificate is only for English and I could maybe teach my son up to about third or fourth grade level math. That was one thing that I learned as I started reading more — you can buy these curriculums off the internet, but you still need an instructor who can explain it. I don’t think I really realized how much the older girls were tasked with helping the younger ones, even though I would kind of see that in 19 Kids and Counting.
AH: Your novel faces the reality of abuse in the story of Lauren, the blogger Rachel reads, but it doesn’t sensationalize it or make that the focus of the novel. What went into your decision to acknowledge the reality of abuse but also not make it the focus?
JM: I think that Lauren’s family is portrayed more one-dimensionally and more evil, obviously more abusive. I did not want Rachel’s parents to be one-dimensional. So many homeschoolers I talked to told me about how they loved their parents. Their parents maybe had dysfunctional childhoods of their own and they thought they were giving their kids what they didn’t have. I didn’t want to make Rachel’s parents overtly abusive because that would make it obvious for Rachel to leave. But I had read stories and heard anecdotes about homeschool children who had been abused. I wanted to work that into the narrative and show this more extreme, overt abuse that has gone on. That’s why Lauren’s story is in there. I was trying to show the continuum of the behavior that can go on in these families.
AH: Have you had any reaction from the homeschooling community, alumni or current? How has it been?
JM: The reaction I’ve received has been very positive. It made me feel good because they said, “You told our story in a way that was not exploitative but was real.” I have had a couple of people say, “It was triggering for me to read it. I had to put it down. I was too emotional at parts.” I don’t want to make people cry, but if I am creating that reaction then it’s authentic. My hope is that people will read Devoted and if people are from that world, they will read the book and hopefully find some validation, perhaps find some encouragement to look forward to enhancing their education through other means.
Last Updated: 26 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
New State Homeschool Histories! (GA & TN)
At the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, we are in the process of creating individual state histories of homeschooling in an effort to provide some context for current homeschooling law. The history of homeschooling is different in each state, and compiling individual histories for each state is a monumental task. We have published 19 state histories to date, in full or in part. Our most recent histories, we posted just this week, look at Georgia and Tennessee.
You can view all of our state histories on our State Histories of Homeschooling page or read summaries of our newest state histories below.
Georgia
Early homeschoolers were required to go to the local school district and obtain permission to operate as a private school. Throughout the early 1980s, the state superintendent sought unsuccessfully to define “private school” so as to exclude homeschool. In 1985, the legislature passed the state’s homeschool statute, which was one of the least restrictive in the country. Over a decade later, in 1997, Georgia homeschoolers rebuffed a state lawmaker’s attempt to increase oversight of homeschooling. Finally, in 2013, the legislature made several small changes to the state’s homeschooling law, requiring parents to report to the state superintendent instead of the local board of education and decreasing the amount of reporting required. For more, see A History of Homeschooling in Georgia.
Tennessee
Early homeschoolers in Tennessee argued that their homeschools should be considered legal private schools. A number of families were prosecuted, and in 1984 two judges found the state’s compulsory attendance law void for vagueness because of its lack of clarity in defining private schools. In 1985 the state legislature passed the state’s homeschool statute. This statute was amended in 1994 and 2011 as the legislature added additional homeschool options, allowing parents to homeschool in affiliation with church-related schools. In 2011 and 2013, the state passed sports access bills, expanding homeschooled students’ access to public school athletics. For more, see A History of Homeschooling in Tennessee.
Last Updated: 26 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Resources for Homeschooling Parents!
As August approaches, parents across the country are thinking about school again, and for homeschooling parents, that means curriculum planning and/or activity scheduling! At the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, we work to support homeschooling parents in providing the best education possible for their children. With this in mind, we have created a variety of resources for homeschooling parents.
First and foremost is our guide to Getting Started Homeschooling. While this article is geared toward the first-time homeschooler, it includes advice and information of interest to returning homeschooling parents as well. Also of interest is our classic article, Advice from a Homeschool Grad Turned Public School Teacher. In this piece, CRHE board member Giselle Palmer gives positive and upbeat advice for the homeschooling parent.
We picked the brains of three homeschool graduates (myself, Arielle, and Jeremy) about what their parents did right and what made their homeschooling experiences academically successful. In addition to providing a retrospective analysis and practical ideas for homeschooling parents, these posts may offer encouragement and inspiration. You can read all three below.
Finally, we offer several resources that may push homeschooling parents to consider blind spots and avoid problem areas that negatively impact some homeschool graduates. We have two articles on the homeschool math gap—“The Data” and “The Stories“—and two articles on socialization—“What About Socialization” and “Homeschooling and Social Interaction Q&A.” We encourage all homeschooling parents to pay special attention to their children’s math education, as homeschooled students often have a deficiency in that area, and to take their children’s socialization and and need for social interaction seriously.
As the new school year begins, we’d like to encourage homeschooling parents of all stripes to invest in their children without reserve and to carefully carry out the responsibility they have taken on as their children’s educators. Your children are depending on you to prepare them for adulthood and everything that entails. Listen to your children, value your children, and uplift your children, and don’t be afraid to take a break for some me-time as needed. Good luck!
Last Updated: 26 October, 2023 by CRHE
So You Have a Deficient Homeschool Education. What Next?
If you were homeschooled, but have reached adulthood with a deficient education, you should know that this is not your fault—and that you are not alone. Don’t give up hope! You can get through this. Josh Powell reached adulthood with a deficient homeschool education and went on to attend Georgetown University. The path ahead of you may be difficult, but it is not impossible.
Here are some options you may want to think about as you consider your future:
In some cases, homeschooled students may find ways to self educate but their parents may fail to create a high school transcript and diploma for them. If this describes your situation, you may be able to create your own transcript and diploma and have your parents sign them. We have heard from many alumni who have done this. You can find information on how to create both documents here and here.
Every state makes adult basic education classes available, usually for free or for a small fee. Taking these classes will allow you to make up the material you missed and prepare you to take a high school equivalency test, or GED, which can be used in place of a high school diploma in the workforce and in college. You can also study to take the GED on your own; this page offers free GED practice tests.
Most community colleges do not require a high school transcript or GED to take classes. This can give you a chance to make academic progress and gain college credits even with a deficient educational background. However, be aware that you may later find that an employer or university (in case of a transfer) requires a high school transcript or GED even for those with community college coursework under their belts.
Once you are an adult, your education is in your own hands. This can be intimidating, but also exciting! Whether you get your GED, take community college courses, or join the workforce, all of that is up to you. A deficient homeschool education may slow you down or make your path more challenging, but it does not have to hold you back permanently.
Last Updated: 25 March, 2021 by CRHE
CRHE Statement on Sex Offenders and Homeschooling in the Wake of the Duggar Tragedy
May 30, 2015
Over the last two weeks, much has been written about revelations that Josh Duggar, the oldest child in the Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting fame, sexually assaulted five young girls, four relatives and one family friend. What has received comparatively less attention is the fact that had his crimes been properly reported and investigated before the statute of limitations ran out, his parents could have lost the ability to homeschool while he was in the household. Arkansas is one of two states that prohibits homeschooling in households that include registered sex offenders.
Because homeschooling removes children from the regular contact with mandatory reporters other school-aged children receive at school, we support laws that restrict homeschooling when a registered sex offender resides in the home. Given their relative isolation, homeschooled children are more vulnerable to exploitation. Last week, four homeschooled brothers from North Carolina pled guilty in court to sexually assaulting their younger sister for over a decade, beginning when she was four. Because they knew of the abuse and failed to take appropriate measures, the children’s parents have also been charged. Our Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database contains numerous entries involving sexual abuse, sometimes perpetrated by household members already on their state’s sex offender registry. While sexual abuse occurs to children in a wide variety of educational settings, homeschooled students may lack safeguards afforded other school-age children, such as contact with mandatory reporters.
In many cases, homeschooling parents fail to require background checks for homeschool tutors and homeschool co-op instructors. In fact, in 2013, homeschool lobbying groups opposed a New Hampshire bill on the grounds that it might require homeschool co-op instructors to have criminal background checks. Homeschooling parents often mention a desire to protect their children from external threats as one of their motivations for homeschooling, but they need to remember that the vast majority of sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone the child knows and trusts, often a family member or close friend. Homeschooling parents are teachers as well as parents, and as such need to be held to the same standards as other teachers in areas like background checks and mandatory reporting.
The homeschooling community needs to take sexual abuse seriously and take internal steps to protect homeschooled children from child sexual abuse. However, we also need public policies that ensure the protection and safety of children in households with registered sex offenders. Children in such households should have access to regular contact with mandatory reporters for the sake of their own safety and to provide accountability for the offending individual. Homeschooling should not be allowed to endanger children’s physical or sexual safety.
As homeschool alumni and board members of CRHE, we stand in solidarity with the victims of the Duggar tragedy and hope they can receive whatever healing and support they need. It is our hope that future victims of sex abuse within homeschooling families will be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve.
Signed,
The board of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education
Kathryn Brightbill
Rachel Coleman
Alisa Harris
Kierstyn King
Giselle Palmer
Ryan Stollar
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 26 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Summer Internships Available!
ETA: Summer internship positions have been filled! Thanks to all who applied!
We appreciate all of the help and volunteer time our supporters have given us over the past year and a half. We have several exciting opportunities available this summer! We are looking for individuals willing to serve as interns for CRHE on a part-time as-available basis. While we cannot fund these positions (i.e. you will not be paid), these internships will provide you with valuable experience and can be listed on a resume or job application.
We have two internship positions available: social media intern and research intern. To apply, please fill out our CRHE Internship Application. We will be accepting applications through Monday, May 25th. All internships will take place remotely, so a strong internet connection is required.
Social media intern
As social media intern it will be your job to update our Facebook and Twitter accounts, flag any questionable material, and participate in social media events. You will gain experience in managing social media that may be attractive to a future or current employer. Some familiarity with Facebook and Twitter is recommended.
Duties:
Time commitment: 5-10 hours a week, 1-2 hours per weekday
Research intern
As research intern it will be your job to assist with a variety of research projects as guided by your interests. We are interested in taking on more than one research intern, so you will have some input in what projects you’ll be working on. You will gain experience with research, data entry, and working both independently and as part of a team that may be attractive to a future or current employer. Some familiarity with using google drive is recommended but not required.
Duties:
Time commitment: 5-15 hours a week, flexible schedule
Last Updated: 31 July, 2015 by Rachel Coleman
Statement Regarding California’s Senate Bill 277
For Immediate Release: Homeschooled Students Should Not Be Left Out of State Vaccination Requirements
Canton, Ma., 4/28/15—California currently allows parents to exempt their children from the state’s vaccination requirements if they have personal objections to vaccination. Senate Bill 277 would eliminate this exemption and require all California schoolchildren to be vaccinated except for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. However, the bill explicitly exempts homeschooled students from this requirement. “It is irresponsible to exempt homeschooled children from medical requirements designed to protect children’s health,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nonprofit founded by homeschool alumni to advocate for the interests of homeschooled children.
In recent years, many California schools have reported increasingly low rates of vaccinations as parents concerned about the safety of vaccines have opted their children out of immunizations altogether, taking advantage of California’s broad personal exemption law. A measles outbreak beginning in December of 2014 infected 136 Californians, raising questions about the relationship between vaccination rates and public health and prompting the legislature to act. “We applaud the legislature’s efforts to protect public health,” said Coleman. “We urge them not to leave homeschooled students behind.”
Mississippi, one of only two states that does not offer philosophical or religious exemptions but exempts homeschooled students from its vaccination requirements entirely, is home to a network of parents who homeschool solely to keep their children from being vaccinated. If the California legislature tightens the state’s vaccination requirements while exempting homeschooled students, such networks will likely appear in the Golden State as well. Indeed, NBC News recently quoted a California mother saying that she would homeschool her daughter rather than allow her to be vaccinated. “Creating a system where parents can homeschool to evade medical requirements, rather than because they believe homeschooling promotes their children’s educational or social well-being, does children a disservice,” said Coleman. “Homeschooling is a serious commitment.”
The vast majority of California’s homeschooled children interact freely with children in their neighborhoods and in the community at large. When unvaccinated homeschooled children do cluster, there is increased risk of an outbreak. Over the past few years, outbreaks of measles and whooping cough have taken place in homeschool communities with low rates of vaccination. “We cannot afford to leave homeschooled children out of discussions of vaccinations and public health,” said Coleman. “Homeschooled children are as much a part of our communities as any other child.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.