Ex-Mormons will be familiar with the family drama that ensues when you go beyond the boundaries.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/christian-home-schoolers-revolt/

They said goodbye to Aimee outside her elementary school, watching nervously as she joined the other children streaming into a low brick building framed by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Christina and Aaron Beall stood among many families resuming an emotional but familiar routine: the first day of full-time, in-person classes since public schools closed at the beginning of the pandemic.

But for the Bealls, that morning in late August 2021 carried a weight incomprehensible to the parents around them. Their 6-year-old daughter, wearing a sequined blue dress and a pink backpack that almost obscured her small body, hesitated as she reached the doors. Although Aaron had told her again and again how brave she was, he knew it would be years before she understood how much he meant it — understood that for her mother and father, the decision to send her to school was nothing less than a revolt.


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.


At a time when home education was still a fringe phenomenon, the Bealls had grown up in the most powerful and ideologically committed faction of the modern home-schooling movement. That movement, led by deeply conservative Christians, saw home schooling as a way of life — a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality and the role of religion in American government.

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.


Like all rebellions, this one had come with consequences. Their decision to send Aimee to the neighborhood elementary school — a test run to see how it might work for their other kids — had contributed to a bitter rift with their own parents, who couldn’t understand their embrace of an education system they had been raised to abhor. And it had led Christina, who until that summer day had home-schooled all of their children, into an existential crisis.

“I never imagined sending you to the local elementary school instead of learning and growing together at home,” she wrote later that day in a Facebook post addressed to her daughter. “But life has a way of undoing our best laid plans and throwing us curveballs.”

Christina did not describe on Facebook how perplexed she and Aaron had been by a ritual that the other parents seemed to understand; how she had tried, in unwitting defiance of school rules, to accompany Aimee inside, earning a gentle rebuke from the principal.

And she did not describe what happened after their daughter vanished into a building they had been taught no child should ever enter. On that first day of school — first not just for one girl but for two generations of a family — the Bealls walked back to their SUV, and as Aaron started the car, Christina began to cry.


But what should be a moment of triumph for conservative Christian home-schoolers has been undermined by an unmistakable backlash: the desertion and denunciations of the very children they said they were saving.

Former home-schoolers have been at the forefront of those arguing for greater oversight of home schooling, forming the nonprofit Coalition for Responsible Home Education to make their case.

“As an adult I can say, ‘No. What happened to me as a child was wrong,’” said Samantha Field, the coalition’s government relations director.

I absolutely believe that home schooling should come under greater scrutiny. I've seen it botched all too often. IMO parents should be required to use a given curriculum, or alternatively, given expectations about what children of a given age should be able to achieve, and submit student work portfolios at given intervals in support of that.

As for the fundies, I really wish they could see how ordinary education is. For the most part, we teach the same things we've always taught. The fundie churches and the right-wing media have spent a lot of time and energy in spreading lies about what we do. We try very hard to be respectful of families' religious choices. There have been plenty of times when in response to a student's question, my response has been, "You need to ask your parents about that." We do not try to undermine parents. We simply teach the basics.

Of course nowadays, the "basics" include the facts about the civil rights movement, the Holocaust, and whatever else educated people are expected to know about.

Bravo to those brave parents for breaking the chains.

The fundies need fear to keep people in.

Once knowledge of the outside world starts to seep in, the hold is broken.

Fluoride, integrated schools, vaccines, the IRS, Muslims, Jews, the Illuminati, take your pick.

If they don't have anything to fear, they make something up.

I've heard this from EV TV preachers my entire life -- somebody or something is out to "get" you -- "you" being EV fundie xtians who are the true-chosen people of God, ya ya ya.

I've worked with people who went to "Christian" academies and they have gaps in their knowledge -- especially in physics, math, basic concepts of biology, literature, history, etc. They aren't dumb, they just don't know some things that they should. It's not their fault, their parents did that.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2023 06:44PM by anybody.

When I was fifteen, I was taking riding and flying lessons and couldn't wait until I was sixteen to solo and fly by myself.

I liked computers, history, and math, and the last thing on my mind was looking for a future husband and popping out babies.



Transcribed by me from the article.

Requirements for my husband is God so wills
By Christina Michelle Comfort
Friday, June 25th, 2004 A.D.

1) Must be an on-fire, sold out Christian who loves, fears & serves the Lord wholeheartedly, myself & kids next.

2) Must be committed to courtship so pre-marriage relationship goes smoothly

3) Must believe in "full & unconditional" surrender of our # of children to God Almighty.

4) Must desire to homeschool our children.

5) Must want me to be a full time homemaker & and only have an outside job if required or instructed by my Potter.


Preffered:
— To play an instrument that could be used to play songs to lead our family in worship

— To like farming & horses to possibly own either one or both.

— To consider missions work — to a Spanish country?

— To have know me in a brother-sister relationship for some time before courting me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2023 06:41PM by anybody.

The last time I went to church (about eight months ago), the bishop's wife gave a talk, and part of the talk described her struggle with her decision to send her kids to public school.

The the bishop spoke about the evils of the world, which absolutely included feminism.

Dear SCMC: this is why so many are leaving. The old trope of sin and laziness is wearing pretty thin.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2023 10:45PM by slskipper.