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In recent weeks, home schooling has received nationwide attention because of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s home-schooling family. Though Santorum paints a rosy picture of home schooling in the United States, and calls attention to the “responsibility” all parents have to take their children’s education into their own hands, he fails to acknowledge the very real potential for educational neglect among some home-schooling families – neglect that has been taking place for decades, and continues to this day...

Poring over their stories, I was shocked to find so many tales of gross educational neglect. I don’t merely mean that they had received what I now view as an overly politicized education with huge gaps, for example, in American history, evolution or sexuality. Rather, what disturbed me were the many stories about home-schoolers who were barely literate when they graduated, or whose math and science education had never extended much past middle school...

Take Vyckie Garrison, an ex-Quiverfull mother of seven who, in 2008, enrolled her six school-age children in public school after 18 years of teaching them at home. Why did she stick with home schooling for so long, despite her difficulties? “We were convinced that it would be better for our kids not to have an education than to be educated to become humanists or atheists and to reject God. We became so isolated because the Quiverfull lifestyle was so overwhelming we didn’t have time or energy for socialization. So the only people we knew were exactly like us. We were told that the whole point of public school was to dumb down the children and turn them into compliant workers – to brainwash them and indoctrinate them into this godless way of thinking.”

Garrison believes that home schooling has become so popular with fundamentalist Christians because, “there is an atmosphere of real terror among some evangelicals. They are horrified by the fact that Obama is president, and they see the New Atheist movement as a vocal, in-your-face threat. Plus, they are obsessed with the End Times, and believe that the Apocalypse could happen any day now… They see a demon on every corner.

“We home-schooled because we wanted to protect our children from what we viewed as the total secularization of America. We listened to people like Rush Limbaugh, who told us that America was in the clutches of evil liberal feminist atheists.”…

Given the scarcity of numbers on this issue, the best one can hope for at this point is anecdotal information about the problem. But because home schooling is such a highly politicized issue, it is often difficult to get a clear sense of what is happening from home-schooling parents themselves. And because many parents see themselves as advocates of home schooling, they are not always very eager to discuss potential gaps in home-schooling education.

Luckily, more than a few adult home-school graduates are eager to talk. And as I talk to more and more people who recount first-person stories of home-school-related neglect, it becomes hard to write off what home-school advocates would call “exceptions” simply as fringe outliers.

Erika Diegel Martin’s story is particularly haunting. A home-schooling graduate of the mid-1990s, and an ex-Quiverfull daughter I have known for many years, Diegel Martin was pulled out of public school at 14. Because she was old enough to remember several years of public schooling, she says she never really believed her parents’ dire warnings about it. Her younger brothers were another story. “When the school bus would come by, my youngest brother would go, ‘There goes the prison bus.’ Our parents had them believing that public schools were these horrible places, just dens of iniquity.”

The narrative about public schools, she says, went something like this: “How would you like to get stuck in a building with no light – and secular, godless, atheist teachers for seven hours of the day without even being able to see your parents or go out to play?” As a result, she says, “My brothers were terrified of the public schools.”…
As for herself, when she completed her schooling, she says her parents did not allow her to obtain her GED as proof of high school graduation. Their reason? “The girls weren’t allowed to get a GED because we were told we wouldn’t need it. It would open up opportunities that were forbidden to us. We would work in the family business until we got married, and then become homemakers.

“When I talked about wanting to go to college, my parents said, ‘Well, you’re a girl. You don’t go to college.’”

Melinda Palmer, 29, is another home-school graduate who is forthcoming about the problems she encountered as a home-schooled child...

Palmer insists that her family was not alone in home-school neglect. Among the various fundamentalist families that ran in her family’s social circles, she says, “I knew several families whose children were not very literate.” Moreover, she points out, education is “more than just learning math and science and the facts of history – it’s learning how to interact with the kids around you, and figuring out what different kinds of personalities bring to life...

Still, this is not to say there aren’t many home-schooling parents who are doing an excellent job of ensuring that their children receive a quality education. Most parents realize they are taking on a tremendous amount of responsibility when they commit to home-schooling a child, so I am not surprised to find many – secular and religious – who are doing well by their children…

Kathryn Joyce, author of “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement,” confirms that there are legitimate reasons for being concerned about a lack of oversight among home-schoolers. She acknowledges the diversity of the home-schooling movement, but notes, for example, that, “among the Quiverfull community, there are families that home-school in such a way that education begins to diverge between boys’ education and girls education around the time they hit puberty.”
Sometimes, Joyce says, girls, “stop receiving the same education as their brothers and are trained instead to fulfill the role that they’re going to have, which is to be a Quiverfull mother and a submissive wife.”

She recalls an anecdote from Quiverfull leader Geoffrey Botkin, who suggested that girls should be taught to use the tools of the laboratory they will inhabit: the kitchen and the nursery. Girls’ education should prioritize “learning how to be mothers, learning in the kitchen, helping their mothers – not merely as chores that are a part of growing up. Rather, the point was that this should be a key part of their education because this was going to be their chief role.” Though Joyce says many home-schoolers go on to do exceptionally well once they go to college, she has also encountered problems with basics like literacy…

Ultimately, the women who report neglect in home schooling want their experiences to serve as a warning that either greater restrictions on home schooling are needed, or states need to do a better job of enforcing existing regulations…

I don’t believe the answer is to end home schooling altogether, and neither do any of the women I talk to, no matter what their experience with home schooling. But neither is it acceptable to allow more home-schooled children to fall through the cracks. And since no one should be deprived of an education, we have a duty to listen to those who were overlooked...

There is simply no justification for allowing cases of educational neglect – wherever it exists – to go unchecked. We need not imprison more parents to make sure this happens, but improving state and local oversight of those who opt out would be one step in the right direction. As Garrison, Diegel Martin and Palmer acknowledge, better checks on their own home education would have made a vast difference for them. This is why, they say, they will continue to speak out.

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Rather, what disturbed me were the many stories about home-schoolers who were barely literate when they graduated, or whose math and science education had never extended much past middle school...

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ORIGINAL: LaTigresse
All of the others did it for religious reasons and the children are nearly incapable of leaving the nest and coping with the realities of the world. Not in any sort of successful manner. They, especially the girls, are literally stuck within that closed society, with very little concept of how the rest of the community around them lives.

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ORIGINAL: SylvereApLeanan

As someone who homeschools my youngest child, providing a good education for my child is my top priority. I won't lie and say it's easy. However, I'm certain that he will get just as good an education with me as he would at the piss-poor excuse for a school he would have to attend if I enrolled him in the public school system. Especially since one of the districts here just lost its accreditation because very few of the kids could pass a standardized test. In fact, that's the reason I chose to homeschool him - it had nothing to do with religion. Articles like this always focus on the religious nuts and ignore the growing number of parents who are engaged in secular homeschooling because we're just fed up with the sad state of the public school system.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: LaTigresse
All of the others did it for religious reasons and the children are nearly incapable of leaving the nest and coping with the realities of the world. Not in any sort of successful manner. They, especially the girls, are literally stuck within that closed society, with very little concept of how the rest of the community around them lives.

That's the whole point, surely?

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In the U.S. the average homeschooled student will test higher than their publically educated counterparts.

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ORIGINAL: FelineFae

Are there any other examples of a stereotype you'd care to display ?

In the U.S. the average homeschooled student will test higher than their publically educated counterparts.

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ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: LaTigresse
All of the others did it for religious reasons and the children are nearly incapable of leaving the nest and coping with the realities of the world. Not in any sort of successful manner. They, especially the girls, are literally stuck within that closed society, with very little concept of how the rest of the community around them lives.

That's the whole point, surely?

For my sister that does it, no. She feels that she can shelter her children (two boys) from the evils until they are old enough, and brainwashed enough, to go out into the world. What she does not realize is that her sheltering has not taught them vital coping skills for dealing with the evils of the world.

Her eldest is proof of that. He is now in his early twenties.

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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In the U.S. the average homeschooled student will test higher than their publically educated counterparts.

Link please.

This is certainly true for my home schooled cousin, who scored 2,337 on his SATs and was accepted to Phillips Exeter. But then, my uncle attended Harvard.

Seems like the problem is not home schooling, per se, but the parents as well as lack of oversight by the state.

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ORIGINAL: FelineFae

Are there any other examples of a stereotype you'd care to display ?

In the U.S. the average homeschooled student will test higher than their publically educated counterparts.

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u
Miss that first time you look across a school room and see the cute girl,that first time you must face down a school yard bully....

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: LaTigresse
All of the others did it for religious reasons and the children are nearly incapable of leaving the nest and coping with the realities of the world. Not in any sort of successful manner. They, especially the girls, are literally stuck within that closed society, with very little concept of how the rest of the community around them lives.

That's the whole point, surely?

For my sister that does it, no. She feels that she can shelter her children (two boys) from the evils until they are old enough, and brainwashed enough, to go out into the world. What she does not realize is that her sheltering has not taught them vital coping skills for dealing with the evils of the world.

Her eldest is proof of that. He is now in his early twenties.

Isn't that an example of what I just said?