A beautiful telling of a tragic, hard-to-listen-to story. Hear are the points I clearly hear, Heather.... Protect those under our care first and foremost. Focus on healing and health for ourselves and others. Embrace integrity. Lead by example. Do our best.
I was a pretty active member on the HA Facebook group and at one point friends with a lot of folks - not you, but Rachel Coleman, Ryan, etc. I even got an MA in ed psych because I was interested in studying homeschooling at the doctoral level (nota bene: impossible to do credible research due to ascertainment problems; it was a dead end, still is; gave up on that quickly).
I later moved into clinical research admin and my mind was very much opened/changed by meeting families of neurodivergent children, who experienced genuinely horrifying, routine and systemic abuse in public school systems, who homeschooled out of necessity and out of real love of and commitment to their kids- a liberatory vision. I realized that I and the ragtag, well-intentioned group of HA folk did not own homeschooling and that articulating a positive vision FOR homeschooling was an absolute necessity. You cannot build an entire persona and an entire profession around reaction and reactionary rhetoric. Or rather - you can, but it will destroy you and it will change nothing.
His letter was such a wakeup call for me and I imagine others. I've been mulling it over for days now - I left that world behind, it was so toxic albeit, again, well-intentioned - and reading this was helpful, thank you.
I usually don’t say much in comments on here, preferring my essays to stand as their own thing, but your comment brought me back to those days. It was definitely not all well-intentioned. Rachel C quietly stole a lot of work from various people, not just me, but CRHE was my idea and based on my grad school capstone paper and she wanted it as her own. Ryan contributed to a horrendous (and very fundamentalist) 13 page letter the group sent me erasing me from it at a time when I had just gone through my own divorce.
There also was a lot of awful behavior towards me when the online bullying (brigading, branding people “unsafe,” etc.) within that space was reaching a head and I said it was wrong. They wanted to lash out and feel righteous. There was no room for nuance or human frailty.
As far as studying homeschooling at a PhD level, I believe it could be done. It’s just hard within existing truncated data sets. Studying it as a missing population - how many should be represented in ACT/SAT/GRE scores that aren’t, for example - would be one way to do it quantitatively. There’s also a lot of qualitative work that can be done. Especially since the pandemic and with all the online schools. Anyway, reach out to me if you’d ever like to discuss it more.
But you are absolutely right that homeschooling is not the core problem (although it was easily hijacked by a right wing juggernaut that has used it to full effect). It is any authoritarian system and set of tools that treats kids like a widget or an empty vessel to be filled rather than a full human being. Ryan was right that there’s a whole theology (and a broader culture) where children are treated like chattel, and abuse is going to be the result.
I still wholeheartedly believe we need basic legal oversight of homeschooling, at least to prevent sexual abuse, illiteracy, and intentionally lower levels of education for girls. I once thought it had pulled together the team to make it happen, and it is still a heartbreak to think about what went down instead. But I think you are right that sometimes you need to just see what’s there and move on to new dreams that are a better fit for you. Constant witness to the absence of caring and all the trauma it causes can also eat you alive. It wasn’t just Ryan who was vulnerable to that.
Thank you for reaching out and feel free to send a message anytime.
💔
More far-ranging than usual, and deep, as always. I am so glad that you were able to rescue yourself.
Everyone is in your life for a reason or a season. Sometimes lessons are hardest because they need to stick with you for a lifetime.
A beautiful telling of a tragic, hard-to-listen-to story. Hear are the points I clearly hear, Heather.... Protect those under our care first and foremost. Focus on healing and health for ourselves and others. Embrace integrity. Lead by example. Do our best.
I was a pretty active member on the HA Facebook group and at one point friends with a lot of folks - not you, but Rachel Coleman, Ryan, etc. I even got an MA in ed psych because I was interested in studying homeschooling at the doctoral level (nota bene: impossible to do credible research due to ascertainment problems; it was a dead end, still is; gave up on that quickly).
I later moved into clinical research admin and my mind was very much opened/changed by meeting families of neurodivergent children, who experienced genuinely horrifying, routine and systemic abuse in public school systems, who homeschooled out of necessity and out of real love of and commitment to their kids- a liberatory vision. I realized that I and the ragtag, well-intentioned group of HA folk did not own homeschooling and that articulating a positive vision FOR homeschooling was an absolute necessity. You cannot build an entire persona and an entire profession around reaction and reactionary rhetoric. Or rather - you can, but it will destroy you and it will change nothing.
His letter was such a wakeup call for me and I imagine others. I've been mulling it over for days now - I left that world behind, it was so toxic albeit, again, well-intentioned - and reading this was helpful, thank you.
I usually don’t say much in comments on here, preferring my essays to stand as their own thing, but your comment brought me back to those days. It was definitely not all well-intentioned. Rachel C quietly stole a lot of work from various people, not just me, but CRHE was my idea and based on my grad school capstone paper and she wanted it as her own. Ryan contributed to a horrendous (and very fundamentalist) 13 page letter the group sent me erasing me from it at a time when I had just gone through my own divorce.
There also was a lot of awful behavior towards me when the online bullying (brigading, branding people “unsafe,” etc.) within that space was reaching a head and I said it was wrong. They wanted to lash out and feel righteous. There was no room for nuance or human frailty.
As far as studying homeschooling at a PhD level, I believe it could be done. It’s just hard within existing truncated data sets. Studying it as a missing population - how many should be represented in ACT/SAT/GRE scores that aren’t, for example - would be one way to do it quantitatively. There’s also a lot of qualitative work that can be done. Especially since the pandemic and with all the online schools. Anyway, reach out to me if you’d ever like to discuss it more.
But you are absolutely right that homeschooling is not the core problem (although it was easily hijacked by a right wing juggernaut that has used it to full effect). It is any authoritarian system and set of tools that treats kids like a widget or an empty vessel to be filled rather than a full human being. Ryan was right that there’s a whole theology (and a broader culture) where children are treated like chattel, and abuse is going to be the result.
I still wholeheartedly believe we need basic legal oversight of homeschooling, at least to prevent sexual abuse, illiteracy, and intentionally lower levels of education for girls. I once thought it had pulled together the team to make it happen, and it is still a heartbreak to think about what went down instead. But I think you are right that sometimes you need to just see what’s there and move on to new dreams that are a better fit for you. Constant witness to the absence of caring and all the trauma it causes can also eat you alive. It wasn’t just Ryan who was vulnerable to that.
Thank you for reaching out and feel free to send a message anytime.