Yes. I was home-schooled for a couple years in grade school and it massively fucked me up a while when I eventually got to go to public school again.
My whack-job conservative mom unironically tried to teach me that math was pointless, cryptids existed + were dinosaurs or demons that had survived noah's flood, christians were persecuted by the gay agenda, plate tectonics was a lie, being gay was a choice, and that george washington was chosen by god as a prophet to invent america. I only saw other kids 2 or 3 times a week at most.
Thankfully I've always been a nerd, so I fact-checked everything online and knew it was all bullshit, but I was locked in my house and threatened with punishment if I didn't "answer correctly" on the shitty tests I was given. This curriculum wasn't just homebrewed content my parents had come up with either, it was bulk printed and sold at a profit by a christian homeschooling group.
The public school system has a lot of problems, but it is much better than not having one at all. It's hilarious when I see radlibs / cranks who want to "abolish public education" or think "all teachers are cops" or whatever the fuck.
Homeschooling is almost always child abuse. Wanting to destroy public education means you want children to be abused even more than they already are.
edit: added a caveat to the end. community schools can be good if they're run by leftists.
I have a lot of chill af christian friends, so I think leftist Christianity is awesome.
With that said, pretty much all the fundamentalists and other bigots should either be re-educated if they're kids or shot if they're adults. To phrase it in a way that would offend them: The fundamentalist pharisees taking the lord's name in vain to justify their hatred and ignorance deserve complete eradication.
If you can legally drink alcohol in America and you're still a bigot, you don't deserve to live. If someone figures it out after that age, then cool, they're not in the "cheaper to fix with a bullet" category.
Fuck, I'm activated and angry right now. I haven't thought about this home schooling shit in years.
Jesus was the leader of a Millenarianist cult that said some vaguely communist (really more agrarian communalist) things and then had his teachings used to make a giant ass theocratic state. There’s wisdom in his teachings like most historical figures but we really shouldn’t oversell his “commie-ness”
That wasn't really my point. More just assigning a modernist political ideology to a guy who existed in the Roman Empire, in a period before even Feudalism developed, is a bit of a fools errant. If you enjoy the Christian community and want to read a generally progressive message from Jesus' teaches great, he wasn't really a "communist" though.
You can disagree with Marx on that still very much be a Marxist/communist.
Of course organized religion is often a breeding ground for reactionary organization or activity, but you can't suppress it too aggressively (if at all) because it will foment reactionary zeal. Sort of like stamping out drug use, you don't want to just sic authority on them and force them to stop. Once it starts happening on the fringes of society you end up with an even bigger problem. I don't know enough about Russian/Slavic religious culture to have my own opinion on the matter, but I do hear this criticism toward the USSR and their policy toward religion being flawed at best.
I had it easy compared to some of the kids I knew who were also home schooled.
I would go to a "homeschool group meet up" once every 1-2 months when my parents felt like it. You would spend a day going between hour long "classes" given by different parents in the group.
One girl had her science lessons rewritten to only be domestic labor and her parents were upset that the science lesson on a meetup day wasn't segregated based on gender. The next time I went, only the boys got to learn about creationism. Women were taught how to be a good wife and serve jesus by serving your husband.
My mom was very irritated about that (home schooling was her idea, my dad just went along with it) and complained to the group, but was ignored. You'd think she would realize the views of the ideology she was pushing, but she was so obsessed with being the smartest one in the room she walked herself right into fascism by attacking anything she didn't understand instead of just being curious.
Thanks, I'm glad I did too. It's one of many things that probably caused me to not come out sooner.
What advice would you give any other kids trying to escape that kind of situation?
CW abuse
Survive until you can leave.
Be kind to yourself and take care of your health as much as you can.
You are beautiful. Everything that is happening is not your fault.
Your parents are not safe if they are doing things like this to you. You owe them nothing.
Find friends wherever you can. I spent a lot of time ditching church to hang at skate parks and also making friends online.
Learn to manipulate people in power into thinking that you aren't worth their time or are on their side.
Don't compromise who you are internally, but put up whatever appearance you need to show for them to not hurt you.
** Note: This is really hard to do. I played a role to keep myself safe, but I wound up getting so good at it I thought I was a cishet man. Be careful.
If your parents are willing to teach you things you can verify as outright lies, then you should just assume everything they tell you is a lie unless you want to bother verifying.
Trust is good and beautiful. Don't let them take that from you. There are a lot of good people.
Your parents are weak. They are probably behaving the way they are because they were also abused. That isn't your problem. Don't waste time feeling sympathy for their toxicity.
Lie to your parents and steal everything you can from them to make sure you get out of their house with as much economic security as you can.
Sometimes parents get much less shitty when they don't have power over you anymore. That still doesn't mean they are safe, it just means they don't think they can control you the same way they used to.
You can completely just stop talking to them once you're free and never talk to them again. Everyone chooses their family, some people just wind up keeping the cards they got dealt instead of looking through the deck and picking a better hand.
Find interests and hobbies that are yours and focus on them. This can be literally anything. Just reinforce your own identity in small ways.
Get therapy with a secular therapist as soon as you can. I prefer CBT, ACT, or DBT, but any therapist who is trans positive probably has their shit together.
It's going to be okay and you're going to build a good life once you're free.
Life is beautiful and so satisfying, stay curious about the future.
This list got really heavy, sorry. Hopefully that was helpful anyway. :soviet-heart:
I guess it figures that my experiences with an iron-fisted homeschooling harridan would be in no way unique, aside from the physical abuse stuff being a lot more widely accepted 20+ years ago.
Most parents that are part of the christian right still view physical abuse as their god-given right and even a moral responsibility. "My parents hurt me and I turned out okay so it's fine" logic.
Yes. I was home-schooled for a couple years in grade school and it massively fucked me up a while when I eventually got to go to public school again.
My whack-job conservative mom unironically tried to teach me that math was pointless, cryptids existed + were dinosaurs or demons that had survived noah's flood, christians were persecuted by the gay agenda, plate tectonics was a lie, being gay was a choice, and that george washington was chosen by god as a prophet to invent america. I only saw other kids 2 or 3 times a week at most.
Thankfully I've always been a nerd, so I fact-checked everything online and knew it was all bullshit, but I was locked in my house and threatened with punishment if I didn't "answer correctly" on the shitty tests I was given. This curriculum wasn't just homebrewed content my parents had come up with either, it was bulk printed and sold at a profit by a christian homeschooling group.
The public school system has a lot of problems, but it is much better than not having one at all. It's hilarious when I see radlibs / cranks who want to "abolish public education" or think "all teachers are cops" or whatever the fuck.
Homeschooling is almost always child abuse. Wanting to destroy public education means you want children to be abused even more than they already are.
edit: added a caveat to the end. community schools can be good if they're run by leftists.
smh if only...
I have a lot of chill af christian friends, so I think leftist Christianity is awesome.
With that said, pretty much all the fundamentalists and other bigots should either be re-educated if they're kids or shot if they're adults. To phrase it in a way that would offend them: The fundamentalist pharisees taking the lord's name in vain to justify their hatred and ignorance deserve complete eradication.
If you can legally drink alcohol in America and you're still a bigot, you don't deserve to live. If someone figures it out after that age, then cool, they're not in the "cheaper to fix with a bullet" category.
Fuck, I'm activated and angry right now. I haven't thought about this home schooling shit in years.
I've meet 3 and all of them kinda lowkey admit they think most of it is BS and just enjoy the community.
Not trying to deny your experiences but I can't help but shake a heavy skepticism of the idea that there's a "woke" version of Christianity.
Jesus is a commie :jesus-cleanse:
Jesus was the leader of a Millenarianist cult that said some vaguely communist (really more agrarian communalist) things and then had his teachings used to make a giant ass theocratic state. There’s wisdom in his teachings like most historical figures but we really shouldn’t oversell his “commie-ness”
Right, like Jesus cannot be a communist because he was a religious leader. Under communism, Marx said that religion should be abolished.
That wasn't really my point. More just assigning a modernist political ideology to a guy who existed in the Roman Empire, in a period before even Feudalism developed, is a bit of a fools errant. If you enjoy the Christian community and want to read a generally progressive message from Jesus' teaches great, he wasn't really a "communist" though.
I see, my mistake.
You can disagree with Marx on that still very much be a Marxist/communist.
Of course organized religion is often a breeding ground for reactionary organization or activity, but you can't suppress it too aggressively (if at all) because it will foment reactionary zeal. Sort of like stamping out drug use, you don't want to just sic authority on them and force them to stop. Once it starts happening on the fringes of society you end up with an even bigger problem. I don't know enough about Russian/Slavic religious culture to have my own opinion on the matter, but I do hear this criticism toward the USSR and their policy toward religion being flawed at best.
this is literally what i assume all homeschooling is like
I had it easy compared to some of the kids I knew who were also home schooled.
I would go to a "homeschool group meet up" once every 1-2 months when my parents felt like it. You would spend a day going between hour long "classes" given by different parents in the group.
One girl had her science lessons rewritten to only be domestic labor and her parents were upset that the science lesson on a meetup day wasn't segregated based on gender. The next time I went, only the boys got to learn about creationism. Women were taught how to be a good wife and serve jesus by serving your husband.
My mom was very irritated about that (home schooling was her idea, my dad just went along with it) and complained to the group, but was ignored. You'd think she would realize the views of the ideology she was pushing, but she was so obsessed with being the smartest one in the room she walked herself right into fascism by attacking anything she didn't understand instead of just being curious.
Wasn't for me. I spent a lot of time running around in the woods.
I got to do a good amount of that too, but I think I would have have done that anyways.
Feral child gang represent.
I'm glad you survived all that bullshit, Bolshe. What advice would you give any other kids trying to escape that kind of situation?
Thanks, I'm glad I did too. It's one of many things that probably caused me to not come out sooner.
CW abuse
This list got really heavy, sorry. Hopefully that was helpful anyway. :soviet-heart:
Hey, was your mom my guitar teacher, and do you have an older brother that she used to beat the shit out of with a riding crop?
My mom is part of a much larger movement of equally shitty people. She was "moderate" compared to some of the people I met.
Riding crops were never used, the abuse was mostly psychological.
:amerikkka-clap:
I guess it figures that my experiences with an iron-fisted homeschooling harridan would be in no way unique, aside from the physical abuse stuff being a lot more widely accepted 20+ years ago.
Most parents that are part of the christian right still view physical abuse as their god-given right and even a moral responsibility. "My parents hurt me and I turned out okay so it's fine" logic.