A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Christian Indoctrination in Homeschooling

00:00:00.000 Grooming kids is actually fine as long as they turn into, like, straight Christian nationalists who run the government.

00:00:10.940 Hello, hello, and welcome to A Bit Fruity.

00:00:14.340 I'm Matt Bernstein, and I'm so happy that you're here.

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00:00:32.240 So homeschooling is one of those things that people outside of the United States hear about

00:00:36.860 and they're like, what the fuck?

00:00:38.760 And then people in the US who aren't homeschooled, like kind of vaguely know that it's a thing

00:00:43.980 that some other types of families do.

00:00:46.380 And then people who are homeschooled are like, honey, take a seat and let me tell you what

00:00:50.740 the hell went on.

00:00:51.640 Until researching this episode, I was kind of in that middle group.

00:00:55.000 I knew that homeschooling existed and I knew that I had some problems with the ethics of it,

00:01:00.720 but the reality of how it actually works turned out to be a lot more complicated and darker than

00:01:07.240 I realized. So homeschooling in various forms has been around for a while, but the real modern

00:01:12.680 homeschooling movement didn't really start surging until the 1970s when this guy called John Holt

00:01:18.440 started advocating for teaching at home with curriculums designed at home. And at first it

00:01:24.060 was called unschooling. And then in the 1980s, Christian fundamentalists and the religious right

00:01:28.980 took up this cause. Today, parents decide to homeschool their kids for all sorts of reasons,

00:01:33.240 ranging from religious and moral reasons, but also racism in schools and bullying and specific

00:01:39.340 disabilities that they feel their schools aren't meeting or just dissatisfaction with the curriculum.

00:01:44.660 So the COVID-19 pandemic is really where the homeschooling movement exploded. And yes,

00:01:49.960 at first, everyone was just forced to be at home. And so we had no choice. And a lot of parents

00:01:54.760 started saying, hey, let's stop with the Zoom stuff. And I'm just gonna start homeschooling

00:01:58.920 you instead. But then it wasn't just the fact that kids were already home. It was also that

00:02:03.800 public schools became the backdrop for a lot of culture wars that we're now seeing still play out

00:02:08.560 in the US, like masking versus anti-masking and teaching about gender and sexuality and race in

00:02:14.980 classes and the whole critical race theory panic. So since the pandemic, we've seen numbers of

00:02:20.500 homeschooled students skyrocket across all households from around 5% of all households to

00:02:26.200 around 11% of all households. In Black families, which a lot of people don't realize have been

00:02:31.160 the center of the current movement, they've increased homeschooled numbers by a multiple

00:02:35.840 of five from just over 3% to now over 16% of Black households homeschool. And a big reason

00:02:42.160 for that, which I didn't know about, was that a lot of black families were seeing how topics like

00:02:47.420 slavery were being taught in school. And they were like, no, no, no, that's really whitewashed.

00:02:51.920 And we want to teach them how it actually happened. That along with the fact that a lot of them were

00:02:56.520 seeing that there were very few black teachers in schools and also racism that their kids were

00:03:01.200 facing both from teachers and other students. So an estimated 3 million kids in the United States

00:03:06.740 are homeschooled now. There's sort of a patchwork of laws around homeschooling that vary state by

00:03:11.700 state, but on the whole, there's really not a lot going on in the way of oversight by a third

00:03:17.300 party. You can basically teach whatever the hell you want and rarely need any sort of credential

00:03:22.460 or licensing to do it. 16 states have no curriculum requirements, 32 states have no

00:03:28.220 mandatory testing, and in 11 states, parents don't need to notify anyone when they pull their kid out

00:03:34.460 of public school. So like in a lot of places, you could theoretically teach your kids about

00:03:38.820 Bible verses every day and nobody can intervene. Does that sound fucking crazy? Yes. Is it fucking

00:03:46.340 crazy? Yes. Wouldn't it be easy to pass laws that would put up some kind of guardrails around this

00:03:52.180 stuff? You would think so, but it's basically impossible all because of one group. The Homeschool

00:03:58.440 Legal Defense Association, also known as the HSLDA, was founded in 1983 by a guy named Michael

00:04:04.660 Ferris. The whole point was to defend homeschooling families because at the time it wasn't officially

00:04:09.860 legal in all 50 states to homeschool. But now that it is, they've become a group devoted to

00:04:14.500 fighting every piece of legislation that tries to implement any sort of legal guardrails around the

00:04:19.660 homeschooling system. So for example, and we're about to talk about child abuse, so trigger

00:04:26.380 warning, maybe skip this part if that's triggering to you. In 2018, there was an eight-year-old girl

00:04:32.520 named Rayleigh Browning, who was a student in West Virginia Public School. And when teachers

00:04:38.060 noticed that she had bruises and other signs of abuse, they called Child Protective Services

00:04:44.260 because teachers are required to do that. When Rayleigh's dad and his domestic partner found

00:04:48.420 out about this, they immediately pulled her out of the public school and registered her as a

00:04:53.340 homeschooler, which they were allowed to do despite the fact that there was an ongoing CPS

00:04:57.680 investigation into them. A few months later, Rayleigh Browning died from parental abuse and

00:05:02.140 neglect. Not long after Rayleigh's death, House Bill 4440, also known as Rayleigh's Law, was

00:05:07.720 introduced, which keeps parents and other homeschooled teachers from homeschooling if

00:05:11.920 there is a CPS investigation of abuse or neglect or a previous conviction of domestic violence.

00:05:17.200 You'd think that this would be extremely uncontroversial and that anyone who wants

00:05:21.740 to support any kind of child welfare would support it, but the bill hasn't passed because

00:05:26.640 the HSLDA is still fighting it. A spokesperson from the HSLDA said, House Bill 4440 is based

00:05:33.220 on insidious stereotyping of homeschooling parents and presumes without evidence that

00:05:37.900 homeschooling is a risk factor for abuse or neglect. What would happen if the West Virginia

00:05:42.160 legislature banned children from enrolling in all schools where there have been allegations of

00:05:46.560 teacher abuse? I just want to say that he's wrong and that there are things about the homeschooling

00:05:52.140 system, including the fact that he opposes this very law that do make it more likely for abuse

00:05:57.340 to take place and more likely for that abuse to never go reported. So that's kind of the group

00:06:02.140 we're dealing with. The HSLDA has over 130,000 members and receives over $13 million in annual

00:06:08.260 funding. It's extremely well-connected and influential in state legislatures, and parents

00:06:13.340 who homeschool are essentially backed into becoming members of it, regardless of whether

00:06:17.320 they agree with the politics of the organization, to protect their status as homeschooling parents.

00:06:22.140 The guy who started the HSLDA, Michael Ferris, went on to be the CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom from 2017 to 2022.

00:06:30.740 The ADF is a conservative legal advocacy group, which is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group.

00:06:38.040 It works to expand Christian practices within public schools and in government and outlaw abortion and oppose gay rights and trans rights and women's rights.

00:06:47.560 It's weird how those things always somehow end up going together.

00:06:51.180 In the year 2000, Michael Ferris opened up Patrick Henry College, which is a Christian university where notable alumni include the former one-term Republican congressman Madison Cawthorne, who, in his very one-term fashion, only attended the school for a single semester before dropping out and was later accused by other students of sexual harassment in a letter that had 150 alumni signatories.

00:07:14.800 But I digress.

00:07:15.920 Today, we're joined by two people who were profiled earlier this year in the Washington

00:07:20.820 Post. Christina and Aaron Beals were both raised in Christian fundamentalist households

00:07:26.740 and homeschooled their entire lives. And now that they have a family of their own,

00:07:31.180 they're choosing a different path. As it turns out, that's not so simple. Christina and Aaron,

00:07:36.160 welcome to A Bit Fruity. Thanks for having us. Great to be here.

00:07:39.400 Absolutely. So take me to the beginning. Where did each of you grow up? What was your family

00:07:45.100 like did you have siblings yeah so i grew up in northern virginia and i've basically been here my

00:07:50.220 whole life mostly in fairfax county or actually in fairfax yeah and i i was uh i was raised

00:07:56.820 homeschooled to a very very evangelical christian household my parents were actually on staff with

00:08:05.240 campus crusade for christ which is now called crew so like they were very much deep in the

00:08:09.200 kind of evangelical right political world that was my upbringing and we still live here in northern

00:08:14.500 Virginia, so I guess I haven't fallen too far from where I started. I grew up over on the eastern

00:08:19.480 shore of Maryland. I was the oldest of eight kids, and we were all homeschooled. From my beginning

00:08:27.940 as a three-year-old, my mom started, and she's still homeschooling my youngest brother, who's 15.

00:08:34.760 There's a 19-year spread between us, as is common in many of the families in the movements we came

00:08:41.000 out of? So in Maryland and in Virginia, there are like few to no regulations or government

00:08:49.180 oversight around homeschooling. So for the most part, parents can teach regardless of whether

00:08:54.500 they're qualified or credentialed, which most aren't. And they can basically teach whatever

00:08:58.400 they want because there's no assessments, there's no standardization. I was doing a little bit of

00:09:03.160 research on the regulations in those states. They're in Maryland. So there are none of the

00:09:08.520 things that I just listed, but there are subject requirements that you have to teach theoretically.

00:09:13.760 But if you're under what's called a church-exempt school umbrella, so like a registered church-operated

00:09:20.040 homeschool, you don't even have to follow those. And the HSLDA will help you find a church-exempt

00:09:26.780 homeschool for your child. And Christina, that's what you were in, right?

00:09:30.360 It is, absolutely. To be fair, I do feel like of all the horror stories I've heard,

00:09:36.440 My parents followed a pretty standard, you know, math, science, English, language arts, reading, history, kind of social studies sort of thing.

00:09:47.520 But there certainly was sort of strict fencing around what ideas could be engaged with, whether that was only learning science from a young earth creationist standpoint or only learning certain facts about history or certain books that we were allowed to read or not allowed to read.

00:10:09.180 um so where i do feel like they my parents succeeded in um covering all the content areas

00:10:17.980 there was certainly a lot of limiting of what exactly that content looked like

00:10:22.560 yeah i read in your article that one of you i believe you learned that like dinosaurs

00:10:28.460 were on noah's ark oh yeah both of us yeah that's uh that's a whole thing yeah not just that the

00:10:35.960 Earth is young, but that very specifically a focus on, yeah, dinosaurs were on the Ark.

00:10:42.100 Lived along with man.

00:10:43.960 Yeah.

00:10:44.620 So Ken Ham with Answers in Genesis was, I think, sort of the foundation for both of

00:10:49.000 us of our creation science upbringing.

00:10:54.220 I mean, we went to conferences and stuff.

00:10:56.840 Would you say that any of your curriculum was secular or was religion infused in every

00:11:01.060 aspect of it, even though you were learning, like you said, math and science?

00:11:04.120 Was it like math and science as it was relevant to Christianity?

00:11:07.840 You know, it's funny you ask.

00:11:09.740 The very first curriculum I used, I believe, you know, kindergarten up until first or second

00:11:15.000 grade was a correspondence school program called the Calvert School.

00:11:20.360 I have a lot of fond memories of it.

00:11:22.380 I believe my mom had to like mail back in our work to show that we were doing it.

00:11:27.280 Remember, this was in the very early days of homeschooling in the early 90s.

00:11:31.100 And I've talked with my dad since then, and he has described it as, yeah, we had to leave

00:11:37.520 the Calvert School behind because it was getting too woke.

00:11:41.180 And I said to him, I was like, what do you mean by that?

00:11:44.680 And he said, you know, they were teaching evolution and stuff.

00:11:47.700 And I do remember as a child being sat down and being like, we are moving away from this

00:11:52.520 basically to teach you exactly what we think is true.

00:11:56.280 It's so fascinating because woke has become something that means literally everything

00:12:00.020 and also nothing.

00:12:01.100 exactly yeah yes yeah exactly and like woke means black people woke means gay people

00:12:08.340 i have to say i've never heard of woke meaning evolution

00:12:12.080 i think our parents are the og woke

00:12:17.640 yeah yeah i guess i guess the standard for wokeness has become really low yeah

00:12:26.840 Yeah. I feel like you had something to say about your...

00:12:31.720 It's pretty similar to her upbringing with... I don't really remember anything being secular.

00:12:38.360 It's possible some of the math was, but some of the math even was not.

00:12:41.660 Like when we did the ATI wisdom booklets, they would literally try to teach you arithmetic from Bible verses.

00:12:47.780 Like Jesus fed 5,000. I don't even remember what it was.

00:12:52.360 But it literally be any scripture verse where there was a number, you could turn into the

00:12:56.280 math lesson.

00:12:57.220 What's so fascinating to me is like, I mean, you're not going to stay a kid forever.

00:13:01.160 And it's like, how do you apply a lot of this?

00:13:04.880 You know, the world is not governed by biblical math and biblical science, only the communities

00:13:11.600 of Christians, you know, where it's predominantly evangelical Christians are.

00:13:14.640 And it's like, how are you expected to move into the world with an education that's only

00:13:18.740 very specific to those communities?

00:13:20.900 I'm not sure that you are. There was a lot of crafting of our insular internal Christian community and Christian culture. Even Aaron, who's in what you might, from our parents' perspective, call a secular career, computer programming.

00:13:39.360 In his late teens, early 20s, I know you've shared that there was a lot of trying to determine what Christian organizations you can work with.

00:13:47.160 There was skepticism of working with some larger secular companies such as Adobe.

00:13:51.460 Yeah.

00:13:51.820 So I think I'm not sure that really was the plan.

00:13:55.780 Yeah.

00:13:56.320 And then even tying that back more to this underbelly of Christian nationalism and how these people really did want this to be a Christian nation.

00:14:07.340 So ideally, if their whole vision came true, you'd be living in essentially a Christian society.

00:14:14.020 So the government, the world, like you're saying, would be operating from what they

00:14:19.580 would call biblical foundations and a biblical worldview.

00:14:23.660 So they're not concerned with preparing you for the world.

00:14:25.520 They want the world to bend to what you're learning.

00:14:27.920 Yeah, basically.

00:14:28.540 I mean, there's this phrase you often hear, be in the world, not of the world.

00:14:32.020 and so like i really do think that as a child i was raised with this mentality that like you're

00:14:37.980 never really going to be part of the world uh and so you you will take advantage of the world

00:14:42.000 in the way that furthers you know our christian goals but you're you never you're never going to

00:14:48.700 be an adult in the world really um was what they were teaching us whether it was said in those

00:14:53.720 exact words or not that's what it was okay so now i'm gonna i'm gonna get to your requirements for

00:14:58.360 husband which i fail miserably now okay wait i'm pulling it up so i can read it sure thing so

00:15:10.620 christina when you were 15 you made a list of requirements that you had for a husband 15 being

00:15:18.640 the age of a high school sophomore correct we have that list i'm gonna read it all right

00:15:27.120 requirements for my husband. So sorry, 15 year old handwriting. I'm working on it.

00:15:33.880 All right. You know, that was one homeschool subject. I did a really bad job at.

00:15:38.500 Oh, it's not that bad. It's not that bad.

00:15:43.700 One must be an on fire, sold out Christian who loves fears and serves the Lord wholeheartedly

00:15:50.140 and myself and the kids next to must be committed to courtship. So our pre-marriage relationship

00:15:56.540 goes smoothly three must believe in full and unconditional surrender of our children to god

00:16:03.200 almighty our our number of children number our number of children what does that mean that means

00:16:10.300 no birth control yeah oh oh my gosh you're like already being like i cannot be on birth control

00:16:15.680 at 15 years old oh yeah oh yeah whoa all right sure

00:16:21.920 four must desire to homeschool our children so that was like that was like no matter what you're

00:16:30.060 like we have to your parents told you you're like you're homeschooling your kids your kids are

00:16:33.560 homeschooling their kids we're all homeschool forever yes five must want me to be a full-time

00:16:39.760 homemaker and only have an outside job if required or instructed by my potter can you explain what

00:16:45.740 potter means um that is a reference from within christian circles to uh humans being like clay

00:16:55.180 and god being like a potter who molds them god and or your parents who are god's manifestation

00:17:01.220 on earth yes i see so it's like you're only gonna have a job if god comes to you and it's like you're

00:17:06.500 getting a job yeah i'm not quite sure how that was supposed to work but 15 year old dreams that's

00:17:12.740 it never does surprisingly and then we have so those are our five pillars and then we have a

00:17:20.640 couple preferred preferred to play an instrument that could be used to play songs to lead or our

00:17:26.080 family in worship like i got the first part of that like yeah i mean i think a husband who plays

00:17:30.480 an instrument that's cool only for worship music i don't know like no you have to understand it

00:17:36.840 probably was only for hymns because music with the beat was like the devil's way oh yeah coming in

00:17:44.180 that's another bill gother yeah teaching yeah like what happened when like britney spears

00:17:48.740 started dominating the airwaves oh that was we weren't allowed to listen to the radio

00:17:54.040 yeah no no yeah no we literally were not allowed to listen to secular music so that that was not

00:18:00.640 even like we vaguely i vaguely knew about britney spears i don't think i heard a britney spears song

00:18:06.140 until like well to my 20s um yeah which is like honestly one of the most shocking statements said

00:18:14.860 so far because at a time when media consolidation was such that they if there was a pop star that

00:18:21.960 they wanted to be famous that you had to hear them the fact that you went so long uh shielded

00:18:27.500 from britney spears is pretty remarkable yeah almost done here uh they preferred would be to

00:18:33.660 like farming and horses and to possibly own either one or both. I actually think that that's like a

00:18:39.780 totally reasonable. Like, yeah, if you want a husband who's like into farming, sure.

00:18:44.600 It is, but sadly, the motivation for it, I think, I mean, I did like farming, but there also was

00:18:50.700 this undercurrent in our circles of you have to be self-sufficient because the end of the world

00:18:56.520 is coming and you've got to be able to like take care of yourselves. So as much as I am an animal

00:19:02.820 lover and i think part of that was in there there was also very much as a matter of fact i remember

00:19:09.540 when i met aaron he was a tech guy and i was like hold up we're supposed to be able to like

00:19:14.220 farm our way to survival in the end times how's that gonna work so it was deep matt

00:19:22.040 it's like you can't farm if you're like coding right i'm useless without the internet the

00:19:28.860 internet's kind of global so yeah basically already taking the mark of the beast oh

00:19:35.120 wanting a husband who farms in the proliferation of email was probably really hard yeah

00:19:41.140 all right uh to consider missionary work in parentheses to a spanish country

00:19:49.300 maybe we wanted someone bilingual that's i mean that's cool

00:19:53.660 and to have known me in a brother-sister relationship

00:19:58.520 for some time before courting me.

00:20:00.820 Can you explain what that sounds?

00:20:02.260 That sounds so incestuous.

00:20:03.300 It does.

00:20:04.000 It does sound very incestuous.

00:20:06.340 Man, this is hard.

00:20:07.720 It's hard for me to hear,

00:20:08.980 even though I recognize that this was me writing it 19 years ago.

00:20:12.240 The whole courtship movement

00:20:14.400 where there was a lot of emphasis on sexual purity

00:20:17.540 and we were not allowed to kiss before our wedding day.

00:20:22.000 There was just, you were supposed to treat each other like a brother and sister.

00:20:27.320 And by so our pre-marriage relationship goes smoothly, that's essentially code for it.

00:20:32.900 So we don't have sex.

00:20:34.400 Right.

00:20:35.740 It's a lot to juggle in the mind of a 15 year old.

00:20:38.680 It absolutely is.

00:20:41.000 Yeah.

00:20:42.080 How were you taught in your homeschooling days to view your parents, both like as teachers

00:20:47.720 and also, I mean, spiritual teachers and authority figures?

00:20:51.040 Yeah, well, it was very authoritarian. Our parents were sort of given a divine right by God to be our authorities. And so it was more than just, oh, they're the parents who have been around. But it's like, no, God, somehow up there in heaven was picking souls. And he's like, okay, this parent is going to go with you.

00:21:12.160 And so like, you dare not question your authority under that ideology. And yeah, my parents were very controlling, and it was sort of justified through biblical and spiritual language constantly. And it was reinforced in the community that we were in as well that had that view.

00:21:31.480 um i guess one specific example is my parents and you'd hear you'd hear people in our circle say

00:21:37.120 this would say that you don't become an adult until you're married uh and then your authority

00:21:45.580 is transferred they literally had this phrase the transfer of authority your your the authority is

00:21:50.420 transferred from out from under your parents at marriage on your wedding day directly to god so

00:21:55.700 that's when you kind of directly to god for the man oh right and from your parents to your husband

00:22:02.040 for the woman yeah um so it's this very hierarchical authoritarian gender roles yeah oh yeah tons of

00:22:08.820 gender roles and at the risk of sounding insensitive what strikes me immediately is just

00:22:14.920 how like for anyone who's outside of communities that believe this like it sounds so transparently

00:22:20.260 made up yes absolutely like like unbelievably made up like like playing house and school levels

00:22:27.640 have made up it does and i i i have gone through some dark places trying to imagine what kind of

00:22:35.540 mind what kind of pathology is attracted to this sort of thing because like growing up as a child

00:22:42.400 you just don't know any better and you think like oh there's all these strict hierarchies and rules

00:22:47.160 and things and you don't know that it's made up you don't know that it's basically being justified

00:22:51.340 by scripture you think it fell out of scripture you think it fell out of you basically think that

00:22:56.340 god like spoke this and people learned it and so it's just kind of like beyond question you just

00:23:01.240 don't get to think critically about it as a child but the adults who are in it like how can they not

00:23:06.960 notice we're just making this up as we go and then we're taking outside things to try to justify it

00:23:12.740 but we're clearly, you know, bias is going to be involved in that process. So maybe we should

00:23:17.280 think critically about what we're doing. Like, I don't know why that doesn't happen to some adults.

00:23:23.420 Well, and to that end, I was going to ask, like, how central is the lack of critical thinking

00:23:29.200 for kids to this whole religious homeschooling experience? Like, are you ever taught to think

00:23:35.200 independently? Are you ever taught to question? What happens if you do question?

00:23:39.620 It's fundamental to strip away critical thinking abilities.

00:23:43.080 And sometimes I don't know that maybe they realize that's what they're doing.

00:23:46.720 You're never given any opportunity to doubt something, to ask questions that actually

00:23:51.860 have multiple possible outcomes.

00:23:53.660 Like, is this true?

00:23:55.800 Could be a yes or no question.

00:23:57.000 You're allowed to ask, is this true?

00:23:58.200 And the answer is yes.

00:23:59.620 But actual critical thinking skills, I was certainly never taught them.

00:24:02.320 I was very, very much just taught a how to think.

00:24:05.520 And that was the foundation of basically everything.

00:24:09.620 And I think it was also that goal of keeping you on track, that language they would use on the rails, that goal of keeping you pursuing the knowledge and ideology that was important to them was also accomplished through pretty strict restriction of the information you had access to.

00:24:33.880 You know, we see the people like Moms for Liberty nowadays who are championing book banning and, you know, our parents were the OG book banners.

00:24:44.960 Aaron's mom would like make sure he couldn't look at different parts of the encyclopedia or say, oh, that's just made up.

00:24:51.700 Yeah.

00:24:52.120 For evolution, was it?

00:24:53.400 Right.

00:24:54.960 You know, we were also very isolated from peers who might have different ideas from us.

00:25:01.780 I was not allowed to play with neighbor kids.

00:25:04.320 Aaron was for a time.

00:25:05.580 And then that was sort of cut off.

00:25:07.100 Yeah.

00:25:08.100 Not only was there a lack of critical thinking,

00:25:11.720 but there was also an elimination of outside ideas that would have

00:25:15.380 possibly,

00:25:16.460 it's hard to say with how deeply entrenched we were in a certain ideology,

00:25:21.560 but it seems like there was other information that could have possibly

00:25:25.720 started to percolate in our minds and make us think something seems a little

00:25:29.600 off or how come they think this but other people think this um it was it's like it was almost cut

00:25:36.260 off at the root yeah it was well we were taught not to trust trust our mind was core to that as

00:25:41.140 well so like everything was filtered everything was censored and explicitly so like this is this

00:25:47.220 is bad and evil so we're not even gonna let you look at that not just we didn't know it was out

00:25:51.240 there we knew it was out there we knew it was bad and we knew that if we were to look at it we can't

00:25:55.100 trust our mind because our mind will be led astray by satan and so we're afraid to even look at those

00:26:01.040 things it's very cult-like in fact yeah it was it was actually a sorry i just had to say this

00:26:06.180 a shocking moment for me when i i was i was googling stuff this was like early uh part of

00:26:14.140 my deconstruction and i came across something called the bike model which probably a lot of

00:26:18.080 your listeners have heard of um it's pretty well known now but it describes how cults control

00:26:24.200 people and i was like dude this was literally my upbringing like all these points are exactly

00:26:29.200 within a christian framework how my parents explicitly raised me uh i can't say that i was

00:26:36.340 raised in a cult just because of that but like it really was shocking to realize that critical

00:26:40.440 thinking skills had been very deliberately robbed from me i mean telling people to not trust their

00:26:46.280 gut instinct is like textbook cult leader behavior like beat into submission kind of behavior i also

00:26:53.300 So I just feel like not trusting your intuition is like the last thing you learn before like

00:26:57.580 truly horrible things are done to you.

00:26:59.900 Yes.

00:27:00.960 Was abuse, I mean, first of all, this all sounds like abuse.

00:27:04.560 Was abuse like physical, emotional, psychological?

00:27:07.660 Was it part of your experience in homeschooling?

00:27:10.660 Absolutely.

00:27:11.420 Yeah.

00:27:12.180 Yeah.

00:27:12.480 I mean, it's taken me a long time to even be able to say yes to that without hesitating,

00:27:16.840 mainly through therapists and people saying, yeah, that's what happened to you.

00:27:20.200 But yeah, there was a lot of abuse and it was very institutional.

00:27:23.300 So people were teaching how to abuse.

00:27:27.120 So like everywhere we went, it was the pastor saying it.

00:27:30.140 It was your dad's friend saying it too.

00:27:36.040 Saying what?

00:27:37.340 That in order to teach a child, you have to hit them.

00:27:42.780 That's the way you'll save them from eternal conscious torment.

00:27:46.060 Yeah.

00:27:46.340 I mean, a lot of it was motivated by fear of hell.

00:27:51.500 And, you know, part of me is, yeah, it's just a whole messed up ideology that reinforces all sorts of bad parenting.

00:28:01.140 It's interesting, too, that as children, we were frequently told that we couldn't let anyone else outside know what was happening.

00:28:12.200 CPS was regularly talked about.

00:28:14.360 So we were aware that CPS existed, and it was regularly demonized as out there to split families apart, out there, basically, again, this was the evil world. And it's just so ironic to us now that Child Protective Services, obviously, there's flaws and corruption, I believe, in every system, but was just unilaterally dismissed as out to get us.

00:28:42.800 and we were the good guys so from a very young age we knew you don't tell anyone you're being

00:28:47.700 hit actually aaron has an interesting story about that i don't know if you want to yeah like i i

00:28:53.340 remember one time with some friends and we were just all talking about like our you know our

00:28:59.060 parents and the things they did to punish us and i started to tell my stories and like they were

00:29:04.500 just all like uh in shock and um and so then my friend's parent came in she must have overheard

00:29:13.420 something she's like i just want to make sure you guys all know it's not okay for your parents

00:29:16.600 to hit you and she like went around the room and asked everyone your parents don't hit you

00:29:19.480 and she came to me and said your parents don't hit you do and i was like no and then after she

00:29:23.060 left my friends were like you were just telling us like all these things they do and i said and

00:29:30.500 believed oh that's not what hitting means hitting is like you're just randomly punching someone

00:29:36.260 like what they're doing is hitting you with a rod because i did something wrong like

00:29:42.860 that's a whole different thing in my head um yeah and i also knew not to i actually kind of learned

00:29:49.020 in that moment oh i can't really talk about this with my friends because they don't understand is

00:29:53.440 what i'm thinking they don't understand how this is actually good um yeah it's like you were you

00:29:58.380 You were like trained to justify it on your parents' behalf.

00:30:01.340 Exactly.

00:30:02.100 Yeah.

00:30:02.320 Yes.

00:30:02.840 Yeah.

00:30:03.120 Yeah.

00:30:03.620 It sounds like some of the abuse that you were facing was like structurally upheld by

00:30:08.880 the homeschool, by the religious homeschooling system itself, by like the pastors and the

00:30:14.160 community of parents who were all like, okay, we're going to like beat our kids into his

00:30:18.200 submission in the exact same way.

00:30:19.880 Something that really frustrates me is when lawmakers introduced legislation that would

00:30:26.500 put up some guardrails to make sure that like you know this this one called raley's law which is

00:30:31.500 basically it says that if a parent is actively being investigated by cps for child abuse or has

00:30:37.660 in the past then they cannot take their kids out of school out of public schools and start

00:30:41.300 homeschooling them and the hslda is fighting against that still because they're like no any

00:30:47.520 amount of restrictions on who can homeschool is first of all it's a violation of parents rights

00:30:52.220 but then the other thing that they say and this is what really really frustrates me is they say

00:30:56.320 well just because some kids who are homeschooled have gotten abused abuse can happen anywhere are

00:31:02.360 we going to shut down every public school where a teacher has abused a student are we going to

00:31:05.640 shut down anywhere where a child has been abused and it's like that is so fundamentally dishonest

00:31:10.680 because absolutely part of the abuse that happens in the homeschool system correct me if i'm wrong

00:31:16.020 is upheld by the system itself it's protected by the system itself yes kids are abused everywhere

00:31:21.520 kids are abused in public parks, but there are structurally places where kids and systematically

00:31:27.220 places where kids are abused more, like in a homeschooling program, like in churches,

00:31:32.540 like in places where there are these hierarchical structural incentives for people to cover up and

00:31:38.500 hide abuse. Absolutely. Yes. It's 100% promulgated from the top down. And then, you know, I certainly

00:31:46.800 I'm not going to say this is all homeschool groups. I do think the group we came out of is

00:31:51.340 towards the extreme end of the spectrum. But our previous homeschool group superintendent slash

00:31:58.860 pastor is literally currently advocating for children within his group. He's teaching his

00:32:08.040 congregation, the homeschool families in his group. You cannot let your child have access

00:32:14.260 to mandated reporters and he goes so far as to say this includes police officers this includes

00:32:18.840 teachers this includes doctors his reasoning you're you're just gonna die over this is like

00:32:25.340 oh no the gay agenda um and he's like we can't trust any of them because they're not

00:32:31.400 in line with our thinking on sexuality like it's it's ridiculous um but there's that very

00:32:39.300 like, yes, abuse occurs in many settings, but also yes, most children have access to adults

00:32:48.320 that they could go to for help. And I recognize there's often emotional, psychological barriers

00:32:53.780 to a child reaching out for help, but at least most children have that. A homeschooled child

00:32:59.320 can literally become invisible and have no way to reach out for help. Absolutely none.

00:33:06.780 And that is explicitly being advocated for by homeschool groups like the one we came out of.

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00:34:47.800 you were part of what's called generation joshua and so i'm going to give you my understanding of

00:34:55.400 generation joshua and then you chime in with like what it actually is but basically generation

00:35:00.840 joshua is it's an organization it's um a division of the hslda and it's like the kids division which

00:35:08.760 encourages and then like runs like conferences and activities for kids who are homeschooled by

00:35:14.420 christian conservative parents to take part in government and politics when they get older so

00:35:20.020 from the wikipedia page generation joshua participants composed mostly of homeschooled

00:35:24.920 teenagers campaigns for conservative Republican candidates who support homeschooling and who

00:35:30.700 oppose abortion and LGBT rights. During election years, Generation Joshua students are often sent

00:35:36.280 to areas where voter outreach and registration could play a significant role. Their volunteer

00:35:41.240 work has helped some of their preferred candidates win elections. Prominent former members of

00:35:45.540 Generation Joshua include Madison Cawthorn. So, but this is crazy. So it's a division

00:35:54.900 of a homeschooling association that's just employing kids to campaign for Republicans.

00:36:00.980 Yes. At some point, you wonder, wait, how's this? How's this legal?

00:36:04.720 Is it legal? How is it legal?

00:36:07.220 Somehow it is. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say Generation Joshua. So I'm pretty sure,

00:36:11.540 I mean, it's certainly a concept that's wider than just that one organization. Like,

00:36:15.020 like our family was involved with an organization called Team PAC, which is very similar. And yeah,

00:36:20.620 The concept somewhat horrifyingly comes from Joshua's conquest in the Old Testament, slaughtering the inhabitants of Jericho and basically expelling them from the land so they could set up their theocracy.

00:36:34.640 That's literally what it's invoking.

00:36:37.360 And the idea was also that the children of these people doing the conquering were going to be the ones who possess the land.

00:36:45.660 And we, as the homeschool children, we were those children.

00:36:48.160 We were being raised up from childhood with a very political end in mind.

00:36:53.780 And that was basically taking over America.

00:36:56.340 So as part of your homeschooling kind of experience, you were raised to be like, if you work in government, like you're basically going to be like the GOP leaders of tomorrow.

00:37:06.300 Yeah.

00:37:06.620 I mean, if you're cut out for it.

00:37:08.280 If you're a guy.

00:37:09.140 Which fortunately, yeah, if you're a guy.

00:37:11.420 I was going to say, Christina, what about for you?

00:37:13.700 So my job, hypothetically, would have been to marry a guy who was doing that kind of thing and support him.

00:37:25.840 I never really quite figured out what that was supposed to mean.

00:37:30.940 Your full-time job was like supporting your husband.

00:37:34.120 There was a lot of language over it.

00:37:35.620 He sits in the gates with the elders of the land.

00:37:38.060 But also, primarily, continuing the ideology by having a lot of kids.

00:37:45.160 There was this idea that we would outpopulate our opponents by scorning birth control and just having a crap ton of babies.

00:37:53.720 Your opponents being who?

00:37:55.560 Like other religions?

00:37:56.920 Yes.

00:37:57.320 Muslim specifically.

00:37:58.060 Other religions, non-religious people.

00:37:59.240 When I wrote this 15-year-old letter, this was two or three years after 9-11, when the evangelical fervor against Muslims in particular was very strong.

00:38:11.680 But yeah, certainly I know you had mentioned that you had heard that atheists, you were taught, are not having many children, so it should be pretty easy to outpost.

00:38:19.940 The Muslims were also specifically a threat on our radar as they have a lot of babies.

00:38:26.800 another group that is having a lot of children so watch out right um we have to we have to have

00:38:33.340 more children than it's a race it's a race yeah and there were literally graphs uh spelling out

00:38:39.380 how this would happen if each person had a certain number of children over a certain

00:38:43.360 number of years yeah it was like exponential growth and like look in five generations we're

00:38:48.140 going to be 10 billion people yeah jesus christ so so you were you were taught at like as a child

00:38:55.880 that like christina that like basically your body is a vessel for you to like

00:39:00.060 brought broaden the christian population to make it bigger than the muslim population that's crazy

00:39:05.940 oh 100 that's wild i'm sorry i don't mean to react insensitively no no no i mean no what

00:39:14.240 strikes me too is that like i mean it sounds like everything that they were teaching you and

00:39:19.400 everything that they were doing with with with you that like that's what gay adults are accused

00:39:24.920 of and have been accused of for decades as far as the gay agenda is concerned like absolutely

00:39:29.620 i mean every day i go online and i see hundreds of people being like you're indoctrinating the

00:39:35.120 kid i mean they talk about this on fox news it's a mainstream right-wing talking point now i'm

00:39:38.420 indoctrinating the kids you can't reproduce so you have to go through schools and be social workers

00:39:43.520 and all these things so you have to work with kids so you can indoctrinate them into your agenda

00:39:47.760 and it's like that's what the christian right is actually doing and it's not even really under

00:39:53.680 wraps it's like there are organizations that explicitly say like we're raising the christian

00:39:58.980 conservative gop of tomorrow yeah it truly feels like when i look at my upbringing every accusation

00:40:05.640 was an admission to what their strategy was their strategy was to indoctrinate their strategy was

00:40:12.440 to groom you know like i don't know how else you can describe the way we were brought up in purity

00:40:17.940 culture was sexual grooming now was it sexual grooming on what they think is the right sexuality

00:40:23.120 Sure, maybe that would even be something that they'd admit to,

00:40:26.240 but it's okay because it's the right sexuality, according to them.

00:40:29.960 And that strategy ends up being projected onto everything they don't like

00:40:34.240 as, well, that's what you guys are doing.

00:40:36.040 And the concept of plurality or critical thinking

00:40:38.500 or open future with options is just not there in their mind.

00:40:44.380 When I say they, I'm talking about people from my past and upbringing.

00:40:48.220 I'm not trying to say every conservative necessarily.

00:40:51.740 Right. It took a lot of reading, particularly memoirs for me, of people from other religious points of view and memoirs, specifically of people who had come out of abusive environments to say like, oh, hold on.

00:41:12.660 you guys don't actually have something special here you just have like the tactics that always

00:41:20.600 lead to abuse and always lead to human rights violations yeah grooming grooming kids is actually

00:41:29.340 fine as long as they turn into like straight christian nationalists who run the government

00:41:33.700 yeah right exactly babies yeah yeah so i want to talk about your relationship uh you did not grow

00:41:41.100 up knowing each other and you obviously love each other now and i love that but at the beginning

00:41:49.940 like how involved were your parents in like the arrangement of your relationship i mean would you

00:41:56.840 say it was an arrangement i think i think we've described it as a pseudo arrangement at the end

00:42:02.880 of the day both of us could have said no it wasn't like you know when you think of an arranged

00:42:07.800 marriage i think there are some notable differences but sure was there absolutely

00:42:12.560 pressure pressured set up well so how did you meet so our parents met first uh well actually

00:42:19.760 you you met my parents first um through so his okay important part of the story is that

00:42:25.580 the homeschool church umbrella group that i grew up in had the church which best we can understand

00:42:33.200 And it may have actually been established so they could have this homeschool group.

00:42:37.400 And his parents started going to this church when you were 16, 16 ish.

00:42:44.160 So our parents kind of there were overlapping functions where our families knew each other or of each other.

00:42:52.840 So we were in the same very extreme religious community.

00:42:56.640 So our options for what our parents would consider suitable potential spouses were narrowed down.

00:43:05.580 You have to understand, I went to Patrick Henry College, which closely associated with Generation Joshua, Mike Ferris, HSLDA, all of that stuff, and went through relationships that had to end with Christian conservative guys, but they weren't quite conservative enough.

00:43:24.560 They weren't 100% sold on having all the babies and homeschooling.

00:43:31.660 So I moved back home after college, and college was sort of supposed to be where I was going to find this guy, but I didn't.

00:43:40.540 Were you freaking out?

00:43:41.620 Yes, I was absolutely freaking out.

00:43:43.480 My parents lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and we didn't have social circles.

00:43:51.200 Yeah, Tinder wasn't happening.

00:43:52.880 No. And I had to move back home after college because girls are not allowed to live on their

00:43:58.440 own. So my dad literally said, well, God will bring someone to our doorstep. And that's how

00:44:03.880 he's supposed to find a guy. Now, remember too, in this world, getting married and especially

00:44:10.400 getting married young so you can have a lot of babies is super important. So I'm 22, I'm moving

00:44:16.540 home. And it was like a common joke in my family, Christina's biological clock is ticking.

00:44:21.500 like she's 22 and she doesn't have a husband on the horizon she's gonna have less babies because

00:44:26.160 of that so then how would you say we i mean how did we start start things uh i mean basically i

00:44:37.240 would say our parents kind of match made us and so in my case being a man i was allowed to have

00:44:44.360 a career so i i was fairly focused on developing my own career now of course it was like from my

00:44:50.740 parents home but right he's 26 and still living at home because he's not allowed to move out either

00:44:56.960 yeah because you're not married yeah right um i'm not really an adult yet right and and to

00:45:03.660 christina's dismay the career that you were starting wasn't farming and like playing him

00:45:07.980 um yeah but you know things are going well for me on that front so i was kind of just focused on

00:45:15.060 that but but i had the same kind of like feeling of like i'm not married i'm not really fulfilling

00:45:18.920 my purpose in this world and you know like time's running out and like how am i ever going to find

00:45:26.560 someone so um yeah our parents i would say kind of match made it certainly my mom was heavily

00:45:32.520 involved um i don't know about your parents they were definitely there was certainly a lot of

00:45:39.520 scoping out prospective young men now always like from a distance because we didn't know any right

00:45:46.260 And you're not really allowed to know any – like this idea of actually having a friendship with someone of a different gender than you is like kind of discouraged because it's going to lead to sexual temptation.

00:46:00.900 So like it was very much a catch-22.

00:46:03.960 Like you're not supposed to – you're supposed to get married, which is like the ultimate goal of love, but you're not supposed to actually do any love before then.

00:46:15.240 so like right how you're supposed to get there is really yeah no one really knew how to answer

00:46:19.700 that question it was kind of magic it was like god god'll make it happen you just like click

00:46:24.180 your heels three times and then start having children yeah yeah eventually erin comes and

00:46:30.940 asks my dad hey can i get to know your daughter yeah um that's a big step in this world um you

00:46:37.420 gotta ask the dad first uh which shows also how there was this setup of like um your parents on

00:46:47.840 you because yeah and just like um perpetuation of the system because you do have to get married and

00:46:54.440 you do have to have the babies but your dad is the gatekeeper to make sure you have a guy who's

00:46:58.640 gonna be committed to those same exact ideas yeah you're not gonna get out without that um yeah

00:47:06.160 so first date he asked my dad my dad says okay and we go hang out for our first date and

00:47:15.680 conversation topics were hey are we gonna homeschool are we gonna have a lot of kids

00:47:20.240 um i mean this is like step one absolutely

00:47:23.900 and you were like wait what's your last name yes yeah pretty much like yeah we were lucky enough

00:47:31.440 to be able to spend some time on private one-on-one dates yes because we happened to live about two

00:47:37.060 hours apart typically in this movement you were supposed to be chaperoned by a younger sibling

00:47:42.620 yeah this sounds like a cool joke but this is like literally it's like the siblings were supposed

00:47:48.660 to be on the date with you yes to make sure you there wasn't too much touching right

00:47:53.600 i mean it's so sad god forbid you put like your hand on her knee

00:48:01.200 it's so sad it's hard to talk about getting really hot on this podcast

00:48:06.260 um so you know we did end up taking about six months until we got engaged which was a really

00:48:16.400 long time there was a lot of pressure i was getting the dude what are you doing what are

00:48:20.320 waiting like get her married wait six months what's what's the normal time like what would

00:48:24.920 they have been happy with like two months i mean my brother was like what three months yeah i don't

00:48:29.700 know it's yeah because you essentially don't start this relationship until you're pretty certain you

00:48:35.020 want to marry the person even though you've kind of never spent any time with them yeah yeah it was

00:48:40.560 right oh and by the way marriage is for life yeah so this is like anxiety inducing oh yeah

00:48:46.780 to the mat yeah and i think we both have a tendency towards anxiety so like this was

00:48:52.220 really you even more maybe so yeah this was this was one of the most stressful times of our life

00:49:00.180 for both of us our wedding day was incredibly anxiety inducing not for the normal reasons

00:49:07.440 because it was just like what am i doing well and and you christina you were like i can't fuck this

00:49:11.820 up because if i yeah if i need to have like eight children with this guy and be with him forever and

00:49:17.180 homeschool and serve him in the name of our lord and savior jesus christ like absolutely absolutely

00:49:23.620 yeah whoa it was beyond stressful yeah so as you were preparing to become parents you took a class

00:49:32.800 on quote gospel driven parenting um which was led by a minister who was like part of the same

00:49:38.680 network that you were homeschooled in. And in that class, you were told how to, quote, break a child's

00:49:45.200 will. And you weren't sure about that. And so we have a worksheet from that class that you all

00:49:53.400 received, and I'm going to read the instructions from it. So this is from the worksheet. Question,

00:49:59.180 how much? The use of the rod is for the purpose of breaking the child's will. One way to tell if

00:50:04.420 this has happened is to see if they can look you in the eyes after being disciplined and ask for

00:50:09.280 forgiveness there should be a rebellion detector inside of every parent and then they give examples

00:50:16.160 of what active rebellion on behalf of the child looks like and it says defiantly saying no hitting

00:50:21.840 parents or other authority knowingly disobeying throwing temper tantrums and ignoring instruction

00:50:27.760 and to me those are just like things that kids do like those are just things that every kid does

00:50:33.980 Not just things that every kid does, but that modern science understands as developmentally

00:50:40.040 appropriate as essential to childhood development.

00:50:45.300 And then it says passive rebellion.

00:50:47.020 So those were active examples of rebellion.

00:50:48.800 These are examples of passive rebellion, consistent forgetfulness, external disobedience with

00:50:54.300 a bad attitude, doing what is required, but only on his own terms, fussing, muttering,

00:51:00.020 complaining pouting eye rolling whining grumbling slamming doors or stamping feet

00:51:05.720 so in this class those were all grounds to hit your child with a rod yep yeah so christina and

00:51:16.100 aaron you were exchanging handwritten notes on this worksheet to each other in the class

00:51:21.980 and christina you wrote i really don't think i can be a parent sad face aaron you wrote in

00:51:28.440 distinctly different handwriting yes you can christina you wrote it makes me sad because i

00:51:35.320 know it's not true but it just feels like you have to be like hardened to be a parent i just

00:51:40.520 really don't like thinking of having to be strict in parentheses sigh and then another sad face and

00:51:46.080 so aaron even though you were initially encouraging her you both were having some doubts about the

00:51:52.060 whole like chastisement thing oh yeah and aaron in the washington post article you describe this

00:51:59.160 as being your first independent thought yeah and so for both of you like how important was that

00:52:06.340 initial knee jerk of like no wait i don't want to hit my kids and wait a second now i'm questioning

00:52:12.360 the authority model that i grew up with and wait now i'm questioning like all of a sudden like how

00:52:16.700 quickly was the spiral into like questioning everything it wasn't that quick um you know

00:52:23.140 it's probably a little overdramatic to say it was my first independent thought but

00:52:26.480 definitely it was a important part of realizing that i could maybe do something different than

00:52:33.240 i'd been very much indoctrinated to do um because yeah so first of all for context that parenting

00:52:39.300 class that we took this was when we were wait were we engaged i don't think so i don't think

00:52:44.500 we were even engaged so this was like before we're even married or having parents this is how

00:52:49.340 important it is to understand you're going to be parents and you're going to do this thing

00:52:52.420 um that is going to be to save your child so you're going to hit them with the rod

00:52:56.320 um because by the way we were planning to have babies right away yeah successfully got pregnant

00:53:02.060 within two weeks of our wedding right on track for the movement's goals yeah yeah so leading up

00:53:07.880 to having a child like i just was always like how is this good how am i going to be okay with doing

00:53:13.260 this like obviously this is a thing i'm supposed to do and everyone does this and in my head like

00:53:18.140 it's hard to explain that i really thought because i had been indoctrinated to think so that

00:53:22.580 hitting your child with a rod was like the good and godly and loving thing to do and obviously

00:53:28.460 there's a there'd be talk about like don't do it in anger which everyone would do it in anger but

00:53:33.860 you know supposedly there was like the right loving way to do it and it's loving and i just

00:53:38.500 remember having this disconnect of him like but i just don't like hitting people like how am i

00:53:41.980 going to hit a child um and so by the time i finally had a child it was like okay i have to

00:53:48.780 do this i just simply could not do it and that was terrifying to me because i thought i was

00:53:55.240 literally doing something wrong by not doing it um but i i just got to a point of being like i

00:53:59.640 don't have the will to do this so i'm just going to not do this and nothing happened my world didn't

00:54:04.780 collapse you know my you know obviously parenting is hard but like it's hard whether you you know

00:54:11.220 no matter what you're how you're trying to parent children are going to be difficult so it wasn't

00:54:16.460 like i was like oh all this bad behavior is clearly because i'm not spanking like it was just more

00:54:20.800 like wow i i maybe there's other ways i can i can discipline without having to hit like timeouts or

00:54:25.960 whatever and and um and that did plant a seed of okay i was very much told i have to do this

00:54:33.020 but maybe i can start to think independently and start to form my own um strategies here and

00:54:39.400 And it took, it was years of slowly unraveling that thread and more and more things.

00:54:44.380 There's a bunch of things I could point out as moments where it was like, oh, here's another

00:54:47.800 thing where I had been raised this way and I realized I actually think I disagree with

00:54:51.380 that and I could recognize that I disagreed with that.

00:54:54.020 Yeah, it was basically latent critical thinking skills that had been very deliberately robbed

00:54:58.780 from me as a child and even adult, slowly creeping out and having those experiences

00:55:04.260 of realizing I can actually come up with my own decisions.

00:55:08.980 Yeah.

00:55:09.400 after we're married and have several children a little late to realize that but yeah better late

00:55:15.500 than never yeah true so now all four of your kids go to public schools whose decision who who sparked

00:55:25.420 that conversation so we both as as the parenting class notes show we both always just naturally

00:55:32.080 did not like spanking the idea of it even before we were faced with the reality of deciding but we

00:55:38.940 we're still very much entrenched in the super fundamentalist mindset,

00:55:42.600 which includes things like young earth creationism and, you know,

00:55:46.220 just all that stuff.

00:55:47.360 So obviously because we had four children having all the babies for a

00:55:51.260 while.

00:55:51.660 Yeah.

00:55:51.940 Yeah.

00:55:52.360 Anyway.

00:55:52.680 So as, as my kids are getting a little bit older,

00:55:54.960 they start to ask great questions and our kids are just brilliant.

00:55:57.800 I mean, they really are.

00:55:59.060 So they're asking questions that are like good questions about like

00:56:02.260 dinosaurs and space.

00:56:04.240 And so I started like doing just independent research on those things

00:56:07.240 with the internet.

00:56:08.460 And somehow at this point, I was a little bit more open to like, well, what is the, you know, secular ideas about, you know, why are they so confident that the universe is so old when clearly all the evidence is it's only 6,000 years old?

00:56:22.920 I think you were honestly motivated to give your kids an honest and well-informed answer and not just BS it through their questions.

00:56:30.940 I was really trying to give them meaningful answers, not just regurgitate the indoctrination I've received.

00:56:36.560 And part of it was actually realizing, dude, I could tell them anything and they would believe me.

00:56:42.580 I could say the world is on the back of a turtle and they would believe me because they're children.

00:56:48.080 They deserve some autonomy to like, I'll give them answers couched in like, well, here's what some people think and here's what some people think.

00:56:57.280 And that was sort of my motivation.

00:57:00.160 But learning about like real science very quickly made me realize, oh, yeah, real science is real.

00:57:04.900 you know that i had been told absolute nonsense and but this is all happening without her knowing

00:57:12.160 um kind of on the side and so i i basically was like deconstructing a lot of our shared

00:57:17.220 fundamentalist ideas uh it included things about the bible literalism you know like the

00:57:22.880 historical accuracy of the bible uh obviously science related topics and um it's just it's

00:57:30.280 just more and more unraveling and for you know for me it got to a point of basically being like

00:57:34.040 yeah i don't i don't i'm not even a christian like i don't believe any of this anymore

00:57:38.420 and you know this was not a recommended strategy she had no idea any of this was going on because

00:57:45.760 it was kind of a i was scared i was scared to tell her hey i'm not so sure that you know

00:57:51.380 young earth creationism is actually the case here uh because it was so much of what our

00:57:56.660 relationship was founded on absolutely it really was it's kind of the rug being pulled out from

00:58:01.780 underneath you yeah exactly yeah it eventually came out i i think it kind of came out because

00:58:07.400 like i was reading a book and i it had some evolutionary fact reading a book to our kids

00:58:13.920 yeah reading a book to our kids a children's book and i just read i just read through it and didn't

00:58:18.680 didn't jump in and say and that's a lie from the pit of hell i just like read over it i didn't make

00:58:23.280 any commentary but i read it i didn't filter it out and that was a huge flag to her she was like

00:58:27.620 I was just walking by and I was like, wait, hold on.

00:58:29.980 What's happening here?

00:58:31.380 Yeah.

00:58:31.880 Christina was like, Aaron, did you get woke?

00:58:35.740 Yes.

00:58:36.700 I was, yes.

00:58:38.180 Yes.

00:58:39.580 Because he like mentioned that like evolution.

00:58:42.140 Right, exactly.

00:58:43.200 The evolution.

00:58:44.080 Yeah.

00:58:44.400 Yeah.

00:58:45.300 Yeah.

00:58:45.860 So it eventually led to kind of us.

00:58:48.600 Sorting through.

00:58:49.640 Yeah.

00:58:50.240 Like where we were and what's it mean for our relationship.

00:58:53.580 Yeah.

00:58:53.940 And, oh, my gosh, like for me, like what the heck just happened?

00:58:59.580 I thought I was like in this program.

00:59:01.820 This is like only a couple of years ago at this point, I think 2020.

00:59:06.620 So, you know, we're locked down.

00:59:08.960 The world's falling apart around us.

00:59:10.380 We've just had our fourth baby.

00:59:11.740 And then like all of a sudden the contractual agreement we built our relationship on is like crumbling.

00:59:17.880 It was a hard time for us.

00:59:19.680 And I will say it's especially like this world we were raised in was incredibly damaging to her because she was not prepared for me changing my mind.

00:59:27.320 Right.

00:59:27.640 She is supposed to submit to me.

00:59:28.920 She is supposed to follow me wherever I go.

00:59:31.600 But now I'm going to the dark side.

00:59:34.200 Like, how is that supposed to work?

00:59:36.060 Yeah.

00:59:36.600 There was there were no helpful solutions for this.

00:59:40.500 And I remember questioning both sides of our family and being like, hold up.

00:59:43.960 I've got some questions here.

00:59:45.300 And tying back to the school thing, you know, eventually in this process, he's like, hey, you know,

00:59:49.440 maybe school wouldn't be so bad. Like as we're talking about all these beliefs, exactly, exactly.

00:59:55.920 And I remember going to our parents, I went to your mom and my dad and I was like, okay, guys,

01:00:00.500 I'm like really stuck here because homeschooling is absolutely required, but submitting to your

01:00:07.540 husband, AKA doing whatever he says is also, so I can't do both. Um, and as you might imagine,

01:00:15.940 I was not able to get any meaningful tips from either side of our family.

01:00:21.480 I think I kind of presented them with a conundrum that honestly,

01:00:25.500 it's actually my own process of walking through this with Aaron and learning

01:00:31.380 to respect one another and our different beliefs has been,

01:00:39.100 it's really opened my eyes to how much of this system was just kind of built

01:00:45.260 on like an unrealistic idealism that like doesn't even really exist like rich white pastors speaking

01:00:57.140 from a place of privilege about things and how society should be structured and honestly having

01:01:04.140 no clue what it's like to be any number of marginalized groups anything outside their

01:01:12.840 very strict blueprint for how everything should be it just implodes it like it's so fragile

01:01:19.540 anytime it comes up against a different reality like it's one thing to sit outside that and speak

01:01:24.580 against it and say and here's here's how we do things but as soon as you're entrenched in that

01:01:29.300 the whole ideology just can't sustain itself yeah which is why i guess you're taught to

01:01:34.520 ignore that to and to shield yourself from the outside because the second someone asks

01:01:40.460 any question none of it holds any water so you just have to bank on the fact that you'll never

01:01:45.100 be confronted with any questions yeah yep absolutely and so eventually i agreed to give

01:01:51.900 it a trial run with public school with public school yeah we decided to send just one of our

01:01:57.320 daughters at the very beginning poor thing i in retrospect feel like what were we doing sending

01:02:02.420 one kid but she is the bravest and she not the bravest of our kids she is a very brave child

01:02:08.180 and she was very proud to be the trailblazer.

01:02:14.120 And meanwhile, I'm still wrestling

01:02:16.500 with a lot of internal guilt and shame.

01:02:19.200 And I've seen people my whole life

01:02:21.620 who homeschool 10 kids

01:02:23.060 and I'm wondering why is it hard for me to do four?

01:02:25.440 Like what's wrong with me?

01:02:26.740 And this is my identity.

01:02:28.600 My friend groups are based around

01:02:30.400 being with other homeschool moms.

01:02:32.640 I have never pursued a career

01:02:34.400 because I'm supposed to be a homeschool mom.

01:02:35.920 So it feels like this ripping away

01:02:37.680 of who I thought I was. Now, in retrospect, I think that was really unhealthy to make that my

01:02:43.680 identity. But that was sort of our agreement, like, okay, we'll send one kid and I can stay

01:02:48.500 home and homeschool the others this year, just as sort of a trial run. But I think it went better

01:02:54.180 than either of us expected. And by the next year, I was still considering homeschooling

01:03:00.900 the two boys who were school age, I had seen so much good in a school system I had once been

01:03:08.880 taught was the definition of evil. And I couldn't imagine keeping my kids from that. I would drive

01:03:17.440 in the car line and just the sense of community and the sense of just what good people there were

01:03:26.080 in our school was overpowering. And I couldn't imagine not allowing my children to be a part of

01:03:32.700 that anymore. In the Washington Post, Christina, it mentioned that on the first day that you dropped

01:03:37.980 your first daughter off at public school, you followed her inside. I did try. I love that

01:03:42.680 detail because you didn't know that you don't do that. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We were clueless.

01:03:48.040 We absolutely were. Yep. So you two are part of what someone described as a growing resistance

01:03:55.180 of parents who are homeschooled in unhealthy and abusive ways and who are now fighting for

01:04:00.540 more oversight and regulation in homeschooling, which again, there is basically none. And in some

01:04:08.220 places there is literally none. So what is your goal? What would you like to see change?

01:04:14.480 Are you against homeschooling categorically? No, definitely not. I would definitely plug

01:04:20.360 CRHE, Coalition for Responsible Home Education. I think they pretty much have said everything that

01:04:25.960 I would say. They have this amazing list of bill of rights. And it basically comes down to,

01:04:33.360 at its core, children's rights. Homeschooling, well, in America in general, there's definitely

01:04:37.800 a problem and a lack of children's rights. And homeschooling is an area where, combined with

01:04:43.560 lack of prioritizing children's rights, homeschooling just becomes this black box where

01:04:47.600 all sorts of horrible things happen. And there's ways, there's solutions to this. And anything

01:04:53.380 towards that, whether it's ensuring that children have access to mandated reporters or providing

01:04:59.460 more opportunity for children, education and so forth, options that parents don't get to just

01:05:06.680 unilaterally say they're not allowed to have, all those things I think are important.

01:05:11.180 Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. I don't think we are opposed to homeschooling. I 100%

01:05:17.180 see how it can be done in ways that are not isolationist, are not indoctrinating children.

01:05:27.620 But I am concerned. I'm concerned about the spike in homeschooling that has come about as a post-pandemic

01:05:34.980 trend. Wild spike. Yes. Yes. And you've mentioned the Post article several times. The reporter who

01:05:43.120 wrote that, Peter Jameson and his colleagues at The Post are doing an entire series called

01:05:49.240 Homeschool Nation. And they've done some incredible research on the data of different

01:05:53.920 ways homeschooling has grown over the past several years and what is happening in various

01:05:59.400 districts and demographics. And I'd highly recommend that for people who are interested

01:06:03.560 in learning more. But I feel like the regulations are not at all keeping up. And we realize that

01:06:10.820 as hard as our experience was, and as difficult as it is to talk about it still, in a lot of ways,

01:06:17.340 we were privileged. There are stories far worse than ours. And that's what motivates us to want

01:06:22.920 to see change. It's one of those things that it's hard to talk about. It's cost us a lot to talk

01:06:29.940 about it. It's cost us a lot of relationships, but we aren't able to say, oh, it's a small

01:06:36.280 minority of homeschoolers and oh well like i feel like that was the strategy to say yes some people

01:06:42.800 mess it up but oh well we simply can't cannot in good conscience do that yeah and that's why

01:06:48.760 we're advocating for reform but certainly not abolishing homeschooling i think it's a valid

01:06:54.140 option for a lot of people for a lot of different reasons yeah yeah christina in your instagram bio

01:07:00.620 you write that quote, you still have faith in Jesus. And so I was just curious to wrap up,

01:07:07.360 like, what does your faith look like today? And after everything and after spiritual abuse that

01:07:13.040 was wielded against you, how did you hold on to your faith? And what does your faith look like

01:07:16.820 today? I'd say it's certainly a growing and evolving understanding. I 100% don't claim to

01:07:24.880 have all the answers or even necessarily settled convictions on most things. But what I think I

01:07:33.440 hope for is that from the story of Jesus, I can see not the same perspective I was raised with,

01:07:41.060 but a perspective that does condemn abuse and that is welcoming and that is looking out for

01:07:49.540 the poor and the marginalized. And I feel like where my faith journey is going right now

01:07:57.720 is very, very different from the indoctrinating Christian nationalist

01:08:02.720 perspective that I was raised with. On my darkest days when I'm like, is any of this true?

01:08:08.120 I'm holding out hope that there's a better story that actually wants to see good in the world and

01:08:14.800 wants to see people cared for and taken care of. Christina and Erin, thank you so much for being

01:08:21.100 here today. Yeah, thanks for having us. So that's our show for today. And as a parting word, I just

01:08:27.620 want to say, whenever you hear people justifying their actions, whatever those actions may be with,

01:08:33.420 I am protecting the children. I always implore anyone to take a coin and scratch just a millimeter

01:08:41.240 below the surface and see what they are actually defending, because I will tell you, it is almost

01:08:47.280 never the children. If you like this show, please give us a rating. And once again, if you don't

01:08:54.700 like the show, please just, you know, don't give us a rating. I am so grateful that you spent an

01:09:02.000 hour or so with us today. If you really liked this episode, feel free to send it to a friend,

01:09:08.140 maybe your mom who homeschooled you and you're trying to now bridge this awkward conversation

01:09:14.380 of like hey mom what was that about or i don't know maybe your cousin who lives outside the u.s

01:09:19.500 and is like what the hell is going on in the united states maybe this is maybe this is one

01:09:22.780 for them to listen to as always i appreciate you being here and until next time stay fruity

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - November 07, 2023

Christian Indoctrination in Homeschooling

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