When homeschooling goes bad.
I've been hanging on the #homeschoolrecovery reddit. We shouldn't look away.
A few admin-y things before I get into it, scroll to the end of the post for:
June zoom date for your diary!
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Lately, I’ve been hanging out on the #HomeschoolRecovery reddit. Before you go searching, I need to warn you: it’s a tough read. Brace yourself. It may not be something you want to dig too deep into.
Hence why I’m writing this post - it’s a condensed version of what you’ll find there, and I feel like we all need to hear it.
I initially went there for curiosity; I really wanted to know how children and young people experience homeschooling.
And I ended up staying because it became really important for me to understand or at least attempt to locate the common thread in all the stories of people - teens and young adults and older adults - who had such a harmful homeschooling experience that they needed to recover from it.
In unschooling circles especially, we tend to brush away any negativity and chalk it up to people either “doing it wrong,” or not deschooling enough, or using homeschooling as a way to essentially neglect their kids. There is some real resistance to actually admitting that sometimes homeschooling and unschooling go wrong.
This post isn’t really about the need or not for regulation - I’ve already written on that here.
This post is more about reflecting on what I learned from #homeschoolrecovery reddit, and why it matters to the wider homeschooling community.
(To avoid confusion, I’m going to use homeschooling to mean all forms of home education, and unschooling to mean unschooling specifically. I have also intentionally not directly quoted whole sentences and posts, or identified the people posting, or linked to the posts because although the reddit group is a public group, I’m aware the posters might not want their words on another platform.)
One of my main takeaways is that we need to stop claiming homeschooling or unschooling or public school or whatever form of education is INHERENTLY superior, because harm can happen in all of those places.
As people living without school, we need to start looking at our own community and pointing out where there is potential for harm. We focus so hard on bashing schooling (often for very legitimiate reasons), but the truth is that both schooling and homeschooling (and unschooling, actually) can be coercive, traumatic and harmful.
There is no way to live and learn that is, inherently, free of harm, because so much of how young people live is ultimately under the remit of adults, and adults get it wrong all the time.
I know people will be like, but unschooling is inherently non-coercive!! And yes, in principle it is. I’m not denying this. But in practice, this is not always the case. And the practice arguably matters more than the theory.
So let’s tackle unschooling first.
Many of the people posting here are either teenagers, or young adults who were unschooled - or at least, thought they were being unschooled.
One poster who is now an adult writes that they were unschooled their entire life and never taught anything directly. The felt they needed to teach themselves basic things like reading and writing, and they struggle with basic math skills. The consider this to be abuse and neglect, even though they say that they are doing okay now.
Many teens spoke about how they simply don’t want to teach themselves, or feel unable to teach themselves. Many write long posts about how the adults around them expect them to self-direct (or whatever version of self-direction the adults have adopted), but they are desperate for more structure, support and leadership even.
I feel like this can be a hard truth for us self-directed folk. Partly, it might be because there is some degree of neglect and these teens aren’t being supported, NOT because self-direction has somehow gone wrong. After all, self-direction is not the same as teaching yourself, there’s a lot more to it! That said, perhaps we need to consider that not all young people want to be self-directed and that some might actually want to be in a controlled environment.
And also, that the words self-directed and unschooling are misleading to the extent that *some people* are taking them to mean hands-off, don’t intervene, leave the kids to do it themselves, trust that they will do it when they’re ready, and all sorts of versions of similar phrases that can in practice mean so many different things. The terms themselves are so easily misinterpreted! And so easily lead to a practice that is not really what was originally intended when those terms were coined.
And now to homeschooling and the many, many ways it can go wrong.
(Bear in mind that unschooling falls under homeschooling, and so some of these stories are likely coming from unschooled children, or parents who were trying to unschool/thought they were unschooling.)
Benign neglect seems rampant in this group, like in a post by an 18 year old who shares their dream job and despairs that they have no idea how to get there, and have had no support from the adults around them. This does not sound like adults trying to unschool, but basically just adults not adequately homeschooling. I suppose this could happen equally to kids within the school system, but perhaps there are more adults around and more likelihood someone might notice? I’m not sure. But to this young person, it definitely feels like homeschooling is to blame for their parent’s complete and utter disinterest.
It’s so sad, because home education should expand rather than narrow our children’s options. I chose this thread because the person specifically says they are learning, but they just don’t know how to jump through the necessary testing and graduating hoops. The issue is not that they don’t recognise that learning happens in all sorts of ways, it’s that they aren’t being supported to learn the things they need in this moment, in order to get them from A to B to C.
A lot of kids seem to struggle with being weird or odd or different. I see a lot of homeschool and unschool parents talk about how it’s a good thing if our children are weird (I’m one of them!) but actually, we never ask our children whether they WANT to be weird.
This thread made me reflect on how choosing weirdness, and having weirdness sort of foisted upon you because you homeschool, are two very distinct things.
I also recognise the fact that feeling weird happens to school kids too - that some children and people will feel like the odd one out, or won’t fit in, regardless of how they happen to be educated.
But I think the weirdness that is being addressed on this reddit thread is not necessarily innate weirdness or neurodivergence, but the feeling of being strange or different BECAUSE you homeschool. And we need to reckon with the fact that some children don’t want to claim that.
There is also a lot of fomo about school and kids who go to school, and I have so much empathy for this. I know we want to raise children who can think critically, who stand up for what they believe in, who are sure in themselves - but fomo is real. We all experience it, to an extent! And I find it very human that of course some of our children are going to have a hard time being different or perceive that they are missing out. I suppose it gets sticky when our kids talk to us about this, and our response is dismissive, or minimises how hard this can be.
Heads up: I’m going to talk about more severe neglect and abuse next.
So many threads in the #homeschoolrecovery reddit are by teenagers who are desperate to either go to school, or generally just get out of an abusive and controlling home situation. A countless number of young people are essentially asking for help: they write that their parents won’t listen when they tell them they don’t want to homeschool, or just refuse to let them go to school. They are desperate for a way out, for a solution, for help from the outside world.
One really tough post asked whether it was normal for homeschoolers to be medically neglected (the responses were basically saying things like: yes my parents never took me to the dentist or doctor, yes they refused to let me wash my hair or shower, and on and on.)
A lot of posts present homeschooling as a form of isolation which is sometimes a way to control who and what the child is exposed to, and sometimes a way to hide neglect, and often both.
There are posts where young people and grown homeschoolers discuss the ways that their family intentionally tried to hide signs of neglect and abuse by limiting their contact with adults outside of the immediate family.
I’ve read so many threads where teens talk about their severe mental health issues from feeling isolated, scared, harmed, controlled and sometimes emotionally and physically abused. It is truly heartbreaking.
One recent post by a currently homeschooled child speaks to the idea that homeschooling is somehow protecting children from public school wokeness: they write that their parent “rants” about wanting to protect the children from the “woke agenda” and the way it is brainwashing children, and that homeschooling is how they will learn to have a mind of their own. The young person clearly indicates that they completely disagree with the parent, but can’t admit it to them or they will be punished or would have things taken away, like access to the internet.
I read several posts and comments by teens who essentially called their lives “a waste” and “pointless”, some of whom were suicidal, and some of whom felt an enormous burden to stay at home in order to protect and somehow “save” their younger siblings from a fate similar to theirs.
Many posters talk about being stuck in situations of intense physical and/or emotional abuse, from their parents calling them names like lazy or useless, banning access to all online spaces or all in-person spaces, emotionally manipulating and gaslighting them, ignoring things like potential neurodivergence or disability, denying them mental health support, abusive behaviour around a child questioning their identity or sexuality, and so much more. These are all children’s rights abuses, carried out under the name of homeschooling.
We may not call it home education, but the fact is that if people are allowed to do this under the guise of homeschooling, then there is a structural flaw somewhere.
There is a fair bit of talk about Christian homeschooling and the really problematic issues that are specifically to do with this group of people: the curricula that is rooted in religious doctrine and excludes a lot of scientific and other knowledge, fixed gender roles, harsh expectations of children, physical abuse dressed up as discipline, banning access to certain resources, books and people.
I think these are the homeschoolers I usually think of when I think of homeschool abuse, but it turns out that many of the reddit thread posters don’t mention religion at all. And this makes me think that abuse is much more widespread than just this pocket of homeschoolers.
In fact, a month or so ago there was a poll that asked members of the group why they were homeschooled, and a minority said it was for religious reasons, while the majority mentioned “other reasons”. To be fair, the sample was very limited so I’m not sure how valid this is!
A lot of redditors have really negative views of homeschool (not surprisingly).
I was so interested, and sometimes a little triggered, to hear some of the posters throw a lot of our homeschool talking points back at my (our) faces. It was interesting because I now recognise that a lot of the things we say, can really go both ways.
For example, when homeschool parents talk about how children don’t really socialise at school. Sure, I agree that it’s a weird sort of socialisation that goes on in school, but I also think it is preferable to NOT being around people at all!
And while my unschooled children have had plenty of opportunities to talk to people and make friends and build connections, for some children school is actually the one place they get to socialise. And so I think this talking point, as well as many others, is simply not a ‘one truth’ situation.
Socialisation is many things. But mostly, it requires people. And wherever you can access people, it will happen even if imperfectly.
(If you’re curious about what I mean when I say homeschool talking points, I’ll make a post about that soon! This one is already long enough as it is.)
The result of lurking on this reddit is that I ended up feeling like I can’t be part of the so-called homeschooling community. Not fully, at least.
I am not an unschooler like these people are unschoolers!
And homeschoolers, even unschoolers, are clearly not a community by any definition.
How are we all able to shelter under this one umbrella, then?
How can we possibly sit under these broad labels when these sorts of things are being done in our name?
I am not sure the bad-apple theory is that comforting. Clearly it’s not just a few bad apples. And while it *may* be a minority of home educating families, there is actually no way to know or prove this! It may very well be a majority or a significant portion. We just don’t know.
Someone on the reddit group asked, recently, whether people thought homeschooling was inherently bad, and the responses were very varied and really interesting.
Here is what was interesting about the responses from people saying that it is inherently bad: they sounded like they hadn’t really homeschooled.
And by that I mean that their arguments were very similar to those made my some academics and teachers and regular people who don’t actually understand homeschooling, who have not deschooled a day in their life, who have never ever questioned the issues with public education.
It made me think how important deschooling is for us, and for our children. And how bizarre it is that some people are lifelong homeschoolers and are against homeschooling not from a perspective of having had a negative experience (which is so valid), but from one of simply not really understanding the reasons home education, or living without school, can make sense - when done in a respectful, consent-based manner.
Some of the comments made me think that these young people and ex-homeschoolers couldn’t conceive of a way that living without school might actually be liberatory. This is super worrying.
I do want to say that while I think we should listen and believe young people, I also know that some of the things we blame our parents for might actually just be about something else entirely.
The point though, is that if my teen is telling me that homeschooling or unschooling isn’t working for them, I listen. I listen hard, I validate, I get curious, and we discuss the options available to us.
And I think this is what almost all of the reddit commenters have in common: their parents and caregivers didn’t want to hear them, or pretended like they were hearing them but weren’t really. They either wilfully, or perhaps even well-meaningly, persisted with something that was obviously making their child upset.
To me, this highlights a massive structural flaw in home education: on the more benign end of the spectrum, that our children aren’t always able to tell us how they feel, and we’re not always able to hear it. And on the more coercive end, that it allows adults to control children’s lives to an even greater extent than might be possible if they went to school.
In different ways, this is also a flaw of the school system: school and teachers don’t always want to hear what children say, and even when they do they aren’t prepared to act on it. And, schooling is used as an excuse to be coercive and controlling.
Perhaps the homeschool/school division is not even what matters most here: it is the fact that young people are routinely ignored, dehumanised, manipulated and controlled, no matter where they are.
Perhaps the bigger thing we should ALL (homeschoolers and non) be rallying around is coercion and oppression, because it is rampant both at home and out in the world.
This is where those of us who care about liberation, could unite.
To summarise, I learned a few things:
We cannot be so dogmatic about whatever it is we believe in that we consciously or unconsciously ignore or diminish alternative viewpoints, ESPECIALLY when those opinions come from our children.
We cannot be so married to our talking points that we aren’t willing to question them. I know this one is tough because deschooling is a long hard slog and it does involve, to an extent, an entire paradigm shift. And sometimes this means that anything that feels “schoolish” or belongs to a schooling paradigm is an automatic hard no. But it might be worth considering that our deschooling journey is not going to be the same as our child’s.
We cannot be so beholden to a vision of what our life and our child’s life is going to look like, that we ignore even subtle warning signs that it’s not working anymore.
We cannot pledge allegiance to a philosophy, pedagogy or lifestyle over our own children’s actual needs.
We have GOT to keep our children at the centre of their own education, whether that means providing them with the support they need, stepping back and allowing for more autonomy, or simply working on building a relationship of trust and openness and non-judgment.
Ultimately the horror stories above don’t scare me off of unschooling, because I know that consent and personhood are at the centre of what we do. And I continue to work hard to be able to hear and see my whole child, even when it feels uncomfortable.
But the stories do affect us: they remind us that it can go really wrong when we don’t pay attention. When we put our own agendas above our child’s. When we don’t recognise that young people’s rights and liberation are foundational.
DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES: Our June zoom meeting will be on Wednesday June 26, at 11am. That should hopefully work for a bunch of different timezones!
AMA: This is a short video I make every month, chatting about something or answering someone’s question. Pls comment below or DM me on here, or reply to this email to share a topic you’d like to know more about/a question you have.
THIS WEEK’S LINKS:
This post is already mega-long, so I’m sharing my usual links all under one heading this time.
I’m still on the fence about whether I can make it, but this study group on Uprooting Capitalism with Toi Smith looks so good! You have until June 12 to join - let me know if you do, it might give me the push I need! (there is a sliding scale).
P and I are almost done watching Power, a documentary about the history of policing and police violence. So far, it’s excellent. We fast-forwarded the bits she didn’t want to watch, and I wouldn’t recommend it for young or very sensitive children (L didn’t want to watch it).
had some really interesting thoughts on Analog Activism.I listened to this episode of Code Switch about the ways white evangelical Christians are some of the biggest supporters of Israel.
I’m half way through reading Free by Lea Ypi, whose episodes on the History of Freeom Podcast I’ve also really enjoyed. It’s a great memoir that it both funny and heartwarming, and a really interesting look at the fall of Communism in Albania.
A history of the 4th amendment on Throughline was a really interesting listen.
Some pod episodes I enjoyed with my kid: Is it possible to clone yourself? and Do plants sleep?
Amy Shumer and the Plague of White Feminism was really good!
Thank you for reading, and for being here.
Sending you so much love, and a pic of the poppies in my garden,
Fran x
Very brave of you to venture into the Reddit thread and thank you for sharing. I like to think that I’m not putting my kids in these situations but it is helpful to often be reminded that connection, collaboration, support, and listening to my kids are essential.
So funny that I picked this post up today. I just had two conversations on Friday and yesterday exactly about this!! On Friday I spoke with Gina Riley who is working on a book about Bias in the unschooling/ homeschooling realm and yesterday I spoke to a Québécoise Ph.D. level researcher and Montessori educator about her small study involving 5 Canadian grown Unschoolers (https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jped-2021-0002) which included several who had a very negative, isolated and neglected experience! It really alerted me to how home education can go really wrong. She also pointed me to the 5 protective factor theory which I hadn’t heard of before.
More conversations need to be had about the bias and judgement in the unschooling and homeschooling community!!