The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers
The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers
They were taught that public schools are evil. Then a Virginia couple defied their families and enrolled their kids.
Oliver Beall walks with his mother, Christina Beall, outside Round Hill Elementary School as Aimee Beall walks ahead. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
By Peter Jamison
May 30 at 7:00 a.m.
Deep Reads features The Washington Posts best immersive reporting and narrative writing.
ROUND HILL, Va. They said goodbye to Aimee outside her elementary school, watching nervously as she joined the other children streaming into a low brick building framed by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Christina and Aaron Beall stood among many families resuming an emotional but familiar routine: the first day of full-time, in-person classes since public schools closed at the beginning of the pandemic.
But for the Bealls, that morning in late August 2021 carried a weight incomprehensible to the parents around them. Their 6-year-old daughter, wearing a sequined blue dress and a pink backpack that almost obscured her small body, hesitated as she reached the doors. Although Aaron had told her again and again how brave she was, he knew it would be years before she understood how much he meant it understood that for her mother and father, the decision to send her to school was nothing less than a revolt.
Aaron and Christina had never attended school when they were children. Until a few days earlier, when Round Hill Elementary held a back-to-school open house, they had rarely set foot inside a school building. Both had been raised to believe that public schools were tools of a demonic social order, government indoctrination camps devoted to the propagation of lies and the subversion of Christian families.
At a time when home education was still a fringe phenomenon, the Bealls had grown up in the most powerful and ideologically committed faction of the modern home-schooling movement. That movement, led by deeply conservative Christians, saw home schooling as a way of life a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality and the role of religion in American government. ... Christina and Aaron were supposed to advance the banner of that movement, instilling its codes in their children through the same forms of corporal punishment once inflicted upon them. Yet instead, along with many others of their age and upbringing, they had walked away.
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By Peter Jamison
Peter Jamison is an enterprise reporter at The Washington Post. Twitter https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/christian-home-schoolers-revolt/petejamison
tanyev
(42,632 posts)And it was very big in this area. But now they've shifted the goalposts to a complete takeover of the public school system.
murielm99
(30,773 posts)And they are very self-righteous about it.
Some of the idiots who are trying to censor LGBTQ+ books in our public libraries here are ardent homeschoolers. And I know that one one those libraries goes above and beyond to provide programs for homeschoolers. Go figure.
Yes, there are others who want to take over the public schools. There are some MAGATs here who have some sort of agenda for the schools, too. They are trying to get elected to our school boards. We have to keep them off our school boards.
Aristus
(66,468 posts)They were the most spoiled, unsocialized, insufferable brats you could imagine. Mrs. Aristus and I dreaded going for a visit.
Several years ago, they all started attending public schools. Now they are a delight to be around. Funny, witty, much better-behaved, and with the necessary social skills to make their way in the world than if they were still following stupid evangelical dogma.
AZ8theist
(5,507 posts)I wonder if there's ever been any studies done looking at behavioral changes in similar circumstances.