Homeschool With Joy

Should Christian homeschoolers be against the show? Should we be insulted? Is Amazon secretly out to get you and yours? Read on and hear one Christian homeschooler’s opinion.

Disclaimer: This is my blog and I’m a highly opinionated, Asperger’s kinda nerdy 30-something mom who despises reality shows. I can say what I want because I paid WordPress for the rights to fly my flag on this teeny dwarf planet minute floating asteroid in the Internet Universe and if you don’t agree, great! If everyone agreed, what a boring planet this would be.

After hearing so much hubbub about Amazon’s 2023 show, Shiny Happy People, about the Duggar family and how they had skillfully managed to mislead the world for years and years, I decided to check it on when I had some alone time at the house and my kids were at an event having fun with their friends. Boy, were my eyes opened…

My kids are first generation homeschoolers. My husband and I were both public schooled throughout out our kindergarten to 12th grade education. I have loved ones and dear friends who dedicate themselves day-in-and-day-out to making a difference in kids’ lives in public schools. My grandmother was an absolute wonder of endless patience and compassion with special needs kids for over 30 years in her public school classroom.

Certainly there are good and bad elements in homeschooling situations and good and bad elements in public school situations. I feel that I need to come clean with those facts before moving forward. I’m not in the homeschooler camp that says we need to abolish all public schools, period.

While I adore the adventure of homeschooling my own kids, partly due to my rebellious nature, I fully acknowledge that homeschooling is not for everyone.

I also confidently say that as a person who worked for years as a homeschool coach for a homeschool advocacy organization – I answered questions from “How do I even get started?” all the way up to “How do I apply for college?” without batting an eyelash. I have published dozens of authoritative articles on homeschooling. After a decade of living this colorful life, I’m a Millennial homeschool mom who, while not being homeschooled herself, is a veritable walking encyclopedia of homeschool statistics, know-how, hacks and tips, Texas laws, and more.

That said, I had never in my life heard of Bill Gothard and the Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP) until two weeks ago. More and more whisperings of it started coming up in my radar through conversations with friends. Hearing them get louder and louder over the past few days, I decided to investigate.

Now, after learning more about the vast impact of his teachings beginning in the 1960s, I realize that the slimy tentacles of his unbiblical statutes had been coiling up around to-remain-unnamed nouns (i.e. people, places, and things) that I was blithely and naively connected to, all without my knowing the name of this particular slithery beast. Now that I am more informed and aware, I can keep watch and make sure that this creature stays-the-heck out of my home.

When Shiny Happy People first came out, I had no desire whatsoever to watch it. By choice, I hadn’t seen a single snippet of the Duggars show and couldn’t tell you the difference between them and the Jon & Kate Plus 8 family or any of these others that were a part of that reality show trend.

I am admittedly a nerdy English major. I watch Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. (anything with “star” in the title,” really) when I get a chance to watch a show after the kids go to bed – which is hardly ever, because I read every night I possibly can. The only other show that might sneak in there is the BBC Sherlock series with Benedict Cumberbatch, but it still starts with “S” so it still counts. I read fantasy, adventure, the occasional classic rocker autobiography… you get the picture. You could not pay me to watch reality television. It strikes me as boring, fake, and terribly unappealing. Watching a family go grocery shopping to make dinner? Eh… Why? Give me my space wizards with glowing swords, and I’m golden – you get the picture.

Yet, the more I kept hearing about it, I got curious… Then, once I clicked it onto the Roku, I couldn’t stop watching the documentary series and very uncharacteristically finished the whole season one in one sitting. Well, one washing – I was cleaning and doing the dishes while watching because I can’t sit still very long, but that’s besides the point.

I had been told by someone when the show first came out – rage, hot tears, and fear edging out of their voice as they tried to control themselves – that Amazon was “attacking us” with that show, automatically including me without my consent in that heavy “us.” I had been told that Amazon was “against homeschooling” and trying to make our whole community of homeschoolers across the nation look bad and discourage homeschooling altogether, resulting with the injecting of unjust CPS visits with steroids to get revenge on the surge of homeschoolers due to COVID-19 or something. That the Powers That Be were against independent thinkers! I was told that it was all slickly-produced lies fabricated and taken out of context to make “Christians look abusive just for disciplining their kids” and make “homeschooling itself look like abuse.”

Now, I have no way of verifying the behind-the-scenes facts stated in the documentary and am in no way a fan of Discovery or other reality shows in the first place. However, I can certainly tell you that I do not believe that garden variety homeschoolers should be afraid of Shiny Happy People.

While I’m less offendable than other people may be – in light of multiple readings of Brant Hansen’s Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better – but I think that as Christians and as homeschoolers, we should be all for abuse being called out and stopped!

I didn’t see independent thinkers being attacked at all in the show, but more saw that thinkers who had co-opted their independence into this charismatic guy’s teachings were attacked. I was stunned that so many willing allowed Gothard to take over all the places of authority in their lives, bumping Jesus out of His rightful place. I’m completely perplexed as to why calling out this cult rife with abuse is a negative thing. Genuine love is Christ-like love; not Shiny, Happy fake love.

As a Christian homeschooler, I will never willingly defend fakery, lies, deceit, or spiritual, emotional, or physical abuse on any level. The ends – supposedly this group telling others of the love of Jesus – can never justify the means if the means are evil. This isn’t rocket science.

The only thing that I prickled a bit over was the show having talking points about how the Duggars only taught their kids that Evolution was wrong, while showing them at Answers in Genesis’s Creation Museum. Full disclosure, I love the Creation Museum! Their book and gift store, Dragon Hall, has a gigantic aquamarine dragon reading an adventure book above a large bookshelf and another dragon arching above the entrance doorway.

Their dragon/dinosaur exhibit shows ancient historical references and artifacts about dragons living among people, like a bill from ancient China to be paid to the Royal Dragon Keeper. If that is not cool, I don’t know what is… See above – fantasy book aficionado.

Besides that the Creation Museum it is an amazingly cool and fully science-y place. That said, we want our kids to explore on their own, get curious, and believe what they know to be right in their souls. I want them to read books for and against creation science, read and study for and against evolution, and explore our big beautiful universe to their heart’s content. My faith in Jesus is big enough for any of my doubts and so none of that stuff is scary to me.

The truth isn’t scary; it’s beautiful, as is the journey to seek it. As humans, we should explore the world we live in as best we know how and love everyone along the way as we do that.

From what I’ve read about the Institute of Basic Life Principles and their required homeschool curriculum, the Advanced Training Institute, it does not in any way encourage curiosity. If anything, it discourages curiosity and the love of learning, teaching incorrect “facts” and purposefully watering down any life-giving, Biblical truth to the point to where it is no longer effective or true.

For instance, the teachings also make it a point to belittle, infantize, and dominate women at every turn, when there are no shortage of Bible verses that teach that women and men are equal in value and should treat each other with love and mutual respect.

The other thing that I’ll add as a disclaimer is that it is rated 16+, which I think is the same for TV as movies that are rated PG-13. Honestly, this makes no sense to me since movies rated R are equivocated with 17 and up and with the TV rating of 18+. Those years between 16 and 18 seriously confuse movie reviewers for some reason.

At any rate, I might have rated it a teeny bit higher than that because the story is so disturbing. However, they certainly don’t have gratuitous detail featured about the abuses and don’t randomly have naked people running around just for shock value. The story is respected in the telling.

There are a couple of birth scenes which are replayed clips from the TV shows that the Duggars were a part of years ago. The first one really jumped out at me and I almost choked on my navratan korma and turned away from the screen. Yes, I was there, Gandalf, and I realize I have kids of my own. That doesn’t mean I want to see that kind of thing on-screen! Call me a wimp if you wish… Onward with this review!

I don’t believe that run-of-the-mill homeschoolers or Bible-following Christians should be scared or concerned about this series. Christians should desire for any kid of abuse to be brought out into the open and stopped.

I can get all of this from one single chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, not to mention other places in the Bible. Ephesians chapter 5 teaches the following:

“But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.” (Ephesians 5:3)
Should we defend “authority” figures who are gross and mistreat others? No. Check! I have no need to defend the Gothard guy or any of his cohorts who did way more than a “hint” of sexually immoral things.

“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.” (Ephesians 5:6-7)
Should I as a Christian homeschool mom be offended that a group with all these cult-like rules and extra practices that are not in the Bible tried to take advantage of others? Does this have anything to do with me and the way I homeschool? No, I am not at all “partners with them.”

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible – and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.” (Ephesians 5:8-13)
Should I have any reason not to want Amazon to “expose” dark deeds? Expose away, Amazon! Shine some light on those dark deeds! Let’s Care-Bear-Stare that junk and save future kids from abuse!

As a die-hard homeschooler, I didn’t feel that the show makes all homeschooling out to be bad.

Yes, it makes homeschooling by route of physically-punishment filled, spirit-breaking, close-minded, book-banning domination of control-crazed parents out to be bad. It makes crushing your kids so that they are zombie-widgets bad, yes. Yet, I do not fight against my children’s independent spirits, but try my best to help them be the people God made them to be. I do not want them to be clones of myself and my husband, but to blossom out into the world, shining the light that is within them – stronger because they homeschooled.

My homeschool home brimming with books, encouraging posters on our schoolroom walls, science experiments cooking in the windowsills, a full calendar of social and extracurricular events for my kids with their other kids, and just open-ended and never-stopping Jesus-fueled joy is not a cult-like atmosphere. I want my kids to have a rich, illuminating education that is boundless. I want their curiosity to grow. I want them to be their own selves, pursue passions, and be better at things I initially taught them to do, like playing chess or playing their instruments!

Rejuvenated in my quest for a joyful, enlightening homeschool environment, I am not threatened as a homeschooler by the Shiny Happy People documentary series in the least!

Now, I have to go check on my kids… They have been quiet altogether too long while I was writing this. Thank you for reading.

Scatter Joy,

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