John Holt on Phil Donahue, 1981

Pat Farenga just put this up on YouTube. Some wonderful things: It's a full epdisode, and not chopped into little parts, AND that it was still around, AND that Pat has put it where everyone can watch it. I saw part of that episode when it was new, before I had kids, and remembered it, but that was before home VCRs, pretty well. (I certainly didn't have one until 1986 or so.)



There are comments on the YouTube page, if you want to join the discussion there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxZEEBiTp-s#t=60

Renee Cabatic shared it on Facebook, and wrote "Did you notice Kirk Cameron in the Hamburger Helper ad?"

Portuguese interview of Sandra Dodd

Escola da vida, escola em casa
por Rita Penedos Duarte
Fotografia de Reinaldo Rodrigues/Global Imagens

http://www.dn.pt/revistas/nm/interior.aspx?content_id=3511700

I was interviewed in June, for a long time, and photographed about 120 times during it, posed here, posed there, in sunset lighting. Finally, November 3, the article. :-) The interviewer was very sweet, and I know she had it worked up months ago, ready to go.

It was in the paper copy of the newspaper, too, with other photos. (Might have a PDF in a day or two.)

The article doesn't exist in English, sorry.

HSLDA, German homeschooling family, questions

I have rarely put a comment in this blog, preferring to link to news, articles, video.

Several times in the past two years, though, I have been asked personally and as the owner of discussions to "support" German families (one, I think, really) who were having legal trouble because of Germany's laws.

First, I don't involve myself in legislative issues at all, only in learning and parenting ideas. And HSLDA is all up in the German situations. I don't want to support them. AND I don't want to explain that to everyone who asks me to get excited about German law. The family is a fundamantalist Christian family, which is why HSLDA is helping them, thought that isn't mentioned in mainstream/secular panic-reports. HSLDA is using that family as a pawn in a larger, darker plot that isn't about children or families or Germany at all.

Today, reading an unschooler's blog, I followed a trail to this, and it's worth putting in a less text-dense place where it can air out:

JAMES DOBSON (Alliance Defense Fund), MICHAEL FARRIS (Home School Legal Defense Association,
JERRY FALWELL (Deceased, Libety University) & MARVIN OLASKY (World Magazine)
Based in Powder Springs, Ga., American Vision also produces reams of material that push Christian Reconstructionism, a form of fundamentalism that argues for a re-writing of American history, dismantling secular democracy and constructing an America governed by "biblical law." Reconstructionists seek to impose the criminal code of the Old Testament, applying the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, witches, incorrigible juvenile delinquents and those who spread false religions. Despite its overtly radical theocratic agenda, American Vision is allied with some of the Religious Right's most powerful outfits. This year's conference was cosponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund, a well-funded Religious Right lawyers' outfit that James Dobson and other religious broadcasters helped create; Michael Farris's Home School Legal Defense Association; the late TV preacher Jerry Falwell's Liberty University School of Law; and World Magazine, Marvin Olasky's influential evangelical Christian periodical. (Christian Reconstructionists Are Trying to Take Dominion in America -- and They Have Powerful Friends By Jeremy Leaming, Church and State, AlterNet, Posted July 2, 2007, http://www.alternet.org/story/55717/)Pre Millennial And Post Millennial Doctrines Do Not Mix
by Sandy Simpson, 7/13/07

Most people who don't know or care about fundamentalist Christianity glaze over and ignore such things. That's probably for the best in many cases. But for anyone wanting to think that HSLDA really does just want to make homeschooling legal everywhere, it's worth pointing out that homeschooling is a small aspect of their real intentions and plans. They what to homeschool their future world leaders so those kids can be kept from worldly information and other opinions.

But then I thought maybe 2007 was too long ago, and looked for something more recent. Here: This is NOT Homeschooling: Is HSLDA Part of a “Bible-Based Cult?”

From that, a quote, from a "church leader" and former HSLDA attorney:

We will lose this movement and this work of God, men, if we do not govern our households. And that means lovingly shepherding our wives. The less you love your wife and the less you shepherd your wife, the more you create an open door for the female sin of the internet. The male sin of the internet is pornography. The female sin of the internet is gossip-mongering…Dear friends, we don’t live in the type of communities where our wives tend to go from house to house gossiping. They tend to go from blog to blog gossiping. And they spend their day going from blog to blog gossiping. And some of you are letting them. Some of you are encouraging them. And guess who they’re gossiping about? It’s not the world. It’s Pastor Joe. It’s homeschool state leader Sally. It’s Charlie. It’s my friend John.

It means that the secret agenda is in danger from women admitting what they know about the plans of the male leaders of Christian cults intending to take over governments. It seems crazy, because it IS crazy. There was more.

Guess who’s watching? The world is watching. When the lesbian, feminist, transgender publishing house Beacon Press decided to release their exposé this month on families that believe in large households, they knew exactly who to go for. Go to the internet assassins. Go to the blogosphere gossips and get the information to denounce and divide the homeschool movement directly from the wives who live on the internet, gossiping 24/7. It’s a bigger problem than you realize, men. And it is causing heartache. It is creating problems.

The problem is the evil, not the exposure of the evil.
The problems it's causing is the potential lack of large incomes for these "leaders" and liars.

Heather, the blogger there at "Becoming Worldly" wrote:

This HSLDA/NHERI/Vision Forum/Bill Gothard ATI thing is not a Christian thing. This is not a homeschooling thing. This is an extremist thing. It may even be a cult thing. Yes, as in “new religious movement.” So please, homeschooling parents, run from this crazy stuff so it doesn’t do to your family what it did to mine. Stop supporting these extremists, stop inviting them to speak before congress, stop allowing them to suggest what laws and politicians you vote for or against, stop buying their flawed explanations and liar statistics, stop letting them tell you how to live your lives and raise your children.

There is much more available, from links within those or by a web search for American Vision and HSLDA.
This is less political and more personal, though: Survivor Blogs (many by young adults who were brought up in fundamentalist homeschooling families).