The Strange Elitism of Sheltered Homeschoolers

Branded childhoods and cultural Christianity don't save souls.

It’s incredibly obvious that America has some public education problems that run deeper than “fix school lunches and keep kids from getting stabbed on the playground.” On the other hand, not all of America’s education debates are over access and inequality—it’s a values fight against ‘Christian nationalist revisionists’ or ‘America-hating wokesters,’ depending on your politics. On the Christian right, however, it’s much deeper than that, it’s a struggle to create a separate culture, rooted in an innate distrust of government and a desire to return to a more classical model of education. Why do I care about those roots? Simple—I’m a part of those roots.

For those blissfully ignorant readers for whom the following statement isn’t incredibly obvious, I was homeschooled for the entirety of my pre-college educational career. I’ve grown up in Christian homeschool circles essentially my entire life and heard all the typical homeschool cliches from classmates and their parents: six-day creationism is the only way to be saved, men shouldn't have long hair because something-something-Corinthians, and you definitely can't be a committed Christian and go to a public school. Shock and horror.

For what it's worth, my personal homeschool experience had very little such tomfoolery; I've been blessed with unbelievably wise parents, and none of this is me saying that homeschooling is bad or that it's not a responsible choice for families. What I am saying is this: an education counterculture, even a Christian one, doesn’t guarantee wise people, and it definitely doesn’t guarantee more Christian ones.

The counterculture is real, and if you grew up homeschooled, you probably know this: the Christian media industry is awash with products advertised to parents as alternatives to 'worldly' media. The world watches Netflix, Christians watch PureFlix. The world lets its kids watch PBS, Christians make sure their kids watch VeggieTales and listen to Adventures in Odyssey. The outside pledges allegiance to the American flag, Christians throw in a Christian flag (and sometimes the Bible) for good measure.

If you grew up in a Christian/homeschool environment and this seems at least vaguely descriptive of your lived experience, it's because the environment you grew up in was affected by the philosophy of sheltering: protect people from the mentality of the world by creating a separate culture that reflects our values. Yet, there’s a darker strain that runs through that separate culture: in my years of running in homeschool circles, I heard and continue to hear many otherwise smart people act like it’s classical education methods and Socratic dialogues that actually create the spiritual growth that Christian homeschooling groups constantly promote. It’s not.

This perception ironically often creates a type of anti-elite elitism: by not subscribing to mainstream education systems and going to more traditional non-governmental methods, we’re saving kids from the fate of being like their worldly, brainwashed, public-schooled peers. Don’t believe me? I’ve heard people tell me homeschooling is a ‘more moral choice’ than sending kids to a public school. Is this sometimes true? Yes—I’d even argue it’s true more often than many think. But certainly not always, and it’s a mistake to see counterculture as a substitute for actual discipleship. Nothing about homeschooling or classical education saves souls.

The culture I encountered in my years as a homeschooler that pledged allegiance to the Christian flag and presented itself as a non-hostile educational system for Christians was decidedly more pro-Christian than much of America’s public education system, and I’m grateful for much of it (not the Christian flag part). But it didn’t make me more Christian or a better person than my publicly-educated counterparts.

Education is a major battlefield in the culture war, and deservedly so—it’s the battle for the minds of America’s youth. But for those of us who grew up homeschooled, that pedigree doesn’t confer moral superiority, even if it’s tempting to think so at times. As a former homeschooler, I’m grateful for the good in my past, even as I realize that it’s not what gives me true hope for the future. That hope transcends all education debates, and we should never forget it.