What’s Quaker about our homeschooling? Part 1: The role, or lack thereof, that our Meeting takes in it, a painful story.
March 27, 2008 at 4:58 pm (Quakerness)
Tags: Homeschooling, Quaker
Well, first, we are. I was raised in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which my husband joined when we married and into which our children were born. We’ve never moved our membership even though we live outside PYM boundaries now, because we haven’t found a meeting community that feels enough like home. It’s probably a wild goose chase kind of thing, hoping to find one, but my heart can’t seem to abandon the idea. We’d live closer to home but the homeschooling laws are difficult in PA and my husband’s job is here. We’d be hard pressed to afford to live there too.
We have attended three of the meetings here, and did find one that we thought was a good fit until we asked them to be the supervisory organization for our homeschooling effort. In our state you can homeschool under the supervision of the public school district with almost no support, under the care of your religions organization, or an approved correspondence program. We now use the Calvert-Jemicy pilot program for kids with LLD (language learning disability), a state approved correspondence curriculum for Dana, and a combination of Oak Meadow 7, Live Education!, and elements of Dana’s curriculum for Berit under the auspices of the public school district. This means we have an apt with a rep of the district twice a school year who assesses whether or not we are meeting minimum requirements.
We wanted a more corporately discerned supervision - yes, more guidance and supervision for our homeschooling than is available from the state, and we wanted it in the form of a committee from the meeting. The meeting we were attending has an unusual number of educators in it and an unusual number of life-long Friends - not to say “Birthright,” who grew up as I did in PYM. We’d asked for, and received, the support and critique of a committee for clearness about going the homeschool route to meet our daughters’ learning needs, and had their approval to ask the meeting to extend beyond making that decision into oversight of the project. I made a proposal to the meeting and in the discussion held in the meeting for business, a member of the meeting said “I oppose Kristin, her vision, and everything she stands for.”
I was stunned. The meeting was silent. No one responded, and I said, somewhat choked, that such a response made me want to take my children and never come back. I was in tears - not a frequent thing for me - when I slipped out the door and headed for home. One member came outside to say she was sorry that I was upset and gave me a hug. I appreciated it! I had never in my 44 years seen such behavior in a meeting for business. The man who spoke did not know me, we had exchanged “good mornings” but had no other contact. I don’t know what he meant by my “vision” or what I stand for, as he would have had no knowledge of either. I guess he thought he did, though. Several of the members of this meeting had known me for almost 15 years, and knew my background in PYM because they had grown up there too.
A few days passed by and I received a letter - very formal - written by one of the people I had known for many years both professionally (we both taught at the Friends school here at the same time) and in the meeting context. She was writing on the behalf of the Worship and Oversight committee and said that I had prevented dialog by leaving meeting so quickly. I responded informally - hand written - and addressed to her by name, saying that everyone there had my contact information and no one had phoned, emailed, dropped by, or written other than she. That sending me a formal letter which had the feel of a letter from the authority, was at least off the mark. I wrote that I had left the meeting when I did in shock and hurt, not in possession of myself nor in a fit state to continue participation in the Light. What troubled me most was that someone would say such a thing as the man had at all, never mind in a meeting for worship with a concern for business, and that the rest of the group would sit there doing nothing in response. I should say that from the time he spoke to the time I left was at least 15 mins. Nothing moves very fast in a Friends Meeting, and it was the deepening shock over his remark and the lack of response that moved me outside.
The clerk has known me for many years, grew up herself in a monthly meeting adjacent to the one in which I grew up, and had taught with me at another school in this area. She’d been on the clearness committee, and we have been friends (small f) for a loooooong time. In fact, when she had given up attending meeting some years back, because the one we’d both attended in town, connected to the Friends School, was so much UNLIKE home for us that we’d both quit, I invited and encouraged her to come to the meeting out in the country where - much later - this MFB was taking place. She had come with me and then on her own and was now clerk! She is a wise and gentle soul, one I respect and for whom I have considerable affection. I still don’t know what she was thinking when this man spoke. She did say later, that she wanted me to come back and educate the meeting about homeschooling in general and ours in particular. My response was that the hurt and dismay I felt had eclipsed that topic altogether. What I wanted to know about was how this group conceived of the Quaker process? (for more on that see http://www.nyym.org/quakerism/uqp.html#mfb) It sure wasn’t anything I recognized. I told her that I was struggling with my own emotional responses, including anger, and that I was not ready to return to the meeting, wouldn’t be until I had settled down and could approach the subject and the assembled from a position of greater openness.
I’ve gone to meeting since then - 5 years now - but not to meeting for business. I have declined the invitation to be a crusader for home schooling, that was not my errand and I think to take it up would mask the deeper concern. I resigned from the First Day School committee and have been silent in Meeting for Worship when I go. There’s a woman who makes it a priority to greet me each time I go with exaggerated sweetness - not a person I know, but she was there that day. My effort is to meet the gesture with openness. I’d give myself a C- on that. All I have been able to manage is a weak “thank you.” There are a few who have spoken privately to me about their disquiet on the matter, and their wish that I would confront it, and one or two who “get” that in refusing to confront it, I am leaving it open. Only one, the clerk I mentioned, who gets that I am still struggling with my own reaction, and have to deal with myself, hold myself in the light, before I can reach out to engage the group again, that’s if I ever feel led to do so.
Berit and Dana are disinclined to attend because the rest of the children are significantly younger than they and the FDS is naturally aimed at the age group most represented, so they tend to sit in meeting with me for the duration. My husband will only attend if I beg him. His anger has been harder to soften because he was not there that day, and feels some agitation about what his role or gallantry might have been. When he does go, he departs the second MFW has risen.
All this has altered the notion I had of how Quaker Homeschooling would go in our household. Part 2 will focus on how it actually does go!
Martin Kelley said,
May 12, 2008 at 2:18 am
Oh God, I just feel so terrible to hear this story. I’d be incredulous except that this is too familiar: Gen X’er asking for accountability, cranky member shooting it down in a nasty way without knowing the details, meeting members letting it go in silence, with the whole thing followed by an over-formal response with a tinge of blaming the victim. This is way too common a dynamic in many monthly meetings.
Change a few details and this is why it’s been years since I set foot in the door of the meeting I officially belong to, and why my wife left Friends altogether. I’m just sorry and wish I could apologize for the whole frigging RSOF.
It is the responsibility of every person in that meeting to try to heal rifts to gospel order and meeting unity (it is especially and explicitly the responsibility for the overseers). There’s probably not too much that you can do. I’ve observed that in meetings that allow this complicity of silence, the tendency is to pass off this kind of disruptive behavior as an interpersonal quarrel.
For a bunch of people who talk a lot about community we can be really bad about it. We’re especially bad about responding to the bully in our midst (in my case I was counseled to wait until the bully died). Over time I realized my problem wasn’t with him — who I could always pray for — but with a meeting that didn’t have the awareness, self-discipline and courage to protect its members and the integrity of its process.
kibblesbits said,
May 12, 2008 at 11:19 am
It’s funny, the comment above is from someone who bullied me in the past and this post brings up those issues, except instead of homeschooling, it was mental illness. I am sorry you went through this and I wish I could say that it is uncommon and I’ve always found Quakers to be openminded but perhaps differently minded is more appropriate. I don’t know how you can continue to go where you don’t feel comfortable — I am very lucky that the group near me, where I moved a few years ago, is small and comfortable. I don’t know what I would do, otherwise.
Diane said,
May 12, 2008 at 11:38 am
Sadly, yes, this happens too often in meetings. I sometimes think people believe they are engaging in Quaker “plain” speaking when they are, in fact, engaging in cruel or thoughtless speaking. Questions useful to ask before any of us speak “plainly”: Is this comment about me and my opinions? Or is it about helping the other person or the group in the process of discernment? Could the other person have asked: “Kristen, could you talk to us about how you weighed your options and came down in favor of homeschoolings and what the pros and cons have been to you?” (Note there is no “I” in this question and no judgment.)
Kristen, I do feel your pain, because as a Christ-centered Quaker in a liberal meeting, I have met with responses like the one above to my spiritual journey. I would have much preferred people to ask me to talk more about my journey and how I got where I was rather than react with a shudder and “I could never believe what you do” (without, of course, asking the first question about what I do believe). It is easy to blame the victim too, by telling him or her they that they are overreacting. Perhaps our meetings need to do more work on internal conflict resolution and peacemaking, which is emphatically not the same as glossing over problems to make “nice.” I do hope that some day you can confront your meeting about this and have your homeschooling under their care. And thank you for sharing your story so honestly.
Cherish said,
May 12, 2008 at 11:56 am
That sounds incredibly hurtful.
I had something similar happen. I did not grow up in a meeting, but I began attending when I lived in California. I moved back to North Dakota, but have never felt comfortable in the meeting here. I kept going, though. My older son has a lot of problems (I’ll just leave it at that). One day after meeting, someone with whom I had spent a lot of time discussing the issues my son was dealing with made a comment to some other parents. She talked about how their children were so quiet and well-behaved and how this was a testament to their parenting.
I could only sit there feeling very hurt because I wondered what that implied about my parenting skills that my child was not quiet and well-behaved most of the time. It especially bothered me that this person knew the circumstances I was dealing with. I tried to chalk it up to saying something without thinking about the ramifications, but it still hurt.
Between that comment and another adult there who pretty openly did not treat my son very kindly, I quit going to my meeting.
cath said,
May 12, 2008 at 12:30 pm
My heart goes out to you. Unless that man has been snooping around your life for years (and even then) he would not know “everything you stand for.” His comment had a ring of an over-generalization of some specific disapproval. I appreciate how deeply that must have cut.
Good conflict resolution rests on having both parties involved in the attempt. To blame you for leaving the Meeting and ask that you be the patient one or the one to do all the work does seem to me to have a conflict-avoidance ring to it, not a conflict resolution one.
I’ve been in gatherings of Friends where one intense remark sends every eye to the floor, reminding me of classes in high school where some of us hadn’t done our homework and we’d be thinking, don’t call on me.
I believe this is the shadow side of the Peace Testimony–we aren’t at peace with one another when we call someone out roughly in the group and then the group refuses to deal with the fallout. Sometimes being silent is a good thing; sometimes it is a facade.
Forgiveness helps to set things right in our own hearts, but it is not an easy path. Most of us have had moments in life when we had to dig deep and realize that another’s behavior will not change, that this person will never come forward to say “I’m sorry.” We can only heal ourselves, I believe, and leave the rest to God. Much much easier said that done!
I am so glad to hear that someone makes an effort to greet you with sweetness–even if it is something that person feels awkward about, it’s a good gesture. And, while I wish that Meetings could deal with conflict openly, I am also glad that some have spoken to you privately and that your friend, the Clerk, gets what is going on with you.
I hope that you will be given Light to understand what you must do to lift the lingering burden of this event from yourself.
I hope the Meeting can open itself up to the Light as well. Unless issues are dealt with as they arise, no body of experience and peaceful, loving techniques can be accumulated for the next disagreement.
cath
Alice M. said,
May 12, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Hi Kristin
Thanks very much for writing this story. It’s painful! It’s really necessary that the experiences of Friends are heard so that we can work towards something better. I hear you about struggling with emotional reaction to the way things have gone in ’settled meeting’ circles and not feeling able to go forward. Quakers, who make such great claims about peace-making, showing conflict-averse colours once again. Sad and all too common!
Someone who taught me at Woodbrooke (Quaker study centre in the UK) talked about how for renewal to be possible in a religious body, it’s necessary that there is a “re-appropriation of the founding charism”. The original spiritual gifts of the Quaker movement were not manifested the First Day morning meetings but in a widespread network of people transformed by their direct encounter with the divine power. The form of settled meetings came later, with the efforts to stabilize and institutionalize the church for a longer time frame.
That might seem a bit abstract. What I’m trying to point to is that it’s the direct encounter with God: the immediacy, the simplicity, and the discipline of that which is essentially Quaker. If the Life and Power is not in that meeting, it’s not necessarily your problem at all, unless you sense you are instructed to minister there - doesn’t sound like you feel that. There might be people local to you where you are who would be willing to start worshipping with you. You might be called to gather a new worship group where you are? Your family might form the nucleus of a fresh meeting.(Perhaps you are going to answer these kinds of musings in your follow-up post Part 2.)
Anyway apart from these ramblings, just very many good wishes and much sympathy for the hurtful and disappointing experience you have been through with that meeting! I pray and trust that the great divine transforming power of love will work through to compost this into food for the unfolding of God’s solution for you and yours and our whole church.
Craig said,
May 12, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I have always had concerns about homeschooling. However, not having children, I have had to trust those friend who do homeschool to make the best decision in their children’s lives. To ask for Meeting oversight in your venture was amazing (and in good Gospel Order). My prayer would be that others would be so bold as to seek such accountablity.
As to the person who “opposed” you. This person should be eldered post haste. This person needs to be reminded, as do we all, that the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, etc..”
I a sorry for what you have been through. I am also embarassed that this whole episode would take place in a Friends’ Meeting.
Very sad…
God’s peace,
Craig
Linda Wilk said,
May 12, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Dear Friend, My heart cries with yours. I understand the feeling of being a part of something hurtful that happens in a meeting, and the hurt that continues when a meeting either does not understand the nature of the hurt or does not know how to help with the healing. In those times, our belief in the Light within us all is sorely tested.
I also feel a kinship with you. I have homeschooled my children, now young adults, and I struggled with the accountability part of homeschooling and with getting the support I needed. I finally found a “secular” homeschooling group, made up of a diverse cross-section of types of homeschoolers, who formed my support group. While I did once attend a homeschool interest group at an RE conference within my yearly meeting, I did not find the support there for the type of accountability you were asking for. In this area of homeschooling, I also felt very alone.
You raise an important issue for Friends to think about. We all have queries in our versions of Faith and Practice that ask us to consider whether we are concerned about equal right to education for all children. Many Friends can not afford the expense of Friends Schools, even with financial aid, and not all children are good fits for either Friends School or public school. My own family came to homeschooling due to a crisis in my son’s life where he was being bullied in the public school, and at the time we did not live in range of an appropriate or affordable Friends or other private school.
I was initially frightened of homeschooling, though I have grown to be a great proponent of the freedom it offers to educate one’s children in the manner one see’s as most appropriate. Not all children learn the same, and the ability to move with a child’s flow of development as opposed to against it has come to my awareness to be a very important tool in schooling them.
I thank you for having the courage to speak out about this issue and your pain over it. You call attention to an important educational option which I believe we will find more and more Friends choosing. How wonderful it would be if we could make this a proactive choice for Friends’ families, since it is so in keeping with many of our Testimonies.
Please feel free to contact me privately as well, if I can be of support. Also, I do not know where you live, but where I live in the Pennsylvania/WestVirginia/Maryland area we have an online support group, http://www.yahoogroups/Arc-homeschool.com (Appalachian Regional Cooperative). Look us up!
Liz Opp said,
May 12, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I see from a web address you include in your post that the meeting is connected with New York Yearly Meeting. I understand that in recent years, the yearly meeting has been doing a great deal of work around taking a sort of corporate spiritual inventory and facing all sorts of difficult questions… and growing, as a yearly meeting, in the process.
I have also heard that the two Friends who serve as the general secretary and the clerk of the yearly meeting have served faithfully during some very raw and tough times… Both of these Friends are personal friends of mine, so I feel I know what they are capable of–both in outrunning their Guide but more importantly, in being faithful to It.
I bring this up because I myself have been counseled (by a completely different Friend) to seek support and discernment from my own yearly meeting (instead of from the monthly meeting) at a time when something arose that indicated the lack of spiritual maturity by the local body. But New York Yearly Meeting is enormous, compared to my own yearly meeting, and I don’t know much else about NYYM’s committee structure.
Anyway:
I had to re-read parts of your post twice: it’s been FIVE YEARS that you’ve been carrying this…? Oh my. That’s a sort of silence on top of the original silence that makes things ever more complicated…
But now I would like to know:
Are you seeking input from readers of your blog as to next steps, or how to raise the concern (of the meeting’s original silent response) after so much time?
Are you wanting feedback from readers, or are you simply wanting to share your story and have it witnessed?
I’m tempted to ask more questions and offer additional thoughts, but I want to be mindful of what, if anything, you seek at this time.
Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up
kristinsk said,
May 12, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Hi Martin Kelley,
Thanks for your response. I should say that I am a boomer - turning 50 this year - and that the Friend who spoke so disturbingly in Meeting for Business is just a few years my senior, I think. One reason I have not responded to this Friend is that we have no personal relationship and I have wanted to keep it clear that this was an issue requiring “eldering” rather than anything interpersonal. He has sat near me in Meeting for Worship and I have shaken his hand at the rise, but nothing more. I try to focus on working through my own reaction and holding that in the light, because that is the only part I can address on my own. Thanks for your kindness.
kristinsk said,
May 12, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Hi Liz Opp,
Thank you too, for being so thoughtful about what I have written. I should say first that we are not in NY but in Maryland and the Meeting in question is part of Baltimore Yearly Meeting.
I have more than one point in doing it. First, I wanted to think about what is Quaker about our homeschooling, and I wanted to invite comment on it from outside our immediate community. I keep a journal - always have - but never one that anyone else would read. In 5 years I have written privately to myself quite a bit, and some of that will show up here, but I wanted more community than I can have in the Meeting I attend. Thinking in text is different from the kind of social interaction that happens even formally in a meeting. I needed to get out of my own head about it but do not feel invited to do anything more about it locally. Does that make sense?
I do not want to circumscribe the kinds of responses F(f)riends might have. I seek light on the matter wherever it comes from and in whatever form. I am thankful for your interest!
K
David Carl said,
May 13, 2008 at 8:14 pm
That Friend’s comments were certainly abrupt and unkind. But who among us has never been abrupt and unkind with another? Do we know what might have been going on in this Friend’s life that might have led him to behave this way? I am not seeking to excuse him, but we are all going to both (1) be unkind at times and (2) be the recipient of unkindness at various times in our lives. We human beings are less than perfect. Maybe this Friend was hurting himself (I would imagine so). Here is an opportunity to seek the light in another. After all, he merely used some rather harsh words. Of course, words can hurt, but how much of the hurt is actually from the initial words, and how much from our own replaying the tapes in our heads? Would it be possible for you to personally approach this Friend and seek reconciliation? This could be a blessing to the both of you, and perhaps to your meeting as a whole. Perhaps you are being presented with an opportunity for spiritual growth. Maybe the lack of a “proper” response by others is just what is needed, as it clears the way for you to take some risks and initiative.
I don’t mean to be judgmental about this, I’m not close enough to the situation to say what others might be led to do. The foregoing thoughts are just some possible approaches to consider. I do hope however that you will find a way to healing with this Friend and in your meeting.
Blessings,
David Carl
Emily Boronkay said,
May 13, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Honestly, why can’t we speak to one another in Truth in our Meetings the way we can here? Are those of us who are on the internet hunting for something we are not finding in our own Meetings? I know I am. As a teacher of students with learning differences, I know how hard it can be to find schooling that meets the needs of a child with LD and honors them as people with their own lovely gifts. I admire the courage and commitment it takes to home school.
I am a special needs teacher because I raised a boy who was incredibly difficult. In spite of all we did to help him, he was really trying. The gift of it is that I never jump to the conclusion that a child who comes to me has a parenting problem. Parents connect to me easily because of my lack of judgment.
I was thrilled to read the responses and find another Christian who is finding the response of Meeting to be contrary. But I hang in there because I feel Christ has a purpose for me in my Meeting, but I also attend 2 other churches regularly to get the Christian in me fed.
Thank you all for being here for me to make a connection with you.
Emily B.
Hystery said,
May 13, 2008 at 10:39 pm
You wrote that, ” I made a proposal to the meeting and in the discussion held in the meeting for business, a member of the meeting said “I oppose Kristin, her vision, and everything she stands for.”
“…I oppose…everything she stands for…” I know what it is like to hear those words. People use those words a lot. They might have a problem with me as a pagan, or with my homeschooling, or my politics, or childrearing techniques. Each time I hear them directed at me, especially when I have reached out with hope and love I feel myself shrivel inside. Those are such hard words to hear and it made me angry and sad to hear that you had to hear them too.
I have been thinking about your post quite a bit as a homeschooling parent and have also been thinking about it in the context of my feelings about recent posts regarding Pagans among Friends. What do people mean when they say that they reject or oppose another human being for “everything they stand for”?
To stand for something can mean a couple of things. It can mean that they reject what you stand up for or it can mean they reject what you stand in for. If they reject what you stand up for (the right and responsibility to teach your own children) that’s one thing. But I think that when someone uses these hurtful words they don’t mean that they reject what you stand up for, what you value, protect, work toward, and support. How could they even know all the things that you are willing to take a stand on? I’ll bet each of us has a really long list! Did he mean that he rejected that you stand for good parenting and responsibility? That would seem absurd.
Instead, I think that folks who use these words mean that they oppose what we stand in for, what we signify in their own thinking. That’s easier to do because once we have stereotyped, trivialized, objectified and compartmentalized another human being we can go right ahead and oppose everything (everything!) about that other person. When we allow ourselves to see other people as “types” of people, then we no longer see people. We see shadows of our own shallow hatreds, insecurities and ignorance. And that’s too bad.
Laura Goren said,
May 15, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Kristin, thank you for sharing this story and providing this space. I am a member of the farthest-in-town of the three Meetings, and am most familiar with the two in-town Meetings, although somewhat with your (semi-)rural one.
I am struck by what I’ve observed as, across all three Meetings, an intense yearning, at least among some Friends, for more spiritual accountability and support, and an inability to translate that yearning into relationships and structures of accountability, whether “single-issue,” as one overseeing a homeschooling process might be, or general. At the extreme end, requests or attempts to form this more “high-intensity” form of spiritual community has been met with flat refusal, at least at my Meeting. Similarly, all three Meetings seem unable to elder or otherwise address destructive and hurtful behavior by “Friends in good standing.”
I see this lack of mutual accountability and refusal to address inappropriate behavior as related to the resistance of some Friends in my Meeting to “caring” for Meeting members and marriages that have supposedly been taken under the care of the Meeting. Without any mutual accountability, it should have been unsurprising to me that there wasn’t a willingness to provide meaningful support for a marriage [not mine, for the record], but it was shocking to me nonetheless.
Frustratingly, for me, while I long for a Meeting community that will provide support and accountability for me in my spiritual and life journey, I have allowed my life to distract me from building that community, or even from plugging into what already exists within and across the three Meetings. Kristin, I obviously don’t have all the answers, but if you would like to talk about how to build some of this community within or across our Meetings please feel free to email me at goren.laura [ AT ] gmail.com .
Somewhat off-topic, I’m also struck by how much pain exists across the Meetings about the Friends school, “believing in” public education, homeschooling, and educational choices more broadly. I’m not sure if this is true in other cities, but it’s driven other people out of our Meetings.