Former Homeschooler on the Duggar Family’s Horrifying Fundamentalist “education”: “it’s Literal Rape Culture”

By Jenny Kutner
The Salon
June 8, 2015

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/a_former_homeschooler_on_the_duggar_familys_horrifying_fundamentalist_education_it%E2%80%99s_literal_rape_culture/

The Duggar family (Credit: Beth Hall/Discovery)

Almost as soon as it was revealed last month that Josh Duggar sexually assaulted his younger sisters when he was a teenager — and that his parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, did what they could to cover it up — the Internet erupted with speculation about how the family’s intensive fundamentalist Christian homeschooling program may or may not have contributed to the abuse.

You’ve likely seen some of the lesson plans from Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute, for which the Duggars have advocated persistently, and which pushes an educational curriculum apparently comprised of some of the most damaging, unbelievably misogynistic viewpoints imaginable. To much of the public, the ATI lessons on sexual assault that have circulated online are basic examples of what we mean when we talk about rape culture and victim-blaming; to children who are raised in the homeschooling program — like the 19 Duggar kids — the lessons are “the truth.”

Nicholas Ducote, a self-identified “homeschool survivor,” was one of those children once. Now 27, Ducote was raised in Louisiana and homeschooled by his mother, a fundamentalist Christian and ATI devotee. As he grew up and began to question the homeschooling movement and religion more generally, Ducote stayed in touch with a number of other ATI alumni whom he met through a homeschool speech and debate program. Together, they gave voice to their shared history of shame, anxiety and confusion perpetuated by their experiences with the program.

“When I was in church, I was the special kid, because I was being homeschooled to be a culture warrior,” Ducote told Salon. “Homeschoolers were like the exemplary, perfect Christian children who exemplified everything that most American Christians think children should do and believe — that they should be fighting for a Christian America. There were so many people who thought that no one else had experienced that.”

So Ducote and several other alumni came together to start Homeschoolers Anonymous, a blog dedicated to sharing the narratives of former homeschoolers. He and the other founders also run a non-profit, Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out, that is dedicated to “renewing and transforming homeschooling from within.”

Salon caught up with Ducote by phone last week to discuss his experience with ATI, the harmful lessons he believes the Duggars also learned, and how he overcame his own indoctrination. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

There’s been some backlash along the lines of, “Hey, not all homeschool programs” or “not all homeschool kids,” in response to the Duggar abuse and the family’s involvement with ATI. Not all programs are ATI, but at the same time, the Duggars were not the only people who were using it. What was your experience with the program?

I was raised in ATI. My mom homeschooled me from kindergarten through 12th grade. She had just become born again, so to say, in 1994-1995. I was born in 1988. She initially wanted to homeschool me for a year or two, but then she kind of got pulled into this larger culture. I don’t think it originally started as an explicitly religious thing, but when she went to look for resources on how to homeschool, the resources that she found were fundamentalist Christian resources. Those tend to be the ideas and philosophies that are at the keynote level of homeschool conventions, even still today.

What drew her into ATI in the first place and do you have any better perspective on how she felt about it?

As far as I can tell, the big attraction of ATI was that it was sort of this holistic thing. It was a lifestyle; it was a religious belief; it was a homeschooling method. Bill Gothard promised you access to exclusive truth. So he presented fundamentalism in a pretty attractive way. He made it practical. Very black and white: here’s a problem and here’s a solution. I think that’s very attractive, especially for new Christians, because it’s so easy. They don’t have to think a whole lot. There’s not a whole lot of critical thinking there. It’s just all laid out for you. Then [my parents] would start going to the basic seminars every year. There are more advanced seminars, literally called the Advanced Seminar. I went to a counseling seminar in Indianapolis at one of ATI’s training centers. That was the progression of them getting pulled into this. But they started ATI pretty early in their whole journey into the cult. That was definitely a huge part of not only educating me, but educating them. It’s such heavy propaganda, working on both the parents and the children.