“The Botkins’ webinar encourages Christian homeschooling families to take dominion, but fails to provide realistic instructions for doing so. The ideology they preach is not only inadequate for achieving the dominion they crave, but inadequate for preparing young people for real life. Life in a fundamentalist bubble simply isn’t good training for leadership in the real world.”
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“The Botkins’ attitudes toward connections outside of the nuclear family were mixed at best. They did not place great value on support networks, and outright rejected support networks (i.e., homeschool groups, relatives) who espoused beliefs that differed from theirs. Girls were encouraged to funnel their talents into the home, rather than seeking university educations or jobs outside of the home.”
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“In this part of the ‘Ready for Real Life’ webinar series, the Botkins discuss the transition from homeschooling to adult life, offering advice on work, education, and adult leadership. As with prior webinars, the Botkins give this a separatist spin, discouraging young people from entering traditional workforces, the military, or universities that could ‘exploit them to their ruin.’ Maintaining Christian dominion is paramount, as usual.”
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“The Botkins, like other fundamentalist homeschooling voices, attribute historical events to divine intervention. History, in their eyes, is a record of divine intervention, as well as how humans obey or reject God across civilizations. In doing so, they shoehorn history into a narrow narrative, oversimplifying history and ignoring the complex causes of historical events.”
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“In this part of the ‘Ready for Real Life’ webinar, the Botkin family discusses the roles that science, nature, and medicine play in Christian homeschooling. While the Botkins spoke warmly of these fields, their words betrayed a distrust of evidence and scientific communities at odds with their beliefs.”
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“In this part of their ‘Ready for Real Life’ webinar, the Botkin family discusses the role of the arts in homeschooling, contending that parents must train their children to appreciate Christian-friendly art and music instead of worldly arts. The webinar amused me in its disdain for Bratz dolls, jazz, ragtime, Picasso, the Frankfurt School, and Jimminy Cricket, but disturbed me with its advice on constraining children’s tastes.”
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“David Botkin emphasized to listeners that parents must teach children the word of God with great sincerity, and that the word of God must dominate children’s lives. David spoke approvingly of his father’s influence in his life, such as his father’s emphasis on scripture as a tool for interpreting the world and his love of R.J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law.”
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“Geoffrey Botkin stressed that parents must cultivate correct knowledge about their children. Children are ‘godly seed,’ not pupils or accessories, he argued. The Bible teaches that children are weapons of war, he added, asking listeners if they were truly acting like warriors. Like other fundamentalist voices, Geoffrey Botkin described children as torchbearers for a fundamentalist agenda.”
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The Ready for Real Life webinar series is a seven-part audio series hosted by the Botkin family.
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Homeschoolers Anonymous 