Personally, I believe the worst part of a religious homeschooling experience is what it teaches you, not what it doesn't teach you. You learn to not question and not strive for anything that is not given to you and approved by an authority figure. That's absolutely terrible. With that mindset, your entire life will be one of settling for scraps, mediocrity, and being a sheep because you believe you can't do things on your own and you can't ask for help outside your bubble or the "chain of command". You will need to be directed of gain approval in order to accomplish anything in life.

I'm not saying that to be mean. I cannot express how deeply troubling and heartbreaking that is. I'm so glad you have deconstructed as much of that religious ideology as you have. I hope as your life moves forward, you'll be able to leave behind more od those warped thi king patterns. For sure, even those of us who didn't grow up as religious conservatives have much to continue deconstructing since our social system is based on Patriarchy born of Abrahamic faith traditions (here in the west, but also much of the world).

I saw some of this same thinking in Eleanor's series on homeschooling. They were good pieces, bit flawed due to this thinking.

Lots of students show up at college not prepares foe college, and it's not always because of a religious upbringing. Rural students, especially, have lagged behind their more urban counterparts for years. Not every small county high school has higher maths like algebra and more focuses science on offer. You graduate with basic math, maybe basic accounting or bookkeeping and general science, maybe physical science and life science.

And that's it. Because that's all some counties can afford.

They're grossly behind on day one.


But they know they need to take accountability to catch up on wherever they're lacking by exercising some self reliance and gumption. They go speak to their professors and ask for resources, they visit their counselor and request tutors, they pester the librarians half to death (which just tickles the librarians into a state of near euphoria), since the internet had come along, they dog YouTube and websites like Khan academy, they look for apps and games that teach the skills they missed so they'll have a place to practice, they get in or form study groups, TAs need to earn their free tuition by being thoroughly abused by under classmen, if they need to, they drop the class and use the time block of that class to begin prepping for being able to handle the course load and course requirements. They take it again if they fail after trying to stick it out. The go down to Goodwill and buy a used high school level 1textbook for $5 and start going through it after looking on the syllabus and seeing they're going to struggle there because they didn't have that in high school.

My point is, there are resources aplenty at every college university and they are thrown at you nonstop. You can gather up whatever you need to succeed with a butterfly net. All you have to do is ask and do the work instead of expecting to have your hand held or minded/directed the whole time.

That, in my opinion, is where your and Eleanor's schooling failed you, not in not teaching you reproductive biology or evolution. It taught you that education was a one time event that is granted to you rather than a life long opportunity that you are equally accountable in achieving.

You don't have to stay uneducated now. The internet has really opened things up. You don't even have to be a student t at a particular university to have a professor from that institution help you if you send them an email asking nicely. They love talking about their respective fields. You don't need to be a juvenile to open an account on Khan academy and take any one of their courses. Kindle Unlimited and Wikipedia have free textbooks, as do many other sites. MIT and others have entire courses available online, for free. OpenCourseware. Coursera and websites like that. YouTube. TikTok (near useless search function though).

Whatever you want to learn or whatever you feel was insufficient or didn't happen the first time around there is a way to learn it now that is accessible and affordable.

All you gotta do is ask and then go do it. The only think stopping you is you and what you believe about education, responsibility, and authority.

I hope to see both you and Eleanor challenge those beliefs. You're both remarkable women in your own unique ways. I'd hate to see your lives limited and your talents squandered by subconsciously and accidentally investing in what were bullshit ideas foisted upon you as a child. It was always bullshit, Kate.

You and Eleanor deserve dynamic and full lives meeting any challenge you care to face. You're both too valuable to have stunted and restricted lives.