Hidden History
Learning beyond Christian homeschool history books
Hello, and welcome to the Thursday community discussion post for STRONGWILLED.
Hidden History
Following D.L.’s deep dive on the history of Dobson, his founding of Focus on the Family, and the ties to a eugenicist movement, we wanted to talk about how history is very often hidden from children who grow up with religious authoritarian parenting.
Part of childhood indoctrination is limiting the information a child has, or framing it in particular ways. I was raised with a take on history in which white Christian men were the heroes, a way of revising history that upheld the current Christian patriarchy my community wanted to maintain. DL and I have both returned to the sources we learned from. On our podcast, we spent some time exploring the ways that Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family taught kids about history through Adventures in Odyssey. Also, in recent years, DL got their hands on the history books from their homeschool years. Unsurprisingly, they both uphold a Christian and white supremacist take on world and US history, and hide many aspects.1
It’s not only history like Focus on the Family’s ties to Popenoe that’s been hidden from us. There is so much that is omitted in conservative religious communities, and ways that history is told with the sole intention to uphold conservative power structures.