I’ve been somewhat hesitant to write this post, but you know what? Screw it. It’s my 50th article on The Tanuki Corner and I have some thoughts on this series. I realize that I could get some backlash for this post since our wonderful elites hate homeschoolers because “How dare the peasantry be autonomous and teach their children what they want them to be taught?” but I feel like people have become more accepting of homeschooling ever since COVID happened, so I’m not that scared. If you have different thoughts on homeschoolers, that’s fine, but I hope this post gives you a better understanding of what homeschoolers go through and that we’re not brainwashed cult-members as shown in Shiny, Happy People.
#1: This is not Christianity
I would like to start off with a quick disclaimer: this is not – by any means – a theological review of Shiny, Happy People or Gothardism. While I know a fair amount of apologetics for Christianity, I am not qualified to seriously talk about the ins and outs of Gothardism because I’ve never studied it in depth. This is simply a critique based on my personal experience as a homeschooled kid. If you would like a deeper theological study of the world views discussed in Shiny, Happy People, I would suggest going to apologist Don Vienot’s, website at https://midwestoutreach.org/ and reading his book A Matter of Basic Principles and Bill Gothard’s Cultish Teachings (soon to be released).
The only thing I will say that’s somewhat theological is that the views expressed in Shiny, Happy People by Gothard shouldn’t be considered Christianity. While the people stuck in the Gothardism cult consider themselves to be Christians, in my opinion they are about as Christian as the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses and should be pitied because they are being severely mislead, which is something that Amazon acknowledged for about three seconds in the intro, which most of you likely missed. Like Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the IBLP basically just took the Bible, twisted it to fit their narrative and ran with it to get money, power, and prestige, a model that many churches have unfortunately followed in their own ways.
#2: All homeschoolers are brainwashed
One of the stereotypes assigned to homeschoolers in this show is that we’re all a bunch of brainwashed, religious zealots who are trained to either be warriors for Gothard (men) or trained to be complete doormats who can’t say no (women). While this was true for the kids in the IBLP, it’s not true of all homeschoolers. While yes, many homeschoolers are Christian conservatives, there are also plenty of homeschoolers who homeschool because they move around a lot, felt that public schools weren’t doing enough to challenge their kids, or homeschool because of a medical issue that would make public school impossible (in my case, my peanut/tree nut allergy made that impossible in my younger years, though I still wouldn’t want to go to public school with my allergy because people are incredibly incompetent when it comes to handling it. I also knew one kid who was homeschooled for many years because of a severe developmental disorder known as ACC).
Many parents who identify as Christians that homeschool their kids don’t act like the IBLP parents. While punishments are sometimes necessary, us homeschooled kids aren’t being beaten with switches or abused in any other way. While many of our parents hold Judeo/Christian values about things like sex, abortion, politics, etc. us kids aren’t being taught to “slut-shame” as one lady put it, and are given both sides of the argument for everything. For example, in science, I got to study both arguments about evolution vs. creation. Some of my history books are more liberal leaning, while others are more conservative. Our parents encourage us to form our own opinions on things, and that is the most valuable gift any parent could give their child, in my opinion. Most of my friends are homeschooled and are some of the smartest people I know. The girls aren’t trained to act like doormats (I’m a girl and if you ever met me or if you’ve read anything from this blog, you’ll know I’m a fighter), they can do math, can speak well, and are doing things that are really cool, like running YouTube channels, learning to hunt, or going to college. The guys are rowdy, but are respectful towards us girls, and by no means treat us like trash and are also very smart. While some of us do fit the stereotype of being socially awkward, most of the homeschooled kids I’ve known are either very, very extraverted or at least ambiverted.
#3: Public schools don’t brainwash your kids
While I can respect the show for trying to stick to the stories of the IBLP survivors and for trying to shine a light to the sexual abuse that happened there, at points it seemed like an ad for public schools because of how much they were smearing homeschoolers as brainwashed cult members. It was as though Amazon wanted the viewer to be so outraged at how those things could happen that they forgot about all the things people like Libs of TikTok have found in public school classrooms that are just as bad – if not worse (secularly speaking) – than the stuff Gothard was pushing and doing. The only major difference between public schools and IBLP is public schools are government funded to push things like CRT, communism, and LGBTQ+ gender theory on kids, while Gothard was funded by his cult members to push another extreme that was highly hypocritical when you looked at what he was doing behind the scenes. Both public schools and the IBLP push propaganda and groom children (especially girls) for all sorts of things, while giving them a crappy education.
In conclusion, while I thought Shiny, Happy People did a good job bringing the survivors’ stories into the light and exposing a major megachurch that needs to be taken down, I really disliked how they smeared homeschoolers, especially Christian ones. While I did say in the intro that more people have become accepting of homeschooling ever since COVID, I don’t think Hollywood has joined that bandwagon and instead wants to re-paint us as indoctrinated authoritarians with an agenda (please ignore that the Left has been raising a bunch of indoctrinated authoritarians with their public schools for years). In my opinion, if you’re going to write a documentary exposing stuff like that, you need to come at it from an unbiased point of view. Instead of being a documentary focusing solely on the survivors, Shiny, Happy People became more about the politics towards the end and I’m disappointed with it.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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