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My Experience with ATIA

In the wee hours of the night last night, unable to sleep because of a sore throat, I read through several of the archives. Whew. The world of Gothard has changed over the years in some ways, but stayed the same in others.

I attended a Basic Seminar in the 70's. (Didn't everyone? Oops, I think I just dated myself.) Of course I was a mere infant at the time...OK, I'll be honest and admit that I was a college student. Although I didn't agree with everything taught, and had some problems with BG's use of Scripture (especially when he would pull a phrase out of context to back up some point) I was impressed enough to buy a Life Notebook. Guess I'm a sucker for notebooks, especially ones filled with such nifty paper.

Fast forward a number of years. I was married, and homeschooling my young children. I kept hearing good stuff about BG's homeschooling materials. Even a nonchristian friend of mine raved about how wonderful they were (other friends of hers had used them for a couple years.) So I sent off for info.

Silly me. I thought I was just inquiring about some homeschooling materials. I wondered if maybe I'd find some good history and science resources or perhaps an alternative to Weaver or Konos. The first puzzling indication that I was dealing with an entirely different kettle of fish came when I opened the packet. The very first paper I removed was an article on dress and appearance. Hhhhmmmm, interesting, I thought, but why is *this* being included? Maybe BG thinks this is a real crisis issue in the homeschooling community.

Next I pulled out the actual sample of the materials. Nifty paper, that unique BG look...I liked it already. Then I began to look closer. The verse being studied had the word "seeing" in it, so the materials immediately plunged into a study of vision. A bit contrived, I thought, but then so are lots of unit studies based on the Bible. My husband, an optometrist, thought the science/medical aspect was OK, but didn't at all like the spiritual lessons drawn. Apparently there's spiritual myopia, you see, and all sorts of spiritual conditions that correlate to actual physical conditions. While the materials didn't actually say that myopia was caused by spiritual myopia, the way things were presented it would be easy for a young, concrete-thinking child to come to this conclusion. Since both my husband and I wear glasses, we didn't want to have to convince our children that this wasn't a symptom of some underlying spiritual problem. My husband informed me, rather strongly, that he didn't like this method of instruction at all. He felt spiritual lessons should be---radical thought!---derived mainly from Scripture and not from someone with a highly active imagination who could turn everything as an object lesson, no matter how contrived. Ah, but I was used to adapting materials. Maybe we simply wouldn't use this particular Wisdom Booklet. Maybe we'd only use some of the materials...

Then we looked at the other stuff in the packet and it began to dawn on us that we were dealing with something entirely different than what we expected. We weren't being offered homeschooling materials for sale; in fact, we couldn't buy them unless we bought what was really being sold: a lifestyle, a group identity, a system, and more. It became clear to us that we were unwilling to jump through all the hoops required in order to use the curriculum. Some would have imposed a hardship on our family at the time; some seemed unnecessarily intrusive and controlling, others violated our conscience. We remembered enough of BG's teaching to know that Bill, nice guy though he may be, is not in our chain of authority or even in our chain of counsel. We believed that my husband was the authority in our household and that he should make the decisions concerning my appearance, whether or not we watched TV, what music we allowed in our home, etc. Furthermore, as parents, we felt that God had given us the responsibility to educate our children and we felt it would be wrong to give so much of this authority to BG and act as if we were simply his agents. There was nothing in the materials we received that led us to believe that we could "pick and choose" among various educational approaches. You either used the whole system, joined up completely, or...you couldn't use any of it. You either placed yourself under BG's authority, jumped through his hoops, or forget it. Since Bill Gothard has absolutely no Biblically recognized authority over us (he isn't my husband, isn't our elder or pastor) it would have violated our consciences to allow him to make decisions about our family and usurp my husband's and my authority in a number of issues.

I need to make something clear. The issue was not that we were dressing like floozies, listening to rock music, and glued to our TV. The irony is that people would sometimes assume we were an ATI family just based on our "look". (That should have been a dead giveaway that BG was promoting more than homeschooling materials. Families that use Weaver or Konos, for example---or any other homeschooling stuff---don't have a "look" that makes total strangers ask if they use that particular curriculum. But we were hearing, "Do you homeschool? Are you in ATI?")

At the time, we didn't realize how far the usurping of husband and parental authority went. We had no idea that other men would actually inspect homes to see if the wife's housecleaning met *their* standard, when the only standard that should matter is the standard of the head of the house. But the very fact that BG took it upon himself to attempt to control what I---the wife of another man---should wear sent major red flags that this was a man whose system was presuming to usurp my husband's role. It was alarming, to say the least.

We could have no part of it.

It didn't seem to mesh with what I'd been taught at the Basic Seminar. For some reason, I had been led to believe that BG respected parental authority. Apparently only if they are willing to submit that authority to him...only as long as it is in agreement with him and part of his system.

So I've been left trying to reconcile the blessings we received from the seminars we attended with the alarming things I've read here and elsewhere, as well as our own experiences.

copyright 1999, 2000 by Rebecca Prewett

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