Homeschooling and College: My Experience

Leaders in the Homeschool Movement spend an exorbitant amount of time selling their rhetoric in words and in materials (books, videos, blog articles) sharing what they believe to be the ultimate role of women as homemaker: how to be respectful and submissive wives, how to cook, sew, how to raise children, etc.

If you are a young girl raised in this environment, your know your lot in life is: get married to your approved husband, have many children, teach your children at home, and hopefully, your children will do the same.

...The ultimate goal in the Homeschool Movement is to be fruitful and multiply and “take dominion” of the world. 

--"When Homeschooled Daughters are Trapped" by Julie Anne Smith, originally published on Spiritual Sounding Board. 

I remember the feeling of being trapped. I had been taught by Bill Gothard and Inge Cannon that college was both dangerous and unnecessary. I already knew it required a large investment of time and money, neither of which I believed I had. I had no job, and when I did get one much later, I was still dependent on my parents for transportation. In addition, I was always expected to help with both regular and irregular chores to keep the household and Dad's business running. Dad paid us to work for him, but the hours and the projects were subject to change according to what he needed. If he needed help, it wasn't presented as an optional job. Neither could I "turn down" a sewing project for Mom, even one she was offering to pay for.

Mary Pride, Vickie Farris, Elisabeth Elliot, and Nancy Campbell were certain my calling was to be a submissive wife and a full-time mother. Numerous writers were telling me that my dad should help select a future husband for me. But I was in my twenties now, and no young men were lining up for the privilege. I'd never even been asked out, never held hands with a boy, never talked to a guy my age on the phone. I was certainly raising babies, but they weren't mine.

At ATI conferences we would listen to "testimonies" of young adults who had left their college studies to return home and happily study the Bible with their younger siblings under the authority of their parents. We would expose ourselves to Satan's temptations if we left our parents' protection to live on a campus. We might even lose our faith. We would be corrupted by humanism and "vain philosophies". We might even succumb to "a dating spirit".

Besides, even without degrees we would have employers coming to us because of our excellent character, worth so much more than mere knowledge. Anything we needed to know, we could learn from masters through on-the-job apprenticeships. To a teenager whose primary outside contact was church on Sunday morning, it sounded so good in theory. I did some volunteer work, but no one came knocking in search of my great talents.

Years after I should have graduated from high school, Gothard's organization launched an alternative to college: a correspondence school by which one could study law from home. Loving the idea of having initials after my name, I was eager to apply to Oak Brook College of Law. But it turned out one had to have some college credits! Or, instead, they would accept a GED certificate and satisfactory CLEP scores in three subjects. So Dad got on the phone and made the arrangements. In January, I got my GED (at a facility for dropouts and delinquents) and sat for the necessary CLEP exams at the our community college.

In April 1995, the week before the Oklahoma City bombing, I spent a week at Gothard's Dallas Training Center doing "orientation". I remember being surprised that the young man picking me up at the airport was alone.(At nineteen years old, I'd never been alone in a vehicle with a single man before. Unspeakable things might happen!) The class was predominantly male, but there were a few other women. All the professors we met were male.

The dean, Roger Magnuson, kicked off the week by warning us of the spiritual perils of our course of study. He urged us to halt our studying if we sensed "our delight in spiritual things diminishing". I remember something about the school not being unaccredited "yet", but I had no idea what that meant. No one had ever explained regional accreditation to me, not even my dad who had a degree from Penn State. After all the introductions and preliminaries were over, I lugged my new books back to Michigan. For the next year and a half logged four hours of study a day, often falling asleep on my bed as I slogged through the heavy, sometimes bone-dry texts.

It was lonely as hell. I rarely got to converse with another student over the phone, and never talked to a professor. It would be two more years before we even got email access at home. I mailed in assignments, got grades back, and took my midterm and final exams at a proctor's house across town. Despite being a devout Catholic, she was an avid fan of Gothard ("He's the most Catholic man I know!") and did her best to spoil and encourage me when I came over. I was grateful to her, but it wasn't enough. All this time I continued to pull more than my weight helping around the house, tasked with keeping the bills paid, the dishes washed, diapers changed, the kitchen clean, and whatever else Mom needed me to do.

When my mother had a nervous breakdown two months after delivering her tenth baby, I was left in charge of the house, and meals, and seven younger siblings--for a week.  I kept assuring myself God would take care of everything, that he had things under control. But nothing was under control! And I was desperately trying to prepare for the state "Baby Bar" exam in San Francisco which would determine whether I could continue my studies or not.

When Mom returned home from a week discussing the Bible with a pastor in Indianapolis (the "counseling" she got at Gothard's training center), we all walked around on eggshells for weeks. There was The Knife incident. I was anxious and depressed and cried a lot in secret. I had trouble sleeping. I got sick. My appetite diminished. I felt like my whole life was in danger of crashing in pieces around me.

I feared Mom would fall apart again. I feared I would fail the exam and Dad's money, not to mention the last eighteen months of my life, would have been wasted. I feared turning into a steely woman lawyer in a boxy navy suit. I feared turning into a sexy female attorney in a fuchsia suit, wowing the judge with her perfume instead of her brains. I wished I had given up the notion of law school long ago!

I took the exam. Mom stabilized. While I waited for the test results, I sewed dresses for my little sisters and did a lot of thinking. My friends were starting to get married. In my terrible loneliness, rocking my infant sister, I longed for a man of my own, someone to embrace and love me. Was marriage in God's plan for me? Was I going to sew dresses for little girls of my own? Of what use would my studies be then?

I could not envision how a career in Constitutional Law could be compatible with marriage and homemaking. I had never actually met a female with a law degree. I had only observed them from a distance on visits to the county courthouse. It was understood in our circles that marriage meant choosing to be a homemaker.  Dad would never approve my marriage if he thought I intended to be a lousy wife!

By the time I heard that I'd passed the Baby Bar, I knew that I was done with Oak Brook College of Law. I did not have the emotional stamina to keep homeschooling myself through college for three more years! And even if I did finish, the school could not assure me that I would be qualified to practice law in any jurisdiction outside California. Since my home was in Michigan, and I had always lived with my parents, it was difficult to visualize a future forging a life for myself across the continent!

But I was soon sure I did not want to remain a stay-at-home daughter indefinitely. A year after taking the Baby Bar, I took the chance to work for Gothard's cult out-of-state. When that didn't work out and I found myself back home, I explored other options. I got an acceptable part-time job (I could wear modest skirts and the office manager agreed to keep the radio off on the days I worked) and started saving money--while still keeping up with chores and responsibilities at home. In a tentative act of independence, I applied for a temporary volunteer position with an evangelical missionary organization, telling them I was willing to go to Peru, Guatemala, or the Philippines.

And at age 24 I enrolled in a summer university linguistics program in North Dakota, taking real college courses for the very first time. Experiencing my first classroom (with real desks!) since first grade, I thrived! I reveled in the lectures, the labs, the camaraderie, the independent study, the collaboration with classmates, and the exams. Especially the exams. Like Anne of Green Gables, I loved the sweet taste of being at the head of a class instead of an isolated self-taught learner!

It would be another decade before I learned the difference between the ten "credits" I earned from Oak Brook College of Law and the ten credits I earned that summer from the University of North Dakota.

In the interim, a lot of life happened: marriage, babies, homeschooling. And eventually, enrolling in classes in community college. How strange to walk through those doors and sit elbow-to-elbow with kids nearly twenty years my junior. Every time I fill out a survey and select the "some college" option, I wonder, "What if I had spent my single adult years getting an education?"

As the oldest daughter, I was the guinea pig in many ways. Several of those now-grown baby sisters have sprinted past me in the race to an education. Yet, the last time I talked to my dad about the courses I was pursuing, his cool response was, "But I hope that being a wife and mother is still your main priority." It felt like a jab, a reminder that I was stepping outside the circle where I was supposed to stay and be happy. Perhaps he didn't mean it that way.

My children see Chris and I working on college assignments week after week and they can't help but see that we value learning. Because as it turns out, Gothard and his friends were wrong--outside their fantasy land, having or not having a traditional college degree can make a world of difference.

Flashbacks: Maternity

I woke the other night and realized I was having a flashback. The scene stuck in my mind was my mom silently writhing on her bed with afterpains, a day or two after giving birth (at home, unattended, again). The first time I saw her in pain this way was when I was six, and the pain was more intense with each baby. With the later ones, it was the only time she would take over-the-counter Motrin. One time she was so miserable that she called another homeschool mom, who came over and made her a tea with dried weed plants that grew out in the field. I felt so helpless.

The time I was six, Mom pushed the baby to me to hold till the contraction passed. Other times, I was in her room to look at the newborn, or to bring Mom something to eat. Sometimes she would ask us to leave because she was trying to protect us from seeing her misery. Later, I knew enough to leave discreetly. I have no doubt Mom thought she was doing what God "made her for". I thought so, too. But it scarred me forever.

"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety." (1 Timothy 2:11-15)

I was nine when Mom had me read the Emergency Childbirth manual for firefighters, just in case Dad wasn't home when she went into labor. The book assured that most births were so uncomplicated, a child could handle them. On the other hand, the Bible and classic literature were full of stories of births that went very badly for the mothers. I was proud to be trusted, but I was freaked out at the same time. And every time, I was anxious again. Would she be okay? If something went wrong, would I be responsible for mothering the rest of my siblings?

While Mom was giving birth to one of my sisters upstairs, I was downstairs alone in the living room reading Larry Christenson's The Christian Family. I was in my late teens or early 20's. My sex education had consisted primarily of the miracle of conception and birth, I had never had a boyfriend, and imagining a birth canal made me horny. To discourage myself from longing for a family of my own, I read Christenson's thoughts on marriage: "God did not give this law of wives being submissive to their husbands because He had a grudge against women; on the contrary, He established this order for the protection of women and the harmony of the home. He means for a woman to be sheltered from many of the rough encounters of life." Clearly, childbirth was not one of the rough encounters from which women were meant to be sheltered! When I heard a high-pitched baby's cry from my parents' room, I shoved the book back on the shelf.

I had three midwife-assisted homebirths myself (on the recommendation of a physician who was also on Bill Gothard's board of directors). With the last one, the postnatal contractions were worse than the delivery itself, and interfered with getting to know and love my baby during her first few days. I knew that if there was a next time, I would deliver at the hospital simply so I could get drugs. Later on, I realized I did not actually want to be pregnant ever again, and that I could make that choice without feeling the least bit guilty.

Becoming a wife and mom myself has made remembering my poor mother's pain more agonizing. I can feel what she felt, to a degree. I wish I could make it stop. 

Voiceless Women: Lives of the Wesley Sisters (Part 2)

The following are the stories of the lives of Susanna Wesley's seven daughters. For further reading, see Part 1, Voiceless Women: Susanna Wesley's Daughters.

Emilia, "Emily"

Emilia Wesley was a good scholar, talented and smart, well-read and capable. John, who became a university professor, said she was the best expert on Milton he ever heard.

Emilia was five or six when the family moved to Epworth. As the oldest sister, she was typically responsible and her parents depended on her; she lived at home well into her twenties. Emilia cared for her mother and baby Kezzy after the Fire, managed the parsonage when her mother was ill (with meager resources), tended the clock and locked up the house at night, took leave from her teaching job to nurse her married sister Sukey through an illness. She was fond of her mother, and had strong maternal feelings for John, who arrived when she was eleven. Though she was a dutiful daughter, she was also the most critical of her father, especially of his financial irresponsibility, describing the family’s circumstances as those of “intolerable want and affliction”.

She fell in love with one of John’s friends from his student days at Oxford. The romance lasted three years before her brother Sam apparently interfered, insisting that they break up. Emily was heartbroken. She coped by concluding that Leybourne had not really loved her and they would not have been happy together; however, she never really got over her disappointment.

Emily was nearing forty when she felt compelled to support herself and took a teaching job in London. However, her employer did not treat her well or compensate her properly. After corresponding with her brothers and receiving some encouragement and a loan, she gave her employer notice and started her own school in Gainsborough, which she operated until at least 1735. Back home, her mother missed her dependable companion considerably.

There was another romance in Emilia’s life, but her brother John meddled this time. His disapproval was partly because the man in question was a Quaker, though Emilia described him as “a faithful friend, a unique companion, and a keen lover”.

Emily was 44 when she eventually married Robert Harper, the Epworth apothecary, but she was even poorer with him than she had been with her father. Emilia even had to sell some of her clothes to buy food. Politically, they were strong opposites, which only added to the friction between them. They had a daughter, Tetty, but she apparently died in childhood.

Harper disappeared, leaving his wife penniless, after which Emilia (and her favorite maid, to whom she was much attached) was supported by her brothers, residing in London at the Preachers’ house adjoining a Methodist chapel. Towards the end of her life, dementia softened her memory and sweetened her temper.

Susanna “Sukey”

A good girl, a bit romantic, and very pretty. She and Hetty were very close. Disappointed regarding the prospect of financial aid from an uncle, Sukey impulsively married Richard Ellison, Esq. a local landowner who farmed his own estate. But though she bore him several children, their union was far from happy.

Richard was too “uncultivated” and “morose” for his strong, smart, and vivacious wife. He was also physically abusive, reportedly even when they lived with her parents while she was pregnant. Her mother described him as “little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness” and blamed Uncle Matthew for Sukey’s throwing herself away on this man who was only a “plague” to her and an “affliction to the family”.

When the Ellison’s home was destroyed in a fire, Sukey called it quits. It must have stirred traumatic flashbacks from her childhood. Like her own family years before, the Ellisons separated to live with relations for a time. Sukey never lived with her husband again, but hid in London with her children, refusing to see Ellison or answer his letters. A master manipulator, he tried to flush her out of hiding by publishing a report of his death in the paper. She immediately went down to Lincolnshire to pay her last respects to the dead, but turned around when she encountered her living husband and realized the ruse.

The two were never reconciled; Sukey lived with her children, and accepted financial aid from her brother John. Ellison later found himself in financial straits after his land flooded, drowning his animals and ruining his crops, and cast himself on the mercy of his brothers-in-law, whom he found more inclined to generosity than was his wife.

Mary "Molly"

Molly was crippled by a childhood injury, thought to be due to her nurse’s carelessness. She was good-tempered, in spite of her disability. Hetty adored her. During the Rectory Fire, someone broke out the parlor window and threw her and Hetty out to safety.

One of Rev. Samuel Wesley’s former students, a John Romley, was given supervision of a charity pupil, John Whitelamb. Romley introduced Whitelamb to his former instructor, who then taught the studious boy Greek in a matter of months. Wesley warmed to Johnny Whitelamb, taking him into his home as his amanuensis and putting him to work designing and engraving plates for Dissertations on the Book of Job. Wesley then sponsored Johnny’s education at university, where John Wesley was by now a Fellow. Susanna called him “poor starveling Johnny”; he could not even afford a gown for his ordination. After his ordination, Rev. Sam Wesley made Johnny his curate in Wroote.

Molly and John Whitelamb were married in December, 1733. Molly died in childbirth within a year. The family rather forgot Johnny after that. Years later, after hearing John Wesley preach in his town, Whitelamb wrote to him and expressed how deeply he felt his debt to the entire Wesley family, how highly he esteemed them, and how he had felt ignored by

The cold shoulder may have been due in part to the Wesleys not knowing how to accept changes in Whitelamb’s religious views. Sometime after his ordination, and probably after the loss of his wife, Whitelamb’s faith was undermined by doubts and he became a deist. When John heard of Whitelamb’s passing in 1769, he said “O, why did he not die forty years ago, while he knew in whom he had believed!”

Mehetabel "Hetty" 

Smart, a poetic genius, educated in language, witty, funny, pretty, and popular with suitors. She was a favorite of her Uncle Matthew, neither of them being as religious as the rest of the Wesley family. It was she who roused the family the night of the Rectory Fire, a piece of the roof falling onto her bed and burning her feet. (Samuel Wesley had actually heard cries of “Fire” coming from the street, but ignored them, not realizing they meant his house!)

Her superior education suiting her well for teaching, Hetty went away to work as a governess. From there, her story reads like a Jane Austen novel. Through her employer, she met a young lawyer to whom she developed a strong attachment. Her father interfered, strongly opposing the match based on information which caused him to believe the gentleman was “unprincipled”. This did not dissuade Hetty, or her boyfriend.

At 27, Hetty attempted to elope, twice, apparently with the lawyer. The latter adventure involved her spending a night with her boyfriend, only to discover that he was not serious about marrying her. When she returned to her parents’ home several months pregnant, she was disgraced and her father forbid her to set foot in the house. He quickly married her off to a journeyman plumber, William Wright, in October of 1725. Only her sister Mary took her side and attempted to dissuade their father from forcing the match. Her sisters were not allowed to attend the wedding, two weeks after being bridesmaids at Nancy’s wedding.

Unwelcome at the rectory, Hetty stayed with her sisters when she visited from out of town and remained estranged her from her father for many years. When Susanna went to visit the Wrights at Anne’s place in Wroote a year later, she requested to speak to Hetty in private. Hetty was unenthusiastic and reserved. Susanna told her daughter she forgave Hetty’s offenses against her; Hetty failed to see how she was in need in her mother’s pardon, but kept her thoughts to herself. Her mother proposed a reconciliatory meeting with her father, but Hetty was not optimistic, foreseeing only more unbearable reproach (her mother thought a father’s rebuke ought not be called reproach, especially since he was a pastor and had a duty to call people out). Hetty repeated that she had no wish for reconciliation with her father and had no interest in ever seeing him again.

Susanna wrote to Hetty’s little brother John after the interview and said if Hetty were truly penitent, she would submit herself to her father. She pointed out to John that Sam did not “restrain” the other girls from spending time with Hetty as they pleased. John later wrote to their brother Sam that their parents and some of the sisters believed Hetty had faked penitence earlier. With this family scenario in mind, John had written a sermon for his parents’ benefit, attempting to explain that even if this were the case, Hetty still deserved to be treated with “some tenderness”.

Hetty tried running a school the next year, but after that failed, the mismatched couple moved to London. Hetty was extremely unhappy in her marriage, in her words “a living death”, and wished she could have given one of her eyes to her father to avoid being compelled to marry Wright. The pair were not equals in any way; he was uneducated, ill-tempered and inconsiderate while she was both brilliant and depressed. He was considered an honest workman in the town, but he spent his evenings away carousing, which wounded his wife. Their several children died young; Hetty believed this was due to her husband’s lead works, which also harmed his own health and probably Hetty’s, as well.

A brilliant, bitter and sometimes biting poet, Hetty had some of her work published in magazines. Other pieces she burned. She and her father eventually resumed correspondence. She also nursed her Uncle Matthew at the end of his life and he left her a generous bequest in his will.

Later in life, Hetty looked for solace in religion and told a neighbor she looked forward to death because “we, the Methodists, always die in transports of joy!”

In 1903, an English literature professor at Cambridge turned Hetty’s story into a historical novel.

Anne "Nancy"

Comparatively little is known about Anne. She was born around the time of the first rectory fire.

She married John Lambert, a land surveyor, shortly after Hetty’s abrupt marriage in 1725. They rented a red house not far from her family and made it “very pretty and comfortable”. Later, they moved to London. Despite John’s slight drinking problem and some financial challenges at times, Anne is thought to have had the happiest marriage of the Wesley sisters. No record remains of any Lambert children.

Martha "Patty", "Pat"

Her sisters and Charles believed she was Susanna’s favorite. Patty enjoyed her mother’s company and listening to her teach. She was calm and serious like her brother John, less playful and mischievous than the rest of her siblings, less inclined to the sharp satire on which they thrived. Patty was sensitive, compassionate, and shared her brother’s strong tendency toward self-denial.

Patty was living with her Uncle Matthew in London when she met Wesley Hall, an Anglican minister like her father and one of her brother’s students at Oxford, and they were secretly engaged. When he later visited Epworth with her brothers and met Kezzia, he was smitten and began openly courting her with the family’s blessing. They were engaged and nearly married before his conscience drove him to break up with Kezzy and return to Martha. Too embarrassed to confess the truth, he told the family God had given him a revelation that he was to marry Martha, not Kezzia. Loyal to their baby sister Kezzy, the Wesley brothers took Hall’s change of plans very badly and Charles even sent Patty a lengthy and nasty poem accusing her of incest (by taking her sister’s husband).

Patty eventually sent her mother a full account of the business, Susanna understood and said it was all fine if Uncle Matthew had given his permission, and Kezzy relinquished any claim on Mr. Hall. The Wesley brothers did not hear the whole story and nursed a grudge on Kezzy’s behalf for years afterward. When the tale was told, however, even Charles had to acknowledge that Patty was completely justified.

After the marriage, Kezzy moved in with Patty and Mr. Hall. It was there she met and was courted by a gentleman, but he died before they could be wed. Kezzy’s health was delicate, and she passed away, still living in her sister’s home, in 1741.

The Rev. Hall turned out to be, no surprise, fickle and shallow, a man of impulse rather than intellect, “one of the worst and most unkind of husbands”. He was inconsiderate, deceitful, violent and abusive. He had an affair with Patty’s seamstress, which Patty only discovered when the girl went into labor in their home. Patty ordered the servants to call a doctor, but they refused, under the circumstances. Patty ended up going herself for a midwife and paying for the girl’s care, before traveling to London to calmly confront her husband. Another time, Hall brought home an infant he had sired elsewhere and ordered Patty to care for it until he could arrange for another situation.

Patty bore Hall ten children, nine of which were buried as infants. Their only surviving child, his father’s namesake, died of smallpox at 14 years of age. By then, his uncles John and Charles were sponsoring his education and he was living away from home. His illness may have been exacerbated by the neglect of those at the house where he boarded. His mother was called, but did not arrive in time to say goodbye to her last son.

Many affairs later, Mr. Hall abandoned his wife and moved to Ireland “with one of his mistresses” and Patty never saw him again, though their marriage officially lasted forty years, until Hall’s death. Deserted by her husband, Patty was financially dependent on her brothers’ generosity. In later years, the talented and Patty was a favorite of Dr. Samuel Johnson and kept company with other literary figures in his circle.

It excited her surprise that women should dispute the authority which God gave the husband over the wife. "It is," said she, "so clearly expressed in Scripture, that one would suppose such wives had never read their Bible." But she allowed that this authority was only given after the fall, not before : but " the woman," said she, "who contests this authority should not marry."  

                                                                (Adam Clarke's Memoirs of the Wesley Family)

Kezzia "Kezzy"

Born a month after the Rectory Fire. Kezzy went with her eldest sister to work at Mrs. Taylor's school for a while. Her health was always fragile, however, and stress made her ill. She longed for more education, but was frustrated by lack of time (when she was working) or money (when living at home).

After her short-lived love affair with Wesley Hall, she forgave him and relinquished all claim on him to her sister Patty. Kezzy lived with Patty and Mr. Hall for five or six years until her death. Charles blamed Hall for her early death (he suspected a broken heart). Kezzia did have a boyfriend later on, but he died before they could marry.

Bill Gothard on Education

My parents began homeschooling me in third grade, and enrolled in Gothard's Advanced Training Institute, a curriculum exclusively for alumni of his Advanced Seminar, before I started seventh grade. Our family was part of ATI until I reached my mid-twenties.

The following statements are the main points from a session of Bill Gothard's Advanced Seminar. They can be found on pages 88-91 of the accompanying workbook and on his website. Looking back, these "principles" explain so much of my educational experience.

Advanced Seminar Session 16: Successful Education

(Bill Gothard)

• The ultimate goal of education is not to produce a degree, but to produce many godly generations. 

• God charges parents and grandparents, not teachers, with the responsibility to train their sons and daughters.

• God established the home, not the school, as the primary learning center; the school and church must be recognized as extensions of it.

• The most destructive force in school is peer dependence, and parents must constantly work to protect their children from it.

• God wants the priorities of every family to be built around daily engrafting of Scripture, rather than accumulating man's knowledge.

• The ability of sons and daughters to stand alone is the result not of rules, but of principles that assure a superior way of life.

• When knowledge is learned before godly character, it produces pride and arrogance.

• Parents who teach sons and daughters at home must be accountable to a local church (Christian school and the government).

• Sons and daughters thrive with appropriate responsibility, and it is God's goal that they be mature in their youth.

• God gave boys and girls differing aptitudes; when children are taught together, boys are programmed for failure.

• When schools group children by ages, older examples are cut off and rebels usually rise to leadership.

• When the Bible is separated from courses, the contents come under the control of human reasoning.

• True socializing takes place not in the arbitrary groupings of school, but in the real world of children-to-adult relationships.

• Valuable learning time is lost in school; two hours of home teaching is equivalent to six hours of school teaching.

• The key to effective education is not just a trained teacher and a professional curriculum, but a concerned parent and a motivated child.

• God has set a limitation on learning; thus, academic freedom is no justification for studying the details of evil.

As an ATI student, I attended numerous conferences that became pep rallies for volunteerism with the Institute or urged us to study our favorite topics from the safety of our homes. (I even spent eighteen months enrolled in IBLP's unaccredited correspondence law school!)

Inge Cannon was one familiar conference speaker. Cannon holds a master's degree in education and helped Gothard develop the ATI curriculum in the early 1980's. She later directed the National Center for Home Education, a division of HSLDA.

At an opening session of the 1990 ATI training conference held at the University of Tennesee in Knoxville, Inge Cannon warned us against the dangerous "High Places" of education. As she talked, I took careful and enthusiastic notes. I was just fourteen, and excited about this chance to sit with the adults.

In the Bible, God repeatedly told the ancient Israelites to tear down the idolatrous "high places". Cannon thus defined a high place as:

"any goal or objective so commonly accepted that it is validated and esteemed as good, even though it violates the will and word of God".

According to Cannon, the following "high places" are educational myths for home-educating parents to avoid.

The High Places of Education

(Inge Cannon--June 23, 1990)

• Comparison--i.e., SAT tests and bell-shaped curves, parents should not base their curriculum on these; also pluralism that pressures those with strong beliefs to "give in to those who believe nothing"

• Grading--earning a teacher's certificate, for example, merely means one has passed the right courses, not that one is "qualified to produce results"

• Completion--filling in all the blanks or answering all the questions or taking the final exam does not mean the educational task is complete; the object is to "know" the material, not merely to "cover" it

• Equivalency--"believing that a curriculum is proper and right when it matches the academic sequence and requirements of traditional, formal education"

• Tangibility--"believing only what I can see or touch is real, thereby de-emphasizing those elements that require faith or minister to the spirit of my child"

• Self-expression--"believing that the arts are too personal to be governed by absolute standards"; the arts can never be amoral

• Methodology--"believing there is only one right way to teach a lesson"

• Socialization--"Children don't learn anything good from one another!"

• Exposure--exposing children to all kinds of knowledge is unnecessary for a well-rounded education; children should be ignorant of evil, they shouldn't understand dirty jokes, they shouldn't study false religions; "There are some things God doesn't want us to know."

• Statistical Verification--believing [the Bible] "needs to be verified  by scientific measurements before choosing to obey its instructions"

During my time in ATI, I was just one of thousands of young people who were told that we didn't need college credits, that college would corrupt our minds with "vain philosophies" and threaten our faith, that there are some things "God doesn't want us to know", and that employers would come looking for us because of our diligence, obedience, and virtue. So, many of us dutifully eschewed degrees in favor of home-based study.

Gothard, incidentally, later changed his mind and now even touts the Ph.D. degree Lousiana Baptist University conferred on him in 2004, much to the chagrin of those of us for whom the new dispensation came too late. Hundreds of former ATI students live today with the socioeconomic consequences of what we were taught, even as we struggle to catch up to our college-educated peers.

The Stepford Daughters

When Bill Gothard announced the new EXCEL program, a kind of fundamentalist finishing school for girls, at his newly-obtained training center in Dallas, Texas, I had no interest in attending.

Pay to learn about nutrition, stain removal, window treatments, sewing, and scripture memory? I spent more time on those at home than I cared to. More importantly, I was close to my brothers and at 19 years old couldn't imagine anything more dreadful than being locked in an aged Texas hotel for two months studying home economics in the exclusive company of females.

While I did end up visiting the Dallas Training Center in April of 1995, it was for a very different IBLP event (another story!) and the men far outnumbered the women. We did walk in the park, walk downtown to church, and marvel at the old southern furnishings and antique elevator. I was exceedingly grateful not to be stuck there for an eight-week program.

Last week, I came across this article from the Dallas Observer in which journalist Julie Lyons describes exactly what I missed. Here are the highlights:

Virgin Academy

At Dallas' old Ambassador hotel, Mr. Gothard's good girls learn the virtues of remaining pure

By Julie Lyons Thursday, Jul 20 1995

It is one of the stranger sights in South Dallas: each day, when the weather is fair, 125 teenage girls stream out of the Ambassador hotel and cross the street into Old City Park.

The girls are dressed almost identically, in navy blue smocks and skirts and crisp, lace-collared blouses, their long hair cinched with bows or bands. All but a few of the teens are white.

*****

No, these teens aren't part of the exhibits at Old City Park, or some lost tribe of Girl Scouts. But they are vestiges of values past, students in an eight-week religious finishing school--works in progress at a factory seeking to build pure and perfect teens. The program is called EXCEL, which stands for "Excellence in Character, Education, and Leadership." It costs $900 per teen.

The girls, who range in age from 15 to the early 20s, come to Dallas from all over the country for the year-old residential program at the Ambassador. Though they hail from a variety of evangelical and fundamentalist churches, they've all been nurtured in the "basic life principles" of well-known Bible teacher Bill Gothard--principles that include unquestioning obedience to their parents, future submission to their husbands, eschewing rock music and television, and remaining chaste.

Gothard, 60, is an unassuming Chicago minister who still lives with his mother, has never married, and drives a 1971 Oldsmobile during the few days of each month when he's home near the ministry's headquarters in suburban Oak Brook, Illinois. His design for EXCEL, he told the Observer, is to provide "apprenticeships" for future "home executives."

Part of the plan is to protect the girls from the pernicious influences of decadent American culture. "I would plead with you parents--protect your sons and daughters from the philosophies of the world," Gothard says in a videotaped lecture. Families, he adds, "should be building walls around their sons and daughters."

Accordingly, all of the EXCEL teens are home-schooled, enrolled in a division of Gothard's ministry called the Advanced Training Institute International. Gothard also runs a residential program called ALERT for young men.

While some of their peers in public schools cultivate a rebel pose--piercing their navels, neglecting to wash their hair, extolling nastiness--these girls carry on dreamily about becoming virtuous wives and mothers, and protecting their virginity.

They rise early and spend their days listening to speakers talk about Christian virtues, and learn the crafts of sewing, calligraphy, interior decorating, and "home hospitality." They spend their spare time writing home and memorizing scores of Bible verses. The girls follow a strict regimen from morning till night; few distractions exist.

*****

Few people, even in the evangelical community, realize just how much impact Bill Gothard's teachings have had on American Christianity.

Consider how few people get your total, undivided attention for even an hour or two during a week--meaning the person is talking to you, lecturing and exhorting, and you're not talking back. Then consider that nearly two-and-a-half-million people have given Gothard not just an hour or two, but 20 grueling hours for instruction, squeezed into one week between eight-hour workdays and Saturday errands. That's how long Gothard's Basic Life Principles seminar--the "basic seminar," shortened somewhat from its original format--takes.

Gothard has never advertised the seminar, which costs $75 for an individual, and $125 for a married couple (seminar "alumni" can attend subsequent sessions for free as often as they want). And at first glance, it's hard to understand just what the attraction is.

Gothard, after all, is not a great speaker by conventional measures. There's nothing about his approach that suggests he's given any thought to entertaining his listeners, let alone that he's hip to the attention deficits of the MTV generation. His seminar consists of one blue-suited guy--either a pea on a stage in a giant coliseum, or a talking head on a video screen--preaching in a Midwestern monotone for 20 hours about what he calls "Biblical principles."

For visual aids, Gothard prints block letters in magic marker on an overhead projector. As his bow to multi-media, Gothard performs an exercise called the "chalk talk"--in which he paints serene landscapes with mountains, palm trees, and pale, hovering crosses using sticks of brightly colored chalk. While he paints, rubs, and blows away chalk dust, he expounds on the Bible.

Gothard never raises his voice, never shouts, never solicits an "Amen." He never pleads for money--or even takes up an offering. He punctuates his lectures with amusing tales from his childhood.

Yet people leave these mass gatherings testifying how Gothard has enabled them to understand the Bible for the first time. The key, they say, is his practical, step-by-step instructions for dealing with complex problems. "I know it's rather simple to give steps," Gothard says. "Scripture is given to us as a foot lamp--enough light for the next step."

While sophisticated ministers have frequently scoffed at Gothard's paint-by-numbers theology, he has clearly mined a deep need for down-to-earth Bible teaching--especially on youth and family matters.

Gothard began presenting the seminar in 1965. While it is often identified with teenagers, in fact adults make up a large part of the audience. The basic seminar will be offered at the Dallas Convention Center on August 21-26--one of a few national locations where Gothard personally presents it, instead of appearing on videotape.

Tim Levendusky, one of Gothard's staff members at the Ambassador, says some 60,000 people from this area are seminar "alumni."

The seminar centers on what Gothard has identified as the seven "principles of life": design, authority, responsibility, suffering, ownership, freedom, and success. With occasional flashes of humor, Gothard explains the principles and pulls out hundreds of brief scriptures to back them up.

It's difficult to sum up the seminar in a few words, but it's clear that one aspect of Gothard's teaching, the concept of a "chain of command" in home and society, has gained the most currency among evangelicals--and caused the most controversy.

Gothard teaches that all individuals must be under some authority--an "umbrella of protection"--or they are in rebellion against God; it is the only way to be useful and to deflect the temptations of sin.

Children, of course, are under their parents' authority--until they marry, Gothard says. At that time, a young woman is transferred to the protection of her husband. Under his authority, she is counseled to submit and develop a "meek and quiet spirit." If she disagrees with him, she is taught to make an "appeal"--nonetheless deferring to any decisions he makes, as long as they don't require her to do something immoral.

"God worked through...a chain of command," Gothard says. "When he wanted something done, he simply gave the word, and the appropriate one down the line carried it out."

The young husband must answer directly to God--as well as any other legitimate authorities in his life, such as an employer, pastor, or government. He is also encouraged to seek his wife's counsel. If he wields his authority like a tyrant, God will send a "harsh messenger" to warn him that he has abused his right. "As long as we're under these umbrellas of protection," Gothard says in the videotaped seminar, "Satan cannot get through with destructive temptations. Whenever we get out from under that, we are opening ourselves up to tremendous destruction."

While some evangelical critics have pointed out the devastating effects a strict "chain of command" can have in a family where there is physical or verbal abuse, Gothard says the principle of authority never fails those who adhere to it faithfully.

"I'm not at all concerned that these [principles] will not work," he insists. "Only that you will not fully, quickly apply them. Apply them all and you will see results."

When girls come to EXCEL, they voluntarily place themselves under the authority of Bill Gothard. They see nothing ironic about putting so much faith in the social teachings of a man who has never married or had a steady girlfriend.

Gothard squeezed in a rare interview with the Observer during a recent swing through Dallas. Our conversation was only supposed to last 20 minutes, but Gothard answered questions for 45, disregarding an aide's conspicuous signals--ahem, ahem--as time ticked away.

This boxy, elfin-faced man, looking precisely as he does in the videotaped seminar--he seemed to be wearing the exact same navy suit, white button-down shirt, and bland spotted tie--seemed entirely devoid of affectation. In fact, at one point in the interview, he looked down at his pants and realized with a chuckle they were a different shade of worn blue. "I guess I got the wrong jacket for this..."

Gothard lives with his mother in a Chicago suburb. His father, to whom he often refers in the seminar, passed away a few years ago. He says he lives on a modest salary from his multimillion-dollar ministry--which has more than 1,000 staff members--owns no property, and still drives a 1971 Oldsmobile. "I never have to lock it up, and I never lose any sleep over it," he says proudly.

Asked if he will marry some day, Gothard pauses, then says, "Uh...I would like to. Yeah, I really would." His lack of time at home, he says, has hindered him from making the commitment earlier.

Gothard realizes that, with his strict behavioral guidelines, dress code, and ban on all rock music (Gothard won't even suffer "Christian contemporary" rock, because he believes its addictive beat invites sensuality), he's going against the grain of evangelicals' attempts to reach young people.

****

Gothard believes the temptations available to teenagers are far deadlier than when he began his ministry in the 1950s on the streets of Chicago, preaching to gang members. Today, kids "are more concerned about what their friends think than about what their parents think or about what God thinks. We find that we can help them, but we have to separate them from all of their former influences."

Young people at EXCEL and ALERT, he says, have the opportunity to grow up in relative innocence.

"The young people here are not juvenile delinquents," Gothard says. "But we all need to have either discipline within, or controls without. And part of EXCEL is to train these young ladies how to have inward disciplines, so when they're on their own, they don't have to have people prodding them on the outside, but they're driven from within."

Gothard's ministry launched Dallas' EXCEL program in fall 1994 at the Ambassador, to pass on instruction in virtue to Christian girls.

****

Today, the Ambassador--whose ancient elevator was the first installed west of the Mississippi--shares a neighborhood with several fleabag motels, a day-labor hall, and homeless shelters.

The hotel was dubbed the Dallas Training Center, and details of staff and volunteers began readying its beautiful interior, which remains well-preserved.

*****

"There are five functions we believe are important for a woman to know how to do in order to find her identity and find fulfillment," Gothard says. "Our problem is that today, most of these five have been taken out of the home. So there is not the fulfillment that there could have been."

The five functions, he explained, are for a woman to teach her children; to offer hospitality to guests; to possess a basic knowledge of medicine and healthcare, with special attention being given to natural childbirth (one of Gothard's stranger quests is to gather a 1,000-voice choir of children born into the world after their parents underwent reversal surgery for vasectomies and tubal ligations); to operate a home business; and finally, to teach others--"going out into the community and helping people."

Gothard's model of the home executive is taken from a literal reading of Proverbs 31--a poetic portrait of the wife of noble character.

"Who can find a virtuous woman?" the passage begins. "For her price is far above rubies."

EXCEL girls are taught a list of virtues gleaned from Proverbs 31 and other scriptures. Gothard has identified 49 virtues, to be exact--beginning with Truthfulness and Obedience, rolling on through Diligence, Dependability, and Decisiveness, and ending with the ever-unpopular traits of Deference ("Limiting my freedom in order not to offend the tastes of those God has called me to serve") and Meekness ("Yielding my personal rights and expectations to God").

Devising strategies for "remaining pure" is a constant focus of EXCEL. It is a given in these circles that a young man or woman will seek to marry as a virgin.

A scandal broke out in the evangelical community in the early 1980s, in fact, when Gothard's younger brother--who handled day-to-day operations--confessed to sleeping with several young female staff members in Gothard's ministry. Though all of the parties involved reportedly were single, Gothard's brother resigned, telling Christianity Today that "I have failed deeply before the Lord."

Bill Gothard, shaken by the episode, stepped down temporarily to contemplate what had happened. After three weeks, the ministry's board restored him to his post.  [For a more in-depth report of the shake-up at the Institute, see this 1981 article published by Christianity Today. ]

Gothard's quest for purity has led to strong counsel against dating. Instead, young people are encouraged to "court," with an eye toward marriage. It is Gothard's antidote for what he calls the "broken-heart syndrome." A young, single person's duty, he says, should be to keep his heart wholly devoted to God.

He takes the courting principle even further: a young man must ask for, and receive, permission from the girl's father to court and eventually marry her. The father "holds the key to his daughter's heart," Gothard says, and will only pass it on to a young man when he has proven he possesses the character to be a strong, responsible Christian husband.

In the meantime, the girls are to cultivate trusting relationships with their fathers--whether they're good, bad, or indifferent guardians of their daughters' virtue.

The girls at EXCEL enthusiastically sign on to this scheme--gushing about their wonderful daddies, or telling melodramatic tales about how they sought their fathers' forgiveness for their adolescent missteps.

*****

... Gothard's standard of purity is a moving target. Whenever a girl empties her life of distractions and impurities, he says, she discovers something else that God has pinpointed in her character requiring the remedy of divine grace.

Staying pure helps the girls maintain a "clear countenance," Gothard says. The EXCEL teens talk about it all the time--how "the eyes are the window to the soul."

"Many of them come from broken homes and have had major problems in their past," Gothard says. "But they have been able to clear their consciences. They have been able to tell their parents about secret failures they have had. So they don't have any guilt.

"It's guilt that causes the eyes to go dark," he adds. "Because they have a clear soul, a clear conscience, they're also able to have a clear countenance."

It is 7:30 a.m., and the seven girls in EXCEL Team One have already been up an hour and a half. They've showered, dressed, and squeezed onto two couches in the sitting room of their Ambassador suite for the daily "Wisdom Search." Each one carries a Bible--some adorned with padded gingham covers, others lined in lace.

The girls' 19-year-old leader, Joy Branch, asks the girls to read Psalm 51--a plea for mercy from God, written by King David after Nathan the prophet had exposed his adultery with Bathsheba.

There is obedient silence, and the rustle of Bible pages. After a few moments, Joy asks the girls to share the wisdom they've gathered from the Psalm.

"We need to go to God with a clean heart," says Stacy Stewart, from Pendleton, South Carolina.

There is more silence, and Branch, an unusually mature teenager from Atlanta, fills in the awkward spaces. She talks about America's steady slide into degradation, and proclaims that, in exasperation, God has "given us up to our own lusts."

She ends the morning's Wisdom Search with a prayer: "Lord, help us have a teachable spirit this day."

Joy Branch can talk. Scriptures roll off her tongue like some kids talk trash, and she's ready with an answer or explanation for the world's most complex problems.

*****

"I'm committed to the Lord--I guess that's the bottom line," Joy says. "The purity we talk about is not something we've attained because we've been home-schooled all our lives or shielded from the world's philosophies. There's no way I can isolate myself and become pure, because we're sinful. The purity comes from the Lord Jesus."

After the morning's scriptural exercise, the girls line up downstairs for breakfast.

Laura Turke, a shy 15-year-old from Battle Ground, Washington, tries to explain what she likes so much about EXCEL. "I think I like how I've grown spiritually more than the sewing and the colors," she says. "We had our colors done. I'm a warm spring--which is very unusual. I look good in yellows. If you put a winter color on me, my skin would look uneven."

A girl named Katy walks up from behind and gives Laura an affectionate hug. Still hanging onto her pal, she expands the color analysis. "If you put a bright purple on her," she says, "she'd look sick."

After eating muffins and high-fiber cereal--Gothard frequently warns against the nutritional evils of white bread--the girls prepare for their morning lecture session in the Ambassador's elegant meeting room.

Lauren Bell, an administrative assistant for the program, leads the girls in "A Wonderful Savior Is Jesus My Lord," a Fanny Crosby hymn dating to 1890:

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
That shadows a dry, thirsty land...
The teens' clear sopranos ring high above the upright piano, played by a straight-backed woman with a lace doily on her head.

Bernadine Cantrell, a woman with big hair and a thick Southern accent, initiated the day's topic: "Pursuing the practice of hospitality."

"We have had neighbors who moved into our neighborhood, and seven women were standing at the door with a pound cake," she says.

She then leads the girls in a silly ditty, complete with hand motions. Some girls giggle at the line, "I was as happy as could be with my banjo on my knee." But all participate enthusiastically.

The effect is surreal--a room full of American teens putting their hands over their heads and making like a spreading chestnut tree.

Then, on an overhead projector, Cantrell lists numerous suggestions for "entertaining the VIPs in your life--your family." Among them: "A beautifully set table--pull out that china!" "Explore old memories." "Favorite foods." "Cloth napkins/no guests."

The girls follow along on their outlines. "Is your home obviously a place where believers live?" Cantrell asks.

She talks about how virtuous wives adapt to their husbands, and find any way they can to ensure his success in life. "When the men in this world find out how special we are, oh man--there's gonna be a stampede to get these EXCEL girls," Cantrell chirps.

"There's a lot of upside-down thinking in this world," she adds. "There's people who say men should adapt to us. But that's not what the scriptures say."

At lunch, Laura Turke is scribbling verse after verse on a sheet of theme paper while her buddies roll bean burritos. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world..." she writes in pencil, hunched over her paper, pinching her lips in concentration.

The EXCEL girls must memorize more than 100 verses during their eight weeks in Dallas. The verses come in sets: there's the "tongue tamers," for example--scriptural passages that warn about the tongue's "power of life and death." There are the familiar Beatitudes ("Blessed are the pure in heart...") spoken by Jesus. And, of course, the 21-verse description of the virtuous wife in Proverbs 31. The girls and their leaders, in fact, often refer casually to "the Proverbs 31 woman."

Proverbs 31, however, says nothing about cramming dozens of Biblical adages written in Elizabethan English into your head, and Laura got tongue-tied when it came time to recite her verses to Joy. "I get very nervous, and my mind went completely blank," Laura says meekly.

If she can't recite her verses to her group leader by Saturday, she'll be called before Mr. Gothard himself to disgorge her penitential scriptures.

Despite the pressures, Laura says she's having the time of her life at EXCEL. She learned about courtship, and overcoming anger and bitterness. She sewed a dart for the first time, and made good friends. "My goal is to be the best mother and wife that I can be," she says. "And this kind of goes along that line."

When told that few teenagers today seem to share those goals, Laura looks puzzled. "Most of the people I'm around want to be wives and mothers. I really don't know of anybody, personally, who doesn't want to."

In the hallway, just outside the meeting room as the teens are preparing for their daily walk in Old City Park, one girl presents a discreetly bundled baseball jacket to Dolly Brandon.

"Is this OK?" she asks timidly.
"Let me see..."
Mrs. Brandon picks up the jacket gingerly, as though it were a soiled rag or some dead thing, and quickly looks it over, shielding it from the view of other girls passing by.

Then, bundling it up again, she hands it back to the girl.
"That's OK," she says, "if it's the only jacket you have."
The jacket's questionable status stems from a few stenciled words across its back. The words--whatever they were; the girl and Mrs. Brandon kept them hidden--were judged suitably innocuous.

Joy Branch later explained the little drama in the hallway.
"The T-shirt and jacket thing--I think it's probably to live above reproach. There are some T-shirts that aren't acceptable, but one person may think it is, and one may think it isn't. Also, a man's eyes may be drawn to a certain thing because of the words.

"Especially in this part of town--we don't want to walk out in skin-tight pants. We're representing the Lord in what we do. We want to live totally above reproach."

Branch confesses that she used to have a problem with the institute's rigid dress code, which requires the girls to wear navy skirts and white blouses. She privately mocked the institute's teens, and vowed never to be forced into Mr. Gothard's mold for the perfect teenager.

"These things were presented to me and I looked at them as rules before--things to limit my freedom," Branch says, leaping quickly to her happy conclusion. "Now I see them as road signs for my protection. Mr. Gothard is out for your best--out for God's best. It's not a mold. Everybody is just going along the same path trying to become more like the Lord."

Branch's change of heart led her in 1993 to personally ask Gothard--"though he didn't know me from Adam"--for forgiveness. She confessed to him that she'd harbored bitterness in her heart toward his organization, and felt compelled to "just make it right."

Branch says she wept. Gothard forgave her.
"That just brought so much freedom and joy," she says. "My misconceptions of the program--they were so sad. That mindset produced in me resistance and a hard heart toward something God had called me to."

At EXCEL, each girl receives a list of guidelines that she is expected to follow when she is temporarily transferred from under her parents' authority to the protective umbrella of Mr. Gothard.

Laura Turke happily shared her list one day.
"Our goal for EXCEL is that young ladies should be radiant examples of Christ's character," the guidelines begin. "Our further goal is for them to be godly young ladies, in every situation, manner of speech, dress...in and out of training sessions, in rooms, and in relationships with one another."

The "young ladies" are exhorted to be punctual, keep their feet off the furniture, and refrain from "boisterous behavior." Possession of Walkmans, radios, music cassettes, and "other books or magazines" than the Bible and EXCEL curricula is banned.

Guidelines for dress are more specific. The girls are instructed to pack four navy skirts and four white shirts; the skirts must fall below the knee and fit loosely. The teens must leave their slacks, shorts, and culottes at home. "Hair styles should be neat and feminine," the guidelines add. "If you have a permanent, avoid the 'wet' look."

Necklines are prescribed with an admonition: "Make sure your dress or blouse has a high enough neckline (in front and back) so as not to be defrauding in any way."

If a guideline is disregarded, the girl will be summoned to a meeting with Tom Brandon. For the second infraction, her father is called.

"Any further instances," the guidelines warn, "will be reported directly to Mr. Gothard."

Sarah Iliff, an outgoing, good-humored Kansas native, skips down the carpeted stairs, clutching a small treasure.

She opens her hand, revealing a red plastic heart and interlocking key. Each is attached to a string from which to fashion a pair of pendants.

"Joy gave us this heart," she says. "And later on, she gave us the key so that we can send it to our dads."

Sarah giggles, suddenly realizing how silly the trinket looks in the hands of a 19-year-old woman.

"This," she says, still smiling, "is to symbolize that your dad's holding the key to your heart till you choose to give it to your future husband. It goes along with the concept of a one-man, one-woman relationship, where we save ourselves emotionally and physically for our future husband."

Sarah goes on to tell an instructional tale about her former boyfriend, a guy named Bob who worked at a dude ranch. Sarah fell in love with him, and admits she gave away a small piece of her heart.

"I'm still having a hard time with that," she confesses. "It was only last year. I'm the kind of person who has to learn through circumstances, and I wish it wasn't that way, but I learn hard. I am convinced, from now on, that I'm going to be a one-man woman.

"It [her romance] was not God's will, and He made that pretty clear. But through that, I made a commitment with my dad to be honest with him in all the relationships I was having, letting him be the protector of my heart." Sarah plans to write a letter to her father, to send along with the plastic key to her heart. She's having a hard time finding the words to say.

"When this courtship thing was first presented to me, I was like, 'Are you kidding? I am not gonna allow my dad, who is 40 years old, to tell me who I can like and who I can't like.'"

But through her experience on the dude ranch, Sarah--whose parents met on a blind date in college while drinking green beer on St. Patrick's Day--has realized the need for her father's protection.

*****

Lights-out is 9:30 p.m.
Joy Branch is in no hurry to get to bed.
"EXCEL is almost like heaven to me--it's just the innocence that's here. The purity. The joy," she says. "There's no spirit that it's cool to be cruel.

"Maybe the world thinks it's bizarre. Maybe it's like we're all standing on our heads. We see life from a totally different perspective.

"But I think it's funny," she concludes. "Sometimes I think the world is standing on its head.