Western Conservatory: The Botkins get a facelift

[Marian the Librarian]

Is anyone here good at handwriting analysis? This is Geoff Botkin's signature - there's another "kinder, gentler Geoff" update on westernconservatory.com.

[ILoveJellybeans]

I cant even tell what that says.

[DomWackTroll]

Is anyone here good at handwriting analysis? This is Geoff Botkin's signature - there's another "kinder, gentler Geoff" update on westernconservatory.com.

The open, gaping bottoms of the capital "G" and the capital "B" indicate excessive, incurable assholism.

[Sobeknofret]

Homeschoolers Anonymous posted a review of the Botkin's new webinar "Ready for Real Life."

homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/ready-for-real-life-part-one-botkins-launch-webinar/

It's terrifying to say the least. The Botkin family must lead such bleak and joyless lives. Even growing up Maxwell can't match Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin for controlling and repressive.

[thoughtful]

Homeschoolers Anonymous posted a review of the Botkin's new webinar "Ready for Real Life."

homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/ready-for-real-life-part-one-botkins-launch-webinar/

It's terrifying to say the least. The Botkin family must lead such bleak and joyless lives. Even growing up Maxwell can't match Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin for controlling and repressive.

Two quotes from Geoff:

“Did you mommies know that simply keeping your children at home and teaching them that B says ‘buh’ and G says ‘guh’ is such a powerful declaration of freedom and academic integrity that your political enemies — and yes, you have political enemies that hate what you’re doing and and all the powers who hate Jesus Christ are losing sleep over your act of defiance and heroic political will. You mothers really are heroes. We want you to know that!â€

“Discipline is not an option in your home. You have to bring discipline and order to your home. Disobedience is not an option in your home. Children cannot disobey parents, ever, either outwardly or passively. They can’t roll their eyes … We have to be very quick to rebuke them and reprove them in a way that we want. The rod and reprove give wisdom … Did we spank our children? Yes, we did spank our children. And there were times that there were children who were easy to spank, and children that were literally impossible and difficult to spank. And did we want to give up on that? Sure we did. And there were many times when I would come home and I would need to encourage Victoria and say, ‘Honey, were you faithful in obeying the Lord in this? Because when you discipline your children, they will delight your soul, and they haven’t delighted your soul today.’â€

Geoff, f says "fuh," u says "uh" . . . oh, hell -- finish it yourself.

[Marian the Librarian]

“Discipline is not an option in your home. You have to bring discipline and order to your home. Disobedience is not an option in your home. Children cannot disobey parents, ever, either outwardly or passively. They can’t roll their eyes … We have to be very quick to rebuke them and reprove them in a way that we want. The rod and reprove give wisdom … Did we spank our children? Yes, we did spank our children. And there were times that there were children who were easy to spank, and children that were literally impossible and difficult to spank. And did we want to give up on that? Sure we did. And there were many times when I would come home and I would need to encourage Victoria and say, ‘Honey, were you faithful in obeying the Lord in this? Because when you discipline your children, they will delight your soul, and they haven’t delighted your soul today.â€

What a great philosophy of parenting: The beatings will continue until morale has improved!!

[thoughtful]

Victoria Botkin chimed in, encouraging homeschool mothers to be flexible and take advantage of opportunities for their children to learn. Anything a mother does with children can be education, she claimed, as long as a parent is talking with them about it. She explained that real life offered her children learning opportunities that were sometimes better than the academic tasks she’d planned for the day. For example, one day she and the children found an injured lamb that fell off of a truck, and they spent the day butchering the lamb.

:shock:

"It fell off the truck," eh? Where have I heard that expression before?

So, school was given up for the day, for the gory and very useful lessons "finders keepers" and "how to butcher a gleaned lamb."

I can just see Victoria sending off one of the boys to steal some mint jelly.

[gustava]

Homeschoolers Anonymous posted a review of the Botkin's new webinar "Ready for Real Life."

homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/ready-for-real-life-part-one-botkins-launch-webinar/

It's terrifying to say the least. The Botkin family must lead such bleak and joyless lives. Even growing up Maxwell can't match Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin for controlling and repressive.

Thanks for the link. AS and Eliz will never marry.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Ready for life??? :D :D :D

Since when are the Botkin daughters ever going to be ready for life? Everyone knows their only one true love is Daddy (which is really really creepy) and he will never ever let them go.

[thoughtful]

More Botkin delusion:

“For three-hundred years, Americans wrote music about nation-building, bringing order to a culture, building culture the way it should be built, honoring the Lord’s design, his architecture for it. The very first music sung in this country were Psalms … We fought a war over the freedom that we wanted to have so that we could continue building the foundations around proper Biblical culture, and we sang about them. We built music around it. We had lyrics around the Christian foundations of culture, both black and white. For four-hundred years, Americans have expressed themselves through music, and until the 20th century, the lyrics and instrumentation was very orderly and very Biblical. And so, you need to teach your children that music is theology, both externalized and internalized, because music is one of the most theologically influential arts there are.â€

Oh, Geoff, you really know nothing about American cultural history. Before there were recording devices, popular music was just sung and played. And much of it was filthy!

Here are some examples, most of which come from your treasured white Europeans when they came here:

sleepinghedgehog.com/music/ed-cray-the-erotic-muse-american-bawdy-songs/

http://www.ibiblio.org/bawdy/ballads/

[ILoveJellybeans]

I think these people have no concept of real history, but just go off their own imagination and ignore all the things they don't like.

[uber frau]

I think these people have no concept of real history, but just go off their own imagination and ignore all the things they don't like.

That's the fundy approach to life in general really. Art, science, history, politics, heck, even their holy book.

[ILoveJellybeans]

I don't think they want to admit that life has never been their perfect Christian utopia.

[salex]

More Botkin delusion:

Oh, Geoff, you really know nothing about American cultural history. Before there were recording devices, popular music was just sung and played. And much of it was filthy!

Here are some examples, most of which come from your treasured white Europeans when they came here:

sleepinghedgehog.com/music/ed-cray-the-erotic-muse-american-bawdy-songs/

http://www.ibiblio.org/bawdy/ballads/

[Sobeknofret]

It was the discussions of art that caused me to recoil: Geoffrey Botkin

Your children are so completely surrounded by really bad art, and the ugly art in our generation, like Picasso, like the art they see on billboards, the art they see surrounding them all over the place, on taxi cabs, on the sides of buses, it inspires men to rebellion. Selfish art inspires men to childishness. Undisciplined art destroys standards of discipline. Meaninglessness, meaningless art robs men of hope and vision … Art will be either Christian or anti-Christian.â€

And music:

Victoria Botkin told listeners that she and her children listened to classical music at home, listing “Peter and the Wolfâ€, “The Nutcrackerâ€, and “The 1912 Overture†as examples of pieces that her children enjoyed. Victoria trained her children to appreciate music that was good and “orderlyâ€, she explained, discouraging any taste in “bad and ugly, chaotic, discordant musicâ€.

Essentially, they redirected their children's taste in art and music to reflect their own; the kids were never allowed to discover what they liked and didn't like, or encouraged to explore the arts on their own. I don't care much for modern art, and there are some genres of music I really don't like, but I came to those conclusions on my own! My parents never tried to influence it, much less control it! Train your children to appreciate "good" music?! WTF! :angry-banghead:

Elizabeth Botkin:

“Mom and Dad knew that whether we became artists or not, all of our lives, we’d be building a culture of art around us. We’d eventually be creating art anywhere we went, which is actually exactly what’s happened … They wanted to be really, really careful that they were guiding us toward more disciplined efforts and better taste in all of our creative endeavors, from the little people we made out of Play-Do, to the pictures we drew. And so, if we did something in a sloppy way or with a bad attitude, they wouldn’t say ‘Oh great job! You are so talented!’ Or if we seemed attracted to things that were ugly … or things that were smarmy or chaotic or had a bad view of reality, they wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, you’re just so unique, such a free spirit!’ They would keep trying to disciple our attitude back toward God, give us a Good attitude toward God’s created order, a good attitude toward reality, a good understanding of reality.â€

Isaac Botkin:

“At the moment, photography is a very easy hobby to get into because cameras are so cheap. Pretty much every phone has a camera on it now. And so, photography is an easy way to very selfishly pursue self expression … This is a good opportunity to talk about the concept of hobbies, and the idea that Christians really shouldn’t have hobbies. And I’m not saying that they shouldn’t do work for free, but the idea of having a hobby that you do purely for self-gratification or for self-expression is not something that a Christian should be doing. Christians should be learning skills and desiring to express their creator.â€

Seriously, Geoff and Victoria Botkin are monsters. Complete monsters.

[danvillebelle]

They steeped their children in Tchaikovsky's music? A known homosexual? Shame shame, Geoff and Vicki. :naughty:

Hypocritical idiots.

[Marian the Librarian]

Fundies and their snobby pseudo-intellectual "we teach our kids about classical music" thing has always been a hot button issue for me. I suspect many of them haven't a clue about the real, messy, three-dimensional lives lived by the composers, conductors and musicians they laud as God's "orderly" examples of their world view.

Best/worst :angry-banghead: case in point for me was a blog post by the Loomii a year or two back, part of a series about How To Listen To Music Right, Because Jesus! They cautioned parents not to tell their kids too much about Aaron Copland, or put too much stock in his music, because "he did not lead a Christ-honoring life." Yes, folks - he was born a Jew, professed an agnostic religious view, and had male lovers. Oh, and he just happened to write some of the most beautiful music known to humankind, and establish a distinctly American musical sound. :pull-hair:

[thoughtful]

Wonder if they love "lick my ass" boy, Mozart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology

:D

[defraudingjezebel]

Wonder if they love "lick my ass" boy, Mozart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology

:D

I can't believe I haven't read anything like this about Mozart before! Wow... that's pretty interesting, I have to admit!!

All of their prattling about the horrors of modern-day music and art reminds me of those kids who think that because they listen to the Stones and the Who, they're so better than kids who listen to Justin Bieber, etc. Yawn. Such a lame way to try to feel superior.

[TurtleBelly]

It was the discussions of art that caused me to recoil:

...And music:

Essentially, they redirected their children's taste in art and music to reflect their own; the kids were never allowed to discover what they liked and didn't like, or encouraged to explore the arts on their own. I don't care much for modern art, and there are some genres of music I really don't like, but I came to those conclusions on my own! My parents never tried to influence it, much less control it! Train your children to appreciate "good" music?! WTF! :angry-banghead: ...

Seriously, Geoff and Victoria Botkin are monsters. Complete monsters.

Regarding the bolded above, how can you even define music as "orderly" vs. "non-orderly?" Doesn't pretty much all music, be it older classical music or modern worldy pop or rap, follow patterns of tone, notes, melody, chorus, etc?

[FloraKitty35]

It was the discussions of art that caused me to recoil: Geoffrey Botkin

And music:

Essentially, they redirected their children's taste in art and music to reflect their own; the kids were never allowed to discover what they liked and didn't like, or encouraged to explore the arts on their own. I don't care much for modern art, and there are some genres of music I really don't like, but I came to those conclusions on my own! My parents never tried to influence it, much less control it! Train your children to appreciate "good" music?! WTF! :angry-banghead:

Elizabeth Botkin:

Isaac Botkin:

Seriously, Geoff and Victoria Botkin are monsters. Complete monsters.

Isn't it the 1812 Overture?

[thoughtful]

Isn't it the 1812 Overture?

Yes. There are some typos and misspellings made by the blogger, and that may be one.

But it is delicious to think that Victoria Botkin may actually call it that!

:twisted:

And TurtleBelly, you are correct -- all music has some organization. There is a sort of grammar and syntax, as there is with words. Different styles do it differently, but none can be called "orderly" or "disorderly."

(why did I just think of Jerry Lewis?) :D

[slickcat79]

It was the discussions of art that caused me to recoil: Geoffrey Botkin

And music:

Essentially, they redirected their children's taste in art and music to reflect their own; the kids were never allowed to discover what they liked and didn't like, or encouraged to explore the arts on their own. I don't care much for modern art, and there are some genres of music I really don't like, but I came to those conclusions on my own! My parents never tried to influence it, much less control it! Train your children to appreciate "good" music?! WTF! :angry-banghead:

Um, one of those artists is not like the others. It's ok to not like Picasso (his work is not really my taste), but the guy inspired entire artistic movements. It's not like he drew polar bears drinking coke on a bus shelter. Which is not to say that there can't also be art in advertising and popular entertainment, but that's got to be downright blasphemous to the Botkins.

I'm also beginning to really understand Geoff's blathering about christian hip-hop. He's probably never spoken truer words, and I hope his supporters continue to see through the bullshit.

[Black Aliss]

Whoa, Noah has grown up, he is kinda cute! His bio says he is exploring alternative energy, invention, agriculture, music, and new avenues for Christian engineers. I have always had a thing for guys who explore new avenues for Christian engineers (so manly). Should I go for it? How old is he?

Does he actually have an engineering degree/credentials? Or is this just a title he's bestowed on himself?

[Arete]

Does he actually have an engineering degree/credentials? Or is this just a title he's bestowed on himself?

Of course he doesn't have an engineering degree or any credentials that would be recognized as such. Polytech schools are full of unredeemed atheists. Daddy taught him everything he needs to know.