Smrt Lernins

Homeschooling is traditionally thought of as being something primarily done by the religious in nature. People tend to make a lot of assumptions about your beliefs when they hear you homeschool. The number of secular homeschoolers is growing, however, and we’re slowly integrating ourselves into the culture of homeschooling.

I’ve talked before about how I often feel, as a secular classical homeschooler, like the odd mama out. While I have ways in which to cross the divide between the secular classical homeshooler and the secular unschooler (we have a lot of social things in common, generally), crossing the divide between the secular homeschooler and the religious homeschooler (especially the more fundamentalist homeschooler) is often more difficult. The philosophical differences between us are often so vast.

Despite the claims by some religious homeschoolers that they’re terribly persecuted, it’s the secular homeschoolers I see being attacked with regularity on homeschool forums. If a secular homeschooler comments on a “CC” thread, we get the royal pile-on and “how dare you!” and “didn’t you know this thread wasn’t for people like YOU?”  Conversely, religious homeschoolers don’t seem to have a problem making comments from a religious perspective on a thread with a clearly secular bent, but heaven help you if you point that out. I admit, it’s made me a bit bitter towards religious homeschoolers as a whole (the “as a whole” part is what’s important here).  I’m sometimes hesitant to comment on religious homeschool blogs, because I feel my perspective is likely to be unwelcome, purely because I’m a secular homeschooler.

Still, some people are able to bridge the gap. I have a few regular commenters on this blog who are of significantly more devout faith than I. Some of them even use Bible-based (or even *gasp* young earth creationist!) curricula. Two of my favorite fellow bloggers, Daisy from The Quiet Life and The Mama from Concordia Classical Academy are what I would consider to be the model religious homeschoolers — and their religious beliefs and curricula choices are often quite different from mine. I decided that my Secular Thursday post should be about the things that Daisy and The Mama do differently from many other religious homeschoolers I encounter online that make them such a fun e-people to e-know*.

If you, as a religious homeschooler, are wondering how you could become a goodwill ambassador between the religious homeschoolers and the secular homeschoolers, here are a few tips for you, based on the wonderful model of the gentle, generous, and humorous The Mama and Daisy :

• Stop recommending religious curricula, especially with the suggestion that I could “tweak it to be more secular,” because no, I usually can’t. All the tweaking in the world isn’t removing Biblical references from Abeka math or making a Biblically-centered history text suitable for secular curricula. A little religious reference in Life of Fred doesn’t bother me, but surely you can how going through a text with a Sharpie or telling the kids “just ignore that part” isn’t appealing. I’ve read enough posts on the Well Trained Mind forums to know that many religious homeschoolers would object to being given a science book and told  “but you could probably tweak it to make it less secular” or having it suggested that they “just ignore the evolution parts.”
• Stop recommending certain materials “for girls” or “for boys.” I’d actually prefer you stop asking for recommendations of materials, but if you insist on gender-segregating everything in your own children’s lives, at least do me the courtesy of not suggesting I do the same. “I’d recommend that book for a boy” or “Do you really think that’s a good program for a girl?” aren’t going to go over very well with most secular homeschoolers. The sex of the protagonist in a book doesn’t have to match the sex of my children for them to appreciate the story. Do you, as an adult, only read books with protagonists of your same sex? Also, stop making curricula/text suggestions based on the inaccurate assumption that all boys are “hands on” or “math/science dominant” and all girls are “good desk workers” or “language dominant.” That may be the reality that you have nurtured into your children, but it’s not one I have nurtured into mine.
• Stop trying to “save” me. No, seriously. You’re assuming that secular homeschoolers don’t believe in God (and that they definitely can’t be Christians), and need you to intervene on their behalf. Personally, I’m happy with the state of my soul and feel pretty right with God as I understand him. I don’t want to be preached at, prayed at, proselytized to, or have it suggested that I’m paving a short road to hell for myself and my children.
• Stop suggesting my children are a bad influence on yours. I’m growing tired of seeing comments about how you don’t like your child playing with the [Not My Religion] children [next door, at the co-op, etc.] or how you have major concerns about your child spending the night at [Child Not of My Religion]’s house because they could be lead morally astray. They’re children. Children. And frankly, my experience has been that children brought up in a very religious home (and their very religious parents) are a lot more likely to share their beliefs without solicitation than less/non-religious children and their parents. For all that I jokingly call my brother-in-law a “devout atheist,” I’ve never heard his daughter strike up a random conversation with another child about atheism. Conversely, I’ve had children start conversations with me (as an adult!) about whether or not I believe in Jesus. Secular homeschoolers aren’t trying to recruit your children (or you) into our secular army of secularists. Can you say the same of your fellow religious homeschoolers?
• Stop being taking everything so personally. If I got my panties in a twist every time someone made a nasty comment about us “evolutionists” or “immodest women” on the WTM forums, I’d have awfully twisty panties and spend most of my day in tears (from hurt feelings and an awfully uncomfortable bottom). You have to have a sense of humor about this stuff. Sure, I laugh at the comical (to me) notion of peaceful fruit-eating Tyrannosaurus Rexes hanging out with Noah on the ark, but  you surely laugh at the equally comical (to you) notion of people and apes having evolved from a common ancestor (or “people coming from monkeys,” as I keep seeing it inaccurately described). We can both poke fun at perceived absurdities in broader systems of belief.  Unless you mean an individual insult to me, as a person, every time you make a snarky comment about evolution, don’t take any snarky comment I make about creationism as an individual insult to you. I can crack about a movement or philosophy while still finding you to be a lovely, reasonable, and intelligent individual.

You don’t have to hide who you are or what you believe (read back through the comments and you’ll see that these ladies don’t blow smoke up my patootie or pretend to be anything other than who they are), but if you try applying these simple ideas, you’ll find that we secular homeschoolers react much more warmly when you participate into our threads or comment on our blogs. We might even find areas upon which we can have a meeting of the minds, or at least share a laugh over the absurd width of the gulf between our beliefs in those areas where we’ll likely never agree.

*You can add “e-” to any word to simultaneously indicate “something on the internet” and make it funnier.