Secular Homeschooler in a Christian Homeschooling World

It really bothers me how so many homeschooling companies and organizations assume that all homeschoolers are Christian. “We welcome everybody! but to join you must fill out this application form telling us which church you go to, how many times a week you attend services and sign this statement of faith”

While I praise the desire of this part of the homeschooling population to have faith based groups, it’s disheartening when an organization created with a secular purpose such as sports, non-religious field trips or legal advice, have a faith requirement. In some cases there is no secular alternative!

With the increase of parents nationwide taking their kids out of school due to Common Core and “teach to the test” teaching styles at public schools, secular home-schoolers are a growing market that is woefully under-served. Some of these new home-schoolers may not have a problem signing a statement of faith so their kid can have field trips and soccer but the rest of us Pagans, Jews, Muslins, Agnostics, Atheists and all other “minority” religions are left with no choices.

I have joined a variety of Secular and Pagan homeschooling groups online to try to find alternatives and the discussions are always the same with people trying to find a non-Christian resource and while this isn’t too hard to do when it comes to curriculum materials, for anything else often times nobody is able to suggest an acceptable alternative.

While I know for a fact that I am not the only local parent in this situation, I struggle with trying to refrain my impulse to take matters into my own hands and create something. But given my tendency to bite off more than I can chew and my schedule already being maxed out with my current home, work and volunteer obligations I will continue to encourage myself to avoid that path. And since I refuse to try to make our square peg family fit into the round hole of these groups and companies I guess we have no choice but to continue trekking on our own.