Woes Of The Pagan Homeschooler
Delisa Carnegie at Associated Content talks about the concerns of being both a Pagan parent and a homeschooler.
“Will there ever be a pre-packaged pagan curriculum? I don’t know. Paganism is too diverse for one boxed curriculum. Are pagan parents currently out there building their own curriculums or only un-schooling? As parents will we be able to speak up and tell curriculum publishers what we want? I don’t know. On days like today, I’m left feeling like the outsider. Being pagan puts me outside of the mainstream. Being a homeschooler puts me outside of the mainstream. Being a pagan homeschooler puts me way outside most streams. I think that maybe a feeling shared by other pagan homeschoolers. I think that if I had the skills I would make teaching aids for pagan parents. Maybe they are already out there lurking in cyberspace waiting to be discovered.”
I’m disappointed that Carnegie doesn’t explain why she wants to homeschool her children. Is the motivation similar to conservative Christians who feel that public schools enforce values and ideas that go against their religious values? Is it a quality of education issue? Could the “religious right” and “spiritual progressives” have more in common culturally than we thought?
2 responses so far
Of course they have something in common, at least in a tactical sense. Both are operating from something of an anti-modernist position here.
We describe ourselves as Classical/Hellenic Neopagan UUs and we follow a neoclassical educational model(pretty much the opposite of unschooling, we are quite structured). For us, it’s more of a bonus that we can put a heavier emphasis on areas that apply to our religious beliefs. When we made the decision to homeschool, we were in an area where schools were sliding sharply downward, with increasing amounts of violence, drug problems, etc. We have since moved to a much better area, but the situation is working well for us, so we don’t see a need to change. Looking for religious homogeneity was not one of the factors *g*. Based on my participation in a number of online forums, I think you will find that Neopagans choose to homeschool for quite a wide variety of reasons, some very related to religion, some not.
In response to Chas, if by anti-modernist you mean turning away from secular humanist culture, I would say that there may end up being some of that effect, but it was not the motivation for our choice in the same way that I see very fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers describing their motivations. We aren’t hiding from the world to avoid contamination. A key to success for us has been finding a truly inclusive homeschool support group that welcomes Pagans, Buddhists, Christians, atheists, etc (as well as those of different races and abilities) without requiring us not to mention religion.