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Homeschooling When You’re the Reason the Right Wing Homeschools

Homeschooling When You’re the Reason the Right Wing Homeschools

Last updated on: September 7, 2016 at 6:00 am by Melissa Hill

Homeschooling When You’re the Reason the Right Wing Homeschools 2016-09-06T15:46:27-04:00 Melissa Hill

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I’m a dirt worshipping, fire dancing, tree hugging, druid Priest: an ordained Reverend in the Ár nDraíocht Féin druid tradition and part of Cedarsong Grove, ADF, our local congregation. I’m the Secretary of the Clergy Council and a leader in my local community. I’m also bisexual, polyamorous, queer, and proud of my transgendered mom. Best part? I’m lucky enough to write here on Patheos about all of it. Clearly, I am not a friend of the religious right.

I’m also the concerned momma of two wonderful daughters, and I am about to take the leap into homeschooling a fourth and a seventh grader this fall. We’ve already started math review, visited caverns, and my youngest has decided that she would like to study explosions. They’ve been in traditional public schools since they were little and they still get excited to run up and hug Miss Debby, their pre-school teacher. We’ve had a lot of good public school experiences. But in the end, it’s not good enough.

Children Swinging during the Sunset

Courtesy of Pixabay (CC0 Public Domain)

I read about these conservative Christians complaining about the “Lesbian Agenda” and I think, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I took my kids out of school to protect them from the Conservative Agenda. My daughters have come home with worksheets about how wonderful Christopher Columbus was, (Does smallpox mean anything?) about how “maybe” climate change is real, and about how abstinence is the only method of birth control. My eldest has been taught about Martin Luther King Jr. three times, but never about Malcolm X, Angela Davis, or Audre Lorde presumably because they were too Muslim, Communist, gay, or most of all, too radical.

Malcolm_X_March_26_1964_cropped_retouched

Malcolm X By By Marion S. Trikosko [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I don’t blame the teachers. I know so many wonderful educators. These are people who dedicate their lives to educating future generations while underpaid, overworked, and hemmed in by standardized testing and laws that restrict what they can do. It’s a really tough gig. So: hail the teachers!

However, I want my kids to have experiential science education, not just boring worksheets. I want my daughters to enjoy the wonders of math rather than getting subtle societal pressure that math isn’t for girls. Barak Obama has stated that our schools are doing a poor job getting girls into STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. He’s right. So I’m going to try something a little different, creating a little bubble of positive exploration.

I want my kids to be taught history that includes difficult truths about minorities and doesn’t whitewash our past. I’ve tried to fit these things in around their school, but there’s only so many hours in the evening and I want them to have unstructured time as well, to encourage their own creativity, initiative, and problem solving.

I’m on a one-woman crusade, but not to teach my kids that dinosaur bones were buried by a god as a test of faith. I want my kids to find the joy in math and science, even if they never become engineers or scientists. Most of all I want them to learn how to actually finish something. Project based learning is a huge part of what we’re doing. As I’ve delved into the local and online homeschool community I’ve discoveded that there is this thing where people like to label themselves as a specific type of homeschooler. There are religious and secular homeschoolers, homeschoolers focusing on giftedness, disabilities, neurodivergence, and overexciteabilities, homeschoolers studying Waldorf, Classical, Eclectic, and Reggio curriculums. I wish I could say I know what it all means, but I don’t. If I had to label myself it would be something like: project based unschooling with a side of nature, overexcitibilities and some math sprinkles. I think I’m making a homeschool sundae. I, of course, am the nuts on top.

I do feel a bit crazy in all of this because the truth is that I am a religious homeschooler, just not a Christian one. I’m a little nervous about going to the local upcoming Not Back to School Carnival, because there’s that moment when people ask that question, “Why did you choose to homeschool?” Sometimes I play it cool and talk about giftedness and providing resources for these two young women I am responsible for. Sometimes I’m real tempted to say, “I’m a bisexual pagan priest, we don’t exactly fit in.” It scares me. I’ve worked so hard to embrace who I am, to live authentically and honestly with love and dedication to a world of sustainability and joy, but the answers that I slowly discovered over years of seeking have resulted in becoming a person who would be loathed by many who don’t know me.

640px-Westboro_Baptist_Church_in_New_York_by_David_Shankbone

WBC member protesting Pope Benedict XVI outside the United Nations in New York City (2008) by David Shanki

I don’t want my children to learn fear. I want them to be successful. Success isn’t about passing a test, getting a grade, or fitting in to survive. I was a nerd, awkward and far less socially successful than either of my daughters. I took all the Advanced Placement tests and was in the “gifted” education programs. I was supposedly headed for success, but when I actually grew up I hit a dead end in my own strangeness.

Recently I posted this article about giftedness on my Facebook page and I got quite the response. Woman after woman shared their stories about how they had been labeled “gifted” as a child, put in gifted programming and then somehow, the system failed them. Stories of a lifetime of minimum wage jobs, struggles with career, depression, anxiety, ADHD, and the failure of one class or one day of “gifted education” in a sea of boredom echoed with my own school and life experience deeply. I want more than that for my children. I want them to succeed in ways I never have and cannot even imagine for them.

I know that someday they will have to go into a world where people will hate their family for being LGBTQ. But for now, I will try to keep them safe and teach them about all the wonder of the world. The local homeschool community has been welcoming so far and I am hopeful. We can learn about the ecology of our home at the same time that we leave offerings for the spirits of the land. I can teach them about chemistry and the three states of matter, solid, gas, and liquid by using the ancient Celtic triad of land sky and sea.

Instead of constantly pushing against the powerful currents of centuries of oppression we can turn aside and swim down our own little tributary in the vast river network of culture and knowledge for a while.

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