Spiritual Homeschooling

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and had an inner dialogue as I often do. I was imagining meeting a neighbor and the inevitable topic of schooling comes up, so I tell them that we homeschool. I don't necessarily elaborate, but then the conversation turns to career, the typical "What do you do?"

So I say that I'm a student and I'm hoping to go to grad school next year. For what? Seminary. So they assume that I homeschool for religious reasons.

And as I lay there, I realize that I do homeschool for religious reasons, not just the ones that most people would assume. I homeschool because of my values and to create a culture for my family that fits our needs.

I realized today that I need to stop talking about homeschooling for religious reasons in a negative tone. Because I'm doing it too.

I'm taking my children out of the mainstream culture and instilling them with the values of our family and what's important to us - family, attachment, social action and justice, spirituality, respect, and peace, to start with. I'm making sacrifices, both of time, career, and money, to do what I believe is best for my children. And not that other people don't. And not that school is evil. But it has issues that can't be resolved with band-aids.

I believe in being involved in the local community and working to make the schools (as they are) a better place for everyone, but I don't see them teaching values that I believe in, in a way that I agree with. And I venture to guess that that is the same argument that religious homeschoolers of every ilk would make. I just happen to be pretty liberal.

Anyway, I'm tired and not making a lot of sense, but I wanted to get my thoughts on paper, so to speak. My point: Religious homeschooling is for UUs too.