This excerpt is posted with great respect for all the women I’ve learned to believe might see their own stories in it, moms and grandmoms like Dawn, Gem, Kay, Shelley, Shelly, Sue, Meredith and the dear, devout yet irrepressible Betty Malone. 
Egalitarianism and Homeschooling-
One Member’s Personal Story by Karen Till
. . .The homeschool community is a culture, religion—to some a cult—in itself. I loved many aspects but certain things were hard to understand. For example, many people thought women should dress very modestly and with head coverings. Definitely the more “earthy” you were the better: grind your own grain, natural foods, bake your own bread.
Many also believed that couples should let God plan their family – and I mean no interference on your part—because it showed you had more faith. Moms should stay at home while dads provided for the family. All of these were what proved you were a godly woman. Of course, you needed to do this all with great delight and in an organized fashion.
I began to have difficulty with this culture as our children got older and their gender roles began to be more defined. . .I started to feel pressure about how my kids behaved and what they wore. We were not a family that believed that girls must wear dresses, but many of our friends did.
Then the whole courtship idea started bouncing around. . . Courtship in many ways seemed like a patriarchal concept.
The pressure got more and more intense and I resisted. I began to question and see flaws in this thinking. . .
I still believe in homeschooling, although I do not fit in with most in the community. I have discontinued much of my contact with the other women because it is too difficult. . . I felt like I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, measure up to their expectations of what kind of a woman I should be.
Our church has become a safe place for me and I love the changes and growth the community has made. I would say we are an emerging church and that concept thrills me as much as the equality issue does.
I love that the sides of the box have been blown off. My journey is so much more than I ever dreamed . . .
Most people in the homeschool community are traditional and patriarchal and I was embarrassed to be lumped together with them. I do believe that egalitarian views and homeschooling can co-exist. However it is not the norm. If you know people that are homeschooling please do not write them off . . .While some home educators are definitely closed to the idea of equality and freedom from subordination, you never know—God can get our attention in unexpected ways.
Things have evolved in our journey in this issue—for me I continue to learn and love all that I am finding out about biblical equality.
(a grateful cock of the snook salute to A Dem Fine Woman for the connection)
I just posted this to my local list too, so prayer day preparers would see it.
Thanks, JJ. Sometimes I click in wondering if you’re going to slam ‘us’ again, what with all the idjits out there claiming to follow Christ but actually just following their own agenda — power, money, whatever — in the name of Christ. Sometimes, without meaning to, secular homeschoolers put out a bit of an attitude that if Christian homeschoolers (or Christians in general) had any kind of a brain they’d become secular. I don’t think it’s entirely intentional for the most part — and not at all on your part, the more I read here.
I do identify a lot with the woman in the article. I have run across so many Christian homeschoolers whose blogs I just can’t return to because of the assumption that we all think alike if we believe in Christ and if you don’t believe like they do you must be on the road to hell. Whatever. That’s between me and God, thank you. I love to visit here, and Daryl’s, and Samuel’s because you all point out the hypocrisy and fallacies and make me examine whether I truly believe what I claim I do — and if my actions follow. Thank you.
Gem — all I can say is, Nance and I need to get you together with our good friend Betty! I’ll see what I can do about getting her to pop in for a visit. Meanwhile, you have me all “verklempt!” As used here at this blog, which you should know about if you don’t, called “GEM-osophy” . . .
Hugs, JJ
Karen, Gem, and whomever,
I would say that of course I found some of Karen’s experience in the homeschool community, but for my daughter (the youngest of five very independent thinkers!), I used those experiences for discussion and thought provocation, not in an argumentative, “aren’t those women acting stupid” way, but to encourage her to understand that the future of all of us depend on how we learn to accomodate and work together. We can pull into our enclaves as homeschoolers, our inclusive versus Christian, our secular versus fundamentalist, or whatever label we choose to attach to each other or to others, but life at this critical point in history demands that we continually seek common ground. At least for me my faith requires that I continually seek common ground, That I am polite and respectful of differing viewpoint, even when it makes me crazy to watch!, :), but that hearts and minds are not something we win…but something we allow to be where they are. And that by standing in our own truth of what home education can be, or should be, or is for us,, we affirm a different way. I see so much value in the way we are learning with out homeschool youth, at the same time as I see some damage being done,, but hey, what’s the alternative..the damage being done in brick and mortar schools on a daily basis,.
I continue to believe, perhaps naively, that I am demonstrating a good way to be a thinking woman for my daughter,, but is it the right way or the only way? Who knows:) I cherish the friendships of faithful women and secular friends.I cherish the learning we share, and I find no more grace in the secular world, no more respect than I am given by my fundamentalist homeschool friends.
All are found lacking at times. I think the deeper question is how deep are we going to let the divisions become in this country before we understand the need for bridges.
Thanks JJ for the kind description. Devout..hmm..don’t know if I’me there! I suppose I share my devout level with Kurt Vonnegut who said, (I’m paraphrasing, perhaps badly here!) That the only reason he needed to believe in the existence of God, was music.
Don’t know if I’ve posted correctly here, Ms. JJ and Nance..not often a Blogger!
Love and blessings
Betty M.
“While some home educators are definitely closed to the idea of equality and freedom from subordination, you never know—God can get our attention in unexpected ways.”
That’s from the Egalitarian article.
The women she is writing about are not only “closed to the idea of equality and freedom from subordination” for others. They are “closed to the idea of equality and freedom from subordination” for themselves!
What an extremely odd way to go through life. No god has ever gotten my attention and that may explain my thinking. But this just strikes me as a bizarre way to live. Putting yourself in the way of being dominated — on purpose! As if that were a good thing!
Anyway. . . thanks to Gem and Betty for your insightful comments. As always, a pleasure to see you — regular blogger or not.
I posted on another tangent to this idea of equality and self-respect at the CK blog earlier, where this was cross-posted. Might was well include it here too:
******
http://www.culturekitchen.com/jj_ross/blog/
not_necessarily_wacko_even_if_you_do_homeschool#comment
Whew!
Submitted by NanceConfer on 3 May 2007 - 8:19am.
I was afraid I was going to have to start packing the kids up for church on Sunday. Or public school on Monday.
But we can be both heathens AND unschoolers? Fantastic!
Of course, this is a stereotype that many of us have struggled against. As a prominent unschooler recently posted, “. . . not all schoolkids are universally the same either.”
Yep. Ruthlessly out of context. Sort of. It was in the context of a discussion about unschooling and teens and how nice her son is and how a lot of unschooled teens are nicer than we sometimes expect from teens and it was a concession that even some publicly schooled kids are decent human beings.
Wadda ya know. There’s no magic wand no matter what choices a parent makes.
Maybe if we all became parents at about . . . what age, when do we think we’ve got a handle on being decent human beings ourselves? Age 60? 70? When do we finish sorting out how to be good enough people to be responsible for the well-being of another human being? To have enough self-discipline not to take our failings out on someone else in our care? To have enough self-respect to truly live with respect toward our own sometimes annoying and less-than-perfect children?
Nance
******
This all ties in with the “no spanking” day and how to deal with reality while trying to remember our best intentions toward our children, etc. It’s not easy being a thinking parent but that’s no excuse.
Nance
Welcome Betty! yes, you “blogged” just right.
SInce it is National Prayer Day and all, I will do my part here instead of down at the Capitol. A little reflection and personal meditation –
In another thread we are talking about the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, how the little boy and his stuffed tiger play a spirited, collaborative AND competitive, everchanging game of “calvinball” where they lose themselves in that loving, playing power of story together. That’s pretty much how I experience religion/philosophy.
“Kurt Vonnegut who said . . . the only reason he needed to believe in the existence of God, was music.”
In my (formatively Methodist) life I felt free to construct my own rules and philosophy, so I grew up seeing music AS god, as part of that infinite connected wonder that literally and continually creates “us” as the complex thinking and spiritual animals we are. In my metaphorical mind that makes an inspiring AND perfectly scientific Creation Story — because without that spark we wouldn’t be “us” in either sense.
Thus I can understand “prayer” as staying connected with that which creates our higher existence.
I used to tell Favorite Daughter when she was little, that everything “GOOD” was God, just with an extra “OH!” So we would skip the churchy “god” and focus on the GOOD that made us go “OH!” Music, poetry, books and power of story (complex melodies and complex ideas) passion and compassion, health and natural beauty, love and friendship, flow and glow –
(and musical theatre which like worship, touches us with deeper truth only when we choose to consciously “suspend our disbelief” and immerse ourselves in the experience. Isn’t that literally what religious faith is, a suspension of disbelief by choice?)
I hope Christianity even in the throes of fundamentalism, is still correctly defined as philosophy, “love of knowledge”? No grief from me for that!
Another mom’s experience from a Thinking Blog that really gets what we’re facing, and the need for (very intelligently designed!) cultural engagement to overcome it:
Thanks for posting that JJ. She comes from a very different background then me in her christianity. I didn’t practice my faith for the longest time and when I did go back to church it was to a very liberal one where women were in every position from the greeters at the door to a Bishop of the Dioscese. I sort of get snarky about the fundy cousins but it’s so nice to see the story of someone who managed to wade out of that.