Non-Christian Home Schooling

Question:
I am a divorced custodial Native American father with five children. I have been home schooling for the past five years in order to preserve our Iroquois culture from the Eurocentric domination of the public school system.

However, every time I try to network with other home schooling parents, either in person in Pennsylvania or West Virginia or via the internet, all I ever seem to encounter are right wing Christians.

Since I'm not very comfortable working with the very people who have spent the past five hundred and seven years trying to erase native cultures from the face of the Earth, is there anyone out there who is home schooling for ANY other reason than Christianity?

Answer:
-If you define "Christian" home schoolers as Christians who want an exclusively ideological Christian curriculum, perhaps half of home schoolers are "Christian". If you define "Christian" as any home schooler from a Christian cultural and religious background, almost all Americans are "Christian." "Christian" home schoolers probably tend to be more organized. Part of the problem is that "unschoolers" are much more likely to be non-Christian, but that being "unschoolers" they might be more inclined to be "unorganized."

Getting materials that don't have an ideological Christian bias aren't especially difficult. For history, there are some non-Eurocentric materials available (check with organizations that promote non-Eurocentric history, check the Library of Congress catalogue online and then get your local library to order the books through interlibrary loan). You might also try some schools with a Native American orientation. You should not expect to find a comprehensive "canned" curriculum reflecting a non-Eurocentric bias, as the "canned" secular curricula (e.g. Calvert) tend to have a strong Christian and Euro-American bias similar to most public school of the 1950s.

-The important distinction is between "Christian curricula" and "Christians" as individuals. While all users of "Christian curricula" are "Christians", many or most Christian home schoolers (depending on definition) use curricula that are broader than a "Christian curriculum". In addition, in many areas, home schoolers regardless of ideology may have more in common and can profitably work together regardless of curriculum (e.g. having a chess tournament during school hours can involves diverse ideological groups, having a discussion of the role of Christianity in various acts of genocide against non-Christiants might not go over so well)