| 12 March |
Secular Homeschooling magazine review |
In our twelve years of homeschooling, I have rarely found a homeschool magazine that I felt was useful or pertinent to our homeschooling life. Growing Without Schooling was the only one that I did like and, unfortunately, it was no longer being published when my family began homeschooling. I purchased as many used copies online as I could find and read every page with interest. But no other magazine seemed to captivate me the way that Growing Without Schooling did. When I published my own homeschool magazine (HELM (Home Education Learning Magazine), 2000-2002), I always felt that it was just a tad bit ironic that I should publish a homeschool magazine when I did not read or subscribe to any other such magazines. You would have at least thought I would want to see what the competition was doing!
Last month, though, I learned of a new homeschool magazine, Secular Homeschooling. It was quite by accident, really. The editor of Secular Homeschooling, Deborah Markus, had one of her articles plagiarized, which caused quite a stir in the homeschooling community. I blogged about it at “Plagiarism Exists.”
In that post, I mentioned that I felt one way to turn her experience into a positive one was for homeschoolers to subscribe to her magazine and I did just that. I received the first issue of Secular Homeschooling a few of weeks ago and then the second issue last week. Unfortunately, the first issue got a quick glance through and then set aside, quickly forgotten. But yesterday I took the second issue with me to read while my son was at karate and, boy, am I glad I did! What a great magazine!
Secular Homeschoolingis a non-religious magazine that does not advocate any particular method of homeschooling. Their website states, “Its readers and writers are committed to the idea that religious belief is a personal matter rather than a prerequisite of homeschooling.”
Issue Two includes articles about a family of four (mom, dad, two eight-year-old boys) biking around the country for a year; rescuing a hummingbird (and showing your children you are smart enough to know you are stupid); how homeschooling shaped the life of a teen who was homeschooled all her life and is now in college; and a large section of articles concerning Charlotte Mason homeschooling. My hands down favorite article was an Op Ed piece by Madison J. titled “It’s a Southern Thing.” As a transplanted Yankee who has lived in the south for close to thirteen years, I found this piece to be hilarious and oh, so true!
As a past homeschool magazine writer / editor / publisher, I know the efforts that have gone into the creation of Secular Homeschooling. I applaud Ms. Markus on her achievements in this second issue and am now scrambling to find where I “hid” the first issue. I have another karate class to sit through and I am sure that I will find issue one to be just as engrossing and entertaining as issue two!
Secular Homeschooling is published four times a year; $28/ one-year subscription. Visit the Secular Homeschooling website for more information and read “Smart Enough To Know I’m Stupid” from Issue Two. You can still purchase a year’s subscription and ask that it begin with Issue One!
