Secular Thursdays

What is Secular Thursday?
Secular homeschoolers have long been the black sheep of the homeschooling world. We're in the minority in most homeschooling forums (no one is warning religious homeschoolers away from our threads with "SC" for "secular content") . We have fewer co-ops, clubs, and other organizations than the religious homeschoolers. Finding secular curricula that meets our children's academic needs can be difficult, and almost impossible in some areas (ever tried to find a secular logic and rhetoric curriculum below the collegiate level?). In short, sometimes it can be tough to be a secular homeschooler.

Secular Thursday was created to give secular homeschoolers a day to share the difficulties and benefits of secular education and/or secular lifestyles. It's a day to vent frustrations - at the isolation secular home educators can experience, of the sense of being marginalized by the homeschool community, at the pervasiveness of religion in curricula (or the oppressiveness of some religions and their followers in society). It's a day to celebrate the positives - finding a great curriculum that perfectly fits your needs, discovering a friend (or a whole community) to offer support and advice, finding a way to bridge differences with members of the religious homeschooling community. It's a day to review curricula, recommend websites, talk up favorite blogs, or just talk share a day in the life of your particular flavor of secular homeschooler.

So, why Thursday? After all, Secular Sunday would be a lot more alliterative, and that sort of think generally appeals to me. Declaring Sunday the official day for secular blogging, however, seemed a little too "in your face" to the Christian homeschool community, and the goal is to create a feeling of kinship among secular homeschoolers, not alienate Christian homeschoolers (at least, not all of them, and not from the very outset). I didn't reckon that Thor would mind sharing his day with a bunch of secular educators - I can't imagine a thunder-and-lightning crashing, enchanted hammer-wielding Norse god would be that threatened by us. After all that profound and careful thinking, Secular Thursday it is.

How do I participate in Secular Thursday?
The greatest part of being a secular homeschooler is that we so rarely require ritual sacrifice in order to be a part of our group. Also, no chants or hymns, which is good, because most of us can't carry a tune, either. Oh, and no books you're required to read or verses to learn. Public humiliation, yes, but ritual sacrifice, chants, hymns, books, and verses, no.
Participating in Secular Thursday is easy. All you have to do is:

• Blog about a topic pertaining to secular homeschooling every Thursday (or as many Thursdays as you can realistically manage).
• Tag your Secular Thursday post with "Secular Thursday" and/or "secthurs" to help this phenomenon grow.
• Add one of our Secular Thursday buttons to your SecThurs posts or to your blog's header, footer, or sidebar. Link that icon back to this page.
• Let us know that you're participating in Secular Thursday, so you can be added to our list of SecThurs Bloggers. We'll help spread the word and generate traffic to your blogs.
• On Twitter? Tweet about Secular Thursday with the #secthurs hashtag! We can also add you to our Friday Follow (#FF) list.

See? So simple, even a child could do it. In fact, if you can't manage, have your child do it for you, as s/he's probably more computer savvy than you are.

Who are the SecThurs bloggers?
We're a (very) small group, but hopefully growing! Join our ranks and get your name on the list, along with:

• Smrt Mama at Smrt Lernins
• Patchfire at A Little Rebellion
• Rational Jenn
• Cara at Peanuts are EVIL...
• Bobbi at My Little Soapbox

(copied with permission from the Smrt Lernins blog...to participate in Secular Thursday, contact smrtmama@smrtlernins.com)