With all of the talk about Texas and its new “adjustments” to state curricula, people are in a combination of outrage and panic across the United States. Will these “adjustments” affect my school, we wonder? In a word, likely. This is the same district whose texts dictate about 80% of texts across the country. (And while we’re on that subject, exactly why is that? Do we all need so much guidance in selecting our curricula that we have to turn to Texas, of all places?)

Women’s rights, civil rights, even Thomas Jefferson will be heavily left out, if not omitted completely, in these revised texts. Democracy will instead be a republic, while capitalism and imperialism will be toted as the supreme philosophies of the land. (Which, of course, they are by many politicians and businesses—but that doesn’t make them right or even ethical.)

Many parents are looking for other curricula to share with their children—either in homeschool settings or as supplemental material. It’s not just this decision that sparks the interest, of course; American schools already stand as heavily nation-centric, with plenty of nationalism and without much global awareness. In search of such a curriculum, I have found several that I’m very interested in. One of them is my current favorite; it’s called the Global Village School.

So far, this school has proven to capture all of the values that I want to use in teaching my daughter—peace, justice, diversity, and an entire worldly focus rather than a narrow national approach. We have been using the school’s reading lists as a guide for the past two weeks, and while I’ve been disappointed that our libraries do not carry many of the titles listed, we have been very pleased with the books we have managed to acquire and read (such as All the Colors of the Earth and Hands Around the World: 365 Creative Ways to Build Cultural Awareness & Respect).

Up until this point, I have been hesitant to purchase curriculum materials for two reasons. The first is mainly that we plan on unschooling our daughter and letting her interests be our guide; but even with that in mind, we’ll still need plenty of materials on hand to garner her interest, which I think various curriculum resources can do. The other thing holding me back is content itself. How can I be sure that what we purchase is going to be of quality, and that it will help foster the kind of humane lifestyle that we work on keeping in our home? After all, curricula are generally pretty high in cost.

It looks like every year’s curriculum will cost us under $200 at Global Village, which really isn’t bad at all. Each curriculum will contain book lists, activities, and ideas for each grade level based on “peace, justice, diversity, and sustainability.” In fact, the school uses four principles, which they call the Earth Charter, to guide their curricula. These are Respect and Care for the Community of Life, Ecological Integrity, Social and Economic Justice, and Democracy, Nonviolence, Peace, and Diversity.

The books they recommend are also known as “living books,” actual works of nonfiction and fiction by various authors rather than stale textbooks. All in all, I’m excited about giving this program a try and implementing parts of it into our lives.