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To Do It - Or Not To Do It? That Is The Question!
You're beginning to hear about it everywhere. Your sister-in-law is doing it. A couple of families from church are doing it. There was an item on the news about it. You're beginning to wonder if you should be doing it, too. But what if . . . No. You have too many questions, concerns, and . . . well, objections.
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The "it" is home schooling and I would like to address some of your possible concerns and maybe help you determine if you should, indeed, be doing it, too. |
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As our public schools fall deeper and deeper into academic distress, become used as a tool for engineering a liberal social agenda and become increasingly a breeding ground for drugs, sex, and violence, many Christian parents are looking for a radically different alternative for educating their children. Some have turned to private schools, but because of the tuition, as well as some of the same peer related problems that exist in public schools, more and more parents are opting to educate their own children in their own homes.
Almost every home schooling parent has had to face the same questions and concerns that you are now facing. Their reaction when they first hear about the concept of home schooling is similar to the one that my husband and I had.
"What?"
"No way!"
"We want our kids to turn out normal, thank you. Besides, we went to public school and turned out pretty well!"
Slowly, as we investigated it more and as we experienced sending our first two children to public school, we realized that home schooling was the option for us and we have never looked back.
"But what about socialization?"
This was our first concern and the most common question we are asked by skeptics! Our society has been trained to think that children cannot learn to get along with others unless they are with others of their own age for 8 to 12 hours a day.
We have found that the public school concept of age segregation is actually teaching children very poor socializing skills and an incredible dependence upon the peer group. In the home school environment, children interact with siblings, parents, possibly grandparents, and often with other home schooling families. In other words, people of all ages. This promotes healthy family relationships (as more time is spent together) as well as an ability to relate to all age groups. This advantage is greatly enhanced if you have more than 1.7 children in your family, or whatever the national average is now! If you have only one or two children, they will still gain needed social skills as they interact with you and others that you choose for them to interact with, as often or as seldom as you like.
But I want my kids exposed to the real world! I don't want to shelter them!"
Most people who have begun home schooling have discovered that their children are now in the "real world". A world where all of your companions are exactly your age, where bells ring to tell you when to begin and end activities, and where your spiritual beliefs are carefully edited out of your life is not the "real world".
Since we have begun home schooling, we have had four pregnancies (three babies, one miscarriage) and all the accompanying morning sickness, we have attended a sick grandmother who died at home, moved three times, acquired animals who require daily care, planted gardens, remodeled a room, painted, cleaned out closets, prepared food for sick friends . . . in other words, we've experienced the "real world" and our children have been right there experiencing it all with us.
Home schooling is more than the three R's.
As for not wanting to shelter, I have to beg to differ with anyone who uses that word. We all shelter our children. Where people differ is to what extent we shelter our children. For anyone who says they don't shelter their children, I have a few questions.
Do you let them buy pornography?
Do you let them hang out on inner city street corners at night to watch drug deals taking place?
Do you allow them to watch movies full of violence and obscenities?
Of course not! But isn't that all part of the "real world"?
The word "shelter" has taken on a negative connotation lately as if it is something parents do who, in fear of the world, live behind closed doors and drawn blinds and are afraid to let their children out of their sight. For some reason, if we shelter young and tender shoots that we intend to transplant in our garden later, we feel like good, responsible gardeners. But, if we shelter our young and tender children who will later be transplanted into that "real world" out there, we are made to feel guilty. There is nothing wrong with sheltering our young plants until they have good, solid roots.
"Is it legal?"
I don't hear this question much, anymore, but some may still not be aware that home schooling is legal in all fifty states. Regulation of home schooling varies greatly from state to state, so you will need to find out what your state's requirements are. You can find out from you local board of education. Or, if you would rather not call them, check with someone who is currently home schooling. They should be able to furnish you with a copy of your state's laws.
"I could never teach my children. I'm no education expert."
Maybe your college degree is in interior decorating. Maybe you never went to college, or perhaps you never even finished high school! You have no business teaching your own children, right? They could never get a decent education with you teaching them, right?
Wrong!
Whether you can think of yourself as your children's TEACHER, you are still your children's teacher, and have been since the day they were born.
What school did you take them to when they learned to crawl? Walk? Talk? What expert came to your house and potty trained them? Taught them to tie their shoes or share their toys?
We are the teachers of our children for the first few years of their lives, but we suddenly get an inferiority complex about our abilities when they hit five years old. You have two of the most important ingredients of a successful teacher built in.
Number one, you know your children. You know them better than the most caring teacher could ever hope to know them. You know their interests, their likes, dislikes, and what motivates them. You know which ones learn better visually, aurally, or hands-on. You don't have to run a battery of tests to figure these things out. You know them.
Number two, you have a tremendous interest in your child's success. There are caring teachers who may love your child and work hard to see him succeed, but even that kind of teacher's concern cannot match yours.
As for the subject matter itself, with a good curriculum you can teach any subject, especially in the elementary years. As long as you stay one page ahead of your child, you'll be okay.
But, you still may be saying teachers spend at least four years in college to learn how to teach. They must know something that I don't!
Let me put your mind at ease. In college, a prospective teacher spends the first two years in general studies just like those in other majors. In addition to that, they will spend a good deal of time in their chosen area of expertise, say, history or music. They will also take courses specifically geared to classroom management and the writing of lesson plans. Some study will be given to philosophies of education, history of public education, the giving and interpreting of tests and, eventually, time will be spent in various internships - time spent in actual classrooms with actual students. Basically, most teacher education has to do with managing and teaching in classrooms with twenty to thirty students in them. None of this is necessary for the parent who wishes to home school.
"I could never teach my children. I'm not disciplined/patient enough."
If this is true, God is probably calling you to home school for your own good as well as your children's! You will grow in these areas as you prayerfully, one day at a time, go about the tasks necessary to complete your day. From my own experience, I can tell you that I was not very patient when we began to home school. My children would probably enjoy telling you all about it, too. After seven years, I still have a long way to go, but am thankful to have seen a lot of improvement in this area of my life.
"What will my parents/in-laws/friends/neighbors say?"
You may be surprised at some of their reactions. Some will respond with delight, others with skepticism, others with out and out hostility. After much investigation and much prayer about your decision, once you are sure that you should home school, don't let negative reactions discourage you. Time will win over your friends and relatives. When they see that you are committed, that it is important to you and that your children are thriving, if they don't become flag-wavers for the cause of home schooling, they will at least respect you for your decision.
Some parents seem to react negatively because they feel your decision to home school is a slap in the face to them. If they sent you to public school, you must think they were pretty sorry parents!
Make sure they realize that you are not indicting them. They had probably never even heard of home schooling because few people were doing it in the past couple of decades. As our culture changes, so do the methods we must use to raise our children to be godly. If the Lord had wanted them to home school you, he would have seen to it that they did!
Other parents and relatives will respond negatively because they are teachers or are otherwise involved in the public school system. Again, only time will probably win them over. Let them know that you realize that even the most committed teachers face tremendous challenges in the school system. Your decision to home school is not an indictment against caring teachers, but merely a personal decision to do what is best for your children.
"But we need Christians in our schools! What if they all left?"
Yes! We need Christians in our schools!
We need them to be on the school board, to be principals, guidance counselors, teachers, and maintenance workers. We need to send adult Christians into our schools, not our babies.
When our oldest daughter went off to kindergarten, I cried like most of the other mothers. She was only five, and yet she was leaving me for the majority of the day. As the year progressed, I realized that I had been naive as to exactly how little time she would now be spending with her family. She got on the bus every morning at 7:00 A.M. She arrived home on the bus at around 2:30. She came home, changed clothes, went out to play with her friends until dinnertime, ate dinner, got a bath and went to bed.
Two things really impressed me and my husband that year. One was the lack of time we now had with our daughter. The other was the fact that we were sending a five year old into an admittedly Godless system and that we would have to unteach her at least three-fourths of what she was learning day in and day out. I base that last statement on the fact that so much of the public school curriculum is highly objectionable - evolution, sex education, multi-culturalism, the rewriting of history, etc. - not to mention all of the negative things she was learning from peers in respect to language, attitudes, dress, etc.
Was this wise? Should she be spending so much of her life soaking up things that we would then have to spend time undoing?
We sent our second daughter to kindergarten the next year and our oldest went on to the first grade. During that year, we devoted a lot of time to prayer, asking for guidance in this all-important matter. Everywhere we turned, we seemed to be pointed in the direction of home schooling. As I mentioned earlier, we have had no regrets.
A good friend of mine recently made an excellent point. She was commenting on the fact that many parents are adamant about sending their children to a Christian college. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this, but it's kind of backwards that Christian will send their young children during very impressionable years into a school system that constantly undermines their faith, but when they are eighteen - supposedly adults - the parents suddenly want to shelter them at a Christian college! I thought she made a point worth pondering.
To answer the question, "What if all the Christians left?", I feel that if that were ever the case, then maybe the educational bureaucrats would finally wake up and start overhauling our failing school systems. In the meantime, we and other home schooling families are quietly attempting to raise godly leaders for the next generation.
I pray that briefly addressing some of these common questions will help you in your decision about whether or not to begin home schooling. If you would like more information on the above topics, I could recommend several books. If you could choose only one book to help you decide, I highly recommend The Right Choice: The Incredible Failure of Public Education and the Rising Hope of Home Schooling, by attorney Christopher Klicka. It is crammed with all the information you will probably ever need and will probably answer many of your lingering questions regarding home schooling. This can be obtained from Great Christian Books of Elkton, Maryland. You can request a catalog from them at 1-800-775-5422 (or on-line at http://www.greatchristianbooks.com). In their catalog, you will find this book as well as thousands of other books related to home schooling. If you are still in the beginning stages of making your decision, don't be overwhelmed by the many curriculum offerings in the catalog. Concentrate on the books that deal with the "hows and whys" until you know for sure whether you will be home schooling or not. Share the information you uncover with your spouse and pray together about your decision. Then you can take the next steps of deciding on the curriculum you want to use.
May God bless you as you pursue his will for your family!
