In Favor of Homeschooling

Dear Bro. Don:

I read with great interest the letter from Bro. & Sis. Dawes regarding what type of school in which to enroll their children. I could well relate to the different questions and emotions they are having.

At one time, my response to their inquiry might have been very similar to yours. However, as the Lord’s return becomes nearer and the world sinks deeper into its filth, my feelings on the subject have changed. I offer them for what they are worth.

We only started home schooling our high school age daughter at the beginning of the year, but we seriously wish we had started doing this years ago. The turn-around in her attitude has been wonderful. She and! start the day by doing our readings together in a quiet atmosphere which gives us plenty of opportunity for discussion. We then do “bookwork” (we are using a Christian school correspondence course — gives us the freedom to edit the content when necessary) and finish up with an oral reading session which promotes more discussion. Her older brothers have both noticed the difference in her, and I  think in some ways they are a bit jealous they didn’t get taught this way. It has certainly brought us closer and we are enjoying the way all of the courses are based around Scripture; we are able to discuss aspects of God’s Word and plan in almost every subject right down to how a cell works. Things have gone a little more slowly than first anticipated, but she is learning and as we both gain confidence, we gain speed.

Everyday there are articles in the paper about the violence and drug problems that are increasing in the school. Children are carrying weapons to school because they either want revenge or they want protection. It’s not just in the inner city schools anymore — it’s in suburbia and it’s in the elementary and middle schools as well as the high schools! For the most part, teachers do not teach morals. Books and courses are being introduced on “alternate lifestyles” with a view to ending discrimination. The attitude of “You have the right to please yourself’ prevails. Moral degeneration abounds — style of dress, manner of speech, type and intimacy of relationships, pregnant girls, lack of embarrassment to speak about any subject, and no respect for authority or possessions.

In the middle of all this, the teachers are trying to teach. But even if there were not the other problems, what and how they are teaching has been eroded by fleshly thinking. A high percentage of children are graduating from high school basically illiterate. They were never properly taught phonics and it has affected every aspect of their learning career, most importantly, comprehension; but these kids have been passed through the system and graduated anyway. (If you can’t understand what you are reading, how can you reason properly?) Evolution is taught both out-rightly and subtly; but God as creator is not talked about because of the separation of state and church. History and government are studied but the religious influence and impact on them is brushed over -again because of the separation of church and state. Add to all this, peer pressure, which can cause a child to make compromises in values so that he can conform to the group without being disciplined by his parents. The message from the peer group is always the same — conform or be rejected. And yet we are asking our children to go to school for roughly eight hours a day and listen to their teachers, try to get along with the other children, and still take a stand for the Truth. We can try to be super involved with the school and hope to keep a handle on what is going into our kid’s heads, but there are limits to what we can accomplish in that type of situation.

The argument that we shouldn’t shelter our children too much just doesn’t make sense to me. I think we need to remember the key word here — children. They are not strong and mature and full of knowledge to withstand the pressures of the world. (We all know how easy it is as adults to be led astray.) They are children being formed into adults. The most important aspect in our roles as parents is to raise our children to be strong and pleasing in God’s sight and to teach them what it is He expects of us in our lives. Our job is that much harder when they spend so much time in the care and influence of worldly teachers and friends. I remember hearing a sister/mother from Australia say several years ago that she really had her work cut out for her when her daughters came home from school every day, because she had to undo a lot of what the world had taught them. It just doesn’t make sense to make our job harder than it needs to be.

Perhaps the following analogy would help: Think of the home school as a green house. The greenhouse’s purpose is to give young plants a head start. The ideal environment of the greenhouse protects the plants from negative elements during their early, delicate growing season and provides them with positive conditions for maximum growth. The plants in the greenhouse end up being larger, stronger, more productive and better prepared to withstand plant diseases than their counterparts who had their start in the wild (world). The obvious parallel is if young plants are better prepared to face the world after their start in a greenhouse, then children educated in a positive, loving, God-fearing home environment (which exposes them to the errors of the world but does not teach them the ways of the world) should be significantly stronger than their worldly counterparts.

Yes, it is a big responsibility, and a lot of work, to teach your own children — it’ s also a huge lesson in self-sacrifice. Not only do parents have to do “homework” to prepare classes, grade papers, arrange field trips and extracurricular activities, etc. (in addition to the responsibilities and involvement in ecclesial life); but there are the normal duties of taking care of the home and family. Here again, the child can be learning skills and responsibility by taking part in the various tasks.

People have become conditioned to trust that the school system will see to the children’s scholastic needs. I think we, as Christadelphians, need to take a hard look at how those needs are being met. When I married, I knew what Scripture said about raising children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” but I think it is only now, 25 years later, that I have finally gotten it through my head just how all encompassing that commandment is. More than anything else, I want to see all my family accepted into God’s kingdom. Why put stumbling blocks in our youth’s way by sending them into this awful world during the formative years?

Love in Christ,
Gloria Dillingham

Dear Uncle Tom,

After I read the letter from Keith and Cheryl Dawes (4/94, pg.), I felt my own observations might be useful as we are home schooling two children now in grades three and four.

Godly instruction

Clearly, one of the primary reasons any of us would home school our chil­dren is our desire to provide a Biblically right orientation to their education. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 commands parents to “teach [God’s words] diligently to your sons and.. .talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and you rise up” (NASV). It is evident God’s teaching should be included in every aspect of our children’s lives.

We are all aware of the false, ungodly teaching that exists in public schools. No mention of God or the Bible is permitted, while worldly philosophies and theories, including evolution, humanism and New Age thinking are woven into many curricula.

When you teach your own children, you are in control of what they are taught and how. God and His teachings can become an integral part of every subject. False, worldly teaching can be eliminated until the children are old enough to understand the dangers and falsehood of such philosophies. Thus the parent no longer has to worry about what the children are learning at school while trying to squeeze all godly teaching into a few precious hours at home.

Godly environment

Closely related to the above is our desire to raise our children in a godly environment. We know, as adults, how difficult it is to maintain Christ-like conduct when we spend a lot of time in a very worldly setting.

In I Corinthians 15:33, we are warned, “Bad company corrupts good morals.” We are exhorted to separate ourselves from sinners (cf. Prov. 4:14-15). Yet, in the public schools, our children are placed in a very worldly environment for six to eight hours every day.

Proverbs 22:15 states, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child” and Proverbs 13:20 tells us, “The companion of fools will suffer harm.” By placing our children in an environment where they are surrounded by foolish, ungodly companions with no God-fearing adults to guide them, we put our children at great risk for harm.

Many who oppose home schooling will respond, “You can’t protect your children from the world forever.” We can control, however, when and how much our children are exposed to the world so that they can gradually develop an ability to discern right from wrong and choose to do God’s will when others are not. A young child is not capable of making such a choice without the close supervision of a God-fearing adult.

Child-tailored methods

Another benefit of home schooling is the ability to adapt teaching methods to the needs and interests of the child. After all, no one knows the child better than the parents. They have probably home schooled the child for the first five years of his life, a time when children learn a large percentage of all they will ever learn. Parents are thus keenly aware of the child’s strengths, weaknesses and personality traits.

A teaching method can be chosen that matches the child’s best learning mode. One can also choose topics that are of interest to the child and use that topic to teach many different subjects. Studies have shown that children learn better when they are interested in what they are learning.

In addition, the pace of instruction can be adapted to the child’s speed of learning. If your child is struggling in a particular area, you can slow down and try different ways to help him grasp the concept. If your child learns a particular concept quickly, you don’t have to waste time going over and over the same material. A public school teacher, with 20-30 students all learning at different speeds, cannot adapt his teaching methods to the pace of each child. In the school classroom, children who learn at a different  speed from the “average” are often bored or frustrated.

A more efficient method

Home schooling is much more efficient than public schooling. While the child may be gone from home six to eight hours per day, much of that time is wasted when no learning is taking place. Most home schoolers find they can adequately cover an elementary curriculum in about three hours per day and a high school curriculum in four to six hours (including “homework”).

This leaves much more time for playing with siblings, baking cookies with Mom, helping Dad fix the car, visiting the home bound, doing Bible reading and all the other activities that are so important to a child’s development.

What about socialization?

People who are not familiar with home schooling often voice certain concerns about it. One protest often raised is that children educated at home are deprived of appropriate “socialization.”

In fact, iris the public schools which fail to provide normal “socialization.” It is very abnormal to spend large amounts of time in the company of a large group of peers. Far more normal “socialization” occurs when our children are exposed to many different people of different ages, in both large and small groups.

If we look at “socialization” from a Biblical point of view, we can see that God warns against a large number of worldly companions (Prov. 13:20; 18:24; 24:1; Jer. 15:17; I Cor. 15:33). Also He places the burden for training a child for adulthood — the ultimate goal of “socialization” — on the parents (Prov. 22:6; Eph. 6:4; Gen. 18:19).

Most home schoolers expose their children to a variety of social situations. Studies have shown that home-schooled children tend to have a higher degree of self-confidence and are less peer dependent — both signs of social maturity -­than children in public or private schools.

What about teaching talent?

Many parents do not think they have the ability to teach their children since they have no formal teacher training. As mentioned earlier, however, parents teach their children more in their first five years than they will ever learn in school. Moreover, as we have noted, God clearly places responsibility for teaching children on their parents (verses already noted and Deut. 4:9-10; Psa. 78:1-8; Prov. 4:1-4; 6:20-23).

Even when children attend public school, their parents continue to teach them many things which are far more important in God’s eyes than the things they learn in school. When it comes to knowing what to teach in the academic areas and how to teach it, there is a tremendous variety of materials available, many written specifically for Christian home schoolers. In fact, the hardest job is trying to decide which resources to use. There is also an extensive support network throughout North America which can provide support, guidance and advice if desired.

Interestingly, studies of home-schooled students have shown that children of parents with a teacher’s certificate score no better on standardized tests than children of parents who do not have any formal teacher training.

Children home all day

Some parents wonder how they would ever manage to have their children home all day. The public schools and the woman’s liberation movement have done a great disservice to God-fearing parents in this area.

It is not considered “normal” for children to spend most of their time with their parents; yet surely this is what God intended when He first created the family.

True, there are times when it is trying to have children underfoot all day long. But can we really justify sending our children to school just so we can have more peace and quiet or more time to pursue other interests? Some find it much better that they don’t have to cram all the interaction with their children into a few frenzied hours after they get home from school.

Self-sacrifice will, of course, be involved in every situation, but we will soon realize that our children truly are a gift from the Lord in whom we can delight (Psa. 127 :3-5 ; Prov. 29:17).

Legal and practical questions

Two additional concerns are, “Is home schooling legal?” and “Does it work?”

The laws vary greatly between states and provinces. Some areas have very strict restrictions, others have almost none. The fact is, however, that people are successfully home schooling in every state or province in North America. There are publications and organizations which can assist with legal issues and clarify the specific requirements in your state or province.

A recent nationwide survey of home-schooled students reported that, on the average, home-schooled students scored well above the national average of public schooled students on standardized tests in all areas tested. While this does not necessarily prove that home schooling is superior to public schooling in educating students, it does support the contention that parents can successfully educate their own children.

For additional information, people can write to me at RR. 1, Box 71, McLean, IL 61754.

With love in Christ,
Jane

Dear Jane,

As you may know, this subject was discussed in the “Tidings” several years ago. Not everyone agrees with you and we may hear from them, but you know this already. Furthermore, I don’t think it is at all wise to assume that a person is less godly because they do not favor home schooling; but, of course, you have wisely not said that.

My major concern is your last point, “Does it work!” By this time, enough brethren have tried home schooling so that we ought to be able to answer the question. Of those being home schooled: Can they read acceptably for their age? Are high schoolers receiving the necessary courses for job training or college entrance? Are the home schooled spiritually ahead of others their age?

In making comparisons, we need to remember any parents who home school are probably very devoted to their children. How do their children compare to those children who were public-schooled and also have parents devoted to them and the Truth? The few cases we know of do not provide adequate grounds for drawing definitive conclusions.

With love in Christ,
Uncle Tom