Have you been wondering about beginning or continuing to home school your children?
Allow me to let you in on a secret:
You have to.
Yes, whether we like it or not, we have to home school these little blessings with which God has blessed us.
How do I know? I know it simply because all parents home school their children.
Actually.
You home school yours already.
Think for a minute:
Who taught your darling that Mom is the best in the world? Did you take him to a state institution to learn that?
Who taught him to walk? Did he receive private lessons on that subject?
Who taught him to stay seated in the high chair and grocery cart?
Who toilet trained him?
Who succeeded in teaching him to pick up after himself?
Trust and obey: This duo is one of the most important lessons in all of life. We have taught these most important lessons. Yet, do we somehow feel we would not be good teachers of minor things?
We have taught our children nearly to master speaking the English language, one of the toughest on earth, as if they were natives, and yet, do we somehow feel that we are inadequate to teach the ABCs?
Or is it only that home school seems like too much work? Were we ready to be at ease and to pass them on to some other mother (oops—I mean, teacher)?
A Map of the Legality of Home schooling around the world. Green is legal, yellow is legal in most political subdivisions but not all or is practiced, but legality is disputed. Red is illegal or unlawful. Orange is generally considered illegal, but untested legally.
My friend’s teen children were tired.
I had always thought they were shy children because they hardly said much in church. I learned though: If anyone spoke first, these children politely carried on an adequate conversation. Then they would drop back into their tired mode, like a trance.
My friend, their mother, was tired, too. I had noticed signs of it: late (or absent), hastily coiffed, testy—all out of character for her and all beginning when school began each year. I understood it more after we had the “school” conversation.
I think she was just using me for a sounding board, not realizing that I have feelings, too. Most people in a State school need to verbalize their convictions to home educators. They subconsciously need our quiet endurance of these conversations, I think, to help them go on.
Since I believe that, I usually do not listen altogether mutely. Usually I say things like, “I am so sorry,” or “I know it must be a real burden,” or “Perhaps a different teacher (grade, school, district, etc.) would make a big difference?”
I am not being sarcastic when I say these things, although the temptation is sometimes there. No, I truly am sorry to see my friends suffer so because of their State education choices. Too, because of my own mistakes in the State systems, I know it truly is a burden.
Of course, I know a different spot within the State school system does not usually make much difference, but I also desire to help them see something: To me, their situation sounds burdensome. I hope to cause them to have second thoughts, if possible, within the context of friendship.
Therefore, I tried to listen gently to my friend’s tiring tedium of tasks. I am sure my eyes widened.
She wound up with, “but I just don’t see any other way to make sure they are doing well . . .”
I said, “Sandra, I know you are tired; anyone could see it in your eyes.” She dabbed at tears. “I don’t know what to tell you. If the teachers and the coaches will not do it, I guess you must—someone must.”
I hesitated, then went on, “The reason your children excel and the reason you are tired is that you are homeschooling.
“For most home educators, it is not so tiring, though, because they homeschool from 8:00 a.m. until early afternoon. You are homeschooling a lot, during those hours, but also during the hours from 3:00 until midnight and beyond. Add to that the fact that you are worrying, and you could not HELP but be tired. You are volunteering at the State schools, and then conducting your own homeschool afterwards.”
The things I said did not help her. She was convinced hers was the only way to send her children into law school.
The entire conversation did help me, though.
It gave me several more reasons that I would never go back into the State institutionalized education program.
You can learn from it, too, perhaps. Perhaps you can see why people should stay out of that system.
Failing that, at least you will have a list of things you must do (should you decide to quit home schooling) to cause success in State-educated children.
Once, a dear friend was explaining to me how the State school experience was better, and how her children were receiving the best education available.
Have you ever noticed how State institution school parents think they must educate us to this “fact” and we must bear it patiently, but the reverse seldom holds?
She was striving to explain her children’s bright future and perhaps she could not hear herself speaking. As I listened and tried to grasp what she was saying, I was astonished at the obvious conclusion.
Maybe it would be instructive to share it all with you.
Granted, her children were in the best State schools available in our small city. They were a wealthy family and had moved into a wealthy neighborhood for the expressed purpose of better State schooling.
That this fact was possible should be enough, alone, to terminate State education.
She wanted her children to be lawyers and she wanted them in the best colleges in the nation. I will also grant that she was a very dedicated mom, committed to performing whatever activity (except home schooling) necessary to raising up successful children.
She was misinformed, though, and not thinking about the entire scope of the picture.
To prove to me her commitment, she began itemizing the duties she undertook for her children’s education. This was a typical day:
She drove her children to school, herself, to prevent teen driving troubles in their lives. They did not enjoy being the only ones arriving with Mom, but she was dedicated enough to insist.
She was careful to deposit them at the school early, to give them free time to form friendships of their own choosing, so they would not be relying on whomever might sit nearby in class. This also allowed time for composing themselves before facing the day.
She signed them up for sports, although they were not athletic, to help them overcome the sitting they must do daily, and to improve their chances for scholarships.
After school, they had sport obligations, of course. She went to every practice and every game, with a video camera. She recorded every pertinent happening at these gatherings.
During the day, she edited these videos, juxtaposing the skills of opponents and her child and his teammates, to show where more effort would benefit.
After school, her children had oceans of homework. She was strict about it, allowing no play until all work was done. Since supper was prepared in advance, she helped with their homework, explaining things they could not get the teachers to answer adequately. She was their cheerleader, greeting them with encouraging one-liners, such as, “You can do it; one more hour ought to get it!”
She showed them the sports videos, explaining her thinking in detail, so they could discuss how more effort would cause more success. Again, she cheered them on. (I do not know where their coach was.)
Since homework reigned supreme in their home, except for a break for supper, the children labored until midnight or beyond, at which point Mom simply conked out. (She did ask me if I thought she was wrong to require them to continue until two a.m. or later, when she, herself, was unable to do so.)
The next day they began again.
It was true that her children were doing well in school. They did not have as many friends as they might have liked, but they were receiving high grades in difficult subjects, and they were often on the first sports teams.
Someone’s gotta stay home with the kids if we homeschool. Right?
Right.
We may quibble about which parent must stay, but no doubt one simply must.
Lots of people think keeping a parent at home precludes being a two income family, but it does not. The act of staying home saves so much, we sometimes wonder how those who work outside make any money at all.
Let’s look at how it adds up:
Clothing. Stay-home clothes bought on sale cost far less than suits or uniforms bought under duress. The same is true for shoes, bags, coats, etc.
Transportation. If only one parent is going out to work, only one car is necessary. Same for gas.
Work. Someone has to do it. Either you clean the house or someone else gets about $1000 per year to do it. You can do your own laundry, yard work, repairs, etc., and save the prices of hiring them done. Or the price of a counselor trying to fix your brain after you try to do it all yourself . . .
Cooking. A rib-eye steak costs about $5 on sale at the grocery, about $18 at a restaurant. Spaghetti dinner for 6 costs the same at home as for 1 at a restaurant. Maybe less. A homemade birthday cake costs about $7, compared to $20 from the store, and you know which tastes better! Hearty, homemade bread costs half or less of insipid store-bought. However, if you make these yummy foods to sell, you get the store price!
Shopping. What? Isn’t shopping how we lose money? No, that’s random spending. Shopping is comparing prices, waiting for sales, and squeezing all the value you can from every penny. It is sticking to your list, buying in bulk, and always being ready for the surprise bargain for someone’s gift for the future. It is what you don’t have time for if you’re on your way home from the office.
Sewing. While it is true, fabric prices have gone up, it is also true you can make new, lovely curtains with hardly any sewing instructions, covering that window in sale fabric for about $25 instead of $125. With only a bit more knowledge, you could make yourself a skirt or cape. Learn a tiny bit more and make simple dresses for your girls. All with the same savings rate. But if you sell, it . . .
Gardening. A pint of home-canned green beans costs about ten cents for the lid and bit more for energy to run the stove. There is an initial investment, but you can re-coup the cost once you’ve canned for a year or two. And store-bought vegetables are nearly $1 per can.
Crafts. A bit of yarn, a drop of glue, how surprising the fun and savings in making gifts! And the savings is phenomenal. You could develop a reputation for a certain type of gift and become known as “the afghan lady” or the “soap lady”, turning it into a business. Astronomical savings in greeting cards, alone!
Last, but not least, Child Care. It’s about $18 per day per child. That does not factor in the cost of medical care for all the diseases they will pick up.
This list could go on forever, but you get the idea. If, when you are at home, you actually WORK, you are a working mom, and your rewards are good.
Are there any people in this country who truly cannot home educate their children?
There are a few. They are the ones who have had their children taken from them. You cannot home educate children that you do not have.
Those who are childless due to infertility or death, although they eventually may adopt or bring forth more children, cannot home school the ones they do not have.
Those who have lost their rightful children to kidnapping, whether by the state or by individual criminals, of course are truly unable to home school these children.
Those whose poverty includes living in the homes of others who are manipulative, or whose illness includes living in a hospital, may be forced to curtail home school activities until this situation is rectified.
Those who’ve signed themselves up for crippling debt may be forced to work at something besides home schooling.
Those whose prejudiced spouse sues for and obtains the legal right to terminate home schooling activities may feel that they are unable.
Anyone in prison, or whose child is in prison.
Maybe there are more, but I certainly have not met them in the last 30 years.
We need to think about our excuses.
We need to realize that when we homeschool, we are setting the high standard, setting the example, of actually raising the children we brought into this world, instead of hiring it out and farming them out.
State educational institutions are often wonderful for adults.
For children, we have homes.
When it comes to children, God says parents should train them, bring them up, teach them. With the return to home learning of the past quarter century, we are discovering that Father knows best and that the brave new world of mandatory public schooling for all children is not the way for civilized cultures.
Maybe it is the best way to germinate Communism or raise up a nation of soldiers, but it is not the best way to grow children who turn into the type of adults we really want managing our finances or our country when we are old.
Various excuses float around for those who do not home school and these excuses need redefining, too.
For instance, I often have heard that some people are unable to home school.
I agree, but for most, it is to their shame and not something to boast about, as they do.
Some people have disqualified themselves from being the ones who raise their children. Perhaps they attack or neglect their children and perhaps they have lost custody. (Perhaps not, too often.)
Sometimes they prefer misleading their children into sports injuries or demonic teachings, and so must drop them off where these things happen.
Many prefer making a show of wealth that requires abandoning the children for two incomes, rather than doing the right thing, as Moses did. (Hebrews 11:24-27)
The fact that these people are extremely poor parenting examples does not mean that home schooling is bad. It only means that some homes are bad and morality is taking a new plunge.
Sometimes we hear of children who do not want to home school. Surely, we do not think the parents ought to home school them!
Well, yes, we do.
Usually these sadly mixed-up children are the products of the above-mentioned types of parents. Attacked, neglected, misled offspring of unfounded and deceiving displays of affluence usually lack ideals, morals, discipline, and even discernible personalities.
True, these children sometimes do not work out well in the normal home school setting, especially at first. Neither do they always perform very well in the public setting, but it is not their fault.
And their parents should quit boasting about it.
What ought to happen is that the parents should “die trying” to fix the mess they have made of their children’s attitudes, but they do not.
Some go as far as laughing about it. If there is any hope for these children at all, the remedy, still, exists only in the home. These parents should have home schooled and still should home school.
The alternatives, correctional and psychiatric institutions—as if we would prefer these to the home—usually control or mollify, only, and do not apply true, known remediation, as parents can, if only they have not disqualified themselves.
“Harsh words!” you say?
I say the words are hardly as harsh as the reality. The prisons of the godless school generation are overflowing, as are the mental institutions.
These human wrecks were America’s children, just one generation ago.
Homeschooling– the magnet school for share croppers in Transylvania, Louisiana, 1939. How times have changed!
Note: Please do not read this if you are against home schooling. Thanks.
Should All Families Homeschool?
Our family once celebrated a quarter century of home schooling. I could hardly believe it. The time had sped by so fast – where was it?
I thought about the huge blessing the Lord had given us – He had been so gracious to us, taking us by the hand and leading us in a way that we did not know. We believe that the Lord made all the difference in how our children might have grown up.
Any child’s education is partly dependent upon his micro-culture. For instance, if our children had remained in our public schools, they would have learned things like chewing tobacco, as appropriate behavior for second-graders. I know the tobacco manufacturers would have agreed with me: Giving it to second graders is completely unacceptable. I know it was unacceptable to me, along with many similar ideas. Our home clearly was the best place for our children.
I gave my children the best possible education available to them at that time. If they’d been educated in England, how different their speech would have been! If they’d been educated in a wealthy neighborhood, how different their science courses would have been!
I happen to believe that the home is where all children belong.
Yes, I am one of those who believe that all families should homeschool. I hear you gasping but after I define terms, you might agree.
(There is still time to NOT read this.)
Please understand I have nothing against the idea of schools existing.
I just have problems with detaining helpless Americans against their will in a gun-free microcosm that cannot defend them, indeed refuses to attempt defending them, from physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual attack, and that both proscribes their religious beliefs (but only if they are Christian) and prescribes the superstitions of others upon them.
It just does not fit the American purpose and does not set well with this American.
Participating in such a micro-community should be an act that an informed adult freely chooses. He should be free to attend or to escape, as the need arises. The course content should please him and an appropriate level of autonomy should prevail.
Of course, I define a college or university. Amazing how a little free enterprise can elevate the quality of the goods offered for sale! Paying your own way or earning a scholarship can motivate you to behave and study hard, too.
Although there are degrees of excellence in the public and private colleges and universities, there also is freedom to go where we want, when we want, or to skip it altogether, if we want. That is how it should be.
If you are thinking that is fine for adults but it would be folly to burden children with such decisions, you are right.
Home's Cool! 