This young man is growing past his fear of bugs.
Surrounded by uncles while his daddy grills hamburgers, he is almost convinced this ferocious-looking creature will not harm him.
The uncle seated behind him in the blue stripes is a firm believer in fearlessness in young men.
The uncle proffering the insect loves this little guy and doesn’t mind setting the example.
Together, they provide a teaching moment for a daddy who would completely approve.
Thus immersed in family, we grow.
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:
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.
Who is left?
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.
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.
We need to want this.
We need to do it.
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Photo credit: Library of Congress
Should All Families Homeschool?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.
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photo credit: Iowa politics.com
Note: Please do not read this if you are against home schooling. Thanks.
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.
That is why schools should be only for adults.
On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, ” come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us. –Acts 16:13-15
Lydia was probably a wealthy woman, a dealer in goods sold only to the wealthy. Usually only royalty wore purple cloth because it was so expensive, good purple dye being difficult to make.
Perhaps she was a widow, necessitating her working outside the home, and if so, perhaps she was older than Paul and Silas.
It seems she owned a house and personally kept a household staff.
Probably she was a pleasant person, given to hospitality, and motivating her household enough that they followed her in her beliefs.
She seems intelligent and rather bold, in her conversation, inviting and persuading men to stay at her house, but if she was older and the house was well-staffed, it would not seem out of place for her to do so.
We know women like Lydia and she inspires us to work harder, with more cheer, and to reach out more
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Photo credit: Wikipedia
for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain,
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good
With brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
— Katharine Lee Bates
Home's Cool! 