After twenty years of homeschooling we have embraced many reasons why homeschooling is the best option. Our reasons vary and have developed over time and the influence of friends. Here are some reasons that we believe will help you make a good decision to educate from home.
God-ordained Task
The truth? The truth is that you are responsible is derived from God's ordained order for the world which makes the family the central place of teaching your children reading, writing and math for the purpose that they know God and learn to walk in his ways. (Dt. 6:4-9; Dt 11:19; Prov 1:1-7,5:5-14; 13:4, cf. Col 3:21; Eph 6:4). These ways include not only the words of God, but wisdom, discretion, understanding, discipline, et. al. In my opinion all knowledge belongs to God, but all knowledge requires the right moral context.
Embracing Family
Inherent to parenting is the fact of life that parents are responsible for their children's care. This includes not only feeding, sheltering, safety. It also includes their instruction. You teach them to speak, encourage them to walk, how to eat. However, the culture has taught people that when children turn 5 years old, you are incompetent to instruct your children and you should surrender your child for education to "experts" in a school instead of in the family.
Freedom From The Herd
How the Herd Was Corralled or "How Education Became Indoctrination"
To understand how homeschooling frees families from the herd mentality of the modern school requires a brief history lesson. The modern school follows the "approved curriculum (plan for education). The curriculum is not about education. It's about control--control of the mind through indoctrination. This was not always so. In the Middle Ages, the means of education was guided by the Trivium. In the United States education was private and usually religious in emphasis. Public schools arose through laws passed in the different States. slowly usurping local and parental control. Then in 1965, the Federal Government annexed the education of children through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) under the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. Public schools could now get federal tax dollars and so the private schools were snared, and religious education was nearly stamped out. This is how education became controlled by The Government.
Breaking From the Herd
The herd mentality of the schools controlled by the Federal Government is maintained by the "approved curriculum (plan for education)". The curriculum arose in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and is essentially a required timetable for education; this is education in public schools into grades by year. This timetable was an essential feature in a world where industry relied on bells and schedules to ensure the assembly lines of industrial workers ran smoothly and efficiently according to the clock. Industrial education was designed for the masses by an increasingly homogenized and secularized plan, the curriculum.
Taking back control
Homeschooling frees us from this controlling plan and recognizes the value of the individual child, not the group. Parents are freed to teach their child according to their personality and needs and variable ability, personality, and resolve. Being free from the classroom herd means learning at your own pace according to your interest and desire, and according to your Christian doctrines instead of the doctrines of The Government or Mass Society.
Socialization Maximization
Freedom from the herd is the freedom from the tyranny of peers. One of the myths foisted upon parents is that homeschooling will lead to children who are social misfits. In truth, the choice to teach your children from home frees you to teach Christian (at least moral) behavior. The manners and behavior that you teach will aim at forming children into adults that are civil, respectful, upright.
Cooperative Support
Yes, you will be free from the extra-curricular activities that schools offer, but those are usually aimed at teaching teamwork and esprit de corps. Hopefully you have a church where you can serve and be active with other families. Then there are community service projects that you can support. If sports are important to you, then there is little league, community soccer teams, community swim teams, etc.
Support is also needed in the face of the hostility toward individual home education. And this is why a homeschooling support group helps encourage parents in the hard task of teaching your children at home. You don't need the school for socialization when you have the church and community, but you need the ideas and experience of fellow homeschoolers.
Flexible, Fun Methods
Teaching at home also frees you from the restrictive methodologies of the modern school. You don't (shouldn't) redesign your family room with desks lined up in a row! Really!
What this means is that math lessons in the kitchen preparing a meal or in the garage constructing a potato gun. After all, making a double recipe means adding and multiplying fractions. Scaling a potato gun up larger (or smaller--where's the fun in that?) requires the same skill to learn. I think you get the point: life is learning. After all, how are you going to understand 9/11 (or the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, Jim Crow) if you don't understand some of the root causes (history)?
And what's more fun than a field trip, especially if you can share the cost with other families! Every place has local historical places that can be explored and studied (reading and writing). And all the while you can ask questions to instruct them how to think logically (how and when questions) and critically (why questions).
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