Home school?

[aegsm76]

Originally Posted by Jermyn Davidson

In the past, I took a hardline stance against homeschooling. After reading this thread, I may be changing my mind about it.

JD - I am a product of the public schools. I loved the public schools and could not stand private schools.
There was not much home schooling when I was growing up.
However, when my wife and I encountered a couple of school systems, we changed our mind.
The public schools are in no wise anything like they used to be.
The main reason they exist is for social engineering, not education.
It saddens me to think on it.

[votivesoul]

If the reason anyone is considering homeschooling is simply to teach kids reading, writing, and arithmetic, so they can be more intelligent and get into a better college or get a higher valued scholarship, or of such like, then I think they are making a grave mistake.

Homeschooling is more than just curriculum. It's more than just preventing children from being indoctrinated into a secular worldview. It's more than keeping kids from the worldliness they would see and be confronted by at a public school. It's even more than simply protecting children from any acts of possible violence or terrorism that might occur.

It's about building the centrality of the family unit in the home under the headship of Christ. Each and every church is merely ever only made up of individuals. Churches are usually collections of families that then congregate together. Therefore, a church is only as ever strong as the individuals, most often the families, that are part of that assembly.

Weak, dysfunctional, or even disabled family units congregating together create weak, dysfunctional, or even disabled local assemblies.

There is a badly thought out idea that we all have an individual, personal relationship with Jesus that doesn't have anything to do with anyone else. That's not Bible. We are a community in relationship with Christ Jesus and each other. To be in a relationship with the Lord is to AUTOMATICALLY be in relationship with everyone else who is in relationship with Him.

Doing this successfully requires not meeting a couple of times a week where a few people do all the ministering while everyone else acts out their roles as spectators. That's not Bible, either.

To educate one's children at home is about lifting the family up together to Christ Jesus. I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone reading this, but if your children are in public school, and you only see them a couple of hours a day five days a week, and a lot of that time revolves around the school (i.e. extra-curricular activities, homework, etc.), then, even though you may be spending time together, it's not time devoted to anything sacred.

It's time devoted to a secular education and the institution and system that has created it.

Such an education is a relatively recent development in the world. All children were educated at home, once upon a time, whether by a parent or an in-house tutor/governess.

The Bible knows no other education but "Fathers, bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord".

This is more than Bible knowledge. This is life skills, wisdom, understanding, etiquette, interpersonal interactions, business dealings, and everything else that pertains to life, since God is our life, and everything we are and do centers on Him alone.

You know, I really wish we could change the dialogue about homeschooling, especially in a Christian sense, because a lot of non-Christian people homeschool, too, and we Christians are doing something altogether different than they.

[aegsm76]

VS - good post.
If you do send your child to a public school, then you need to be prepared to spend time every day really educating them.