Adventures in Home-Schooling

Over these past months, I’ve mentioned “issues” we’ve experienced with our teenager and some of the challenges we have faced with regarded to his education.

As I may have mentioned, we decided to home-school him for his last two years of high school. It was a huge decision for us and primarily for my wife. There were only two choices for us: send him to a different public high school or home-school. At the time, both options had their pluses and minuses.

We settled on home-schooling for several reasons:

• Our son was getting farther and farther behind in school;
• The public school system overall wasn’t helping him get to where he needed to be;
• He was not choosing friends that were good for him;
• The public school system has removed God from the classroom;
• Home-schooling was the only way we could instill our family’s values and get him on the right path again.

As I’ve said before, my stepson is a good kid. He’s no different than any other soon-to-be sixteen year-old guy. But in my opinion, the public school system was failing him. Sure, he had his role in the issues, but for reasons I’ll explain shortly, the public school system doesn’t care about him as a developing, young member of our society.

I don’t want to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath-water. I know that there are good teachers in the public school system. But the “system” itself is broken and severely under-funded at the level it needs to be funded at: teachers’ salaries and funds for the classroom.

We’re three weeks in to our new home-schooling year and things are going well. My stepson is learning and his grades are where we know they can be at. For example, he took a test recently in math. Sometimes poor math scores are due to challenges with reading vocabulary. In this case, there was a word in one of the problems he did not know what it meant. So, for a moment, he reverted back to his old behavior by just not answering the question. When we explained what the word meant, the light-bulb went off and he figured out the answer! There have been several instances just like this and every time, it just confirms our decision was the correct one.

He starts his day with “Life Management,” which is really his Bible class. It’s all real-world, practical information. There is no way that the public school system would teach this class and it’s truly to our students’ detriment. No value system or situational ethics equals students who will never know the difference between the truth and a lie nor what is right and wrong.

Home-schooling: it’s not as hard as you might think

My wife was so scared that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. Okay, so was I. I lost my job in July–just before we really got started–and we also have a one and-a-half year old running around the house. But you know, Romans 8:28 really just sums up everything that’s going on for us. God has me here at home for a reason during this season.

As for my wife, she’s really jumped in feet-first and is handling things like a pro. I’m so proud of her and my stepson. I just know that in the future, he will look back on these next two years and thank her for all her dedication to seeing him through.

Christians: if you want to pass along your value system and keep your children from being infected by the cancer of the public school system, seriously consider home-schooling. I understand the proposition that we are “to be in the world but not of it.” However, I’m coming around and looking at this differently than I used to. Being a teenager is an extreme developmental age. Why would you want to allow them to become polluted by the world when they cannot truly comprehend the long term effects of their decisions? They will have the rest of their lives to be “in the world” and make a difference, if we nurture them until the point they can make their own decisions.

But I understand, not everyone can do it. Certainly if we both were working he’d be at the public high school. But my wife has been home with our kids since 2005 so it made perfect sense.

Either way, we need to all do our best to do as God said to the people of Israel:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” –Deuteronomy 6:5-7.

This isn’t about keeping the law or the old covenant. This is about a love of the Lord and passing those values on to our children.

Sometimes we all need to stop and think about the influence we can have on an entire generation if we simply stand up for what is right and what is true, pass that along to our children, and see them live that out in their lives, by the will and grace of God.

May He Increase!