The Homeschooling Decision
Disclaimer: The intention of this article is to provide thoughts regarding making the decision to homeschool or send your child out of the home to receive their education. The way we will do this is by sharing the thought process that my wife, Kelly, and I had regarding what we have chosen to do with our own children. The reason for approaching it this way is because we don’t presume to make decisions for you or tell you what is best for you and your family. That is not our place, and every Christian family is to govern themselves under the authority of God’s word. We recognize that the family is one realm of government instituted by God. The aim for this article is to provide our thought process to be a resource to you as you navigate this decision for yourselves.
A Brief Narrative
As we began the process of considering what education was best for our children, we felt like we were fully equipped to make the best decision possible. We were both educators who had worked in education for a number of years, and I had stepped into some leadership positions that really opened my eyes to bigger picture philosophies and structures that make education what it is. Beyond that, we had spent time studying educational history, looking at various curriculum models, and looking at a wide range of statistics resulting from different educational options. That said, we felt like we were in a position to make a solid decision for our kids, and if it came down to it, we felt well equipped to homeschool if we needed to.
With all of that said, we began the exploration process of looking at schooling options around us, and quickly found that we weren’t fully satisfied with anything in our area. There were certainly some options that were better than others, but again, we didn’t feel fully satisfied. If you have found options around that you are satisfied with, then great! Remember, this is just our own thought process we are sharing with you.
Why we were drawn to homeschooling
Because we did not find anything we felt great about, we sort of defaulted to going with the homeschooling option. Once again, in this realm we felt like we were well equipped since we were already both educators. We understood how curriculum was built, knew how to differentiate if we needed to, we knew how to supplement, knew how to discover and teach to our own children’s learning styles, knew how to modify methodology according to our children’s stage of child development, had a good grasp on how to make sure our children had proper reading foundations, knew how to schedule days out to make the most of it, and more.
We ultimately felt like we were the best equipped to teach our own children. We also loved the control we could have over the environment and curriculum that our children would experience. We also were drawn to the flexibility that homeschooling had to offer in regards to how you could structure your day. It seemed like a great option!
3 Other Considerations
With all these positives considered, we also began to consider other angles. In doing so, we were surprised to find some really key factors that were not a part of our original thought process, and ultimately caused us to choose against homeschooling. Those three key items are listed below:
Academic socializing
Learning from people outside the home
Community
Academic Socializing
Many who are considering homeschooling will rightly be lead to the concern of children being properly socialized. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about a child’s social life if they are homeschooled reflected in statistics that have been available for a long time, but this kind of socialization was not actually a concern for us. We are blessed to have a very close community of family and friends around us that we have the ability to get our children around as much as we felt like we needed. For us, there was no shortage of social opportunities for our children. Rather, the thing that we felt would be scarce was the academic social opportunities. We realized that we wanted our children to have plenty of opportunities not just to be around other kids on “play dates,” but to be around the ideas of other children. We wanted our kids to get in the habit of engaging with other’s academic thoughts and to be routinely exposed to their ideas. We wanted our kids to learn how to wrestle with opposing ideas at a young age.
As we first thought through this desire, we explored the options of co-ops. We had heard through multiple sources that the co-ops in Kenosha are very healthy and there are many opportunities to get connected. This seemed like a great opportunity, but as we looked into what this could look like and just how much time we wanted our kids to be with others in an academic way, the amount of time we wanted ended up looking much more like a traditional school setting than a homeschooling co-op.
Our last consideration in this realm was the possibility of homeschooling at a young age, and then when it seemed like they were ready leave the home and engage with others then we would send them. As we thought this through, we were reminded of just how important it is to build habits at young ages. I thought back to my experience in education. One of the unique experiences I had was working at an elementary school and then taking a position in student management at the middle school level afterwards. The result was that I had the opportunity to see some students progress from 1st grade all the way through 8th grade. One relevant observation from this was related to habits. Some of the bad habits that a child had in Kindergarten, if they weren’t broken at a young age, continued on with that child even on into 8th grade and beyond! Obviously, there are good habits and bad habits, but the point in the observation when considering to keep our children home at younger ages was that we understood it to be a difficult thing to build a habit at a young age and then break it later on. If we were going to send our kids to school ever, we wanted to build the habit of attending school and being around others ideas at a young age, because that’s how lasting habits are formed.
Learning From People Outside the Home
When we studied what education looked like at various points and locations in history, we found something very interesting. well, we found a lot of interesting things! But, we found one thing to be very relevant to us in our homeschooling consideration. We found that our natural thought process was that homeschooling was the most “organic” option. We had always thought of homeschooling as what always happened before compulsory education laws began to roll out and before the industrial revolution began to shape the education system into mass production. Because of this assumption, we found a sense of guilt that we were even considering sending our kids out of the home. We had even heard it argued that the Bible never says to send your kids out of the home for education. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that this assumption was misguided.
One foundational discovery was that through most of history we have been made up of communities and localities, whereas in most recent years we have shifted to being made up of industries and networks. In the context of communities and localities everyone was an integral and necessary part of that locality. From the adults all the way down to the children, everyone had a role to play. In regards to children, there certainly would be a small handful of things they would learn in the home, the majority of their learning happened as they left the home and learned from others in the community. Apprenticeships were an absolutely necessary part of raising up the next generation to be a productive member of that community. Every adult in these communities were expected to play a part in teaching and raising the next generation, not just the parents. Teaching was not a profession, but an expectation for all. In fact, it was through this that children became much more well rounded as they learned not just from their parents, but from many others in the local community about how things work. It is said that reading books and other peoples thoughts allows you to become many different men instead of just an individual wrapped up in their own thoughts. In the same way, learning from others allows you to become much more well rounded and equipped for life. It is in these times that education seemed to flourish the most.
Because of this, we realized that what education looked like in biblical times was far less like homeschooling, and much more like children learning by immersing themselves in the day to day doings of the local community. We were reminded of images of Jesus as a young boy, sitting at the feet of those who weren’t his parents in the Temple. The practice of discipleship itself was by nature learning about life from those who weren’t your parents, just as Paul (then Saul) learned at the feet of one of the most well respected Pharisees, Gamaliel. As we remembered this, we realized that there are others who may be able to teach our kids certain things far better than we could. Yes, that was hard to admit!
I share all of this, because we were able to experience freedom from any sense of guilt in regards to making a decision to send out child out of the home to be educated. It wasn’t unnatural, it wasn’t unbiblical, and in our eyes, it was actually a beautiful thing!
Community
The last key and and important item we found ourselves valuing was community. We wanted our children to truly be a part of a community on a consistent and routine basis. One of the things we realized was just how disconnected we are from others in modern times. We talk about this all the time, don’t we? We talk about how even though Facebook claims to connect people, it has only further divided us and kept us away from each other. We talk about how the digital world and smart phones are keeping us from real human interaction, and how sad it is to see families out to dinner with everyone only looking at screens. We talk about how busy we are and how difficult it is to schedule a get together with other families. We realized that this is sort of the natural result of the historical shift we’ve made from communities and localities to industries and networks. While there may be positives to that shift, the downside to less real human interaction is an increase in depression and suicide.
Kelly and I realized that we wanted our kids to experience abundance in community for the sake of their overall mental health. We wanted them to know what it means to be around many other people and to work together as a group. We knew that we couldn’t offer this just in the home. We certainly get together with people a lot, but even with how much we get together with people, we still know that we would benefit from more. It seemed to us that the healthiest moments in history are the moments and locations where human interaction is at its maximum. We ended up wanting a consistent community for our kids to be around, and a school that shares our values as parents would offer that. This relates to the Paideia concept written about in our foundations series. Click below to view that article!
Conclusions
So, after all of these considerations we felt, even though homeschooling has positives, that it made more sense to send our kids to a school we trusted, shared our values, and was a place where our children would experience the three key things elaborated on above. There are certainly other things we want included in our children’s education, but these were the key things we considered when thinking through the homeschooling option. We love how we came to this conclusion and feel like we learned a lot along the way. As I said in the disclaimer, this is the decision we made as a family who is in charge of governing ourselves under the authority of God’s Word. I wanted to share this experience because we experienced some freedom along the way and we wanted to be able to hopefully share that freedom with others who may be struggling through this decision.
