I know there are a lot of children who lose their faith in public school. But there are a lot of parents who don’t get all that involved in their children’s moral and intellectual development. They don’t seem to realize that this is their responsibility regardless of how or where they choose to have their children educated.

I can’t say what anyone from Vision Forum or anywhere else believes other than what they say. And many do seem to promise that homeschooling will “save” our children. I’ve heard it countless times, and I’ve heard people who have chosen other means of education, regardless of how much they are otherwise invested in the education of their children, criticized and even condemned by fellow Christians. I have seen comments like “how can they even consider themselves Christians while still sending their children to school?” on forums and that is the attitude to which I am responding.

I do believe in homeschool. I do, I do, I do!
~mel

I do have to totally disagree with your quote “because children tend to adopt the values of their parents regardless of their schooling.” This has been disproved time and time again. High school students who identify themselves as Christian are changing their faith in college by astronomical numbers. I know too many heartbroken mothers to even understand where you got your data. It just isn’t true.

The “government” school is an indoctrination machine. If you don’t believe me, you either never went to public school or have blocked out your experience. Christianity doesn’t have to be openly criticized to be persecuted. But when people in authority say things to children to imply that what certain people (aka Christians) believe are small minded or hateful or that we need to keep open minds to learn all things (aka what the teachers tell you) the school is trying to break down the interenal belief system of the students and make them homogenous. Ugh. The WHOLE goal of public school is to make children the same. (Read Deschooling Society by Ivan Ilych.) The way education is done overall is just wrong. It doesn’t work. And instead of fixing it, the gov’t throws money at it. I started homeschooling purely for academic purposes to ensure my children could think freely and not be made into performing seals for the standardized test believers and their ilk. But God has taught me that the damage public schools do to children reach far beyond the academic. I believe and know many ps teachers who agree with me but do not know how to fix the “machine.” Read the works of John Holt- a public teacher for years and New York teacher of the year. It is not only Christianity that is being squelched in government schools; it is freedom, truth, imagination, and the ability to think for one’s self! It really is time to find a worthy alternative to public school or completely revamp it. It should really bear little resemblance to what we refer to as “school.”

And I have some of the greatest minds of all time agreeing with me. Thomas Jefferson said “education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire.” And Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “it is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled holy curiostiy of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.”

Children need to be in a safe environment where they can question without fearing the answer will take them. Public school is not this place. There is no freedom there.

In Christ Alone,
mel

With this kind of involvement, kids tend to do well regardless of the school environment, and if the environment is truly damaging physically, intellectually, emotionally or spiritually, the parents will feel more empowered to do something about it.

Starting out with “Homeschool or your children will rot in hell,” really only shuts people out and makes us all look like a bunch of unsocialized nuts.

I am certainly glad you had good experiences; mine were for the most part also. However, it doens’t mean that these things did not occur even within the very same schools to other children and adults. Someone got bullied on the playground, and someone got bullied in the teacher’s lounge also.

I agree that Drake’s statement was ludicrous. I hear the opposite views often enough; that homeschoolers are abusing their children and so forth. It is all nonsense. However, the real difference between the two opposing sides is that one of them is funded by taxpayer dollars and has the full backing of the law, social services, and public opinion (although I like to think that public opinion has changed in the last twenty years or so).

I think ideas such as “regaining covenantal visions” are geared to evangelical Christians who are currently homeschooling for reasons such as academic achievement, which isn’t really a Biblical ideal as I understand it (and I can be wrong here of course). It also means that without a broader “vision”, homeschooling falls apart when times become tough.

I don’t believe homeschoolers of any kind ought to feel “excluded”. Homeschooling is not a club with a one-size-fits-all approach (unlike, dare I say, public education) that a parent has to sign up for under certain rules or points of view. A parent is 99.99999% of the time the best teacher for his or her child, period. However, if you’re a Christian, homeschooling is just part of the family system (as it were) that helps to encourage faith and give children live and walking models on a daily basis of what it means to be followers of Christ. Renewal/revival begins at home, and that just isn’t likely to happen when the vast majority of Christian parents expect other teachers/pastors/counselors and whomever else to disciple their children.

“Hostility” isn’t always met with swords. Sometimes it is just with the persistant (and arrogant?) insistance that a secular, consumer and employee driven, tolerant, and liberal worldview is the only proper response to the nation’s problems. The idea of “sin” is rather quaint, and isn’t allowed in any public school that I know of, anywhere.

It is true some words are hurtful. Most are probably birthed in frustration and all need to be tempered with grace. My hope is that parents of all walks will begin to homeschool their children, AND that they would all know the joy of following God through Jesus Christ in doing so.

Good discussion, great job.

I am not an apologist for the public school system, but when homeschool advocates are making statements like Drake’s that those who send their children to public school should be sent to jail, there is a serious disconnect. You talk about the NEA’s stance opposing homeschooling, but how different is the tone and character of statements made by Drake and the Exodus Mandate, really? Homeschoolers can talk about parents of children in the public schools with the same kind of arrogant attitude which often can look like these particular advocates have no more respect for the ability of parents to make educational decisions for their own children than the NEA.

These kinds of statements are not going to make parents with children in the public school system reconsider that decision. It only pushes people into their respective camps and makes homeschoolers look like we are bit nutty.

Of course homeschooling is a wonderful way to disciple your own children. After all, that is a large part of why I homeschool. But I really don’t think that the harsher tone some of these groups are striking benefits anyone.

I never said that these different groups shouldn’t exist…private organizations have the right to include or exclude whomever they choose for whatever reason. But how many different “flavors” are there really? Eventually, the market will expand to include those who currently feel excluded, because homeschooling seems to be growing at leaps and bounds…a “problem” some seem to be meeting with attempts to “regain the covenantal vision” of homeschooling as someone wrote to Doug Phillips.

I’ve personally attended nine different (and yet the same) ones growing up. Isn’t every public school affiliated with the NEA? Don’t they think that parents are stupid?
http://www.nea.org/espcolumns/dv040220.html Aren’t they the ones that pass a resolution every year to combat homeschooling?

This sounds a bit much like “to each his own”, which, of course, may be what was intended. Homeschooling in itself is not the answer to sin and its ilks, but it sure is powerful stuff to disciple your own children on a daily basis (Christian or not). Personally, I’m fine with all of the different conferences and flavors in magazines and don’t think it’s that big a deal. You know, “to each his own”

I was also a former public school teacher (and NEA member and representative). “Tolerating” all religions meant “accepting” them all…which meant distain for Christianity…which, of course, comes swinging with there-is-only-one-way-to-God. Furthermore, there is (or was, when I was teaching) a great pressing need to teach about all cultures except ours (excepting where ours involved angry white European men killing off innocent natives and taking over land….or more recently, killing off all the rain forests…). Evolution was never allowed to be questioned or debated, because, duh, it’s true and all. And of course, the school nurse was entrusted to pass along information and support for birth control and abortion services information without thought to the student’s family’s values regardless of their religion.

So, again…..are there really schools in America that are different? Just wondering.

I only become frustrated when I see how many parents so easily abdicate their authority to others who they think “understand children better”. If a parent is making an imformed decision regarding their child’s education, then great. Most parents I come in contact with, view public school as the default button. They are not making an informed decision. As a matter of fact they don’t even know what their child is being taught. They’ve never seen a textbook (district doesn’t allow them to go home), never been to an assembly, never even been in the classroom. That is only reason I even mentioned what was in some of my husband’s textbooks. So many parents do not know.

I just want those parents to understand that they have options. That they really should stop to think about what their child is being taught and what their child is not be taught in their current educational environment. I’ve seen public school, private school, and homeschooling students spiritually strong and spiritually weak. I believe in a Soverign God who is so much bigger than an educational choice. I’m a strong advocate for parents taking the authority and responsibility for their child’s education, whatever form that takes.