Years ago when we first began thinking of home schooling, the Lord challenged us with Jeremiah 6: 16: “Stand at the crossroads and look, and ask for the ancient paths and the good way.” At the time, we realized we hadn’t a clue what God’s ancient path or good way was for educating our children. Both of us had been for the most part raised by institutions, for the school and church had claimed the majority of our waking hours as children. And these institutions had taught us a way of looking at and living life that was not necessarily God’s way. We took up God’s challenge to “look” and “ask” with questions like:

How do I see myself? We came to adulthood at a time when many Americans considered themselves victims of one sort or another: victims of their upbringing, of their environment, of their lack of education, of the prejudices or actions of others. Unfortunately, we shared the victim mentality’s sense of entitlement and unwillingness to assume personal responsibility for our actions.

What is the focus of my life? Because we were Christians, we automatically would answer, “God is our focus, of course!” But in reality our focus was on the principles and protection of God. Our interaction with God was more a contract than a relationship. We wanted to put Him in our theological box and we expected Him to respond if we followed certain Scriptural principles and engaged in certain spiritual activities.

What is education? We had been taught that “knowledge is power,” and an education is a commodity— something you acquire in order to make you more powerful, either through a better job or a higher social status.

Our public school upbringing had steeped us in a noble humanism that made us the center of the universe and judged everyone and everything else according to whether or not it benefited us. We were firmly enthroned as the gods of our own lives and carried that “me, me, me” mentality into our Christianity. Even Jesus was, in a way, a commodity, because our faith centered around how God would satisfy our needs and help us achieve our ambitions. It was quite a shock to realize that it isn’t the ungodliness in the world that threatens our children, it is the ungodliness in us! This startling discovery strengthened our determination to search for God’s ancient paths and good ways.

We can’t presume to say that we have “arrived,” but at least we can share with you some of what we have discovered on our journey.

Prepared For A World That No Longer Exists
Both of us grew up in the 50s and went to high school and college in the 60s and early 70s. Those of you who did not live through the 1960s have no idea of the radical shift in American culture during those years. In the 50s, our life was lived pretty much as it had been lived for generations. Fathers worked at the same job for years, mothers usually stayed at home and raised their children, and neighborhoods were places where everyone knew everyone else and you and your neighbors shared the same values and many of the same religious beliefs. Picture “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” in your mind and this will give you a pretty good idea of the kind of life we were being prepared to live. Then came the 60s when all traditional assumptions were challenged: assumptions about life, about family, about what had value, about what was worth believing. Instead of being told to work hard, do well in school, get a good job, and raise a family, we were told: “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Millions of young people did. The whole world suddenly changed and as we reached our late 20s, we realized we had been prepared for a world that no longer existed. The benchmarks, the anchors, the external goals, and the institutional structures that were an important part of our parents’ lives were no longer reliable. Our high school and college degrees and our family backgrounds were little help in dealing with the capricious job market, the confusion about roles and relationships, the cynicism and disillusionment, and the relativistic values that greeted us in the world of adulthood.

As we now prepare our own children to function in a future that may be as drastically different from today today is from the ‘60’s, we ask ourselves these questions: How can we give our children the tools and abilities to survive and thrive no matter what the future may bring? What skills and knowledge will stand the test of time and be valuable to them as adults? What helped us weather the ups and downs of the last thirty years? What of all we learned from childhood through adulthood was “real?”

Putting In The Big Rocks First
In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, Stephen Covey has you imagine a man standing behind a table. On the table are a large glass jar and a pile of rocks. The man fills the glass jar to the brim with rocks and asks you, “Is the jar full now?” You answer, “Yes.” The man then brings out a container of small pebbles and begins putting them into the jar. The pebbles fit in the spaces between the big rocks and you see that the jar was not really full. Even though it was full of rocks, the jar still had room for pebbles. The man asks, “Is the jar full now?” You answer, “Yes.” The man then filters quite a bit of sand through the pebbles and big rocks. You think that surely the jar is full now, but the man shows you that there is still room for more by pouring a glass of water into the jar. The jar that you thought was full with just rocks wound up holding pebbles, sand, and water as well.

Our time is like the jar in Stephen Covey’s story. It can be filled with quite a lot of big things and little things. But the important lesson from the story is: Put the big rocks in first. If we don’t make sure we do the really important things, the “big” things, our lives can easily become filled with the “smaller” things. Covey says we spend our time in four ways:

[1] On things that are urgent and important (crises, emergencies, big problems)
[2] On things that are important but not urgent (planning, renewing our vision, thinking, developing relationships, studying, moving towards achieving our goals)
[3] On things that are urgent but not important (most interruptions, phone calls, some meetings)
[4] On things that are neither important nor urgent (useless recreation, watching TV, procrastinating, piddling).

To be productive, successful home schooling parents, we need to be spending more and more of our time on activities that are the most important. Those activities are the “big rocks” while the other activities fill our lives with pebbles, sand, and water.

Determining Your Educational Philosophy
Home schooling parents are often told they should determine their “educational philosophy” before they make any decisions about how they will home school. This may be helpful, but it is not essential, because our “educational philosophy” tends to evolve as we become more know­ledgeable about what we are doing and about the real needs of our children. Plus, the concept of having an “educational philosophy” tends to make us think in terms of home schooling as a compartment of our lives instead of as a lifestyle. Our recommendation is that you begin your home schooling journey by doing the following four things:

First, examine the viewpoints and teaching approaches that currently influence home education. If there is a particular emphasis or teaching ap­proach that appeals to you, take the time to learn about it. The fact that it appeals to you may be the Lord’s gentle nudge in that direction.

Second, take a long, hard look at the presuppositions and objectives of institutional education by reading books such as Going Home to School and Dumbing Us Down. Why? Because, as Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and he is us!” We are so used to thinking of school as children sitting in desks, listening to lectures, and working on pre-packaged curriculum for six hours a day, 180 days a year, over a period of twelve years, that we have a hard time imagining any other way. Also, many products for home educators are merely repackaged versions of public school materials, and we need to be able to recognize them as such. Otherwise, we unwittingly find ourselves adopting the same scope and sequence, the same methods, and the same standardized curriculum that was derived from the public school’s presuppositions and that seeks to achieve its objectives. We will worry if our children aren’t reading by the time they are six or doing fractions by nine. We will guide our children toward popular careers. We will feel unqualified to teach without an education degree. In short, until we understand the misconceptions behind public schooling, we will think that traditional institutionalized education is true education.

For most of us, our public school upbringing has steeped us in ideas about education that have to be discarded if we want to effectively educate our own children at home. As John Gatto says, “School was a lie from the beginning, and it continues to be a lie.” If we know no better, we may buy into the lie and perpetuate its thinking.

Third, try and get in touch with your family’s convictions and values and the real needs of your children. Once you have an idea of what you really want for your children, you will be better prepared to chart your home schooling course.

Fourth, buy several home school resource books that give an overview of home schooling. These books will overwhelm you if you don’t already have an idea of where you want to go with home schooling, so don’t dig into them until you have some sense of your family’s convictions and the real needs of your children. Start with books such as Homeschooling the Early Years, …the Middle Years, and …the Teen Years. They provide general information about teaching each age group. From there begin looking at curriculum guides like those by Cathy Duffey. Educate yourself about “what’s out there” before you start educating your chil­dren.

Prepare to spend several hundred dollars and a few months getting clear about what you want to do. If it makes you feel any better about the amount of time and money you have to spend getting ready to teach your children, think of it this way: The average public school teacher has spent four to six years and twenty to fifty thousand dollars learning how to teach your children. Why shouldn’t you spend some time and money preparing yourself?

However—and this is a big however—don’t think that you have to have everything figured out before you begin. You can adapt as you go. So loosen up and accept the fact that some of what you try will be a total waste of time, energy and money. This is all a part of learning what works for you and for your children. Consider it payment of your tuition in Home Educating U.

ORDER ONLINE >>