7 Reasons Not to Let the Government Educate your Child - Conclusion

For the past couple months, we have looked at a number of different arguments, both negatively against public schooling (and to a large extent, Christian schools) and positively for homeschooling.  Am I saying that homeschooling does not have problems?  Absolutely not!  In fact, most of these reasons can be applied to a poorly structured homeschool.  But to a biblically based, dynamic homeschool, these reasons provide major benefit against the public schools.  

I must stress what I did not talk about.  I spent extremely little time on content.  What I did talk about regarding content was the Christian base.  People can debate over whether or not Common Core is good for schools.  People can debate over whether or not the teaching of evolution and an old earth is good.  People fight to get intelligent design taught in schools as though that is justification for putting our children into schools.  It is not.  What is absolutely not debatable is whether or not Christ is exalted in the standard public school program.  He is not.  Thanks to Madelyn Murray O’Hair and the United States Supreme Court (Engel v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp), school prayer and Bible reading has been outlawed since 1963.  Some will try to dodge the issue and say that students can pray (quietly) and read the Bible during class.  That is not the issue.  If the educators cannot educate children in religious matters, like modeling prayer and reading the Bible as inerrant, then the educators cannot properly educate.  The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline (Proverbs 1:7).

So how will you respond?  What compels you to send your children to the public schools?

     It is not because your children are to be a light in the schools, for it is not their job, and they are almost certainly ill-prepared for the task (Aside)

     It is not the education, for their education is corrupt (Reason #1)

     It is not because schools are time-efficient, because they are extremely inefficient (Reason #2)

     It is not because they are bigger, because they fall harder (Reason #3)

     It is not because it is free, because it isn’t (Reason #4)

     It is not because they are flexible, because they aren’t (Reason #5)

     It is not for the one-on-one interaction, because it simply isn’t present (Reason #6)

     It is not to get away from remedial education, because it is present every year (Reason #7)

So why?  Why do Christians pour their children into these places?  Why are these parents surprised when, after giving them 10 times as much secular education as they do religious education, they find out their children are secular?  

In almost every instance, these people put their children into the public schools because they simply haven’t thought about the issue.  They grew up in the public schools, and most, if not all, of their friends grew up in the public schools.  Their friends with older children put them in the public schools, and so when it comes time to decide how their children will be educated, the answer is clear.  For many of them, private Christian schooling is simply too expensive for consideration.  The idea of teaching them at home, or with a trusted homeschooling friend, simply doesn’t come up.

In the beginning I said that my target audience was not those whose kids are in high school.  If anything, my audience is the high schoolers themselves.  People who don’t yet have children, be they single or married.  People who have young children.  People who have only recently put their children in public schools.  There is still time!  When your child is 15, it is most likely too late.  To those whose children are older, I’m sorry.  I don’t mean that in a judging way.  I truly feel sorrow because even for those students who do stay in the church, they are absolutely affected.  I speak as one of them.  After my mother became informed on the reasons we decided to homeschool, she actually apologized to me for putting me in the public schools.  She can’t unmake that mistake, but she can (and has) supported us fully in homeschooling our children.  Perhaps that is a book for her to write.

As I conclude this series, I must make one other thing clear:  There is no absolute dichotomy here when it comes to salvation.  It is certainly possible for a child to go through 12-13 years of public schooling and exit a Christian, perhaps even a fairly strong Christian.  It is also possible for a child to be homeschooled through the most God-honoring, efficient, customized school program in existence, and exit without any love for God.  There are Daniels in the public school, and Judases in the homeschools.  But we can’t decide that public schooling is acceptable on the hope that our child will be a Daniel.  We can’t write off homeschooling because of the chance that our child will be a Judas.  Far and away the majority case is that you act as you have learned.  Will you learn the Fear of the Lord?  Or simply fear of man?

The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline. - Proverbs 1:7

7 Reasons Not to Let the Government Educate your Child - Reason #7

The final reason in this list against government education is perhaps most visible right now.  Kids are right now coming off of summer vacation and going back to school.  When it comes to the high school age and below, it is not often that you start new fields.  They do exist (and these new fields are exempt from this reason), but you only take maybe two per year at most, if at all.  What I mean by "new fields" are classes that you didn't take a previous iteration of them the semester before.  For example, shop class is a new field (at first).  So is Spanish I (but not Spanish II).  Most of the classes you take in high school are just more advanced versions of what you took in middle school, and even elementary school.  I took English all throughout my schooling, as I did Social Studies, Science, and Math.

For these core classes that you take year after year, schools typically waste about 2 weeks per year because of two words:

Summer.  Vacation.

Anyone who does any sort of independent learning knows extremely well how awful it is to spend 3 entire months without studying a subject.  You get rusty.  When I spend extended time away from Hebrew, I start to forget some of the morphology.  What that means is that when I go back to studying it, I have to delay learning new material, because I need remedial education just to get me back to where I was at before!

It is the same thing for math, or history, or science.  Teachers spend the first part of the school year going back over what they taught right before summer vacation.

What has homeschooling to do with this?  When we looked previously at how inflexible government schooling is time-wise (Reason #5), I mentioned that there was another facet to schools' inflexibility.  We now come to this facet, which is that schools have standardized summer vacation as a break.  It does not matter what your parents do for a living.  It does not matter if you are really interested in a subject.  We won't teach you.  Not now.  You'll have to wait until August, or study by yourself.

Some may defend Summer Vacation.  Some students will spend their time at a summer job.  Some students will spend their time reading ahead for next year's classes.  These are both valid points.  However, the problem is that most students will do absolutely nothing during their vacation.  Video games, TV, and gobs of Internet usage headlined my summer vacation, and I have reason to suspect that most kids do not veer far away from my itinerary.

Homeschooling allows us to break that awful chain.  Does that mean that our children never get any break, ever?  Not at all! We, as a homeschool, can (just as an example, this concept is entirely fluid) spend the summer months one week on, one week off.  We can take the last few weeks of August off, and then "start" school back up in at the beginning of September.  Birthdays?  Holidays?  Automatically off.  It allows us to enjoy the benefits of summer, while pushing forward in education, and removing that remedial section found in the public schools.

When I was a child, I thought like a child.  I reasoned like a child.  I thought that summer vacation was great. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.  I realized that summer vacation simply does more harm than good.

7 Reasons Not to Let the Government Educate Your Child - Reason #6

This reason, outside of the first one, may have the single greatest practical effect on the child.  In importance, I would rank this as #2 of these 7 reasons.

Simply put, in the public schools your child is one of many.  I don’t mean to insult any public school teachers, and I don’t mean to give the implication that they don’t care about their students.  Some homeschooling advocates seem to give off that impression, but I want to be clear that for the most part, teachers genuinely care about their students.  However, they get so many.  Your average third grade teacher almost certainly cares for the kids entrusted into their care.  But they only really get one good school year with each of those students.  How many elementary school teachers can remember the names of half of the class they taught 5 years ago?  3?  Last year?  As much as they can care for students, the simple fact is that most of those students they care for now, their care will fade into nothingness a decade from now.  Sure they will love to hear of what happened to them afterwards, but how many of them are praying for students they had 5 years ago?  The problem here isn’t with the teachers, it is with the system.  

Not only does the child move from teacher to teacher, but when they are in class, they are usually in a group of maybe 20 other children.  That means that one-on-one interaction is extremely limited.  Given the inefficiency explained in a previous post, the teacher simply does not have the time to give each and every child the opportunity to ask questions and effectively teach the lesson.  Also, every child in that classroom is different.  Some of the children are tracking very well with what the teacher is saying.  Some are bored because they already understand the material and are waiting for the teacher to tell them something they haven’t already heard.  And some are having great difficulty even keeping up with what the teacher said five minutes ago.  So why are these kids in the same class?  Because they are the same age, and are grouped into completely arbitrary units called ‘grades’.  If you are 11-12 years old, then you are in 6th grade (they used to hold children who were struggling back from advancing to the next grade, but now it is far more common to placate parents by advancing them anyway and giving them a title like “learning disabled”, and this is coming from one who spent years under such a title).  This also means that if you are in 6th grade, you are in 6th grade everything.  This creates the possibility that one could be at a 7th grade level in math, but a 5th grade level in science, leaving one bored in one class and outclassed in another.

Under such a system only the most gifted students are typically noticed.  The only other ways to be noticed in school is by a) being attractive, b) excelling at extracurricular activities, or c) acting out in defiance (this is negative attention, but most kids would rather have negative attention than no attention at all).  This leaves a good chunk of students falling through the cracks, and that is such a shame.  Teachers are aware of this, and try to push these “sheep children” up, but there is only so much that can be done under this system.

So what is the solution here?  The best solution is to homeschool them.  Under this system the child is being taught by someone who not only cares for them, but loves them deeply, and is more concerned about them than a schoolteacher will be.  The teacher will know the child’s gifts, and after a few years will know the best way to teach them.  Class sizes shrink from 20 to siblings (or perhaps a few more if the homeschooling parents are taking on extra children.  Obviously in that scenario some of these benefits are mitigated). That means that there is much more time to take more questions, and explain things in more depth and detail.

Is one child behind another?  Allow the excelling child to read ahead, while you slow down to the level of the struggling child, and help them understand what is being taught.  In public school, curriculum is decided by people who have never met the children in the room.  Homeschooling allows the curriculum to be shaped by each individual child’s needs and gifts.  Read those two sentences again.  That is seriously some potent stuff there.

Under this system grades can be scrapped altogether.  Or they can take on a much more fluid form, allowing one student to be in multiple grades simultaneously as each subject is taught to different levels.  Is one child gifted in chemistry, but another is gifted in geography?  The way classes are done can actually be changed to help those students foster a love for those subjects.  

Under such a system nobody falls through the cracks.   The teacher will not forget the student, but will care about them deeply, and will know the best way to teach them. And every student gets education tailor-made for their particular gifts and needs.

Which system do you like better?

7 Reasons Not to Let the Government Educate Your Child - Reason #5

Today’s post will be shorter than the others.  Not because this reason is less important, but I don’t feel like there would be much debate about this.

When I was in high school, classes started at 7:30 am.  I typically got to school at about 7:10 ish.  To get there on time, I was usually picked up at my bus stop at 6:40 am.  To get to my bus stop on time I had to wake up at about 6:00 am.  Believe it or not, but most school-aged kids simply aren’t very awake for their first class - and usually their second.  So why have it so early?  Since school is so inefficient (See Reason #2) you have to start pretty early to get kids home by 3 pm.  Parents work, kids go to school, then they reconvene at home and, unless sports, cheerleading, or videogames get in the way, perhaps the family can spend a few hours before its time for bed (unfortunately, this quality time is both shrinking, and being eroded by TV time where the family members don’t speak too much to one another outside of commercial breaks).

But what about the parents who don’t work 9-5?  If I worked 3-12am (as I often used to do) and my wife worked outside of the home (as she used to do) what is the public school going to do?  Nothing.  In that circumstance, I would be left forced to send away my children during the day.  Since someone would have to be around to take care of the kids later in the day, my wife would have to work during the day as well.  By the time I go to work, I’ve spent my day alone, and by the time I get home the house is asleep, the children having lived a functionally fatherless life.  

Homeschooling fixes this.  If I have the children with me, then even in this undesirable situation, at least the kids are spending time with Daddy.  We can do 3 hours worth of school, and the rest is play time.  When Mommy comes home, she does 3 hours worth of school, and the rest is play time.  The burden of school is shared between both parents, and the joy of fun is shared between both parents, even if (a mighty shame) the parent’s have little time together.

The point is that with homeschooling, the burden can be shared, and the schedule can be flexible.  I work Saturdays, but I get Thursdays off.  In public school my children would have to go to school Thursday.  Homeschooling allows us to, at the drop of a hat, give us the option either to allot me with teaching for that day, or to simply take the day off as a weekend day.  If I want to teach at night and enjoy the day together, I can.  If we agree to sleep in until 11 am and start at Noon, that is an option.  There is another major facet to this, but that will have to wait for a later post.