I have been asked some questions lately about why and how we are and will be homeschooling, so I thought I would post the answers for anyone who is curious.
Why are you going to homeschool?
We are going to homeschool for many reasons that would take me longer than I have right now to answer, so here are just a few reasons (these are our personal opinions, and I am not applying them to you, reader, so please keep your offendedness to a minimum:o)
1. We believe that God has given us, as parents, the ultimate responsibility of raising our children. It would be very hard to train them up in the way they should go if we were only together for a couple of hours a day. We apply this to spiritual training as well as education. We don't leave the spiritual training of our children up to sunday school teachers either. It is our primary responsibility. Here is one of the scriptures that has influenced our decision:
Deuteronomy 11
18“You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. 19 “You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. 20 “You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth. 22 “For if you are careful to keep all this commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and hold fast to Him, 23 then the LORD will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. 24 “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours; your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea. 25 “No man will be able to stand before you; the LORD your God will lay the dread of you and the fear of you on all the land on which you set foot, as He has spoken to you.
26 “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, which I am commanding you today; 28 and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today, by following other gods which you have not known.
2. We want our children to be family focused, not peer focused, and we want our day to center around the home, not being shuttled here, there, and everywhere.
3. We want to control what our children learn, and at what age they learn what a sex is, STD's are, or a myriad of other topics mean.
4. We want to control who our children are influenced by until they exhibit godly wisdom and decision making skills that frankly, no 5 year old can possess.
5. I don't trust many people with my children. 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 10 boys is molested by the age of 18, and while my trust rests in the Lord to protect my kids, and I can't always be with them, I can be as careful as possible. I read an article last week about a girl who was stabbed in the back multiple times by scissors in the hallway at school (this wasn't an inner city school either) by a boy she didn't even know. Enough said!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Homeschooling- Q & A Part 1
Posted by Samantha at 8:53 AM
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4 comments:
thanks for sharing this! i always love hearing your ideas. i've considered homeschooling our kids, though at this point i'm planning to send them to public school.
i do really relate to wanting to have a good centered home life, free from chaos and people running in different directions. this is something we'll have to be purposeful about if we send the kids to public school. one thing i think is SO important is family dinners around the table. so simple and yet such an integral part of the day.
will your kids be involved in any extracurricular-type activities outside the home like sports, choir, etc.? seems like such a challenge in general if you have more than one kid!
I think that you hit the nail on the head, Brianna. It IS about being purposeful, in all we do. It is so easy to just go with the flow that everyone else is doing and not think through the issues ourselves. I think that families can try to be more "home-centered" even though dad is at work and the kids are at school. If the kids know what is valued in their family, dad's sets the vision, the kids want something to follow.
We will definitely be involved with things outside the home, but my hope is that we will do them as a family as much as possible. There are homeschooling co-ops that we can be a part of that have choir or sports, or the arts. It just won't be the most important part of our lives. It is hard to be home-centered when no one is home!
Thanks for your comment, I appreciate your thoughts as well!
(A good book to read is Mary Pride's Schoolproof if you do send your kids to public school. It is a great tool on how to supplement what they are learning in the classroom.)
Hi Samantha, i find this whole topic interesting as well.
I'm wondering about the friendships your children will have. Will you only allow them to "hang out" with other kids who are homeschooled? What about other kids in your neighborhood who may attend public schools? Would you try to discourage them from having more than a casual relationship with those children?
Like i said, this is a very interesting topic to me. So many questions and things to think about!
Thanks for your question Sara, I answered it in a new post!
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