Homeschooling Thoughts Post 4

Yep, we're back on this topic. I'm not trying to be a one-trick pony, but I want to get this done and go find something else to blog about.

One of the common discussions in Christian homeschooling is related to being a Christian witness in the community. If you're not a Christian, you're probably not all that concerned with the idea---and will likely be bored silly by the following. Read on, though, if you like.

The most frequent condemnation that Christians who choose to homeschool receive from other Christians is this: Since Christians are supposed to be "salt and light" in the world and tell others about Jesus, are you not abandoning the mission field of schools by holding your kids out?

Here's the first response, and it's a kind of a knee-jerk defensive one: I will take that question seriously from anyone who has left their career and gone into public education so that they, as Christian adults, are working in the mission fields of schools. Not from those who live in church offices, not from those who work in banks, and not even from those who chose teaching for the summers off. For those who have chosen to go into and chosen to remain in teaching for the purpose of spreading the Gospel.

Why? Because if you aren't doing it yourself, you really have no business telling me it's a need. That's actually one of my personal pet peeves in ministry and American Christian behavior: those folks who know exactly what everyone else should be doing. If you are so passionate for the lost kids in schools, then go yourself and don't tell me to sacrifice my children to what you won't do.

For those of you who are curious about the more well-thought responses, here are those:

Well-thought response part one: Christians are, indeed, commanded to spread the Gospel and be salt and light in the world. That command is given to Christians. None of my children at kindergarten were bound to that command. Or at first grade. Two of them are at this point, and we certainly wouldn't want any of them behaving contrary to Gospel-centered life, but there's no way my youngest is commanded to be a missionary. He's not even a Christian at this point.

Let's think a little further about this: I am a Southern Baptist, and we have a process for appointing missionaries that involves examining spiritual maturity, preparation for the challenges, and long-range support. That's what would be required for me to be a "missionary" in far away places like Little Rock as well as foreign nations. Yet a child is qualified to tackle the mandated-atheist environment of a government school simply by living in the district?

Now, this shifts and adjusts as children come to faith, become young adults, and grow in the faith. Some parents have chosen, together with their maturing teens, to enter the school system for that purpose. I do not know what choice our family will make when those days come for us, but those of you who chosen to do that, you have my respect.

Well-thought response part two: the world is more than the school room. Not being in the school room does not deny homeschool children the opportunity to be involved in Christian life and witness. There are people that Christians can seek out and interact with during any time of day. A parent can be available and can help shape the situation to protect both the child and the opportunity to be salt and light. After all, this is about honoring God and we don't want it go screwy because we let an 8-year-old do something they weren't capable of. You wouldn't do that in the kitchen or the deer woods, right?

This comes back to not being involved in Fort Homeschool that never interacts with the world.

Which is a choice that has to be made if you're homeschooling. It's very easy to lock down and never leave the house. Shut door, shop for groceries online, and keep the bad people out.  Except you can't do that. Reach out and build the opportunities.

Homeschool Part 3

It's an ongoing series with no determined ending. I dropped "Reasons" from the title because it's not always about the whys or why-nots, sometimes I want to hit methods, problems, obstacles…

Here is one of the top challenges when it comes to homeschooling your children: social skills. It's the major question asked by family members, was the subject of a 5 minute diatribe by a pediatrician who criticized us for homeschooling during a routine visit, and one of a conscientious homeschool parent's major concerns. If your kids only spend time at home, then how do they learn to relate to other people? How do they learn to get along with folks?

Well, #1: family is people, after all—and when you live with your classmates and teacher, there's no chance that you get to just ignore someone being obnoxious and escape via the Yellow Bus. You're stuck. So, the first response I have is this: if they are never out of the home, they're still learning to deal with people, because home has people in it. And, seriously, you always get along with your siblings and parents and never have to sort out differences? Really?

#2: Beyond that, the next answer is generally obvious, but as a result, gets overlooked: they are not always at home. Now, some people get too extreme and really do build Fortress Homeschool from birth to 21, and they deserve their own post for this: Yikes. You scare me. Get out more.

But most of us are not home all the time any more than a "stay-at-home parent" stays at home. Yes, there are specific times that schoolwork is done at home, but then there's: interacting with the people at the library; interacting with people at daytime church or community events; going to zoos, museums, and other educational places when these places are not so crowded you can't learn and you actually talk to experts while there.

After all, at school, what should they be doing? Listening to their teachers and doing their work, right? That 30-minute math lecture isn't introducing any social skills beyond the "sit and listen" skill, and we can replicate that at home.

#3: Ah, but the other times at school, kids learn to interact and behave like kids their age. Yes, and the ones that never grow up beyond junior high school become Congress people of both parties or perhaps hold other political offices. This is a question of goals and the best way to reach them: is the goal for my 10-year-old to act like a 10-year-old? For 1 year it is. Then it is for her to mature and act like----an 11-year-old. And so on. All with the goal of her becoming a mature, functional adult that relates to other adults.

Which is where social skill time is often spent: with adults that recognize that kids aren't quite there yet, but help them get there. Homeschoolers that aim for the best do try to get their kids out interacting with the wide array of people that are in this world. Because very few people spend their time interacting with a single maturity set, a maturity set that is just like theirs. Except the aforementioned political office holders who never grew up past junior high.

#4: This is an important aspect of this question (unlike the "learn to act your age" which is nonsense, because being 10 isn't a life skill): what about interacting with people that are not like you at all. For example, we are white, middle-class (basically, though our income runs much lower than average in that class), Baptist-type Christians. Do our kids spend any time with Latino, wealthy, Buddhists?

Um, no. Because there aren't any people in that demographic in Almyra. Of course, there aren't in the DeWitt School System feed area either. A few responses: 1: Just because you're in the same school doesn't mean you interact. I am Facebook connected to high-school classmates from different ethnic groups but we didn't hang out much in school. Most of the white kids hung out with white kids, and so on---you know why? Kids are immature and socialize with people they have commonalities with. When I got into band, I socialized with band nerds. Honestly, band nerds came from all walks of life and multiple ethnicities. Nobody cared: we were all band nerds. Skin didn't matter much. We only knew who the Jews were because they got the extra holidays, and you could see who was African-American, Latino, or white but it didn't matter for that time. It mattered other times, but not when band was our common bond. All said, being in a government school doesn't guarantee a child learns to appreciate all ethnic groups or has multi-racial friendships. It can just reinforce stereotypes and group dynamics of hatred.

Response #2: We also don't stress that no one is shoving other religious views down their throats. Oldest child is getting older and reading more diverse books. She's learning to interact with ideas and think critically about all of them. And just as I would rather a person who wanted to judge Christianity start with the Bible itself rather than many Christians, so most beliefs are best understood starting with the writings about them. We don't hang out with any Buddhists, but we've got books that introduce the belief system. Likewise, there aren't many minority families in this community, but our church is working with a minority church in a neighboring community to do things together. That helps. Our kids know (or will know) Frederick Douglass and Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant and Phyllis Wheatley. My son loves the book about the Tuskegee Airmen. They are huge fans of the work of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver---and it comes to them as no surprise that great advances in science come from women, African-Americans, Arabs, Jews, Asians----none of whom get a "month" but all of whom fit into the flow of history.

 

In all, there is effort required for our kids to fully grasp the social skills they need---but looking back on my years in school, my parents had to retrain a lot of what I learned at school anyway. So, again, why send them to learn things that they don't need and that we'll just have to redo? Seems like a silly waste of time and tax money to me.

Homeschooling Part 2

More on homeschooling, starting with why nots and whys.

1. We do NOT homeschool because the local school system is guaranteed to turn our children into hedonistic disciples of materialism, greed, and sensuality. Schools and peers within them have a great measure of influence on children, and as school days and school years get longer, that influence will certainly grow. For a lot of kids, their parents have disconnected from them and the school is the primary influence, but that is not the fault of the school system.

There is no guarantee from homeschooling that our children will not find evil influences anyway. Just as an example, Hello Kitty is not purely evil but it's not a cartoon character we bothered introducing our children to. We introduced them to VeggieTales, 3-2-1 Penguins, Scooby Doo and to the important cartoons: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Taz, and the Road Runner. No prohibition on Hello Kitty, but no family effort for it. Meanwhile, my middle daughter became a Hello Kitty fanatic simply by exposure from friends. Guess what? If my child at 4 can find Hello Kitty, a homeschooled kid at 15 can find drugs or alcohol.

It's not a complete protective bubble at home anymore than it's a guaranteed sewer at school. We do not homeschool them because their morals will definitely collapse at school.

2. We DO homeschool them because we want to strengthen the moral influence we have on them related to drugs and alcohol. Some of that is related to raising, just a little, the age of initial exposure. What do I mean? I learned about drugs at school. In the effort to teach us to "Just Say No," my elementary school brought in a police officer with a demo kit to show us drugs and tell us to reject them. In fact, the only marijuana I've ever held was given to me by a police officer in elementary school. It was in a sealed baggie and he was right there, but that's the only time I've seen it and held it.

I don't remember if that was 4th or 6th grade. Guess what? My 5th grader is being taught about what is healthy right now, being taught self-control, and taught about long-term consequences. Does she get it all? Not hardly. She's 10. We're building a foundation. But she doesn't have to hold the stuff she doesn't need to get that. We've held that innocence a little while longer.

We want to equip our kids to make good choices, make right decisions. To that end, we keep them at home and teach them at a better pace that fits them. We also want to be the primary influencers of our children, so why give them to someone else for the bulk of their waking hours?

Homeschooling part 1

I thought I would take a few posts in the coming days and explain about our family. Most folks that know us know that I am the pastor of a small-town Baptist church (empirically small), and that I am married with three kids who take after their mother in all the good ways. We choose that our kids do their education, right now Kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 5th grade, here at home instead of going down the road to the county school system.

I wanted to give a little bit of perspective on reasons that we made the decision to do it this way. Some of these are fact-based reasons, some faith-based, and some emotion-based. And since none of the rest of you are the Hibbards, you've got to make your own choices anyway, but in case you're pondering what to do, here's part of how we made our decision.

First, let's hit some basics:

1. Homeschooling can be done very, very badly. In some cases, parents use homeschooling as cover for educational neglect and let their kids do nothing all the time. Some parents use it for social neglect and never let their kids interact with anybody ever.

We strive not to be that type of family. It is true that our kids don't have huge peer groups to interact with. They do, however, interact with a diverse range of people. Is it as diverse as it should be? No. We're working on that.

2. Most homeschoolers are well aware of the need to put positive effort into helping their kids overcome the drawbacks in homeschooling. That's why we get a little exasperated the fiftieth time we're asked by someone about our children's needs for "socialization." Because the question is often being asked by someone at a social event, where our children are interacting with people of a variety of ages and backgrounds, and doing so quite well. Then, we get asked "How will they learn to interact with people?" Really? Why do you think we bring them out in public at all hours of the day?

Trust me, most of us know our shortcomings and don't need your help seeing them.

3.Homeschooling should never be used to fake academic achievement. That's one problem I have with some of these "equal-access" pushes to allow homeschool participation in school extra-curricular activities. I know what my kids have done, but I don't know quite how it grades. Would they get a good enough GPA to be eligible? Well, they ought to, but is it fair?

Our version of homeschooling does have requirements and prescribed assignments and subjects. Not everyone homeschools that way, but we do.

4. This is also not about pure religious indoctrination. Yes, we blend Bible and our Christian faith into our schoolwork. It's not impossible, though, to teach your faith to your children without taking them out of school.

Homeschooling is not about building a wall that keeps the world out or blocking all alternative views. It does allow for blending more aspects into education: no one is going to sue us for our kids singing Christmas songs about Jesus in school. That has happened in public schools, and it's sad, because that's putting up a wall and blocking alternative views.

5. Most homeschoolers are not in it for the money. Truth is, we spend as little as possible but as much as necessary, and it runs about $1000 a year so far for books and materials. We could spend less if we wanted to go the library every week and more if we wanted to blow cash on more fun things. That's a cost we're wiling to pay. Most of us wouldn't mind if we got to count our education expenses as a tax deduction like college expenses are, but we can live with what we've got.

And, no, it doesn't bother me that "we pay for a school system we don't use." My parents pay taxes for the Ouachita Parish School System in Louisiana, and they don't use it. Lots of taxpayers pay for schools because of the societal benefit from them, not because of personal use. Now, am I concerned that greater dollar amounts go into schools now than did 20 years ago but we have worse results? Everybody should be concerned with that, and the solution is more complex than adjusting the dollar amount (up or down). But I don't think we're entitled to a refund just because our kids don't use the local school. (But, an income tax deduction would be nice. At the state level, since that's where most of my state income taxes go.)

That's just a few random thoughts on this. More to come later.