With so many school-aged children at home these days due to the China virus, I’m hoping many parents will consider continuing to home school their precious sons and daughters after the health risks of the virus have receded. That’s my goal with this post.
Melissa and I home schooled our children for seven years. We are advocates of, and believers in the process. Not because we were good at it, but because the overall experience was good for our family.
There are so so many advantages to home schooling. I’ve listed fifteen of our favourites below. Some are faith and values-oriented. Others are simply educational advantages.
Please add more ideas in the comments, and feel free to share your experiences.
- Fathers and mothers are the primary teachers and shapers of their children’s character, so home schooling makes sense in a day when our children are increasingly targeted. Home is the “rubber meets the road” school to which all other institutions must submit. In Melissa’s words, we need to be “the primary influence on our kids”.
- Most kids absolutely thrive in a home school environment. Kids just zoom on an individual basis, rather than having to grab one 30th of a teacher’s time and attention.
- Home schooling can be accomplished on four or fewer teaching hours per day. Afternoons can be used for a student’s independent work or other developmental activities. Our son was able to do tennis and fitness training some afternoons when his athletic peers were trapped in public schools. Other kids enjoy music lessons or other activities during the day, when demand for special instruction is lower than during the after school rush.
- Home school does not have any of the following: line-ups, noisy and crazy cafeterias, deviant sexual (LGBT) or socialist indoctrination, unnecessary paperwork, Common Core or testing designed to make a school look good. Nowhere in the bible does it say that we need to send our children to the Philistines for an education. Keep them at home so they can benefit from raw, awesome education delivered by fathers or mothers who know and love their scholars better than anyone out there.
- You will actually witness first hand each of your children’s erupting academic passions and strengths, rather than (maybe) hearing about them later in scheduled teacher conferences. We caught our son on many occasions reading through an entire set of encyclopedias just for the fun of it.
- Parents, rather than county administrators, pick curriculum that best fit each child’s learning style as well as teacher preparation ramp-up time. One size doesn’t fit all, but there are a lots of quality choices readily available out there.
- The home schooling community is exploding, so there are tons of helpful resources for newbies: FB groups, online curricula, online academies, co-ops, local community home school academies, and orgs like museums with special home school offerings.
- Permissive and age inappropriate Planned Parenthood “sex ed” curriculum designed to promote premature sexual activity won’t reach your child, so you don’t have to be on the constant alert in order to opt them out of unhelpful content. If moral protection is as important as it is to Melissa and me, this will be a huge benefit to continuing your home schooling adventure.
- Home schoolers as a rule tend to do better academically than their government school counterparts. In addition, your children will become better at working independently at a younger age — a key skill that needs to be in place by the time they go to university.
- Family holidays can be taken spontaneously and at any time of year. No need to plan around school breaks when everyone else travels and when rates for accommodations skyrocket due to demand. Just go whenever.
- Parents can easily integrate a biblical worldview and values into the academic curriculum, rather than dropping kids off at an institution that increasingly operates in radical opposition to the values of the home. Government schools tend to engage in academic censorship — talking about some subjects, but not talking about others that are intimately linked. There is no academic censorship in the home school, as it is a fully integrative environment. History, Science, and English Literature lend themselves particularly well to integration, especially when supplemented with family read-alouds.
- A field trip materialises anytime you walk out the door of your house, whether it be in the back yard, at the store, or at an art gallery or museum. All outings are educational and potentially life-enriching opportunities.
- Transportation benefits: No bussing with bad behavioural modelling, or frustrating traffic jams leading up to the school doors.
- Parents get to relearn stuff they forgot years ago. It’s an all-family education!
- The deal-breaker: More time with your precious children. In Melissa’s words, “opportunities to bond more deeply by going through more experiences together.”
What have I forgotten?
Keep going with what you are doing at home with your kids. Please don’t stop. If you’re curious, do more online research on home schooling. Talk to your neighbours who are already committed to it. They don’t have three heads — they just love their kids and want God’s best for them.
You can do this! Check out the amazing resources at HSLDA.
Blessings on your home,
robert
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