Homeschooling vs. Public Schools

My wife and I have a 3-year-old boy, a 17-month-old girl, and our 3^rd child is due in a few weeks. Needless to say, the question of educating our children has been on our minds a lot lately. Both my wife and I went to public school from kindergarten through high school and both attended public universities in the Midwest (southwestern Missouri to be exact). Coming from a small town in a more conservative part of the country to the Denver area in Colorado, we quickly found out what it was like to live in a big city.

Our first town home was only a block away from a public middle school and one of the first things we noticed were the kids going to and from school each day. It was very common for us to see ‘goth-like’ dress, kids smoking, unfiltered, obscene language, the smell of marijuana, and disrespectful talk among other things. At this time we did not have any kids but we jokingly told each other that we’d never send our kids to school here.

Well, that was six years ago and those kinds of things are even more commonplace among kids who go to public schools today. Many youth today exemplify 2 Timothy 3: 1-4:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

I regularly ride public transportation and it just amazes me how arrogant, selfish, and inconsiderate young people have become. On a weekly basis, I see teenagers get on the bus blurting out obscene language to their friends as if no one else is riding along with them – this is especially irritating when I see young children nearby. Many times they’ll cut right in front of people, even the elderly, while getting on and off the bus without thinking twice about it.

Needless to say, it is becoming a rare thing to see a polite, courteous, well-behaved, well-mannered, well-spoken child these days. The other day I was talking to a substitute teacher who was working a long-term stint in a public school. She was going on and on about how disobedient and disrespectful the teenagers are. She spoke of a teacher in her 9^th year that said of all the years she’s taught 8^th graders, that this year was the worst. The kids will not obey the teachers, they don’t really care about learning, they are indifferent to getting suspended from school, and they don’t care what the teachers think about them. Furthermore, there is nothing, no real consequences for the teachers to administer other than to kick them out of class and suspend them – even then they are limited because they can’t suspend everyone. And the kids don’t mind it anyway.

Then there are stories like this one, where kids in a public school were fed x-rated material under the guise of sex education. In this incident, a poster was hung on the wall that was entitled “How Do People Express Their Sexual Feelings?” followed by 17 different ways to do so. When a parent of a student who took a picture of the poster was outraged and brought it up to the school’s administrators, they did nothing about it. A district spokesperson said:

“The poster that you reference is actually part of our middle school health and science materials, and so it is a part of our district approved curriculum”

Followed by:

“The curriculum it is a part of, it aligns with national standards around those topics, and it’s part of our curriculum in the school district”

The father of the student later said:

“A lot of parents view the school as a babysitter,” “My message is to stand up. Let’s take charge of our kids. There are so many out of control kids in the nation.”

Amen to that! Seems that he is observing the same thing I am.

Then you have another story where a teacher humiliates a first grader by telling her in front of the whole class to stop talking about the Bible while in the middle of a one-minute presentation she was giving in response to a classroom activity given by the teacher the day prior. 

photo credit: bookgrl via photopin cc

The article states that: The principal reportedly told her [the parent] that her daughter could write about her beliefs in a journal but she was not allowed to share her beliefs aloud to any other student.

I say all of this because at this point in time, my wife and I have decided to homeschool all of our children, while we still have the freedom to do so. Echoing the sentiment of parent mentioned earlier: we WILL be taking charge of our children, and their education.  Some countries, like Germany, have outlawed parental homeschooling of children. The government there will, by force, take children from their parents should they find out that they were attempting to homeschool them. In fact, many German families have left the country to go to places like France or the U.S. just so they can homeschool their kids. One such family came to the U.S. recently and was granted asylum because the German government was attempting to put the parents in prison for homeschooling. But U.S. protection didn't last long.

The article states that: The Obama administration, which in other notable areas of immigration law has enacted a policy of “discretion” regarding deportations, took the [family] to court to have its asylum protections revoked, and succeeded in doing so. The family has appealed to the Supreme Court, which has ordered the Obama administration to respond to the [family’s] petition, but the administration has so far refused to do so.

So it appears that the current administration is showing more signs of their anti-homeschooling agenda by trying to send this family back against their will. What does this mean for the future of America’s homeschooled children? The outlook does not look good.

As a father, I am commanded in Scripture to:

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

I think as a parent, one of the best ways we can contend earnestly for the faith is by teaching and instilling that faith in our children. This goes beyond church, Sunday school, and youth group.  This is a command to ‘bring them up’, or educate them (which takes time; years, in fact) in the discipline and in the instruction of the Lord (the Bible). 

Source

Currently, the only way I see this happening effectively is through homeschooling, and for parents to take responsibility for their children and not leave it up to the government or public school system. While I won’t be the primary one doing the homeschooling (my wife will), you can rest assured that I will make certain that a Bible-based curriculum is chosen and that what is taught is done so with a Biblical worldview. And I will reinforce their instruction by being involved, reading Scripture with them, teaching them to pray and to worship, and explaining the things of life in the black and white Truth revealed in God's Word.

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(Let your kids decide about Religion? – Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason)