Why We Homeschool, Part I

(revisiting this series for a friend, and copying over from Prologue).

Educating Our Children Is Our God Given Responsibility.
I think most parents would agree that we, as parents are responsible to educate, train and disciple our children. It's not a matter of *whether* we are responsible for their education but rather a matter of *how* we are going to accomplish that, what the challenges are, and making the choice that will best facilitate our success in that duty.

Some parents might agree in part but then say that as parents we are only responsible for the spiritual teaching, and spiritual formation of our children, and "secular education" is better left to "qualified" educators. In the grand scheme I don't believe you *can* separate spiritual formation from any aspect of education. Spiritual conviction and and one's world view as formed through education are intrinsically connected. We must look at science through the lens of Creation, History through the lens of His Story, Math through the lens of His Wisdom, The Arts through the lens of relationship with Him. These things all point to Him and His truth.
So, whether our children are home educated, or whether they are public schooled, the responsibility lies on the parent to make sure that their children's "worldview" AND spiritual formation are continuously growing upward in alignment with the Truth and the Great Teacher.

Once we recognize our children's education is primarily *our* responsibility it is a matter of deciding how we can best fulfill it. If our children would go to public school, our job would be the same, but our schedule would be difficult at best. For us it came down to the question of "how many hours are there in a day?". If our children spend 7 hours a day in school (between getting there and getting home) and THEN have "other" outside activities on top of that, sports, music lessons, homework, play time with friends, club, youth... plus WE have evening activities two to three nights a week, how much time does that leave us for being our children's primary educators? How much could we REALLY be aware of what they are learning, how they are processing it, how their peers are subtly influencing them?

For us, we didn't just want to "find out through the grapevine" what our kids were being taught and "supplement" it for mere minutes here and there. We wanted to be intimately involved in the forming of their worldview, in the moment by moment maturing of their consciences and understanding of God's world. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine what a rewarding and beautiful experience that would be.

Besides responsibility, other determining factors were;
-time efficiency (time to learn PLUS live, laugh, love, play, relax and just plain be a child)
-quality of education
-family first
-freedom and flexibility

which I will talk more about in upcoming posts.  A passage that has always gripped me is the following verse that God spoke over Abraham,

"I have chosen him. He must direct his children. He must see that the members of his family after him live the way I want them to. So he must direct them to do what is right and fair. " Genesis 18:19 NIRV