by Erica Fitzgerald
Alexis Smelker’s post about public school in the last edition of Titus 2 Women was a great reminder to shine the light of Christ into our communities, a call to unity in Christ, and a testimony of how God uses each family’s gifting and circumstances for his glory in the various places he has called us to.
This week I am sharing about my family’s decision to homeschool. While I know homeschooling is not the right choice for every family (nor do all families’ circumstances allow for it), I’m convinced it’s the right choice for ours, and I’m thankful we have the freedom and ability to do it.
Stay tuned for one more installment of this series from a sister in Christ who leads a private Christian school. We hope our various perspectives are a helpful contribution to this important discussion.
“A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher.” (Luke 6:40)
My husband and I decided on homeschooling our future kids even before we were married, and that goal influenced all of our financial and career decisions as newlyweds. His mom gave him an excellent home education on the mission field in Ecuador, and I received a decent public education but struggled with the social aspects of school. By high school I dismissed my parents’ values as out of touch with the “reality” I constructed from peer culture and the media, and I learned in my classes that authority and tradition should be questioned, truth is relative, and the purpose of life is to know and love myself.
Thankfully, God saved me in my junior year and gave me a new worldview based on his Word—a worldview that I would eventually have the opportunity to impart to my own kids.
Since our homeschooling journey began six years ago, my list of reasons for choosing this path has grown longer than my arm, and I can no longer imagine living our life any other way. Yet my original reason remains. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 urges us to teach God’s commandments diligently to our children—at home, on the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up—and homeschooling is our family’s answer to that calling.
It’s no guarantee that our children will walk with the Lord—their salvation is up to him, not us—but I can do my best to equip them to enter their adult lives standing firmly in the truth, and that’s what I’ve set out to do.
The Gift of Time
Homeschooling gives us the gift of time: time for discipleship, time for me to impart a Christian worldview to our kids, and time to simply enjoy one another.
If our kids were at school, we’d be squeezing discipleship into the cracks between school hours (14,000 of them between kindergarten and twelfth grade!), homework, and extracurriculars. Instead, it happens naturally throughout the course of each day as we simply live life together—reading, learning, caring for the baby, sharing household chores, and having fun.
Even the hard moments are a blessing. Conflicts and sinful attitudes aren’t fun to deal with, but I’m thankful that they happen under my watch so I can discipline and counsel the kids with God’s Word.
Our days are full, but we aren’t racing out the door every morning, and the relaxed pace of our life has enriched our family culture. We also have the freedom to start our school year early so we can enjoy breaks for birthdays, holidays, prime weather, and family time.
Homeschooling Highlights
The desire to saturate our kids with truth is the main reason we’re homeschooling, but it’s not the only reason. Homeschooling has benefited my kids both academically and socially (and research indicates we aren’t alone). It has also given us a tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It has enabled us to foster a love of learning and to demonstrate the preeminence of Christ in all things, including academics.
Some of the highlights of my homeschooling years so far have been:
- Reading aloud together, teaching my kids how to read, and watching them all become bookworms
- Watching my kids play together between lessons and become best friends
- Having interesting discussions that flow naturally from our Bible readings and seeing their adorable drawings of the Bible stories in their notebooks (these are some of my most treasured possessions)
- Taking nature walks to our neighborhood pond, identifying the plants and animals to draw in our nature journals
- Having the hymns and folk songs we’ve learned become part of our family culture
- Doing schoolwork outside in the sun, feeling so thankful that we have the freedom to be outdoors whenever we want
- Fumbling our way through reading our first two Shakespeare plays—something that totally intimidated me and has turned out to be so much fun
- Learning new things every day that I never learned in school or have since forgotten
Common Objections to Homeschooling
If you feel that God may be calling you to homeschool but you’re feeling uneasy, here are my answers to a few of the objections that tend to hold people back:
“I don’t have what it takes to homeschool.”
God entrusted your children to you, and if he is leading you to homeschool them, he will equip you to do it. Remember, you know and love your kids more than anyone else ever could. Statistics even show that homeschooled students who have a certified teacher as a parent perform no higher on standardized tests than others. My mother-in-law was a homeschooling “pioneer” with just a small catalog of curricula to choose from, and she gave my husband an education that was superior to my public one, even though I was a very driven student in a good school district.
Gaining confidence in homeschooling is just a matter of finding a network for moral support and a curriculum that’s a good fit—and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Veteran homeschooler Carole Joy Seid is known for saying you can homeschool with nothing more than a Bible, a library card, and a math curriculum. Though I’ve always used a curriculum (and I love it), I believe she’s absolutely right.
Remember, every education has gaps—it’s not up to you to teach your kids everything they need to know. The world is simply too full of knowledge for anyone to be able to do that, even if the perfect school or curriculum existed. It’s been said that “education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” The source of that quote is debated, but whoever said it was right. If we can inspire our kids to love reading and learning, we don’t have to stress out about teaching them everything because they will continue learning all their lives—far beyond their school years.
“If I homeschool, my kids will be isolated from non-Christians and unsocialized.”
It may sound backwards, but I think homeschooling can actually be socially beneficial, and the research backs that up. I was painfully shy in school because I was so preoccupied with peer acceptance. I love watching my kids be themselves without fearing that their clothes aren’t the right brand or their interests aren’t considered cool. They don’t spend their days among same-aged peers, but they have lots of friends from church, our neighborhood, and extracurriculars. This year, our 10-year-old joined a Christian homeschool speech and debate club that has exposed him to excellent role models, important life skills, and challenging subject matter, from apologetics to international affairs.
As far as evangelism goes, I agree with what Voddie Baucham said in a recent interview with Allie Beth Stuckey: missionaries must be trained before being sent out, and at this point, our kids aren’t the missionaries; they’re the mission field. Yet I would never want homeschooling to cut off my kids from non-Christians. Over the past couple of years, the Lord used our witness to bring our neighbor (a fellow homeschool mom) to faith in Christ. We also joined a secular homeschool hiking group, where we met lots of families who, through our friendship, have since brought their kids to our church, our AWANA program, and Bible camp to hear the gospel.
“I’m not patient enough to homeschool.”
This is the one I hear the most, and it always makes me laugh because I’m not either. My kids can attest to that. Like any virtue, patience isn’t some magical power that some people possess and others don’t. It develops over time as the Lord walks with us through trying situations and gives us his power to conduct ourselves as we should.
Like anything in this fallen world, homeschooling is not perfect, and it’s hard work. I savor the idyllic moments when they come, but we are sinners who spend a lot of time together, and our days are full of sanctifying circumstances that force us to face that reality (hello, math worksheets). Juggling school work with meals, relational needs, and household responsibilities is a constant challenge, and our decision to homeschool has been a great sacrifice of income and time. But even on our hardest days, I wouldn’t trade the privilege of homeschooling for anything in the world. If it’s something you’re considering, I know God will faithfully equip you too.