I am sometimes asked why we home-school. Indeed, before we started, I needed to ask myself, “Why should we home-school?” To be frank, home-schooling isn’t always easy. It involves a huge commitment of time, a fair commitment of money, and sets us in opposition to the mainstream of society. So why did we decide to home-school, and what are my thoughts on it after several years of doing it?

My initial reasons for wanting to home-school included providing a superior educational experience, protecting my children from influences I deemed inappropriate, and giving us a chance to work our Christian faith into the children’s educational experience. Lofty goals to be sure!  But how has this worked out in real life?

I come from a strong academic background, and want to provide my children with a superior educational experience. I knew from my own experience in public schools that the typical teacher spends one third of the time teaching, one third of the time disciplining and one third of the time motivating and reviewing. Like many home-schoolers, we have found home-schooling to be extremely time efficient. Our oldest daughter is usually able to cover her work during the mornings. One of the reasons why it is time efficient is because she gets individual instruction (note that institutional teachers are always pushing for smaller class sizes. I don’t think that these teachers are lazy! I think they realize what home-schoolers realize; that individual instruction is important). Our daughter gets her questions answered when she needs them answered, and before problems arise. She doesn’t have a chance to get bored by repetitive drill exercises that she doesn’t need, but if she does need extra drill, we can recognize that need right away and deal with it.

Another academic advantage is that we can tailor the instruction to our children’s learning styles. Different children learn in different ways, but a classroom setting doesn’t offer this sort of flexibility. How many children get left behind because they are kinesthetic learners trying to function in a classroom filled with textbooks?

One aspect of providing a superior education that I didn’t anticipate before starting to home-school, is the way every day activities become learning experiences. Recently, washing the dishes became an opportunity to demonstrate what dish soap does to oil floating on water. Likewise, a computer game I was playing became an opportunity to explain the meaning of the word “academy”. A hot air balloon making an emergency landing on a street near our house became a learning opportunity, as did a family vacation to Toronto. All kinds of experiences have become learning experiences. Yes, people had told us about this before we started to home-school, but I didn’t realize how often it would happen.

One of the other reasons why we decided to homeschool, was to protect our children from influences we deemed harmful. Our particular concern was curriculum materials we disapproved of. In homeschooling, we have indeed been able to protect our children in this way, but we have been able to protect our children in other ways too. Over the years, I’ve met any number of children, who from an increasingly early age, display attitudes of rebellion, deceit and anti-social behaviour. Many parents are unwilling or unable to deal with this. Frankly, I don’t want my children exposed to these sorts of influences. My children may end up having their own struggles in these areas, but if so, let it be because of their own sin nature, and not because they have been influenced by someone else’s sin nature.

The fact that parents seem unable or unwilling to moderate their children’s behaviour brings up another important point. When I tell people that we homeschool, the response is often one of, “We could never do that because our children would never obey us.” What a startling abdication of parental responsibility! This is essentially saying, “I have no control over my children, and so I’ll ship them out of the house in hopes that someone else can get control of them.” At some point, we have to interact with our children (even if it is only nights and weekends). What are we to do then? I believe it is far better for parents to work with their children, to help their children develop emotional control and obedient behaviour. Don’t send your children to an institutional school because you want to abdicate!

Now some parents recognize that the classroom environment and the schoolyard is not the perfect influence on their children, but they justify themselves by saying, “I’m concerned about socialization” and “My child needs to interact with a group, learn to sit quietly and learn to obey authority”. Laudable goals, but are they best taught in a classroom? I think not. Ask yourself, “does the classroom bear any resemblance to real life?” Of course not. Compare the classroom or schoolyard with real life situations like the workforce or the church:

Classroom/Schoolyard

· Segregated by age, and sometimes by gender

· Learn to sit quietly in large groups and listen

· Anti-social behaviour and bullying is prevalent, despite zero-tolerance policies. Lawsuits against schools for doing nothing, and child suicide.

Workforce/Church

· Interact with people much older or much younger than ourselves.

· Sometimes sit quietly in church. In the workforce, team work and discussion/interaction are important.

· Anti-social behaviour is weeded out. Those who persist in anti-social behaviour are fired or excommunicated.

Clearly, the classroom and the schoolyard are experiences of socialization, but they have little to do with real-life socialization, and in some cases are positively harmful to our children. On the other hand, home-schooled children are usually capable of interacting with groups large and small, or varying ages and genders, engaging in the types of discussion and interaction that are important in the real world. Yes, home-schooling parents must work to ensure that their children get the opportunity for social interaction, but we also have the opportunity to pick and monitor their social contacts, instead of shipping them off to an institutional school and hoping for the best.

The third main reason why we wanted to home-school was to have the opportunity to work our Christian faith into our children’s educational experience. Our children participate in family devotions at the supper table, attend Sunday school, and also attend an AWANA program. These are all good (and one of them is even Scriptural), but we have found added blessing in adding “Bible” to the children’s daily studies, and the opportunity to integrate the study of History with the Bible program. Now please understand me – I’m not suggesting that a Bible curriculum is a replacement for family devotions! But we have found that we don’t have to choose one or the other – we can choose to be blessed by both. To see our children showing signs of spiritual interest and new birth, is an experience like none other! And this experience is reinforced by watching our children read the Bible for themselves.

One of the really neat examples of seeing Christian faith added to the educational experience, has been the way in which home-schooling families have been able to help others. Because the children are usually done their formal schooling in the mornings, afternoons can be used for both enrichment activities, as well as Christian service. During our first year home-schooling, a pre-teen girl came over to our house one afternoon a week and played with our children, giving my wife a chance to get caught up on house work. Here was the book of James lived out!  It was a great help, and gave this young lady some additional experience learning to take care of children.

So our reasons for home-schooling our children have been confirmed to us. But having started home-schooling, there are some additional reasons we have found. One of the main benefits we have discovered is the freedom from freaky educational theories. Several times each generation, some theorist comes up with some weird ideas that actually get tried on children in the classroom. I’m thankful I learned to read in a public school using phonics, having narrowly missed the disaster of the whole language approach. But I didn’t completely escape the clutches of the theorists and their desire to use me as one of their experimental subjects. From Grade Four to Grade 6, I attended a school that had been built when the “open approach” was in vogue for school architecture. This meant that classrooms didn’t have doors. One wall was actually missing, and became the corridor leading to other classrooms. I guess the idea was that children would learn best of they were not locked up in an enclosed space. A noble sentiment, but one that completely ignored the fact that children make noise. Now each class could hear the noise being made by the others. The net effect was bedlam. Of course, this really didn’t affect me too much in Grade Four, because that year I had to attend class in a “portable”. In Grade Seven, a theory came into vogue from Switzerland, that suggested we could learn best if we had 3 periods of gym every day. Another noble sentiment, but to make room for an extra 2 periods of gym each day, all of our academic classes were shortened and History was dropped altogether. Sheer brilliance. In Grade Eight, I didn’t have to worry too much about educational theories. My teacher assigned 3 hours of homework each night. Myself and a neighbour in the same grade came close to nervous breakdowns.

Sometimes, people say to us, “I could never home-school. I don’t have the patience”. This is a sad statement. Do any of us have all the patience we need? Of course not. But as home-schoolers, we don’t have the option of giving up. We have to push ourselves to be the best we can be, and indeed, to let the fruit of the Spirit reign in our lives. Is home-schooling hard on us? Yes, but not as hard as dealing with the consequences of not home-schooling. We know our own personalities, and we would be continually worried and concerned about what our children were experiencing and learning (and not learning) if they were in a traditional classroom.

Now I’m aware that I’ve made some strong statements in this article, but if you are reading an article that is designed to state my opinions, don’t be surprised if I actually do state them! Home-schooling is not a panacea. It can be done poorly, and some people should not do it. Some people honestly can’t do it, for family, health or financial reasons. And yes, many parents who dearly love their children send those children to a traditional school and many children in traditional schools receive a decent education. But we have seen incredible blessings and benefits, to our children and to ourselves, through our home-schooling journey. And we want to encourage others who are concerned about academic excellence, inappropriate influences and Christian values, to consider home-schooling their children.

Shawn Abigail is a home schooling Dad with 3 children. Taking the children to the library on Saturday mornings is one of the high points of his week.