The truth of the matter is, before any child is sent off to school, daycare, head-start or any of these locations outside of the home, they are homeschooled:

Until you put your child in a "head start" program or kindergarten, what had you been doing with them? Many parents of young children will say they are "thinking about" homeschooling, but their child is "only three" so they "haven’t started yet."

What have they been doing all that time? Haven’t they trained them to walk, to eat, to say "Thank You," to brush their teeth, to tie their shoes, to chew with their mouths closed, to go potty by themselves, to sleep through the night, to say "Yes, Ma’am" and "Yes, Sir;" to count to ten, to say their ABCs, to pray, to sing, to play pat-a-cake, to finger-paint, to eat Goldfish, to clean up after themselves, etc.?

The author goes on to ask the obvious question:

Where do we get the idea that when a child turns five (or four these days…), now they need formal schooling? What do they do in pre-school and kindergarten? They spend a couple of hours away from home, finger-painting and eating Goldfish. They could have done that at home… and learned to empty the dishwasher, sweep the floor, share with their siblings, take care of a puppy, and pray "Now I lay me down to sleep" before their nap.

And the answer is, we’ve always done things this way, and therefore we must do them this way.  But this thought is mistaken.

You see, much of what takes place in modern schooling is built around factory workers—work until the bell, take a break, new station, work until the bell.  However, much of what goes on today is much more flexible, requiring much more flexibility.

And if you think about it, this public school fad is only something that’s relatively young.  People have been homeschooled for much longer than the modern era.  Granted, we believe we’ve made significant advances today, but I would argue that this isn’t from truly original thought, for as a whole people are not Renaissance men and women, they are highly specialized and used to doing something just a little bit different than the person that came before them.

What are your thoughts on homeschooling?

Many of us that believe that homeschooling is the best option for raising children wonder when it will dawn on other Christian believers that sending their children to be indoctrinated by the humanist school system might not be the best choice for their kids.

Things like this e-mail from Rachel make you wonder if anyone’s paying attention:

Hey MInTheGap, I was just resting on the counseling couch and I picked up the most recent issue of Charisma.  This article was in there.  It’s about the California bill that forces public schools to teach about alternative lifestyles.  The pastor profiled in the article is urging parents to pull their kids out of school, and now California is trying (it didn’t pass, but it’s probably only a matter of time) to ban parents that don’t have education degrees from teaching their children at home.  What is this world coming to??  Are we going to have any say in how our kids are raised???

Seriously, don’t parents realize that their children are being taught the opposite of what any moral Christian parent wants their child to know?

And since when is it the domain of the government to decide a moral question—which “alternate lifestyles” is?

And parents wonder why kids that go to public schools leave the faith—it’s simple.  Deuteronomy 6 states that we are supposed to spend our time teaching our kids about God and bringing them up to know Him.  How is that supposed to be accomplished when a majority of their waking ours they’re being taught to worship the gods Eros and Mammon.  They are taught about Mother Earth and The Almighty Dollar.

When will parents wake up and take a stand?

Anyone can take a shot at the public school system.  They take in tons of money, have multiple layers of bureaucracy, they pass people that cannot read or write, and then they say the solution is more money.  It’s the definition of insanity.

However, as Chris @ VocoPro commented, we can’t have all parents be homeschoolers—at least, not right away:

And yet not every parent is capable of home schooling. Let’s just call it – there are a whole lot of parents who lack the orientation towards education that is required to home school. (Wouldn’t the majority of American parents rather hold a remote control than hold a math workbook for their kids?)

So the success we are seeing from home schooling students is really about COMMITTED PARENTING and parents oriented toward education more than it is about how kids can learn so much better away from school. That’s an important factor that may not be obvious in the stats you are quoting.

So how do we solve the problem?

Kick the Government Out—Sort of

I would propose that government’s main function in education is the verification that a student passes a certain level of knowledge.  To that end, it should not matter how the child gets that education (homeschooled, public schooled, charter schooled, tutored, etc.)

I would furthermore add that there is no reason that teachers must be unionized, must be put under the same roof, and must be limited to one grade.

We all want our kids to succeed.  We want them well educated—better than that: we want them to be the best they can be.  The problem with the current system is that it puts all kids in a geographic area and at a certain age in the same class together.

This wasn’t always the case.  There were always kids that have been educated by parents, but for those that wanted, they could send their kids to the one room schoolhouse—where kids of multiple ages would learn together.  This had one of the same benefits that homeschooling has: the benefit of having different grades helping the others along and socialization between ages.

One of the problems of the government schools is how centralized they are, and they way that they are structured.  This is the case for bureaucratic administrative purposes as well as teacher utilization.

Free the Teachers

I would propose that all teachers should leave the teachers union and be permitted to set up their own small businesses that would teach students that are not taught at home.  These teachers would be licensed for a certain class size (much like daycare/babysitting) and the evaluations performed on the children could be limiters.

For example, if the teacher has a class size of 10 and 50% of the have below a C average, the teacher would only be permitted to have 5 the next time around.

The teacher would also be able to charge whatever amount they feel the market would bear.  Therefore, a teacher could charge $5,000 a child for the year (in monthly installments or upfront) and if they have 10 kids then they could make $50,000 a year (minus expenses).

Teachers could bind together for multiple offerings (for example, specialties like art, music, gym, etc.), but they would not be permitted to organize like the current system.

Some teachers, therefore, would be able to command more money.

The school district could rent out space to teachers to hold their classes, or they could rent office space.

The school year could be dictated by the teacher.

Pay the Parents

Instead of spending $7,642 a kid, each parent could get an amount—save money and make it $5,000 or change the property/school tax and make it less.  In any case, make it so that no one has to go without schooling, but give (or let parents keep) a certain amount of money to pay for schooling.

And don’t let this be only certain types of schooling—let homeschoolers in as well.

How about set up an education savings account per child, and have the government and family be able to put pre-tax money into it.  Any money not used toward elementary or high school education could be used toward college—but it must be used toward education.

Test Well

The market would bear out what teachers were good and which were not.  It would also allow for the really good ones to make good money and would reward extra work—it would have a built in incentive.

The public would benefit because the restructuring would mean that they wouldn’t have to bus as far, maintain expensive buildings, and deal with union contracts.

They would also benefit with the choices available to them and the ability to choose the place that works for them.  Each child is different and may react better to a different style or teacher.  We need to free them to express their individuality.

But we need testing to make sure that the kids are getting the education we want them to have, and we need systems in place to make sure that our kids are safe.

What do you think?

Why is it that a stay at home mother who pays $1000 or less for a curriculum’s worth of books, $15 to join an area group for sports, recreation and activities, and spends $100 for a sport and then pays school taxes for services that they can’t take advantage of (instead of getting paid by the government) can end up training children that have great academics and are an asset to our community, but New York state can spend $7,642 per pupil with the average teacher salary of $46, 800 and can graduate students that cannot read? [Education Backgrounder]

The thing is, there are multiple problems with our public school system—and few that are able to do anything about it.

Public Schools are Staffed by Unions

The problem with Unions is that they’re out to protect all their members—even the ones that aren’t performing well.  It’s next to impossible to remove Union employees, and it’s hard to hold people accountable for failing our kids when you cannot remove teachers that are a cancer.

The solution that the Unions tout for getting better performance from the children is more money, better teacher/student ratios, and better equipment.  But the equipment is broken, and homeschooling proves that money per student isn’t the answer.

Charter Schools and Homeschoolers Run Rings Around Public Schools

Why is it that homeschoolers and charter schools can do a much better job without the funding that the public schools enjoy.  I mean, think of how unfair this is—every homeschooler pays for his kid to go to public school, even though he cannot join the school’s athletic teams, use their gym, participate in their experiments or field trips.

And yet these homeschoolers are more involved in their communities, they’re more well adjusted, and are being sought after by some bigger colleges as the colleges see the academics of these children.

The problem is that there are fundamental problems at the core of modern schooling.

Some Problems

Here’s a short list of some problems:

• Feminized Curriculum: We now spend much of the time treating the entire class as girls, and medicating the boys to make them like girls.
• Not Recognizing Uniqueness: Each child learns differently.  Homeschoolers can adapt to this, public schools that have multiple kids in a single class can have special ed classes, but often miss those that aren’t really having difficulty.
• Lack of Moral Compass:  No more Bible or Prayer in schools seems like a good thing, until kids stop caring about what they do and whether it’s right or wrong.
• Lack of the Ability to have Meaningful Discipline: Between helicopter parents, the ability to sue for anything, and the concept that the child is innately good, it’s next to impossible to correct deviant behavior.
• Does not reflect real life. Sure, when we were all working in factories, processing people from place to place at the sound of a bell made sense.

And that’s just some of the issues.

Public schooling doesn’t need fixing—it needs a reboot with a better Operating System.  It’s time to invest more in Charter schools and homeschooling—what a way to employ someone from every family!

Where our country and our world is going can easily be seen in what is being taught to our children.  The Roman Catholic’s knew it.  The Marxists knew it.  Plato knew it.  The Pro-Life movement knows it.

What children are taught and who should be doing the teaching is, therefore, a big issue.

What is the Parent’s Role?

There are two dueling schools of thought when it comes to the parent’s role in a child’s life. 

First, there’s the concept that the parent is the primary authority in the child’s life.  The parent holds all responsibility and is also given wide latitude on how to raise the child.

Opposed to that is the idea that society—implemented as “the state”—is the primary authority in the life of a child, and the parents serve mainly as one of many guides or teachers.

The School Wants Credit for the Good, not Responsibility for the Bad

When a child does well, whomever is watching them wants to take credit.  However, when something goes wrong, the finger pointing begins.

You will notice that in all the finger-pointing — the students, the teachers, the administrators — not a digit is aimed at the parents. Their children are accused of hounding a classmate to death and the parents apparently knew nothing. Not only that, they are somehow not expected to know anything. The teachers are supposed to know what’s going on. The principal. Maybe even the school nurse. But the parents? No. They’re off the hook. Not as far as I’m concerned. This tendency to blame teachers or administrators for all that happens in the schools is both unfair and unrealistic. 

The truth is, regardless of whether the school or the state attempts to take away rights of the parents, the parents are still responsible.  God will hold the father personally responsible—but I’d go further and say that the father will also be responsible for shirking his God-given duty to raise his children and giving it to the godless state.

Public Schooling is Woefully Inadequate

I’m not saying this to slight the teachers that are there.  Often their hands are tied as far as discipline goes, they’re given way to complicated a task: trying to educate a group of people that are undisciplined, learn at different paces, with different interests.

This method of schooling is insane, and does not give our children the best.

Furthermore, it’s become only an incubator for meddling by people with agendas with the purpose of shaping the country in the way that they deem fit. 

• Social Studies classes that encourage multiculturalism, pluralism, and the neutering of America’s greatness.
• Science classes that teach as much history as science, claiming to divine the past through experiments in the present and not teaching logic and the scientific method.
• Mathematics that erase logic and deduction.
• English classes with an agenda—whether it’s Farenheit 451 and the ills of censorship, Sarah T and the ills of drinking or any other politically laden text.  There’s only one book a child can’t read in the public school—the Bible.
• Health Classes that instruct “safe” ways to perform risky behaviors that put children in more danger.

And then we leave off good skills like personal budgeting, building a family life that will last, etc.

Time for a Revolution

The number of homeschooled children is growing, and it needs to continue growing until Americans have a true choice.  It needs to grow to the point that it challenges the status quo.  Our homeschooled children already run rings around their public schooled counterparts.

Parents need to realize their responsibility to their kids and take action.

Not having enough to do trying to brainwash all the public school children to only believe one worldview, the press believes that it now has the right to dictate to the makers or home school curriculum what worldview they teach as well.

Never mind that the article itself states that the textbook writers are giving what a majority of their clients want—it focuses on how “unjust” it is that non-Christians do not have many text book options as homeschoolers where they can learn their preferred beliefs.

The History of the Home School Option

The Home School Option was pioneered by Christian parents that did not like what was being taught in the public school and didn’t have the option of a private school.  For many years, they were judged as backwards, under socialized children that would not do well in society.  They were the subjects of exposes, showing the worst: parents that claimed they were homeschooling and yet were neglecting their children.

But as more people saw that these children were not backward, but turned out smarter, better able to communicate with adults, and more involved in their communities, the number of homeschooled children grew.  Soon there were multiple different textbook venders.  They starting having groups that would have sporting activities.  Co-ops and guilds were made that allowed people with expertise to teach specialized topics.

Homeschooling grew beyond it’s original purpose, and it began to appear to be a superior form of education.

Christian Roots vs. Secular Roots

However, with those Christian roots comes a Christian worldview in most of its textbooks—and not just in the Bible textbook.  Science textbooks are the flashpoint for this discussion because science textbooks teach origins (though I personally believe that origins is a separate concept from science in general).

The truth is that it’s a battle of beliefs and worldviews.  The Theory of Evolution via Natural Selection isn’t something that can be tested and proven—it’s a logical extrapolation based on the idea natural processes that are currently seen happened uniformly throughout time to some point at which something happened, that initial event is still up to debate.

Creation claims not only to have the answer to the initial event, but also describes how we got to the current point.

Both worldviews use science and evidence.  Both use the same set of facts and have explanations and interpretations of things that can be observed and tested.  And both believe that they are the truth and the other is a lie—and it’s more than that your worldview dictates which one you believe.

Parent’s Rights

If a person were to tell me that a school curriculum taught that 2 + 2 = 5 then I would be behind you all the way.  But when it comes to worldview, the parent should have the choice of whether to have their children brought up in a secular worldview, a Christian worldview, etc.

And if you’re really upset about the lack of curriculum for secular homeschoolers, create your own company (it seems like there’s a underserved niche here that someone could capitalize on!) or pressure that big book distributors to sell to homeschoolers.

Better yet, allow home school families of any stripe to buy used textbooks from schools of their choice.

Whether you’re sending your child off to school or homeschooling like we are, you need to make sure that you identify those things that belong to your little learner.

When I was a kid going to school we had to cover all of our school books in brown paper bags, and then we’re color them and put our name on them.

It was important that our name was on them so that we could get credit for returning them at the end the of year and not have to pay for the books.  It was always neat to get the nice shiny new books too!

With homeschooling, it can be a little more obvious whose book is whose (and less likely that you will misplace it!) but that still means that you have to use labels to keep track of your studies.  One of these places will be the file folders you use to keep your reports and other paperwork that you file with the state—or for your grades and transcripts.

You definitely don’t want to misplace these important papers, and having them labeled will help you easily find them when you need them.

Politicians come with labels too—some they try to affix to themselves and some affixed by others!  It’s amazing what labels can do!

That we have taken the teeth out of grading by continuing to process children forward even when they haven’t master basic skills is at the heart of our education problem in America.

At the heart of this matter is the concept of equality, the “right” to equal opportunity, and that we can’t let any person think that they’re smarter or better at anything– that is, until they get in the real world.  When they get there, they find that there are highly specialized tasks, and that the company will want someone with skills and experience over the new shiny diploma.

So, it gets me back to the question– is college pointless?  For some, it is.  It’s simply a very expensive add on to high school.  Colleges cost a lot of money, and they’ve had to create classes to catch students up to where they should have been at the end of high school.  Plus, the number of students who are actually qualified to excel there is low compared to the entire student body.

And we won’t even go into how many people are in jobs where they don’t use their degrees.

Don’t get me wrong, there are redeeming qualities to college.  For some it’s the first time a person is out on their own.  For others there is a definite benefit to the structure.  But the negatives like the debauchery, the debt, etc. seem to outweigh those positives.

And then there are those whose talents flourish outside of college.  So, eventually, it all comes back to who the person is, their thirst for knowledge and drive, and what they can do.  Those are things that cannot be taught, only suppressed while the teacher helps that other kid would still is struggling with the FOIL concept when figuring out the binomial equation.

I do not believe the current culture that tells us that we have to send our children to day care because we have to have two incomes.  And I think it’s a convincing lie, because our society is constantly telling us what we need to have, where we need to live, and that we have to have it our way now.

The problem is that when we buy into this lie, when we ship our children off to day care and public school we subject them to teachings that are not our own.  And we miss things that we can never have again.  Sheri reminded me of this in when she thought about all the things she would have missed between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM if she had a job outside of her home.

If you’re a stay at home mom or dad, take the time to treasure those things that you would have missed.  If you send your children to day care, sit down and think about what is truly valuable, and how you can work to get one parent the ability to be with your children.

Children are eternal beings, just like you.  They will live beyond this life, the things that you accumulate won’t.

What’s strange is the parallels between this concept of “it takes a village” to raise children and Plato’s Republic. Two portions of Plato’s Republic I find scary (especially when you consider that Plato is thought to have lived between 427 and 347 BC).

Primary Education of the Guardians: Censorship of Literature

Plato begins to muse about educating the children of his new society. He states that in order to create the perfect society that they will have educate the mind and that they will need both fictitious and non-fictitious stories to do it:

It seems, then, that our first business will be to supervise the making of fables and legends, rejecting all which are unsatisfactory; and we shall induce nurses and mothers to tell their children only those which have approved.

What’s interesting here in our discussion is the current trend that I see to erase some “incorrect things” in our current literature and replace it with “correct” things. It’s no longer “One little, two little, three little Indians…” and other such things. If the state were to be the only place for education, they would be free to be the only source of information, and could easily twist stories and truths to fit their purposes.

Some would even argue that the left-leaning colleges and high schools do just that– that they take and proclaim a message of liberalism and not a balanced presentation and are hoping to influence a generation this way.

The next segment is even more interesting.

Equality of Women

Many centuries before the women’s movement, Plato believed it to be a good thing for men and women to be equal. He stated that men and women should be trained equally for the role of Guardians with one difference from modern feminism: that the standard should be the same for a man and a woman:

We come round, then, to our former position, that there is nothing contrary to nature in giving our Guardians’ wives the same training for mind and body…

Now, for the purpose of producing a woman fit to be a Guardian, we shall not have one education for men and another for women, precisely because the nature to be taken in hand is the same.

Once the distinctive features of womanhood are erased, it becomes easier to erase the concept of family…

Abolition of the Family For the Guardians

Here it is: a law which follows from that principle and all that has gone before, namely that, of these Guardians, no one man and one woman are to set up house together privately: wives are to be held in common by all; so too are the children, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.

And what’s the advantage here? If children are taken away from parents, they are taken away from their parent’s ideals, morals, etc. and can be taught that of the state. They can look to the state as their source of morality, as the provider– and they can be molded into the perfect little citizens as long as they aren’t polluted by their parents.

Translate this to Today

If we look at today, we can see that this society that Plato desired really isn’t that far off from what we have in America today. Literature that is not approved is censored. Just take a look at how the Bible is treated in many classrooms around the country. And it’s not the only book. There are approved book lists for book reports, approved topics for papers, approved subjects for artwork.

The sexes continue to war about being equal. They’re encouraged by run away debt and class envy. They believe that it’s normal to have have a certain standard of living and they’re not above having two working parents to have every gadget they can possibly want.

And that leaves who or what to raise the children? If you think about the amount of time the average school aged child gets to see their parents if both work (by my rough calculations with a 10:00 pm bedtime they see their parents for five hours a day if not locked in their room) compared to the amount of time they are impacted by the state and their friends you can see why our society is the way that it is.

You can also see why people like Michael Farris get concerned about Parent’s Rights when looking at the state and its teaching. Homeschooling and Private Schooling provide different avenues for education, and allow for different thought.