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Posted in Home Educating
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Recently we had a neighborhood cookout. Now we live in a rural/residential area, so the houses are quite spread out on our road. For the last year and a half I had never even met our "next door" neighbors. When I invited one family, the husband said, "So, you want to open pandora's box, do you?!" That was an attention grabber. He followed that remark with a long story involving neighbors, water, lawsuits, heart attacks and grudges. Well, what is a good Christian neighbor to do? Invite them all anyway! When the day of the cookout arrived and we had a total of 3 out of the 5 neighbors come. One family brought a bottle of the cherry wine they'd made from their little orchard. Everyone laughed and chatted and enjoyed talking for 5 and a half hours! It was almost midnight and I couldn't believe people were still hanging out. It really struck me how despite the fact that these folks hardly ever go out of their way to see each other, they were all enjoying a renewed sense of community. They relived days of 4-H animals getting loose, neighbors rallying to chase other neighbors' pigs. No one wanted to leave! Towards the end, one woman asked me, "So when are you going to let your children go to school?" The question took me back. It was one of those that I replayed in my mind the rest of the night and all the next day. I wish I'd been better prepared for what to say. My response was an ameliorative conglomeration of military moving, "considering it," nothing against the school, etc. I definitely didn't want to appear to snub their great school. Her next line was to inform me, "I think there would be lots of benefits. They would get a break from you and you would get a break from them!" Wow....what a combination of statements. There was really no way in those moments to describe to her our vision. She wasn't asking, "So, what's homeschooling like?" Or, "How does that work for you guys?" It was all negative ammo! After they left, my first reaction was to think, "Man, am I that awful?" I just couldn't help but think how funny her statement was. The picture her assumption created in my mind was of my children holding out their arms longingly toward the school and me braced feet wide, with a furrowed brow, holding them back--barring them from the wide open inviting front doors of the benevolent institution. It's so far from the truth it's laughable. Our children know how fortunate they are that Mom and Dad have sacrificed time and money and more to give them the opportunity to learn in the comfort of their own home, with great books. My neighbor implied I was depriving them and this whole homeschooling thing was somehow a way of being weirdly overprotective. Then the next set of fallacies: "They would get a break from you." This mentality holds the assumption that children don't really want their parents' time or attention. Nothing could be farther from the truth, at least in our family. If I have to run to the store, everyone is vying for their turn for a trip with mom. If I read a book, there are at least 3 children wriggling to compete for the 2 sides of my body and the third peering over my shoulder. Dinner helpers get special secret "perks" while we work together. The picture she described conjured up in my mind an image of me hovering over my children every second of the day, ordering them about, micro-managing their every move enslaving them with my presence. Our lives are nothing like that. We have order and routine, some disciplined academic time, lots of free play time, time for hard family teamwork and chores and time for family singing and worship. We don't have 8 hours to waste on chasing after buses, standing in meaningless lines, doing busywork, being poisoned by peer opinions, and then doing hours of homework to facilitate the school's attempts to improve their test scores. How could I have put that nicely? Hmmm... I still wonder. Homeschooling is not an incubator bubble for us. It is the means by which we can "go and make disciples" and carry the torch of faith in Christ to the next generation, how we can learn the ways of Christ in our "going out" and our "lying down" (Deut 6:10). It is the vessel for real life learning, not contrived assembly line products. It is our training camp where we teach them how to put on the full armor of God. And if the Lord blesses this endeavor, then when they have done everything, they will be able to stand in the world as beacons and shine like stars. |
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