Here on Pulpit Magazine, an article was posted concerning the pros and cons of public vs. private vs. home school choices.  I must say, I was taken aback by some of the outright contradictions concerning the public school being humanistic, unbiblical, unmoral, and the list goes on – and yet the right choice for some families.  Here on Home Where They Belong, we keep an eye on the public school system.  It is frankly, tough on all of us to read about, and report on what happens within the walls of that institution.  Many of the statements in the above mentioned article appear as ignorant to us.

For example, in the second paragraph of the article, we find that humanism, immorality, ungodly influences, etc. are not confined to the public school system – but come from our television sets and neighborhoods as well.  Hello?  Turn off or at least limit the TV and limit the friendships in the neighborhood as well.  The amount of time we are talking about in a school setting is several hours every day – that is, day in and day out, year after year.  Furthermore, our children are expecting to be educated there.  How contradictory to tell our children they are going to school to learn, but they can’t trust their teachers.  What is that for anyhow?  What’s the point?

Or how about this, in the fourth paragraph:

Also, some Christian schools lack the quality and depth of education that public schools can offer—and that can apply even to the basics. Of course, that’s not always the case, even when the neighboring public school looks bigger and more impressive than the local Christian school.

So now this humanistic, ungodly, immoral school (according to paragraph 2) offers a good quality education?  How’s that?  Is the science they are getting the terribly flawed theory of evolution, put forth as fact? Is the history rewritten to cut God out of every page, and offer a  more liberal bent?  Is that the quality and depth of education public schools can offer?

When my own oldest daughter was in public school for high school, her school was among the top in the nation.  It’s still up there.  She will tell you, her good grades were not true learning, but rather cram for the test and then forget it.  Just as well – she needed to forget the lies she was taught there.  You can read  more about her experience HERE.

Time just does not allow to take this article point by point, but I did want to mention the pros and cons we were directed to at the end of the article.  This list of pros and cons was bothersome to me.  Seeing that we write about what is happening in our public school system regularly, I felt it it was way off.  Homeschooling was given seven pros and eight cons.  Public school; five pros and five cons.  It became clear to me right away that the writer of this was just simply not on the same page with me.

This post would get way too long (it already is) if I took on all pros and cons, so let’s just look at the homeschooling cons  listed.

1) Overwhelming for Mom.  My response?  Can be, when she forgets to seek God.  Personally, having used both choices for my children, public school was way more overwhelming for me.  Getting up early, having lunches ready to go out the door;  keeping track of special days and events, extra curricular activities;  dealing with bad attitudes; undoing wrong thoughts and concepts learned in a humanistic setting; concern with teachers abusing my children in some way.  The list could go on.  Public school was incredibly more overwhelming.  And in seeking God for that overwhelmedness, I was directed to bring them home, as according to Deut. 6.  And day by day, if I forget to seek God, I do get overwhelmed with homeschooling - the same as I get overwhelmed by every other area of life when I forget to seek God.

2) Academics are overrated and some are trying to prove something – to produce a “superior child.”  Listed as a con to homeschooling??  I think you could find that anywhere; homeschool, public school, or private school.  Appreciated in homeschool is the ability to teach to my child’s bent, and if he is academically gifted, give him what he needs there – praying all the while for God’s will in his life, and my job as his teacher/guide.  Public school children are loaded with homework every night, separated out from their family members during the day as they are in school, and in the evening as they hit the books at home.  Homeschoolers, I find, spend much less time at the academic grindstone and more time pursuing their own interests; be it in the arts, computer science, nature, or a plethora of other interests – academics having been dealt with in a fraction of the time.

3) Potential isolationism.  Excuse me?  Homeschoolers have their children out in real life, while their counterparts are with the same age in a class room day after day.  Who is being isolated?  When else in life will you be with peers day in and day out who are all the same age as you, while you are corralled like cattle from corridor to corridor?  Added to this con is potential maladaptive.  OK, what does that mean here?  My children are not adapted to the norm of society?  Ummm, that’s bad?  Have you taken a walk through your local mall lately?  If the writer is talking about sitting there like a mouse, never saying a word – afraid of life and people etc. – I will say that I’ve seen homeschoolers like that.  And private schoolers.  And public schoolers.  One girl I went to school with never said a word, and there were other such “pretty strange kids” in school.  I feel really bad for them today, thinking what it must have been like for them to feel so strange day in and day out, in such an ungodly and rude environment.  I can definitely say, it did not help them.

4) Breeds exclusiveness attitude, pride, judgmental spirit.  Are some homeschoolers this way?  Probably, since this can be the heart of man in nearly any situation.  How about the cliques in any public or private school?  When you didn’t fit in, another clique was created.  I can speak for my own children only, and I can say that they are opposite “exclusive” and hate that in others.   

5) Breeds fear … of outside influence, of failing academically, of not keeping up if not homeschooled.    I am not certain what is meant by the last point … I’ll just say that there is a healthy fear that’s good, concerning caution with outside influence.  God showed us a picture of what it means to be His people, through the nation He made with Abraham.  They did keep it within the camp.  They did not involve themselves with pagan activities (at least, they were told not to).  Failing academically …?  My own are not afraid of that.  My oldest son has had issues with math, but he would have had those same issues in public school as well.  The one on one has been very good for him.  Don’t children in public school fear failing academically?  I think they do, much more so than homeschooled children.  Fear of not keeping up if not homeschooled … all I can say, is most homeschoolers I know appreciate that they have the opportunity to stay with something until it is mastered, and not having to move their children ahead when they are not ready.  I just don’t quite know what the writer means here.  My children do not have cram for the test and forget it mentality, they just enjoy learning - so none of this applies to us.

6) Limited situations that could provide opportunity for teaching life lessons.  This made the least sense!  Opposite!  Public school is not real life!  Not even close. Self expanitary.

7)    Limited exposure to the teaching gifts of others…as well as spiritual gifts of others; parent doesn’t have ALL the gifts.  I beg to differ.  Granted, there are Christian teachers in public schools, but fat chance I’m sending my children there on a possibility that they are going to get a Christian teacher who just might have something to give that I cannot.  On the contrary, I see myself as the person God has put into my child’s life – I am who he/she needs.  I don’t have every gifting possible to mankind from God, but I do have this; I am the one God gave to my child, for His purposes.  Can I delegate something or another out, if I see a bent in my child that I am not savvy in?  Sure!  Nothing wrong with that.  But I don’t have to send them to public school to get that.  I knew a homeschooled child who wanted a horse more than anything, with no way to keep one.  She and her parents prayed, and a neighbor fairly close by allowed her to “have” her horse as her own.  Kept at the neighbor’s, cared for by this child, who was taught how to care for it by the neighbor.  Win/win for the child and the neighbor.  The horse got a lot of attention and care, the child got a horse, the neighbor got some help.  It wasn’t really hers, but it was.  God is over all, and will provide opportunities as we pray and trust Him that He has a plan for our children’s lives.

In closing, let me tell you about a senator from our state who died several years back now.  He was a great man.  He really put himself on the line, advocating for life – showing the film “The Silent Scream” in his office to other senators as he tried to give the unborn child a voice.  He worked hard for the public until his death.

He lived nearby, and I had always admired him.  He stood head and shoulders above so many other leaders of our day.  When I read his obituary, I was not surprised to find he had been homeschooled for much of his education.  It made perfectly good sense.  But (tongue in cheek) how was he able to rise above all of the cons listed?  His mother’s overwhelmedness; the pressure of academics; the isolationism; the exclusiveness (he ended up helping people); the fear of outside influence, failing, not keeping up; the limited exposure to real life situations and to the teaching gifts of others?

For that matter, how did Abraham Lincoln rise above all these so called pitfalls, or cons?  Benjamin Franklin?  C.S. Lewis?  Franklin D. Roosevelt?  Theodore Roosevelt?  George Washington?  Oh, the list is long.  Maybe an even better question is, who would these men have been, had they been raised in our public school system?  What influence might that have had on their lives?

Finally, I want to say that God put children in families.  That was HIS idea.  The public school system is a modern entity.  God's idea was best.  What He has called us to do, He will make a way for us to do.  There are no cons when following His will.  That doesn’t mean that everything looks good on the outside, all the time.  It just means that He is building His character in our lives, and in the lives of our children – for His purposes.  We put our faith in Him.

Deb Turner - Homeschooling from the Heart
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