Fashion is a strange thing. Some clothing industry aficionado decides what the new look will be, the stores stock their apparel departments with the new look, we see the new look in magazines, catalogs, and store windows. People begin wearing the new look and before long, everyone’s got the new look. Consider the transformation that blue jeans have taken over the years. They started as basic canvas overalls preferred by farmers and miners, patented by Levi Strauss in 1873. Since then, we’ve seen America’s favorite bottom-wear take on various shapes, colors, and textures, from bell bottom jeans to straight legs, high rise to low rise, dark and crisp to soft and faded, and baggies to skinny jeans. It’s hard to keep up the look of denim duds over the years. I wonder how many perfectly good pairs went out on the curb because they weren’t what everyone was wearing anymore. But that’s how fashion is: someone makes the choice of what’s “in” and we all follow.

School choice is very similar. If you rewind the clock, there was a time when all families taught their own children at home. In fact, it was the standard for the majority of history. Then the idea of mass education took root and it grew to become the acceptable norm. Parents bought into the idea that someone else, an “expert,” was better qualified to teach their children. Before long, everyone was doing it—plucking their little ones from the home nest and putting them in public institutions to be shaped into a particular mold and moved down the education conveyor belt during their prime, formative years. Who decided what the standard would be? Was it based on God’s Word or some humanistic principles void of any Biblical foundational wisdom?

Look around you today and the answer to these questions is quite obvious. When children spend the majority of time outside of the authority and influence of their parents for 12 or more years of their lives, you can be sure they will be sporting the “new look” that the founders of the education system were looking for. Horace Mann, John Dewey, and other humanists believed children belonged to the state, and the mass education system was the way to capture young minds and shape them according to ideals that would serve their socialist agendas.

Before long, the local school style became as American as apple pie, foot-long hot dogs, and blue jeans. School became a right of passage that every child went through, and parents bought into the idea that it was a good thing. After all, everyone was doing it. Well, several generations after the dawning of the age of mass education, parents began questioning whether public education was actually doing more harm than good. Many Christians, in particular, began reexamining child training in light of Scripture and they realized that the methodologies and philosophies of public school ran contrary to principles that God has clearly laid out for us (Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Proverbs 22:6, Matthew 18:6-7, 1 Corinthians 15:22...)

It’s no wonder there are so many problems within the Christian community. The divorce rate is just as high among believers as non-believers, teen pregnancy and drug use is not a shock to hear about among young church goers, Biblical illiteracy is at a staggering all-time high within the Body of Christ, the worldview of Christian youth is completely warped, mirroring that of a Marxist/socialist and secular humanist mindset, and the falling away of the next generation of believers is said to be between 80-85% when they graduate from highschool.

The sad thing about all this is, it has become the norm! We are complacent with the sad facts and figures that point to a crumbling generation because we have become used to seeing the fallout. Another pregnant unwed mother sitting down the pew in church on Sunday morning? Oh well, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen that. A college kid who decides to move in with his girlfriend to save money on room and board? Times are tough, right? Young Christians who support liberal extremists in our nation’s government offices because they make some vague promises about prosperity and change.

It’s not too difficult to connect the dots between the moral decay that has permeated the Christian culture and the day-to-day exposure to all things ungodly in the public schools to which Christian kids are subject. For some reason, the public school danger alarm that we try to sound within the church is falling on so many deaf ears. People like the soft, worn comfort of the local school. It’s what’s readily available, easy to wear, and in style. Prom, football games, honor societies, lots of friends...what good parent would deny their child these opportunities? Besides, going against the norm is hard. Don’t we need a teaching degree? Isn’t there a lot of work and sacrifice involved in homeschooling? Won’t people look at us funny? Might we be denying our children a chance at a solid future?

Take it from me, I was an institutional school guru. I attended public and private schools for seventeen years of my life, my father taught in one, I ended up teaching in one, and my husband, David, and I even began our oldest daughter’s education in the local Christian school as a preschooler and kindergartener. We know what it’s like to comfortably follow the norm. Then, by God’s grace, we discovered the “new old” look of homeschooling. We tried it on. It fit! God’s ways usually do.

Isn’t it time more parents abandon the traditional school style and put on the genuine article of homeschooling? It’s not a matter of whether everyone’s doing it, it’s whether it’s the right thing to do.

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. ~ Proverbs 14:12

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Kim d’Escoto and her husband, David, co-authored The Little Book of Big Reasons to Homeschool and its companion Bible study/discussion guide. They also co-hosted “Homeschooling for Life." The d’Escotos have homeschooled their five children, ages 2-16, for over 10 years. For information on their speaking, writing, newsletter, and live webinars, or to get more encouragement on homeschooling, visit their website www.dexios.info or email them at davidandkim@dexios.info

- Home Where They Belong

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