Nov. 4, 2009 - Does Homeschooling Mean Living in the Christian Ghetto?
Category • General Homeschooling
Over the last 40 or 50 years, the evangelical Christian community in America has gradually but steadily formed a separate sub-culture with its own institutions, events, services, and entertainment. I call this the Christian ghetto, a world-within-the-world where you can live your life without ever having a meaningful encounter with people outside your self-selected group. For those of us who homeschool or use a private Christian school, this isn't just possible, it's quite likely--about the only way to become more isolated among Christians would be to join a commune.
What affect has this had on the vibrancy of the church in America and its impact on the larger culture? In his book Grace-Based Parenting, Tim Kimmel writes, "What's ironic is that the 'secularization' of the non-Christian community has risen proportionately with our withdrawal from it. The more options the Christian community created for itself, the more our general cuture moved toward secular thinking, the corollary being that the less we need to engage the lost world around us, the more it will be left to its own devices."
Homeschooling does not have to mean living in the Christian ghetto. Nor should it. Tim Kimmel's book provides strong support for the position that isolating children from non-Christian influences does not keep them safe; on the contrary, it sets them up for failure when they reach adulthood and necessarily must encounter those other influences OR it makes them completely unable, as adults, to impact the world around them because they don't know how to interact with it.
Christian homeschoolers often set up their own homeschooling support groups. The majority of homeschoolers are still Christian, and so it's natural that Christian homeschoolers make up the bulk of the people forming and joining support groups. Because of that, it's also natural that the small number of people constituting the rest of the homeschoolers find it impossible, outside of very populous areas, to form their own homeschool support groups because there just aren't enough of them. The result? In some areas, where the only large and active group is restricted to only Christian members, other homeschoolers have NO options for standardized testing, field trips, clubs, social events, graduation ceremonies, athletics, and the other functions provided by a support group.
It is not hard to see that not only does this remove the Christian influence from the larger homeschooling culture, it breeds resentment of Christians (and by extension Christ) among the very people we are intended to love and serve!
You may not be able to change the policies of your local support group. But you can plan events and activities outside of that support group umbrella and make them open to all homeschoolers. If an inclusive group is available in your area, you can join it in addition to or instead of joining the exclusively Christian group. Not only will you be fulfilling your mandate to "be in the world", you'll be moving your kids beyond the boundaries of the Christian ghetto and giving them a safe, supervised introduction to life in this larger world that they must someday inhabit without your guidance or else become irrelevant.
• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • 6:44 AM
Jul. 30, 2009 - Why I Homeschool
Category • General Homeschooling
When my dh and I decided to homeschool, back when our oldest was 2-1/2 or 3 years old, our primary motivation was academics. We decided we could cover more material better at home than the school could. This conclusion was prompted by my reading the Little House series of books again and noticing how much more Laura knew than I did, even though I had been a top student through 13 years of public school and four years of college plus a couple more years getting a masters degree, and Laura didn't even go to school regularly.
Now that we've been formally homeschooling for three years, I have different reasons for homeschooling. Primarily it's about ideas. As Charlotte Mason says, ideas are the mind's food. Ideas, not information, are the critical component of any education. Each book or other resource we select must contain no ideas that are not true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Each year, as I read the materials my children are reading or hearing, I am reminded of the importance of the ideas in each work--they are forming my children's worldview in subtle ways constantly.
I'm also homeschooling so that we can have more time together as a family. As my kids get older and begin to have more activities outside our home, I am grateful that we have so much time together each day, learning together and playing together. Soon enough they will be leaving our family, and until then I hope to build strong relationships and influence their development so that our family will be a resource they rely on when they need it even after they have left home.
I'm homeschooling so that I can meet each child's educational needs individually. I have one child who will be a late reader, and in another school environment I would probably have to hold her back a year at least and put her in special programs which for this particular child would not have positive longterm effects no matter how I tried to soften the blow. Since we are homeschooling, I can work on her reading while we move ahead in other areas where she is more than capable.
I am thankful that we have the opportunity to do this, and that the curriculum we are using (AmblesideOnline) has such high quality books and materials so that we don't have to go out and invent our own schedules and booklists. Thank you to all the Advisory members who worked so hard to put this package together!
• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • 3:40 PM
May. 9, 2009 - Is the Sky Falling?
Category • General Homeschooling
Conservative Christians and homeschoolers who follow politics at all are becoming more and more agitated about various bills under consideration and various policies being implemented at all levels of government here in America, but especially at the federal level. Scary emails are forwarded letting us know that this or that change marks the end of our freedoms.
I refuse to be alarmed by these bills and policies. They are but symptoms of a larger problem, and that larger problem has been around and growing for a long time, but is still ignored by almost everyone. Until that problem is addressed, we may alleviate a particular symptom for a time but the cancer still grows below the surface.
Somehow, over the last couple of decades, our political class has slowly but surely become completely corrupt. Votes are for sale, openly and in almost every case. This applies to both political parties, by the way. This corruption is the root of the ills that assail us, and unless it is dealt with, all these other issues don't matter. The corruption is the result of greed, and most often takes the form of policies designed to repress or oppress those who can't defend themselves. In general, we don't hear much about those policies unless they touch on a hot-button issue that's useful to some large organization for fundraising purposes. (How many people are aware of or active in redressing the abuses in our prison system? How many know what eminent domain means or are working to prevent its abuse?)
Homeschoolers have by and large failed to really try to understand and follow politics but instead have used the crutch of relying on "action alerts" from their favorite issue organizations. As a result, we are not "wise as serpents" at all and are completely unprepared to tackle the huge issues facing us politically. Continuing to focus on symptoms, which any single piece of legislation is, might delay the final reckoning but will not prevent it.
This applies to the evangelical Christian community in America also. We aren't salt and light. We aren't out there doing the hard work in the trenches that our forebears did when confronted with terrible societal decay. We just wait for an issue and then agitate. Alas, as a result we've maintained some appearance of morality externally but society has rotted within and now there's no perfume sufficient to hide the smell of decay.
• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • 11:03 PM
Sep. 2, 2008 - Starting Out Homeschooling
Category • General Homeschooling
If you are new to homeschooling, you have a lot of decisions to make. That *can* seem overwhelming. But remember you can always change your mind later. Of course, it's also true that if you put in a little time up-front to think about what you are trying to accomplish and how you would like to accomplish it, you may save yourself wasted time and money! You'll find that homeschoolers use lots of different approaches and materials--there is no "one right way" to do things. One option to learn more about getting started (if you live near an area where these are offered) is to attend Smoothing the Way classes.
Don't rush to get started! First, you've got some thinking to do about what your goals and priorities are. Your choices are almost endless and very different, and you'll need to have a good idea what you're looking for or you'll be completely lost.
This site might be a bit helpful:
Home School Curriculum Advisor
(Click on the items under How to Choose on the left-hand menu to see the content without taking the eCourse.)
I don't think their descriptions of the homeschooling styles (like literature-based, Charlotte Mason, Robinson, etc.) are accurate, but they at least give you a general idea and their other suggestions are good.
I use the Charlotte Mason approach, because I want something with structure but that's also flexible, something that challenges and inspires my kids but also allows them to approach the material individually. You can find out more about it here:
You *could* start the year with this curriculum because it's free and books can often be found at the library or printed from the computer. Then if you decided to change, you wouldn't have invested much, and you'd still have been making forward progress.
There's a good website that helps you see the steps to getting started with Ambleside:
Getting Started with Ambleside Online
This site has links to lots of different curriculum outlines or lists of things kids should know in various years, which might help if you want to take an eclectic approach and gather materials from a variety of sources:
Remember too that if you're coming straight from a traditional school setting you need to allow some time to deschool. More about that here:
Deschool Before You Homeschool
• 1 Comments • Post A Comment! • 9:03 PM
