Why We Home Educate

What is education?

            Before we go into why we home educate, it is important to first understand what education actually is. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition, “Education” is defined as: “1. The act or process of educating or being educated. 2. The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process. 3. A program of instruction of a specified kind or level. 4. An instructive or enlightening experience.”¹

“Educate” is defined as: “1. To develop the innate capacities of, especially by schooling or instruction. 2. To provide with knowledge or training in a particular area or for a particular purpose. 3. To provide with information. 4. To stimulate or develop the mental or moral growth of.” ¹

 “Schooling” is defined as: “1. Instruction or training given at school. 2. Education obtained through experience or exposure.” ¹

            It is not until one looks up the word “school” that we see anything about education being associated with an “institution.” Although that is commonly what “school” is associated with, “school” also means “To train or discipline.” ¹ This last definition (“To train or discipline”) along with Education, Educate, and Schooling is where we look to what the Bible says.

Discipleship

                A disciple is defined as “One who embraces and assists in spreading the teachings of another.”¹ We have decided to follow (become a disciple) Jesus in our daily lives and in doing that we must pattern our lives after Him. We must have a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father and follow His commandments, guidance, and instruction in all areas of our lives. This means that we embrace the Word of God in our lives through the salvation and sanctification that the Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit so freely provides to each that will repent of their sins. Through embracing the Word of God in every area of our life, we have been led by God to home educate for the primary purpose of obeying the commandments in the following Bible verses:

Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: That thou mightest fear the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

– Deuteronomy 6:1-7 (Emphasis added)

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

 – Proverbs 22:6

             The Bible verses above became the foundation of why we were led to home educate. Colleen and I were enlightened one day (Summer of 2012) with how great of responsibility God has given us as Christian parents to bring up our children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). We realized through this enlightenment that our children are “an heritage of the Lord” (Psalm 127:3) and that God expected us as their parents to form and shape them as “arrows are in the hand of a mighty man” (Psalm 127:4). We soon realized that in order to form and shape them “as arrows” for the LORD, we could not continue bringing up our children (Noah and Eden at the time) the way we were planning. We realized we could not be the primary influence of training and discipling our children if we sent them to a school or daycare. We were convicted primarily by the words in Deuteronomy 6 and Proverbs 22 in that the responsibility to “teach” and “train” are the sole responsibility of the Christian parent. God gave us precious children to take care of for Him and He expects us as Christian parents to be the primary Godly influence in their lives.

          Home education however is not nearly as popular as public, private, or charter schools (although it is growing in our country) and therefore many people (to include fellow Christians) may not understand why we are home educating. Some may say that God did not literally intend for parents to educate their children with respect to the Bible verses we have highlighted. To provide an answer/defense (I Peter 3:15) to this, one must be reminded of the purpose man is here on earth. Ecclesiastes 12:13 says, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” By this Bible verse we are to comprehend that our “whole duty” as people on this earth is to: 1. Fear God and 2. Keep His Commandments. In fearing God, we not only bow down at his perfect and holy feet, but we are to love and respect Him and His divine instruction. Once we attain this, we should have no issue obeying His commandments such as those found in Deuteronomy 6 and Proverbs 22.

Some others may say, well these scriptures are Old Testament and we are no longer under the law of the Old Testament. Although this has some truth to it since we do have a New Testament, we know that the Old Testament law was a shadow of good things to come (Hebrews 10:1) and that Jesus Christ said that He came to this earth not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17-18).  Furthermore, since God’s moral law was not destroyed but instead the ceremonial/judicial law, God’s moral law was actually placed in our mind and written in our hearts (Hebrews 8:10). Furthermore, the Bible says that the Lord does not change and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8). And for this reason we understand that God still expects us as Christian parents to be the primary teacher and trainer in our children’s lives for the purpose of bringing up our children to embrace the Word of God in their lives so that they may also assist in spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ. This is truly the “whole duty of man”.

Building Family Relationships

Back in the book of Genesis, God designed and created the family. God first created the man (Genesis 1:26-27, 2:6-7). God assigned man to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle, all the earth, and every creeping thing on the earth. God told man to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it. God also put man in the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it as well as name all the beast of the field and fowl of the air. It was during the naming of the beast and fowl that man realized he did not have a help meet. Therefore God caused man to fall asleep, took a rib from the man, and made woman (Genesis 2:21-22). After God created man and woman (Adam and Eve), Adam said “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:23-24). These Bible verses describe that the family (Father/Husband, Mother/Wife, and Children) was designed and created before any other organization, church, or government and that God has a special purpose for a family.

          The family that God designed and created consists of special relationships between each member of the family. Paul, through the inspiration of God and His Holy Spirit, told the husband to love his wife as Jesus Christ loved the church and gave himself for it (Ephesians 5:25). Husbands are also told to honor their wife (I Peter 3:7) and to not be bitter against them (3:19). The wife is told to submit to her husband as unto the Lord (Ephesians 5:22) and to be a help meet to him. Children are told to obey and honor their parents (Ephesians 6:1-3, Exodus 20:12) in the Lord for this is right. Fathers are actually told to not provoke their children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). These special relationships between each member of the family are to be continually adhered to today as they were in Biblical days.

           We realized though that through the first few years of our children's lives we were making choices (primarily financial) that forced us to send our children to someone else to care for them during the day while we worked. We realized that we were heading in the same direction when we started considering whether to send our children to public, private, or charter school.  Although we had wonderful people caring for our children and feel blessed to this day to have them be part of our lives, we still did not like sending them away. For example, we didn't want to send our children to daycare, however we felt like we had no choice and since everyone else was doing it, it seemed normal. The reality was, we did have a choice (although not an easy choice) and we did not "have" to send our children to daycare. Our choices early on had to do with desiring certain "things" (e.g., home, vehicle, salary, vacations, extracurricular activities, toys, hobbies, etc.). Although desiring these things were not necessarily wrong, we realized that these "things" really did not matter at the end of the day. Our children is what matters (next to our personal salvation with Jesus Christ). We realized basically that through our own selfish motivations, we as Christian parents lost our vision for our family. We felt that if we continued in this way, we may begin to consider our children a burden instead of a blessing.

Once we realized this about our family, we directed this mindset and conviction toward our children's "education." We began to realize that if God expected us to build relationships with our children through teaching, training, and discipling, then how could we achieve this if we put ourselves in a situation (by the choices we made) that forced us to send our children to school for 6-8 hours per day, 5 days per week, 180+ days per year, all for “educational” purposes. We further began to think back to our childhood days and particularly public school days. Although we feel we had a good experience in public schools, we thought back to our relationship status between our parents and our teachers and friends at school. We realized that our priorities focused around our friends and the people we looked up to for direction the most were our teachers. We realized we did not have a Biblical relationship with our parents since we did not focus on obeying and honoring them. We loved them, however our friends and teachers had the most influence on our lives.

This doesn't mean we aren't appreciative for the friends we have made through the years nor does this discredit the great influence certain teachers had on our life. What this means for our family now though is that we cannot completely fulfill what God has called us to do if we choose to send our children to a school that will ultimately take precedence over family most of the time. We cannot work on building Biblically strong relationships together if we aren't together most of the time. We realized that spending a few hours in the evening and 2 days on the weekend together was just not enough time to work out all of the issues of life that take place in relationships. We desired something different for our family and sending our children to any type of school (public, private, charter) was not an option to fulfill the calling God has for us as Christian parents.

Individualized Instruction

            One of the issues with our education system today is that children are treated as if they are going through a manufacturing line. The manufacturer (the school system) gathers all of the materials (children) together in one manufacturing plant (school building) with the purpose and objective to use the materials to manufacture what the manufacturer desires. The materials however are all unique and cannot all be handled identically. This requires the manufacturer to establish handling “standards” in order to attempt to manage all of the different materials as efficiently as possible. What ends up happening is that each piece of material cannot completely be used during the manufacturing process due to the uniqueness of each material and the fact that the manufacturer can’t possibly take the time to apply each material for the material’s special purpose. On average, most of the materials “make it” into production; however there are still many materials that are either held back or moved forward in the manufacturing line while all of the other materials move together down the line. This ultimately results in waste of which the manufacturer is faced with difficult decisions on how to use all of the material or how the material should be “labeled”.

          Although there are great teachers in the school system, the school system itself cannot possibly address each of our chidlren's uniquie needs. It's really nothing against the people in the system, it's really about how the system is designed. In a mass-education environment, there is simply not enough time or resources to cater education curriculum to each child even if they desired to. So the school systems approach is to create a standard for each child to meet, however the problem becomes that not every child meets the standards. Some are above the standard, and some are below the standard, and some are right with the standard. The school system would term these children “Gifted”, “Behind”, and “Average”. This labeling creates many more problems that children have to deal with and is completely unnecessary, if the education curriculum and system could be catered to the specific child. Then there would be no need for “Gifted”, “Behind”, and “Average” but rather the child would simply be where God wants them to be. This is how we wanted to pursue "education" in our home: without the labels and for our children to be exactly where God desires for them to be.

Basically, when it comes to individualized instruction, the benefit of home education is that we can focus on each our children's unique abilities without having to label each of them based on how they meet a “one-size-fits-all” standard. This is a great thing since instead of forcing our children to learn a specific way or “else”, we can utilize an education curriculum or method that is best for each child. Whatever works for the child is what is used. Whatever does not is put to the side. We have to remember that the point of education is for our children to love God, love learning and prosper for the LORD in their adult life. Individualized instruction fostered in a Christian, Biblically worldview environment allows our children to freely explore the vastness of knowledge God has given to mankind. We feel individualized instruction is really the most efficient manner to educate our children. Many great educators within the school system also agree with this. How one may ask? For example, when a child has an issue grasping material, what usually is prescribed? A tutor! Why? Because the school system acknowledges that one-on-one, individualized instruction improves student academic performance. So we have basically created an environment in our home that allows for our "education" to be 100% tutor-oriented. Our hope by providing this type of instruction is that our children will have a love for learning and that we can continue to build our relationship with them as their primary educator.

Opportunities for real experiences

            One of the things we realized with the public, private, or charter school systems is that they really do not provide realistic experiences for life. “What? How could you say that?” one might ask. “Children relating with other children their own age is normal and is needed to provide opportunities for growth and allow them to experience real life”. To this, I (Michael) would say, “Since when?”

            
           We started to ask ourselves questions like, "When in “real life” do we experience age segregation other than the school system? How does age segregating provide opportunities for real experiences and real life?" Once we realized the answers to these types of questions, we really felt that we needed to incorporate relationship building across age groups so that our children could learn real life lessons. It just so happens our home is comprised of multiple ages in the ranges they can expect to find in the real world. Even more important, our children can interact amongst themselves with teaching, training, and discipling from us as Christian parents throughout the day. We can lead, guide, and direct them just like God does for us as Christian parents today. This is ultimately "real life" experience. Learning to work with others in a Christian manner and guided by somone who cares about you and where you end up at the end of your life.

             We didn't think this way initially though. We used to think,  “If our children go to school, then they can experience different personalities and people who do not think like you do”. This was actually an odd excuse for us to really achieve our selfish desires. When we really thought about that, it didn't make sense. We realized that what better opportunity does a child get to experience different personalities than with their own family members 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year? A child is expected to work with their parents as well as their siblings (who in fact have different personalities and do not all think alike) all the time and in a peaceful, loving, kind, and Godly manner. If we sent our children to school, they would only be expected to “work with” other children (the same age most of the time) during the school day or during extra-curricular activities which are not 24/7/365 and not in a God-centered manner. Being required to treat one another with love and kindness all the time is a much greater and difficult task than to only have to practice it certain times of the day. By practicing this every day together, it is our hope that our children will be understanding of others who are different socially, ethnically, and religiously but are also willing to stand on the truth and principles of the Bible.

            Home education also provides for many other "real life" experiences such as understanding roles and responsibilities within a family.  This would include the Father’s role, the Mother’s role, the child’s role, and how each role relates to serving God. Having the opportunity to experience how God expects a family to work together prepares the child for one of the most important parts of life (raising a family in a Godly way). We realized that school systems through some of the curriculums out there could jeapordize the Biblical viewpoint of the family and could not possibly provide for these experiences which are really essential for each family to exist and operate according to God’s Word. God designed the family and how it is to operate and therefore for the child to understand it, it is best for them to be trained and have the opportunity to practice the training they have been provided which comes from real life experiences.

            
           Additionally, from the "real life" perspective, home education  also provides many more opportunities for discipleship, internships, apprenticeships, and co-ops. Since we have much more flexibility in our schedule compared to schools, we can pursue these types of "real life" experiences together. Through these opportunities we look forward to training our children to be productive citizens in our society as well as develop healthy and appropriate skills necessary to provide for themselves and their families in a God-centered way.

We were simply “called” to home educate

           At this point, we hope that no one has been offended for the words we have shared, however we wanted to provide our reasons for home educating. We do not judge or condemn others who have chosen to send their children to an institutional school. We certainly realize that there are many good Christian parents out there who love their children more than anything and have chosen not to home educate. In fact, both of us (Colleen and Michael) were raised by very loving parents who provided the best life they could for us. We are also products of public education which actually treated us well academically, socially, and emotionally. However as we have become parents through God’s gift of children, we have a different perspective and outlook on life and our background.

          We had actually been saved from our sins and serving the Lord for close to 10 years before we realized that God was leading us to home educate. When we were united in marriage, we had plans that most newly married couples have: 1) Rent or purchase a new home, 2) Adopt a pet, 3) Purchase a new vehicle, 4) Plan to have children (ours was a five year plan), 5) Send our children to a good daycare (so we could both continue to work), 6) Send our children to school (since that is what everyone does, right?). This plan may deviate for some, especially when it comes to the order of things, but for the most part we see this trend among peers. Well, God changed our plan, but not until we got into step 5 (daycare).

          We were both working at the time primarily to support the lifestyle that we thought we should have or needed. We even began to use our children as justification to keep our lifestyle. For example, we would say things like, “Our parents did this or that for us, we need to do the same” or “Our children need this or that, so we both need to work to provide for them.” However God started speaking to our hearts early in our marriage with a desire Michael always had which was for Colleen to have the option to stay at home. This desire was not even considered or come to fruition until we had our oldest child (Noah) in daycare for the first 3.5 years of his life. Eden had been born at that time and was in daycare, but not nearly as much as Noah due to health issues.

         Our intent (with Colleen staying home) at that time however was simply about how Noah would be going to school the next school year and we only had one more year with him at home. We actually had moved from where we were living 2 years earlier and back to the county we grew up in so our children could go to “good” schools like we did. But then in January of 2012 God led Colleen to stay home. By the summer of 2012, God had clearly shown us He was leading us to home educate. Between January and March, God had spoken to Michael’s heart about schooling options. We both started thinking of sending Noah to private Christian school. Then God spoke to Michael’s heart again about the option of homeschooling. Colleen’s first reaction was, “No way. I am not homeschooling.” Well, never say never when you let God lead your life! By the summer of 2012, both of us were convinced we needed to home educate in order to obey the calling of the LORD.

          As it turns out, God had been calling us to this way of life for some time but we were not listening close enough. We now realize that for our family at this point in our life, home education is what we must do. However, it’s not really about the opportunities or academics (although there are clear advantages), but rather it is about obeying God. We must home educate not only for our children, but also as parents. We are all called to “…grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ…” (II Peter 3:18). We have grown so much since we began this journey with home education, it really is unbelievable. Our eyes have been opened to things we never thought of, didn’t think was important, or didn’t want to address in our lives. However, serving Jesus Christ has a way of setting a person free to grow, and that is through His way, His truth, and His life (John 14:6). In order to grow though, we must first be willing to obey. Even at moments where we feel we aren’t capable of home educating our children because we think we aren’t “qualified”, God quickly reminds us that we “can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth” us (Philippians 4:13) and that He qualifies the called, He doesn’t call the “qualified”.

         So why do we home educate? We were simply called by God and we simply want to obey Him because His way is always right.

“But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” –Matthew 24:13

References

1. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.