Home Schooling

OK. So what am I talking about? By end, I could mean finished or over due to home schooling being outlawed or made illegal. But I'm not talking about this use of the word. Some home educators might think I mean the end of home schooling, and now the beginning of home education. They think it would be best to eliminate the terms "school or schooling" from our vocabulary altogether when it comes to describing what takes place in our homes. Their position often represents an us (school is where you send your children away, and we don't do that) versus them (those who don't understand the difference between school and education, but they would if they would just attend the right seminars, the ones we in the "us" camp attend) kind of thinking. I'm not talking about that either.

I am talking about end, and by using this word, I mean the purpose, or expected result of engaging in this form of schooling, (oops, or education...).

In other words, what are we doing this for?

While most of us are busy doing it, doing it, doing it, for nine months of the year, there are two times when the Why am I doing this? question especially surfaces: at the end of the school year around the time of graduation and just prior to the start of the new school year. So, here we are at one of those times. With just a week or two left before beginning the new school year, I want to encourage you to think about why you are home schooling again this year. As a way of stimulating some thought about this, I want to reflect a little on our most recent NCCA graduation ceremony.

Each year when we hold our ceremony, we invite a guest to speak to our graduating class. This year's speaker, a home school father and pastor, began his talk by contrasting two people. Then he posed a question to the graduates.

Here's a paraphrase of the two people he contrasted:

On a weekly basis, he sees a man who comes to an outreach ministry for support and help. The visit always begins a little awkwardly-- the man smells and looks like he just arrived from a campsite. Actually that's pretty close to the truth; hours before he was dozing in a sleeping bag. He and his wife are homeless. He suffers the aftereffects of drug addiction both physically and mentally. In fact, he may still be abusing, still caught in the cycle of starting and stopping and starting and stopping. They talk awhile and afterwards pray together. His need for God is great, and he knows it.

In contrast is a girl around seventeen or eighteen. She comes from a stable and loving family that enjoys a comfortable standard of living. Her parents have invested deeply into her life. She's benefited by being home schooled and attending a private Christian school the last two years. She is a good student, respectful, and well-liked. She'll be attending college next year.

After a few moments, our speaker posed the following question to the graduates: "Who do you identify with?" The range of expressions on the graduates' faces seemed to suggest they thought his question was too weird to respond to or that he was just joking.

He wasn't joking; he was going somewhere with it.

I'll give you the crux of the question in my next article as well as tie it in with the larger question about the end of home schooling.

Thanks for reading!

Curt Bumcrot, MRE

Does your elementary-age child resist opening his grammar book? If so, you don't have to look far for the reason: it's long, boring, and looks all too familiar to last year's grammar book. For all he knows, it is last year's book with a different cover!