There is a strong suspicion that Christians who take the step to educate their children at home do so out of fear. I sometimes wonder whether this is because we unwittingly spend too much time talking about how bad schools are and too little time dwelling on the tremendous benefits of Christian education. It is important to speak positively about home education whenever the opportunity arises. Home education is a feast and not a famine. Home-based learning is for freedom rather than from fear:
1. Freedom to Preach the Gospel
All day at every opportunity and to intentionally use every subject to draw a child’s gaze to Christ. God is not confined to family worship, or a prayer before bedtime, but he is studied through the lens of all learning. It is amazing to me the number of times a day that we are free to talk about the Lord. We are currently reading through ‘The Children’s Homer’ since it ties in with our history curriculum. Replete with Greek gods and goddesses from start to finish, every reading times provides me the opportunity to remind my children that while these characters place their faith in false erratic and irrational gods, we worship the true and living God of the Bible who is consistent in character and who sacrificially loves his people.
2. Freedom to Disciple
A Maths lesson is not only about learning times tables. A page of faultless Maths completed with grumbling and a bad attitude is a red flag. A week away from academic work is not a week away from education as every interaction and activity opens the opportunity to character training (mine as well as that of my children). God’s work of sanctification in our lives is mainly carried out in the home with the abundance of different relationships, personalities and pressures that we have within our four walls.
3. Freedom from Dancing to the Tune of the State
More time than I can count, I have heard parents complaining about schools, teachers and classmates. I do understand frustrations that people have with the school system and I truly sympathise. Nevertheless, it is freedom for me to acknowledge that if my child’s teacher (me!) is too strict or too lenient, then I can actually do something about it! There is no complaining via email and hoping for a positive result. The attitude of the teacher is entirely in my own hands. If one of my children is being bullied by another child, nobody cares more than I do about sorting out this situation for the sake of both my children. Furthermore, we do not continually find ourselves on the back foot re-teaching wrong worldviews imparted by the state curriculum and peers. We have the upper hand since we teach what we want when we want.
4. Freedom to Teach at the Pace of a Child
I do believe that children and families work better with some kind of schedule in place. Nevertheless, the pace is not set by how long we think a book should take, but by how long it takes a child to grasp the book’s main points. What is the point of pushing on in Maths when a child has not fully mastered the basics? Children learn at different paces. This has been exemplified for me with my two sets of twins who have all learned phonics and writing at their own pace, rather than at the pace of their twin. If I pressed on teaching them both together, I would have bored one child with a slow pace and distressed the second child by a fast pace.
5. Freedom Means Responsibility
Finally, as a caveat, it is important to note that with freedom comes responsibility. It is one step to remove children from the state system, but if we decide to take on the responsibility of teaching our children, rather than giving this job to the state, then we do have a responsibility towards our child to think about what that might look like and how we might put it into practise.
The reality is that many parents turn to home education as a result of a negative experience at school. If this is case, it is absolutely right to remove our children from a system that does not acknowledge the Lord and has proved to be damaging to our children, if we possibly can. However, to treat Christian education as a hideaway from the world is to miss the freedom that is ours when we teach at home.
