“If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the Scriptures.
If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper.”
–Daniel Webster
In my last post we talked about some of the important discoveries
I made during our 20+ years of homeschooling.
Remember school buildings and specialized equipment do not
educate or teach. Neither do extra curricular activities. Some of those
things would be nice to have, but they certainly are not necessary for your child to be well educated.
Next we talked about your home, your community and the world truly
becomes your classroom. You can expand your child’s horizons far beyond the walls of a classroom.
Third, your child has the opportunity to truly get to know his mom and dad, siblings and grandparents. Your children will be well grounded in who they are and where they’re going, and you will have the opportunity to impart your God-given faith and values to your children.
I also learned that my job was to “work myself out of my job.” My job was not to teach my children all the facts and figures known to man.
My job was two-fold. One, to do my best to stay out of God’s way of guiding and directing my children. Two, my job was to teach them “how” to learn and empower them to be life long self-directed (following God’s leadership) learners.
In the homeschooling environment, constant interaction with others is the norm. Constant communication and discussion is crucial in developing critical thinking and leadership skills.Real life education occurs on a daily basis.
God will coordinate opportunites for our children that we could never imagine.The presence of the living God involved in the daily walk of your homeschool-Who could ask for a better Superintendent of Education than that.
So the answer to the question, “What should your classroom look like,”
Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and a pastor during the 1800s said, “The mother’s heart is the child’s classroom.”
Now that gives us something to think about.
Before I became a mom, I was a public school teacher
and I absolutely loved teaching. I loved the idea that
I could possibly make a difference in the lives of the
children that I dealt with day in and day out.
Those children spent more time with me than they did with their parents.
That was quite a responsibility. Would I teach public school
again? Probably, since my own children are grown and maybe
I could still make a difference. I see it as a ministry and I
respect those Christian school teachers who love teaching
and are helping guide and teach the next generation.
Would I send my own children to public school? Not if I could possibly help it. Another name for public school is government school, and my husband and I had no desire to put my children in that environment. We didn’t want our children to have a cookie cutter education.
So what’s the alternative? I believe homeschooling is the best choice.
We knew we were going to homeschool even before we had children.
Was it hard? Sometimes.
Was it worth it? Yes, absolutely.
It’s not about whether the government school in your community is
excellent or not. It’s not about running away from public school problems.
It’s about having a better option. If you believe God has placed it on your heart to homeschool, there’s a reason you feel that way and you need to be willing to check it out.
We homeschooled for more than twenty years, and during those years, I made some important discoveries that I want to tell you about:
1. School facilities do not educate or teach. It doesn’t matter if the government school has a new computer lab and you have a “techie” child who you know would just love it.
It doesn’t matter if your child has musical talent, and you know they would love the new choir or band instructor.
It doesn’t matter if you have an athletic child who would excell in the school’s sports program.
It doesn’t matter that the school can offer programs and opportunities that you could never afford.
What does matter is that you have the heart of your child. You can spend time with your children to teach them to be individuals and to stand up for what they believe in. What does matter is that they have a heart for helping others and look for opportunities to serve others. What does matter is that they’ve had time and guidance from you to develop and cherish their
own walk with the Lord.
2. For homeschooling families, your home, the community and the world becomes your classroom. Field trips, family projects, travel opportunities, mission trips and apprenticeships with trusted businesses and friends expand your child’s horizons far beyond the walls of a regular classroom.
3. Home school families are not confined to a strict school schedule. As the Lord guides and directs your home school, you have the freedom to follow His direction.
4. You have time to spend with immediate and extended family which is a wonderful thing. In most families today, family life is so splintered that children don’t have the opportunity to spend time with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and counsins. Family is important. Knowing who you are and where you come from develops deep roots that last a lifetime.
There are several more lessons that I learned from home schooling, and I’ll share those with you next time.
Talk to you soon,
Susan
John Taylor Gatto, New York state teacher of the year, gave a speech called “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher.” Mr. Gatto says that all teachers in America teach these seven lessons whether they realize it or not.
Lesson #1- Confusion. Everything is taught out of context.
Lesson #2- Class Position. You come to know your place.
Lesson #3- Indifference. The “lesson of the bell.” When the bell rings, you drop whatever you’re doing and proceed to the next work station.
Lesson #4- Emotional Dependency. Surrender your will to the predestined chain of command who use stars, red check marks, smiley faces, frowning faces and prices.
Lesson #5- Intellectual Dependency. We must wait for other people who are better trained than ourselves to give us meaning for our lives. Successful children do the thinking they are assigned with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm.
Lesson #6- Provisional Self-Esteem. People need to be told what they are worth.
Lesson #7- You can’t hide. The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted and privacy is not legitimate.
To learn more about what John Taylor Gatto has to say, read Dumbing Us Down.
“Schooling is an attempt to find one right way to educate everyone.”
That is a quote from John Taylor Gatto. Mr. Gatto is critical of compulsory education. He says it is a means of teaching people to keep themselves in their place.
John Taylor Gatto taught over 29 years in the public school system and he was named New York City’s Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990 and 1991. He was also New York State’s Teacher of the Year in 1991.In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement saying that he no longer wanted to “hurt kids to make a living.” One professor of education said that Gatto’s books are “one-sided and hyperbolic, [but] not inaccurate.”
I had the privilege of hearing John Taylor Gatto speak at one of Rhea Perry’s Entrepreneur Days. It was wonderful hearing his words in person. I wish I could have just sat down and visited with him. What a giant of a man!
He’s an American retired school teacher who has authored several books on education such as Dumbing Us Down, The Exhausted School, A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, The Underground History of American Education and Weapons of Mass Instruction.
Listen for yourself and let me know what you think.
This “veteran” homeschool mom spent the day going through curriculum boxes and rediscovering lots of long forgotten Living Books. It was so much fun remembering all the memories and treasured moments of our family’s homeschool adventure. As the memories came flooding back, they brought tears to my eyes.
We have an area wide homeschool used curriculum sale tomorrow so I decided it was time to go through the boxes and find some things that I’m ready to part with. When I finished sorting books into boxes, I called my sons, now 21 and 26 years old, and asked them if they would like to go through the boxes before I took them to the sale tomorrow.
As they were going through the boxes, my husband and I sat back and listened to all the chatter about all our homeschooling adventures. “Oh, Mom, you’re not going to get rid of this are you? We’ve got to keep this one. Hey, do you remember when we…” Ah, sweet memories! It was so much fun.