Educational Alternatives and the Church

A Home Education Tailored to Your Interests

One of the perks of home education is the incredibly interesting things parents learn vicariously while “doing school.” During the teenage years, our family toured interesting and amazing places in the name of education. We visited an aeronautics school, a hydro-excavation company, a recording studio, our state’s General Assembly, countless museums and national parks, shipyards, a tea plantation…the list goes on. We enjoyed some trips with groups and others with just our small family.

When my girls graduated high school and moved on to college, I had a selfish thought. Who is going to be my free pass to cool field trips now? A lone, curious middle-aged woman who just wants to know what’s going on behind the scenes is a little creepy. I definitely wouldn’t be as warmly received on my own as I used to be. I bemoaned the end of an era and accepted that I could no longer be a legitimate undercover explorer.

When the Student Becomes the Teacher

As it turns out, I no longer tag along on my kids’ life experiences and adventures. I experience them, nonetheless, just in a different way. For example, my older daughter recently completed a self-defense class. As she rattled off new knowledge and showed me a few moves, I thought about the whole idea of protection. She described day-to-day, practical, hands-on ways to practice safety. Specifically, I started thinking about people I know well and respect who have thoughtfully and prayerfully opted out of homeschooling. How does a self-defense class relate to not homeschooling? Hear me out…

My daughter knows what to do if trapped in a life-threatening situation and forced to fight for survival. She should target the perpetrator’s weak spots. For starters, raking your fingernails across someone’s eyes is a good way to end the altercation and escape. It’s hard for someone to continue an ambush if he can’t see! After the eyes, the instep is another extremely sensitive place on the body. Slamming your heel into the top of someone’s foot inflicts intense pain. It may give you a chance to defend yourself and get away.

Taking One for the Team

Acknowledging especially susceptible or weak parts of the body makes sense in other areas, too. Take soldiers marching into battle or players charging onto the football field, for example. They wear uniforms and gear designed to protect their faces and other sensitive areas. If you’re part of a team or a troop, your entire body and mind must be thoroughly equipped. You must be fully engaged and focused on accomplishing the common goal of the group. If the weakest part of your body is exposed, you will incur an injury. Not only will you suffer individually, but the entire group may also suffer and forfeit victory.

Our bodies are extremely complex and all parts must work together to achieve ultimate functionality. We can see the same idea is true concerning the family unit. The family is a collection of individual bodies that live and work together to accomplish common goals. Zooming out a bit more, we see Christ Himself as analogous to a physical human body. “For just as the body is one and yet has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.” (I Corinthians 12:12)

Fortifying the Weak Spots

Scripture has quite a bit to say about people in the church, as well, whose faith is new and fresh. They necessitate special attention and protection as they mature, as the church is a body with Christ as the head. Paul says twice in Romans 14 we should not do anything that causes our brother to stumble. We should manage our own behavior with the weakest members’ wellbeing in mind. We’re to take a person’s level of vulnerability and sensitivity into consideration. Certain members of the body of Christ receive special care.

In an individual family, who constitutes this special, vulnerable, essential component of the whole? The children! The children are vital members who, for a designated and limited time, require careful, purposeful protection, guardianship and nurturing. Children do grow up eventually. They mature and their function in the body changes. Thus, they transform from consumers of their parents’ time, energy, and money, to contributors to the family economy. For a limited time, though, they receive special treatment because they are weaker vessels. The children are essential to the overall functionality of the family. If they incur an injury that keeps them from fulfilling their roles, the family as a whole suffers. Conversely, when we nurture, train, strengthen, and teach the children well, the whole family benefits, as do future generations.

“You Do You,” Respectfully

Both secular and religious people generally accept these ideas. Children play a critical role in families and in society. Children need and deserve special care and protection. Opposing viewpoints manifest when we go a step further and talk specifically about ways to carry out this responsibility.

Notice the phrase “opposing viewpoints” instead of “opposing beliefs.” Viewpoints are simply ways of thinking about something, fluid perspectives logical arguments can sway. Beliefs, on the other hand, form the scaffolding of entire cultures. Beliefs distinguish one nation from another, unite or divide families, and underpin wars. When talking with other Christians about childrearing and about homeschooling in particular, it’s important to use the appropriate terminology. We are, after all, all on the same team.

Within the Christian community over the years, I’ve talked with people who have chosen not to homeschool. They politely and respectfully say things like, “It’s just not right for our family. You and I simply have different points of view. You do you.” These friends and I wouldn’t say we disagree. We simply “think differently” about what protection, nurturing, guiding, and teaching our own children should look like.

Serious Matters or Matters of Opinion?

If push came to shove, would either of us be able to articulate our “viewpoints” clearly enough to be convincing? Are we really talking about something deeper and bigger than equally good, equally right ways of rearing children? Out of mutual respect and a desire for unity, we say we think differently about education. We don’t say that we believe differently about it. I would never advise someone to homeschool who isn’t already thinking about it of his own volition. It’s not an easy job. To sally forth because someone you know made it sound fun may lead to a wobbly education at best.

Logical, level-headed Christian parents justify continuing in traditional school thoughtfully. Friends have proposed to me that taking care of their own families keeps them busy enough. No time is left for fretting over the inadequacies of the school system. They politely suggest that I am a busybody. I rant and rave over the schools, which they point out aren’t all that bad. Perhaps I need a hobby. Maybe I should mind my own business. I should turn inward to my own home and career and put my nose to the grindstone. I should focus on doing my best to run a Christian household. That’s challenging enough and leaves no time for heroism and rebellions.

Schools are a worldly system, my friends acknowledge, but schools are also necessary and unavoidable. Where should kids go while their parents are working all day? What good does balking at the fundamental organization of American society do? Shouldn’t our focus as Christians be to diligently do our best. Our job is to produce solid, healthy, upstanding and exemplary Christian households within the imperfections of America’s educational landscape. This is what I’ve been told.

Doesn’t Everyone Know This?

I respect that opinion and have never argued with my friends who have that viewpoint, as many of them do. Recently, I listened to a pastor explain that Christians should live hopefully, even as American culture declines. His message rang of the same sentiment as that of my well-meaning friends. Although he never mentioned homeschooling specifically, his subtle directive was familiar. Societal ills cannot be remedied, but they can be somewhat alleviated. Individual Christian families can be unified, emotionally balanced, and spiritually strong. By this means, families can develop happily while immersed in a faulty, inescapable system.

Certainly, families are the building blocks of society, and if individual families are healthier, society at large is healthier. Certainly, a godly husband and father provides stability, protection, and guidance. His wife and children grow and flourish. Few would argue against the evidence that strong parental leadership leads to strong families, which leads ultimately to strong communities. There’s no shortage of sociological research and statistical support to prove this is true.

Stay in Your Lane…Unless…

I tend to think the subject is more complex and more involved than that, though. Think of the scope over which parents have legitimate jurisdiction and over which they are morally responsible. It is broader, deeper, and more extensive than the boundaries of their individual households.

A father may choose to focus only on what is going on within the four walls of his own home. While creating a model family, he garners applause from his church family for intentionality and nobility. Still, he could miss the mark. There may be more to this movement of homeschooling than simple differences of opinion among friends. Is a godly husband’s calling solely to focus on godliness in his own home? Should he bother with this issue of education, and specifically homeschooling, at all? Or is education a mere distraction, a subtopic that is neither here nor there?

Letting Well Enough Alone

Conscientious parents implement practices and patterns to ground their families spiritually. Routine prayer times and conversations about Scripture provide security and stability. Activities at school and in the community limit time the whole family spends together. Little energy is leftover for parents to concern themselves with what’s going on beyond their own homes. Managing their own team is an all-consuming, commendable task. Must they add concerns about the state of education to an already full plate?

If its most vulnerable and impressionable members attend school, the state of education directly impacts families. The school shapes a family’s identity and determines its potency as salt and light to the world. Because of this, education rises to a central and all-important point of interest for parents.

It’s easy to be buoyed along by what most immediately affects your family routine. Aligning the multiple calendars from each school your children attend feels like noble work. Who can question parents who are only dropping off and picking up, feeding, clothing and keeping up with their kids? They are putting forth their best efforts to the glory of God.

God honors the intentions of the heart and uplifts parents who entrust their children to Him. Who could ever get parenting exactly right anyway? Yet, we sometimes grapple only with matters of routine practicality without questioning our place in the community at large. This can be insipidly counterproductive to the overall health of our families.

In fact, single-mindedness for your own home backfires if taken to the extreme. Intentional ignorance and purposeful naivety about things like the state of education is counterproductive and leads to familial sabotage. A sermon encouraging parents to focus on their own homes is good. Focusing too narrowly, though, is essentially strapping on blinders. Limited understanding or concern for the larger community in which their families are entrenched, is dangerous.

Positive and Perky, Please

Serious evaluation of a trusted institution like school sometimes makes you stand out as a bellyacher. If the school scores high academically, for example, seeking alternatives appears reactionary. Questioning or challenging fixtures of the community doesn’t go unnoticed. The expectation for Christians is positive, perky participation in things deemed acceptable and normal, like school. Mark Wingfield is the executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He denotes public school as a “stabilizing, equalizing force for good in society.” What kind of Negative Nancy’s would find it so off-putting that they seek radical alternatives like homeschooling?

Mr. Wingfield has relatives he loves and respects who have been employed by the public school system. He himself attended public schools. He cites these reasons for his special affinity to them. Christians who choose alternatives to public school are launching “an attack on…the larger political maneuverings in our nation.” An attack – Mr. Wingfield has barreled past civil talk about “opposing viewpoints” and gone for the jugular.

Can’t You Play Nice?

Christian parents who envision an alternative form of education often sacrifice dramatically to get at it. Political and religious leaders sometimes label these parents as extreme, negative, paranoid, reckless renegades. Wingfield contends they have, “stoked the fires of hate.” Analytical thinking and careful examination of the most powerful influence on a family’s most impressionable members is laudable. But those who do so are discouraged and even ridiculed.

In the brief, scathing article, “It’s Time to Stop the Insanity That Is Killing Public Education,” insane or insanity are used nine times. “Insane” doesn’t reference the policies and practices that cause serious controversy and concern in the school. It refers to any person or movement that fails to embrace, support, and fully immerse themselves in public education. Anything other than public education is an ungodly choice, according to this influential denominational leader. We are now crossing over from conversations about “viewpoints” into conversations about “beliefs,” I believe.

The local school, by means of both its content and its form, is influential, not innocuous. Its viewpoints and perspectives infiltrate the family. The local public school is a never-ending experiment. Children act as the controls, variables, or constants, depending on the situation and the day. Routinely and systematically, the educational system analyzes, categorizes, and compartmentalizes children. It is neither neutral nor noninvasive.

Defining the Business You’re Minding

On the contrary, the life of the school is inextricable from the life of the family, and vice-versa. There is no such thing as dealing with the inner workings of your own home, tending to your own wife and children, without also dealing with the inner workings of the institution that supervises, instructs, conditions, and molds your family’s most impressionable, most vulnerable, and most susceptible members. Minding your own business and leaving the school system to itself, even if you are preoccupied with modifications for achieving godly behavior and a Christian identity for your family as you do so, is simply an unrealistic way to live.

Back to the pastor’s instructions to mind your own business and stay in your lane. He directly links societal problems to the demise of the family. He claims resolutions are possible if every individual family becomes healthier and stronger. This is a positive, encouraging message but is only a half-truth.

For Christian families who choose not to homeschool, the problems of the school system are one and the same as the problems of the home. It is your business to know what those problems are. School is not a separate entity from your family; it’s not an activity you go to. Its influence is always with you. It’s a passenger on every family trip you take, a guest at your dinner table, and a shaper of your children’s views and beliefs about their world and even about you. You are the school, and the school is you.

If family life languishes, the father may wonder how it is that his dedication to building a godly household is failing, even with the implementation of every standard of behavior Christian leaders teach. He will critically self-examine his abilities, question his understanding of Scripture, and doubt his leadership skills. If he is going above and beyond as a model Christian husband and father and still isn’t achieving his goal, what is the infiltrator thwarting his family’s peace, joy, and victory? Could it have something to do with the school?