The decision to home school our children was not hard. We loved our children and wanted to spend time with them. It was not so much that we disliked other options as we desired to bring as much of our lives (including our work) home as possible.
Over the years, we have learned more than a few things and our children continue to surprise us with what they teach us. Here are ten things we have learned about the home school over more than a decade doing it . . .
Three Big Picture Truths
First, education must begin and end with virtue. My early life was harmed by character flaws that have required hard lessons to repair. It seemed obvious to me then and more apparent now that teaching children to be smart and glib could actually be harmful.
Give me good children, in the ancient sense of good, and the rest will follow.
The best way to teach virtue is to model it in front of our children. We tried to fill our home with the best books, pick good curriculum, and answer their questions as they came up, but it is all nothing if we do not live what we wish them to be.
There is no “best” curriculum . . . I have seen children from every type of home schooling and have never seen a success from an unhappy and unloving home . . . and never a failure from a relaxed and happy house running over with love.
We have tried to be frank about our failures, but have also (by the grace of God) done our best to love . . . not just them, but as much of the world as we could in front of them. “Virtuous” children who do not love, even their enemies, become insufferable!
Third, our goal is not children who will be little images of us, but free to be the persons God made them to be. We tried to teach good questions even when we were pointing them to what we believed to be the best answers.
Little children can be told what we think is right . . . but we should also encourage questions about . . . everything!
If an image is to be stamped on them, may it be the repaired image of God and not “lessons” beaten into them out of our fears.
Better spiritedness than craven compliance.
Liberty, soul liberty, must be the default position if we wish our children to reach true adulthood. As they grow older, they must be given more and more choice. If the loving heavenly Father allowed our first parents, in a garden full of delights, to choose sin . . . then we cannot over protect and parent more than that Best Parent.
Three Educational Lessons
Too often home educators try to set up a government school at home. How foolish I was with all my records, charts, tests, and clip boards at the start!
Years of watching college students at the honors level soon taught me what should be our educational focus. Students should read well, write well, be numerate, and cultured.
Above all remember that (as a favorite author once said) “specialization is for insects,” and we are raising ladies and gentleman.
Don’t be afraid to teach them to do many things badly! We need more hobbyists, self-taught men, and amateurs.
I dare to believe that a young adult with good character and these three skills will do well in any station of life!
He must read. Reading is the trait of leaders. Why? Arguments cannot be made in any other way over time.
The reader is able to master words and mastery of words allows the reader to separate himself from the storm of his emotions. The ability to choose from many words provides the precision needed to clarify and decide.
If he can read, then Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, and Lewis can be his primary teachers. If he cannot read, then he is limited to teachers in his neighborhood. I home school so my children can study under Aristotle and Saint Paul, not under me.
Do not so fill his day with other things that he has no time to read. Read aloud when he is small. Give books as gifts at every turn. Provide the bulk of the school day to exploring books and show him the way to his public library.
She must write. As this blog proves (oh for the time to edit!), my children are blessed to be able to learn this skill from their mother and not from me. (I am so sorry Miss Balentine that I did not listen more carefully to your careful and appropriate English lessons!) Grammar is good . . . Latin is better. Do not be afraid to diagram a sentence or two.
Early on originality is overrated in the writer.
Have her copy the essays and style of her favorite authors. The young lady who loves Anne of Green Gables can attempt to write like her . . . and then when she learns the lessons of Jane Eyre, that Bronte style can tutor her in the language of passion. Finally, as she longs for clarity as college approaches, Harriet Vane (Gaudy Night!) can help her prepare.
Eventually a voice will develop in your child and the day will come (as it already has for me) when you will learn from an essay one of your children has written.
They must be musical. When Plato urged that his young guardians be musically educated, he had in mind more than what we call music.
There is no place for home educated students who do not learn to cultivate the human gifts. We are not raising workers or consumers for the materialistic state, but souls that will live forever in paradise. Poetry. Drama. Art. Music. These are the skills of the lady or the gentleman.
These musical disciplines bring the passion, intellect, spirit, and body into harmony. Nobody can play Bach and not experience the union of every part of her nature. The great composer’s mathematical precision unites in her mind with the passion of his piece as she uses her body to play his work and so worship God.
I have seen my children perform on stage together and at some rare moments hit the zone where they are all working together to make an audience learn, laugh, and celebrate their splendid amateur talent!
Buy a piano, the best you can afford. Get lessons . . . get a male teacher for your boys if you can. Get involved in community theater. Produce art, don’t consume it.
Read (and write!) all the poetry you can. I used to read Donne to my children who would pay no attention or play on the floor . . . and now they will listen (for a bit!) and criticize or discuss. What more can a parent want?
Three Very Practical Things to Do
Don’t home educate just to save money. Figure out what private school tuition is and spend at least two-thirds of it on school.
Buy the equipment the children need . . . buy good books. Get tutors (local Christian colleges are a great source) for areas of weakness.
In all probability, you will save some money, but that is not the point. Spend what it takes. Better to have less for retirement and watch your children enjoy the new sports equipment . . . who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Treat the home school mom like a key employee. (This goes for Dad if he is doing most of the schooling!)
Give mother a morning totally off (not just to buy groceries!). Use some of the tuition money you are saving to have a person come in and help with housework once a week or a month if you can. Above all, remember that there is no external pay check to help her keep score so that some rewards need to be built into the system.
She is doing it for love, but everyone who loves her will make sure to show their love for her in tangible ways . . . as she is doing for them!
If you cannot afford to treat your teacher as well as any good school would treat their “teacher of year,” then you cannot afford to home school. The last thing that we want is for the children to picture the Christian parent as a worn out drone . . . who grimly sacrifices all for their sake without even having asked if such a sacrifice is wanted.
I have met home school grads who deeply appreciate what their parents did, but will never do it because they are horrified at what it did to the parents.
Let her buy the clothes so that she can dress like the professional women in your office. Take time to work out together . . . this is good for you and your marriage.
If grandparents can watch the kids, take one week of your vacation (if you are lucky enough to get two!), with just you and your wife! Your kids see a lot of you (remember you home school!) and the time will renew both of you for the rest of your year.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In our house even well intentioned advice like this can send us into depression and make us want to quit.
We imagine the perfect home school family, in our case the Evil Home School Family Von Trapp. We see them sitting about their antique dining room table (built by Father and the Lads) sharing a dinner made by their charming old Auntie (who conveniently has moved in to do all the house work for free).
All the Von Trapp children can read Greek while playing the violin simultaneously solving physics problems. The Father looks like an erudite and sober Mel Gibson . . . the Mother like Julie Andrews before Victor, Victoria. The entire family has the piety of Saint Francis while living in the little home they built themselves on the prairie with the proceeds of their Internet business and cheerful herd of Alpacas.
We are not that family. Both of us struggle with dark moods, a sense of failure, and organizational skills that often end with the purchase of the day timer we forget to use.
At the end of this decade of home schooling, however, looking back on the best we could do . . . I realize that most of our failures did not matter much and that our children still love us, read, play the piano (some more than others!), and are much better than either of us were at their age. They are pleasant and charming people. We like them . . . and most days we suspect that they like us!
We are not perfect educators . . . most days we are just good enough, but we are who we are! I suspect that is a good thing . . . as the million home school house holds will all be unique, failing at different things, and flourishing in their own odd ways.
Finally, the home school family is creating culture . . . and in most houses that rests on the mother. She, like Dante’s Beatrice, is a figure of beauty that calls a culture back to true love and life. It is a job that our culture ignores or despises since it defies every convention and every demand of our materialistic age. She works without wages, teaches for the love only of her students, and receives only the honor we can give her.
And that is the last thing I have learned. This mother, giving all, cannot be honored too much. We must celebrate what she has done and thank her for it. Eventually, Sacred Scripture promises her children will rise up and call her blessed, but surely it is not too much for the culture she is helping to save to do so now.
Blessings on you home school mothers and fathers!