Home Education New to Home Education.....Home Education Myths...Home Education Creates Hardship Upon Parents Home Education Creates Hardship Upon Parents Such will be the case should parents try to copy the public school, and secondly, when they try to have a structured study time in an unstructured home. A more recent development has been the passage of homeschool laws which place unrealistic requirements upon parents teaching their children at home. (That latter development must be seriously addressed and corrected since it bodes considerable mischief for the teaching home. For the most part, however, we will leave the question of homeschool laws to our other writings.) It is important that the home be structured after a godly pattern. Thereafter, the home education process should fall into place quite naturally. In other words. structure the home and you will hardly notice when homeschooling begins. In spite of whatever we may have been taught, to have a spouse is an asset and to have children is a blessing. When the home is set in order with parents in charge and children are taught to obey, in-home academic learning will easily fall into place. (Again, we will put shoe on the other foot. Consider the loss to the home when about the time children become helpful within the home they are sent out for their education.) Above all else. parents must not try to copy the public school program! Keep in mind that the objective is that children become educated, and not that we create a program. Creating a program, however, seems to be at the base of some homeschool laws. Requiring a certain number of hours or specifying certain times of day or certain days, as well as certain courses can lead to burdens which have nothing to do with good education. It only accomplishes turning that which God intended to be a blessing into a burden, plus eventual homeschool burnout. My son Jonathan testifies that he had only about an hour and a half a week of formal education time during his years of secondary education. Yet he, along with his brothers and sisters, have done exceptionally well when tested against the norms. The hour and a half a week cannot possibly equal a thousand hours a year, yet a thousand hours of instruction is a requirement in at least one homeschool law. My sister Karen attended public school but was sick one year with rheumatic fever and could not attend school most of that year. The public school sent out a tutor for and hour and a half a week. Karen kept up with her class and accordingly got her best grades that year. |
