Myth: 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.
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