“We’re not the homeschooling type,” we said often to each other as our oldest son got closer to school age. We felt quite inadequate when we considered the idea of choosing home based education over public schooling. We are products of the public school system and are strong in our faith today. Still, as the first day of kindergarten drew closer for our son, our unease with the idea of sending him off to school grew.

Potential Obstacles

One significant concern many people in our shoes have before committing to homeschooling is that they are being overly protective of their children. While there are elements of society that we would like to shield our children from, we don’t want to render them incapable of coping in the real world by not allowing them to experience a normal life. Finding the balance between protection and imprisonment in our world can be difficult. In the end, we decided to begin homeschooling and take it one day at a time. Now into our second year, we realize that we overemphasized the difficulties and were not aware of many of the rewards.

Chief among the perceived difficulties was the availability of homeschool curriculum. A common question we’re asked when we disclose that we are homeschoolers is, “Where do you get your material? Does the public school provide you with curriculum?” To our surprise, when we began investigating we found dozens of good publishers of Christian homeschool curriculum.

Some prefer to use one publisher for all subjects. We’ve found it beneficial to pick and choose each subject from among the various publishers in order to provide what we feel is the best curriculum for a home based education. Much information is available online for those interested in understanding homeschooling. Many curriculum publishers provide free samples of their material online for review before buying. Homeschooling curriculum can help instill values public school curriculum often misses—you can choose curriculum that is evolution-free, pro-family, and academically sound, to name but a few.

The second difficulty often overemphasized is the cost of homeschooling. While homeschooling does carry a price tag for curriculum (we spend $400 to $500 per student per year for curriculum), there are also savings to be considered. Many schools in our region charge $400 per year or more if the child is to stay over the lunch hour in order to to pay teachers to watch the kids. Public schools in our area often charge curriculum and project fees as well.

The third and most significant difficulty to be addressed is the time factor. Many moms are working outside the home, and leaving the workforce to stay home with little Jane and Johnny isn’t always the most appealing thought. At work we get to deal with adults and have real, meaningful conversations. To be sure, we can’t understate the fact that homeschooling is a sacrifice in many ways for the teacher (usually mom).

A desire to work outside the home may have to be put on a back burner while homeschooling the children. Still, many well-organized, energetic moms are able to fit part-time employment into their schedule. A home-educating mother must also balance the usual household duties with the teaching time, lesson preparation, and extra-curricular activities associated with her homeschool. However, many parents of public school children are doing this now anyway. The teacher-student ratio at public school combined with the problems some children bring with them from home produces an atmosphere that makes learning tough even for the child to whom learning comes easily. You can provide a good start in basic language and math skills by homeschooling in the early years—a natural extension of the teaching most parents began with their infants.

Rewards

Enough about difficulties; let’s talk reward. Almost everyone would acknowledge that while parenting may be challenging and difficult, it is among the most rewarding endeavors in life. It’s amazing how much we grow as our kids grow.

Among the chief rewards is greater influence on our children. Sadly, the public school system where we live has been infiltrated with humanistic relativism to the degree that children are introduced to sexual immorality in sex education classes. Immoral teachings are also being brought into the English and math curriculum,  circumventing parents who hope to keep their children’s minds less tainted by keeping them out of sex education classes. The “gay is OK” message is being spread in elementary schools, and homosexual lobby groups are being granted greater degrees of influence each year.

The Scriptures urge us to raise up children in the way they ought to go so they’ll stick with it into maturity. Christian parents may come to different answers on this question based on the school system operating in their community, but we must each consider whether we are being faithful to God’s charge to raise our kids in the faith while sending them off to public school.

Another great benefit of homeschooling is the closeness that develops within the family. One mom we know often fretted over sending her four boys off to school because she knew their character would change.  Even over summer break she found an improvement in their attitudes and behaviour that quickly eroded after getting back into the classroom.

Some readers might be thinking, “My kids would never respect me as their teacher; it would never work.” Believe me, we have our days when the motivation to do school work is not there in our kids. But firm rules, keeping to a regular teaching schedule, and occasional rewards help squelch these moments.

While many parents might view homeschooling as a great sacrifice of time, one of the great benefits is that it frees our kids to be kids. We’re disturbed to hear about young children who go to school all day and then bring home an hour or more of homework each night. A couple complained to us that their kindergarten-aged son has an hour of homework each evening and countless parents are doing remedial work with a child who has difficulty in reading or some other area. This didn’t seem appropriate to us. It takes an average of three hours a day, four days a week to homeschool at the early elementary level. Typically it takes much more time for a public school teacher to teach a lesson to a room of 30 kids than it takes for a mom to teach her kids one-on-one.

In spite of the fact homeschooling takes much less time than public schooling, some statistics show that homeschooled kids receive a better education than publicly schooled kids and are now being sought after by many leading universities and colleges.

One of the things we dreaded was the response we would get from others when we disclosed that we were home-educating our children. Now that we have a couple of years of homeschooling under our belts, we actually enjoy people’s inquiries. Many parents we meet share their concerns about socialization. We’re often intrigued by this as the public school system is a relatively new advent in terms of human history. “Frankly,” we often respond, “there are many aspects of social behavior we’re happy not to expose our kids to that occur in the public school.”

Though you may not be aware of it, homeschool associations exist in most communities in America. These provide children with opportunities to socialize and make friends. Our homeschool association conducts weekly gym classes as well as regular special events such as talent shows and project fairs.

Many people we speak with today—including many who work in the public school system—offer the same response when we tell them we’re homeschooling our children. They look us in the eye and say, “You’re doing the right thing!” |L

Terry and Rachael MacCabe homeschool their two sons in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.