Homeschool Haven

Site Admin Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 5

(article)
Is Homeschooling for You?
It provides choices, opportunity, and freedom

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By Vincent Alex Brown
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

Each Labor Day Weekend, more than 10,000 parents who homeschool, and those considering it, descend on Orlando to attend the Florida Parent-Educators Association (FPEA, www.fpea.com) homeschool convention. This year the 17th annual event was held May 27-29 at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee as FPEA celebrates 20 years “of service to Florida home educators.”

At one time, homeschooling was the province of “the fringe,” practiced secretly by people who were “weird” Christians—at least that was the picture many had.

Yet, the movement is becoming so mainstream that FOX last year aired a show parodying a homeschooling family; newspaper columnists from USA Today to The Washington Times regularly comment on it; networks run investigative pieces on it; and WORLD (www.worldmag.com) magazine frequently highlights it, noting the political clout homeschooled adults will have based on observations by Michael P. Farris. He recently started a college that caters to homeschoolers called Patrick Henry College (PHC, www.phc.edu) in Purcellville, Va., and near Leesburg, both outside the Washington, D.C., area.

Farris also founded, along with fellow attorney and homeschooling father J. Michael Smith, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA, www.hslda.com), which is also celebrating 20 years of service with the goal “to defend and advance the constitutional rights of parents to direct the education of their children and protect family freedoms.”

HSLDA says the movement is even going international, though not without challenges: “Homeschooling has finally earned a place in American education. In the rest of the world, it’s a fledgling phenomenon. Many governments forbid it, and homeschoolers in other countries have limited access to curricula and support.”

Yet, according to Brian Ray’s Worldwide Guide to Homeschooling, only about three percent of school-aged children (1.6 to 2 million) are homeschooled—hardly a movement worth noting nor something for a hostile teacher’s union like the nation’s biggest and most powerful, the National Education Association (NEA), to be concerned about, though they are—very much so by squashing school voucher initiatives and any non-public school choices.

Christians should be as concerned and more—enough to start practicing it. According to HSLDA Senior Counsel Christopher J. Klicka in his book Home Schooling: The Right Choice, “The goal of home schooling is to raise the children so that each of them will ‘study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.’ Sending our children to public school violates nearly every biblical principle described above. It is tantamount to sending our children to be trained by the enemy!”

And even from a scholastic point of view, it’s bad: “Since 1963 the public school system has experienced a steady decline in literacy,” he says. Taxpayers have financed 40 years of failure, and still they’re asked to pay more and more for new education programs and “government schools,” as radio talk-show host and Libertarian Neal Boortz calls them. Jim Book, senior minister of First Christian Church of Winter Park who founded the church’s Alpha Christian Academy, says that he does “not see the education system in this country improving with more money and bigger schools.”

Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family (www.family.org), who lately has thrown his full support behind homeschooling, is alarmed at the current state of affairs. “If I had a child in California or in the other states where this is happening...I would get my child out. It’s just that simple,” he says, citing “the politically correct lessons that are spreading through public schools at an alarming rate and the issues that Christian parents are facing,” according to Focus.

Facts About Homeschooling
SOURCE: www.youcanhomeschool.org

• Today an estimated 1.6-2.0 million children [about 3%] are being taught at home by their parents. (Brian Ray, Worldwide Guide to Home-schooling, Broadman & Holman, 2002, p.7.)

• On average, homeschool students in grades 1-4 perform one grade level higher than their public and private school counterparts. (Law-rence Rudner, Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998, Education Policy Analysis Archives, http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8.)

• By grade 8, the average homeschool stu-dent performs four grade levels above the national average. (Rudner, Figure 3.)

• The number of families choosing to home-school grows at an estimated annual rate of 7-15%. (Ray, p. 8.)

• In a web poll taken by 989 respondents, 49% said religious conviction is the main reason they continue homeschooling; 15% positive social environment; 14% academic excellence; 12% specific needs of child; 5% curriculum choice; and 5% flexibility. 79% of respondents were HSLDA members; 21% were not. (HSLDA web poll, 5/22–5/29/02.)

Getting Started

• www.fpea.com
• www.hslda.com
• www.youcanhomeschool.org
• www.homeschoolfoundation.org
• www.family.org/pplace/topics/a0025318.cfm

Early American families were the original homeschoolers, like Abraham Lincoln’s, considered by many to be one of our greatest presidents. But during the past few decades, Christians have taken up the mantel because “God is being taken out of the classroom.” Now it’s an option pursued by many who aren’t doing it for religious reasons but because public schools are failing.

Whatever your situation, homeschooling offers not only the opportunity to instill Christian principles in your children, but also the flexibility to teach each child using methods that work for him. It’s not uncommon to use a different math curriculum for each child, even if covers the same concepts. The approach by a certain company or author may appeal to one child but not to another, and that’s the beauty of homeschooling: you can choose what works for each child, go at his pace, and give him one-on-one attention.

Because of that, a homeschooling day is typically compressed to three hours or less. The typical six-hour public school day is hampered by constant interruptions, behavioral issues, the sheer number of kids in a classroom, time spent going from class-to-class, and more. Homeschooling allows children time for continuing what homeschooling is also about: learning life lessons and using life to learn.

“As my wife [Rhonda] and I talked about it, we realized that the freedom of homeschooling would provide our children with unique educational opportunities within and without the classroom,” says Arron Chambers, minister of Southside Christian Church in Orlando. “For example, last August while other children were heading back to school, my family and I were heading to New York so I could speak at a family camp. We studied along the way as we stopped and studied at Washington, D.C., Cape Cod, Plymouth Rock, and Manhattan. My oldest daughter began her school year by researching the Pilgrims, the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. Two weeks later she was walking around on a full-size replica of the Mayflower.”

Like the Chambers, more and more Christian Churches families in Florida are homeschooling. My wife and I—who attend First Christian Church of Lake Butler—have been homeschooling for five years. It’s all our youngest children have ever known. Our oldest daughter was also homeschooled, but after much prayer and for many reasons we enrolled her in public high school this year, which none of us have regretted. And that, again, is part of the appeal and point of homeschooling: doing what works for each child. That’s the choice some are fighting for: the ability and option to choose what is best for their children.

Jan and Jack Lup, a professor at Florida Christian College and members of Southside, homeschool their children as well. “We believe that the training and education of children is the parent’s responsibility,” Lup says. “Jan and I are both educators, and we believed that in working together we could provide an education at least equal to, if not better, then what they would have received in a public system. It is a joy to have been able to teach the children at home. It has certainly been costly and we’ve had to do without some material benefits, but we believe the experiences in training our children outweigh any present material benefit.”

Educators or not, educated or not, statistics show that non-college graduates are as effective homeschoolers as graduates, simply because homeschooling is all about one-on-one attention and doing what works for that child. “There are two—and only two—keys to educational success,” Farris says, “hard work and parental involvement.”

According to an HSLDA report titled Home Education Across the United States, “A parent’s education background has no substantive effect on their children’s home school academic performance, according to this study. Home educated students’ test scores remain between the 80th and 90th percentiles, whether their mothers have a college degree or did not complete high school.

“For public school students, however, a parent’s education level does affect their children’s performance. In eighth grade math, public school students whose parents are college graduates score at the 63rd percentile, whereas students whose parents have less than a high school diploma score at the 28th percentile. Remarkably, students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school score a full 55 percentile points higher than public school students from families of comparable educational backgrounds.”

“What about socialization?” is the most frequent question of “concern” from observers about homeschooling. The fact is that homeschooled children learn to socialize comfortably with people of all ages while avoiding the bad influences, negative peer pressure, and bullies of the public school playgrounds. You can tell a homeschooled child when you meet one.

“It seems to me from conversations I’ve heard and had that most critics define ‘socialization’ as: Doing what it takes to make sure that your kids aren’t sheltered,” Chambers says. “Is being ‘sheltered’ really a bad thing? What’s the alternative: Doing what it takes to make sure that your kids are really worldly.

“I am sure that I’d prefer that my kids be innocent for as long as possible. I have come to cherish the innocence I still see in my 10-year-old. She may not get a lot of the jokes she hears at cheerleading practice, or know the name of every member of the latest boy-band, but right now she really loves God. I’m OK with ‘sheltering’ my kids in these formative years if it will mean that they are more prepared for ‘long obedience in the same direction.’”

The statewide support group like FPEA, and its local ones, provide plenty of socialization, and the tools parents need to successfully educate their children. FPEA’s convention provides keynotes and workshops to encourage homeschoolers. There, attendees like the Browns, Chambers, and Lups can network with others and be encouraged that their Christian Church brethren are practicing what they so firmly believe in—that they “get it.” And a large vendor hall boasting the top and biggest homeschooling curriculum companies in the country allows parents to look at all those different types of math courses and even talk to the actual authors who freely give advice on what works for each of your children.

In fact, many of those authors are there because they saw a unique need while homeschooling themselves, and wrote curriculum to meet that need, rightly sensing that others could benefit as well. They often lead the convention workshops, discussing a certain issue and providing solutions while promoting their curriculum as the one or one of many solutions.

Although FPEA does not state a Christian focus in its mission statement, the idea of promoting Christian principles and training abounds at its convention.

Also, as an indication that not all in the education community are against homeschooling, top administrators from Florida Virtual School (www.flvs.net) put on a workshop at FPEA with glowing support for homeschoolers. The school is a new and state-run online-only curriculum course for grades K-12. It allows homeschooling families access to courses in areas they may lack expertise in, though many historically have done this through co-ops and joint classes taught by families of local support groups.

Simply put, homeschooling provides choices, opportunity, and freedom, “We spent three days in an apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan. We visited all of the tourist sites, but with our new focus on homeschooling the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty became dynamic educational experiences,” Chambers says. “When we travel together we have nothing but miles and time with our kids. Besides the new freedom to be together we have come to love the freedom we have to teach our daughter what we think she’s ready to learn and to teach her what she wants to learn.

“This year my 10-year-old daughter has taken an interest in horticulture, so we’ve gone ‘plant crazy.’ We are free to feed her interest and make the lessons as long and as dynamic as we like. She takes a standardized test each year to make sure that we are doing our job and she’s testing two-to-three grades above her age. We don’t have to wait to teach her what she’s ready to learn.

“We love the freedom we have to disciple our kids. We spend the first part of every day in Bible study. We’ve also become even more enthusiastic about homeschooling as we’ve enjoyed the empowerment we feel knowing that we have control over our child’s education.”

“This year my 10-year-old daughter has taken an interest in horticulture, so we’ve gone ‘plant crazy.’ We are free to feed her interest and make the lessons as long and as dynamic as we like. She takes a standardized test each year to make sure that we are doing our job and she’s testing two-to-three grades above her age. We don’t have to wait to teach her what she’s ready to learn.

“We love the freedom we have to disciple our kids. We spend the first part of every day in Bible study. We’ve also become even more enthusiastic about homeschooling as we’ve enjoyed the empowerment we feel knowing that we have control over our child’s education.”