Challies on homeschooling
December 12th, 2006Tim Challies has started a series of posts about why he and his wife have chosen to send their children to public schools. Part one is up today.
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of what he has to say. For us, we’ve ruled out public schools and are leaning toward a Christian school — but I’m still mulling some things over about home schooling.
I think a lot of it has to do with the public schools in the area. Where I’m at I know quite a few of the teachers and wouldn’t have many reservations; if I lived one county over, though, there wouldn’t be a consideration for public schools.
I think this is a matter-of-conscience issue for parents. I was home schooled and got a lot of benefit from it. I don’t think my wife and I will home school our (future) children, though. Not because of anything in my experience, we just have a different understanding of what it means to engage the world than my parents did.
The lack of opportunities to play organized sports is the closest thing to a deal-breaker for me when I think about homeschooling. And I don’t mean league sports, I mean actually participating in a school-sponsored athletic activity.
We don’t yet have kids, but we’ve had several discussions about this. We feel we would do a good job if we homeschooled, but are much more comfortable sending any children we have to public/private schooling. As a former athlete, I am infinitely more comfortable sending a child of mine somewhere that has an athletic program than I am having to participate in an endless slate of leagues just to fill this void.
Just wanted to throw out another perspective.
Stephen - not sure if you knew this already, but many school districts do allow home schooled kids to participate in school sports. I played baseball in jr high/high school, and my younger brother ran track, cross country, and was on the nordic ski team.
My favorite part of public schools is the run and funded by the government part. Are there any positive advantages to public schools? Public School is a JOKE! Who do you want raising your children the government your you the parents? How much control does any parent have over their children’s education when they are enrolled in public schools?
Well, Tim really opened a can of worms with this topic. He’s posted twice, with each post getting more than 100 comments.
I appreciate Tim’s approach to the matter, but don’t really agree with his reasoning. One of these days I’ll write my own post about “Why we don’t send our kids to public schools.”
The kind of venom Challies has been taking for the past two days is exhibit A for why I cringe when asked where I went to school.
I’ve honestly never thought of the home/private/public schooling debate as anything other than “where is my child going to receive the best education?”
What defines “best education”?
My wife and I homeschool our children. We do not view this as a biblical mandate, but we felt that we could best provide our children with a godly education in this manner (there are no Christian schools in our area).
I enjoy having the opportunity to teach them the Bible in a manner that is integrated into their curriculum. I also don’t have to worry about them being exposed to evolution, an ammoral view of sex education, liberalism or a host of other social ills.
I would never judge anyone who chooses to send their child to a public school, but I am very happy with the option we have chosen.
I’ve read through some of the arguments on the blog Tim referred to because this issue really interests me. But let me just say that if the regular patrons of timellsworth.com ever start posting comments that lengthy I’m outta here.
I’m glad we have been able to have good discussions on here with people who don’t feel the need to write voluminously.
If too many people start using big words like “voluminously” I am gonna be outta here.
You don’t find words like that in Romans.