My point is that our choices to educate at home should be built on wisdom and confidence in Christ, not fear. Your kids are not doomed to walk the broken path you did. They will walk their own broken path until they find Christ. Our responsibility and opportunity is to hold their hand along the way, in whatever ways the Spirit leads us. And the truth is that we must overcome our own brokenness through Christ if we are going to be effective in leading them.
Mistake #2. Public school education is so sub par, we can surely do better at home.
News flash — there are kids everywhere who are learning tons in public school every day. Among the reasons not to homeschool, do not paint all public education as sub par.
There are passionate teachers who have given their lives to educating these kids in the public school system. There are teachers with missionary hearts who could make three times as much in another career as they do teaching … but they don’t, because they love kids. There are people who teach in public schools that have extraordinary experience and education which they draw from to teach. Those same people are in your church and community.
When we rationalize our choice to educate at home by criticizing public education, we insult the people who are being obedient to Christ in their lives by serving in that field.
When considering reasons not to homeschool we must also understand that there are also families in our congregations that cannot educate their children at home for various reasons, most of them noble and sincere. When we rationalize the choice to educate at home by criticizing public education, we sound self-righteous and arrogant to them. (And in many cases, we are.)
Homeschool families must repent of this arrogance and replace it with considerate compassion. Wisdom leads us to recognize the honorable things in people’s lives who have made different choices than ours, and to affirm them with grace.
Mistake #3. We love our kids SO much that this seems our only option.
“We just cherish our kids. We love them so much that we just can’t be at peace with settling for public education.”
Again, the inference here is that public education is the enemy in itself, and people who send their children to public school don’t love their children as much as you do. As a pastor, words are your tools of the trade. God’s Word, and your ability to communicate truth, are your bread and butter.
It is insufficient to support your choice to home educate by suggesting that you love your children more than everyone else, and if people don’t understand then that’s just too bad. You cannot play the part of a misunderstood victim of popular opinion; this is one of the reasons not to homeschool.
Use your words. Speak the truth in love. Share your commitment to Christian parenting and how God has placed a burden on your heart to make this choice. Do it without minimizing and mischaracterizing other people’s choice to educate differently.
