How Our Journey Began (Cont’d)

In my last post, I described how our decision to homeschool our daughter launched a spiritual journey.  In the 12 years since that decision, that journey would take us places that we never would have imagined.  The road was rough in the beginning, however, and we were slow to recognize God’s working in our lives.

 

After only 2 years of homeschooling, our eldest daughter Heidi returned to public school.  Considering the depth of the foundation underpinning the homeschooling decision, this relapse was predictable.  Again, I will summarize the event with a list of observations explaining the factors that contributed.  As before, these factors are interrelated:

 

1)  Principle – As mentioned previously, the decision to homeschool was based less on biblical principle than on perceived benefits as measured by our secular standards.  As time passed Heidi became acquainted with other children in her age group.  My wife and I gained confidence that the school was “good” academically and that overt heathenistic curriculum was not being forced upon the students.  At that point, the perceived benefit of Heidi’s participation in extra-curricular activities out-weighed our reasons to continue training her at home.

 

2)  Momentum – 8 years of living the “normal” public-school-two-parent-working lifestyle proved difficult to surmount.  Attitudes regarding the underlying principles to the model American family were not fully recognized and our shallow foundation was insufficient to overcome those that were.  Prevalent assumptions about key issues such as boy/girl relationships and parent/teacher distinctions were reinforced by church youth groups.  Nearly all of these assumptions supported the notion that the homeschooling option is merely one choice among many equally valid ones.

 

As a consequence of the items discussed above, sending Heidi back to public school became a reasonable avenue for our family.  In reality, it was a compromise through which we avoided potential conflict with our daughter.  We still preferred to homeschool, but we did not have the conviction necessary to counter Heidi’s desire to return to public school.  Quite honestly, we feared a blooming of the rebellion that we had increasingly observed in her.  Once again, a selfish desire — this time to avoid conflict — dominated our thinking.

 

To be continued…

 

 

 

 

How Our Journey Began

Our current journey of spiritual growth began with our decision to homeschool our then 13 year-old daughter.  In retrospect, we made a good decision, but it was not based on the reasoning we use in continuing to homeschool our younger children.  In fact, our reasoning was flawed in at least four interrelated ways:

 

1)  Leadership – As husband and father, I failed to lead my family in this matter.  My wife and daughter investigated the idea and requested my agreement.

 

2)  Justification – As nominal Christians, we joined the battle cry opposed to the abolition of God from the public schools and the resultant curriculum that included topics such as evolution.  We still oppose these things, but we now recognize them more as symptoms of a pagan society than specific reasons to reject public schooling.

 

3)  Focus – The decision (at least from our daughter’s perspective) was driven largely by fear related to our recent move from Indiana to Wisconsin.   The prospect of transferring to a new school was intimidating.

 

4)  Materialism – The move mentioned above included a dramatic change from an affluent suburb of Indianapolis to a small, rural community without the resources that we considered essential to a “good” education.  Our pride had convinced us that we could do a better job preparing our daughter for the future than could the local school.

 

The bottom line?  We had a secular world view that caused us to misunderstand the purpose and goal of education.  In fact we misunderstood the purpose and goals of everything we were doing.  To paraphrase a quote from Francis Schaeffer we were dedicated to the pursuit of personal peace and affluence.  In spite of our genuine concern about issues such as anti-Christian values and evolution in the classroom, our motives were still selfish.

 

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