Why Do We Home School?

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. -- Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (ESV) (emphasis added)

This passage of Scripture forms a strong basis for why we home school our children. Here we find that God is telling parents to live out a whole life devotion to God, and then to disciple their children to do the same thing. The manner of training described here seems to indicate that the training period is not confined to a particular time or hour. It really is built around the parent-child relationship as a whole and encompasses all aspects of daily living.

My wife and I considered how we could mold and train our children in the ways of the Bible, and we became convinced that there was no way to do this if our children weren't with us for a majority of their time. To us, sending them away to school would be quietly encouraging our children to pull away from us. The trappings and temptations of life away from home in an age-segregated, peer-led environment would be too much for them to process at such a young age. The influence of mom and dad at home would slowly erode away as the relationships with peers and non-parental adults strengthened. In our opinion, it's pretty futile to believe that our children would maintain their loyalty to the family when most of their lives would be spent away from the family.

On top of the principle laid out in Deuteronomy 6, there also was a practical problem with sending our children away to school. We haven't seen any public or private school in the area that would train our children with the information we believe to be crucial to their development in the doctrines our family holds dear. Consider the words of Jesus:

A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. -- Luke 6:40 (ESV)

The principle that a student or disciple, when fully trained, becomes like his teacher is crucial when considering the education of our children. We realized that the educational process is more than just the transferral of information. It encompasses the whole life. Deuteronomy 6 describes a whole life devotion to God that is to be passed on to our children. The scope of that instruction is consistent with the implication that regardless of who is teaching our children, the teacher is communicating more than just information. Students look up to teachers and learn more than the words which come from their mouths. On display for the students is the teacher's whole person, and when the teacher is teaching, it is the whole person which is being taught.

So we asked ourselves, whose lives do we want our children to model? Who do we want our children to look like when they are adults? Their peers? Their favorite school teacher who might think that Christianity is just one of many valid religions and that as long as you are basically good you get to go to heaven? Really, the ultimate answer to those questions is that we want our children to look like Jesus. If our educational process results in children who have multiple college degrees but live lives in opposition to what God desires, the we have failed as educators. We missed the boat. We may have taught them the ways of math and science, and they might even by very rich, but their lives are bankrupt with no eternal value. We want our children to be Godly men and women regardless of how many degrees or accreditations they have.

We then asked ourselves, who is going to teach them to be like Jesus? Who is going to train the whole child to correctly assimilate the necessary information for life into a moral context which is built around sound Biblical doctrine? Ephesians 6:4 instructs me as the father that regardless of who teaches my children, I will be held responsible for how their education proceeds.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. -- Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

It is I, dad, who is responsible for training them. My wife will function as my helpmeet in this area, but I am to lead. What are the consequences of fathers not properly discipling their children? A provocation to anger. How much of the teenage culture today is characterized by anger? When you look around the general teenage population, do you see joy in their eyes? Do you see children who are devoted to their families and their parents? Do you see families operating in harmony? I sure don't, and I have to wonder if that is a result of fathers not properly executing their role as laid out in Ephesians 6:4.

Between Deuteronomy 6, Luke 6, and Ephesians 6, God is instructing parents to disciple and train their children to be godly men and women. No one loves our children more than my wife and me. No one knows our children better than my wife and me. No one else in this world is in a better place to influence the lives of our children than us. If we want our children to be a light to this world, if we want our children to bring honor to God, if we want our children to not depart from the way they should go, then it is up to us to disciple them in those ways. No one else can do it like we can and no one else ought to be put in the position to do so.

So, that's why we choose to keep our family together during the educational process. The primary reason is to worship God through obedience to His instructions as we see them in the Bible. And really, obedience to God is a sufficient reason to make the choice we did. However, as is typical with God's ways, obedience produces joy in the hearts of those who love Him. Home schooling isn't a guarantee that we will always be happy and feel good about being together, but it will keep us together in a framework that will allow us to persevere in the face of the trials that will come. It enables us to establish a God-honoring vision for our family and to remain faithful to that vision. When the world comes crashing in on us, as it inevitably does, we will face it together and those trials will make us stronger in the end.