Homeschooling Principles

Why to never send your children to any kind of school

From the text of the book, Train Up a Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl:

CHAPTER 19

Homeschool Makes No Fools

THE SYSTEM

One judge in Nebraska said that the public educational system is preparing the children of America for the year 2000 when we will all merge into the new world order. He went on to say that the children of Christian homeschool families would not fit into that planned system.

Never even consider sending your children to private Christian schools, much less the public automaton factory. Whether a classroom is based completely on Christian education or secular is not the issue (although, we would by far prefer the Christian). God didn't make teenage boys and girls to sit together in a classroom every day using their brain while real life passes them by. The world's system digs a pit and then creates a myriad of industries to reclaim the tragic lives that fall into it. Classroom education for the young is a pit. The psychiatrists, counselors, social workers, Planned Parenthood, policemen, social manipulators, juvenile courts, drug dealers, penal institutions, and medical doctors stand on the edge of the pit competing for the business generated by the shovels of the National Educational Association.

One warning: There exists a fundamental fault that is telling in the discouragement experienced by many home-school families. The public educational system is based on false premises. Therefore, both its curriculum and its format are in error. The homeschool is not established to duplicate the public school in a private environment; yet most homeschoolers are attempting to do that very thing. The stress on the family attempting to perform for the sake of public image, as well as state required testing, is destructive to a wholesome growth environment.

Ask yourself and answer the question, "If I did not have to answer to anyone, and I were not controlled by public opinion, what would I desire for my children to learn in their early years?" Keep in mind that specialty disciplines that are necessary for professional employment need not be taught by either the classroom or the homeschool. [emphasis mine]

Parents, you are wearing yourself out trying to keep up with the Judges. Teach from your heart, not from the John Dewy perspective. Children need a mother who teaches them, not a teacher who doesn't have the emotional energy to mother them. Young men need a father who teaches them to work, not a father too busy working to teach them.

The best schooling for children is a good home life, not a home that is all school. It is a strange perversion to remove a child from that which is natural to life and make of him a professional student. Such accepts the false premise that academic and behavioral education is the foundation of life and society. Order your own life according to God's perspective. Your children are too valuable for you to compromise.

This, especially the emphasized part, is exactly why I will not send my children to an "assembly-line" school.

I've known (about the emphasized part, above) for some time, but could not formulate the wording in my head--it has nagged at me, and in some conversations with others on the topic of home schooling vs. "regular" schooling I just couldn't form the idea solidly enough to communicate it.

Darned good book (I'm reading it online, but I'll probably buy it.). Read the reviews on Amazon, and you'll get a good idea of how good a book it is--there are so many people that hate this book, it's laughable. (Mostly women who've been hoodwinked into believing whatever the "theory du jour" of child rearing is.) For a proper review of the book, and another darned good site to take the time to read, try Raising Godly Tomatoes.