The Kitchen as Classroom
- Bill Ihde
The Teaching Home, a Christian magazine for home educators, provides essential information and resources for families considering or already involved in home schooling. Write for a free "Questions and Answers" brochure to: The Teaching Home, P0. Box 20219, Portland, OR 97220-0219 or call (503) 2539633.Bill Ihde is director of Christian Home Educators of Ohio, a statwide organization helping nearly 3000 families. Bill co-pastors the Cummunity of Believers Church in Akron, Ohio. He an dhis wife Marcia have been educating their three children at home for ten years.
Homeschooling is destined to become one of the most exciting movements of the nineties.
Primarily a Christian movement, it is the result of a profound social and educational
shift at the grassroots level. Christians concerned with preserving and transmitting
traditional moral and educational values are opting out of the public schools, especially
at the lower grade levels. In fact, the homeschooling movement stems directly from the
increasing de-Christianization of America's classrooms and textbooks.
More and more Christian parents are rejecting passivity and rediscovering their educational responsibility toward their children. The are guided by a clear vision: 1) a renewed understanding that education a primary means by which the next generation will form its outlook on the world; 2) the certainty that no educational system is morally neutral or value-free: and 3) the realization that the primary responsibility to educate children in godly ways rests squarely on parents (Pr 22:6).
Homesehooling plays a prophetic part in a battle of world views. Dr Jay Adams, author of the book, Back to the Blackboard, sums up this struggle with his characteristic bluntness: 'There are giants abroad in the land!.. These two giants, secular humanism and evangelical Christianity, are squaring off for the battle of the century."
The baffle, to a great extent, is over young hearts and minds and who will chart their
destiny. We owe it to our children to prepare them in the best way possible for the
calling God has on their lives.
Many parents have taken a second look at homeschooling for some down to earth reasons
as well. Learning specialists in all fields of study are now affirming what Christians
have known for years: home education helps produce higher-achieving, better behaving, self
directed children.
"SHORT-CIRCUITED" CHILDREN
How young is too young? That question is usually asked about voting and drinking ages. Another to add to the list is school entrance age. There is a growing trend toward mandatory education for children as young as three years old. But do children benefit from earlier formal education? Research does not substantiate the claims. In fact, a study by Joseph Halliwell concluded, "early entrance into first grade results in lower achievement."
Despite their initial excitement for school, many, if not most, early entrants are tired of school before they are out of third or fourth grade. In a cover story on education, Time magazine tells of a first-grade student who had been in day care since she was a baby. After a hard day, her teacher asked her what was wrong. I'm tired of school,' replied the world-weary seven-year-old. 'I've been to school all my life."'
Tufts University psychologist David Elkind calls these pressured youngsters "intellectually burned out" The key reason: their vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, motor
coordination, and brain development are simply not ready for formal programs of learning until eight or nine years of age, according to studies done by Dn Raymond Moore, an expert in the field of developmental psychology. Moore likens die social and academic pressure of early formal school to running 220 volts of electricity through a 110-volt line. Says Moore, "The line will tolerate the overload of current for a limited time, but soon it will short-circuit!"
Professionals may label some children as "learning disabled" when they are simply unready physically and emotionally to perform the tasks required of them (though perfectly within God's timetable of development). For instance, have you ever wondered if your children have hearing impairment?
Several years ago, my family and I were traveling to a small town named Medina. Our six-year-old daughter, anxious to complete the journey, burst out: When are we going to get to Mels Diner?" On another occasion she spent an entire day playing with a girl bearing the biblical name Tamar. During the drive home from that fun-packed day, she squealed with delight, I had so much fun playing with my new friend K-Mart!"
Superimpose the above scenario in a classroom setting, multiply it by a half-dozen similar incidents, and the likely diagnosis would be learning disability" The mislabeling of such a child would undoubtedly have negative effects on his self-image. Homeschooling parents are free to move at their child's unique developmental pace, thereby sparing him the pressures and comparison inherent in regimented group instruction found in most American classrooms.
Moral Excellence
In the stormy reality of youth illiteracy, immorality, and rebellion against authority,
concerned parents in and out of the Church are looking for safe harbor. The generation gap
continues to widen, in part because many American parents surrender their children from
their earliest years to institutions.
Children who spend greater amounts of time with a peer group (classmates) than with their own parents tend to be come emotionally dependent on their peer group. The Scriptures warn us:
"Bad company corrupts good morals" (ICo 15:33 NASB). Cornell sociologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, in his book, Two Worlds of Childhood, amplifies this thought "Until at least age 11 or 12 a child is highly vulnerable to his classmates' habits, manners, finger signs, obscenities, rivalry, and ridicule, so rampant today. Even if his parents are still shockable, he does not fully understand the furrowed brow nor care about the remonstrances placed before him in love. All he knows is that when everybody is doing it, he is to do it, because his friends say so, He gives parental values the back of his young, inexperienced hand."
In their "formative years," (till the age of about 12), children are highly receptive to parental example and instruction. Parents who homeschool are capitalizing on these character-building years, rather than sending their children away to the care of others. These early years provide the greatest opportunities to fill our children's lives with natural examples, family relationships, and social experiences that will strengthen their sense of identity and sharpen their ability to exert a godly influence in the world. At no other time in their lives will they be as responsive to their moral surroundings.
Home education, in its simplest form, extends the number of years that a parent may
nurture moral excellence without major distractions from the harsh outside world.
Academic Superiority
Research studies in the United States and Canada have consistently confirmed the
effectiveness and, in most cases, the superiority of home education to traditional
classroom instruction. The Hewitt Research Foundation studied several thousand home
schooled children across the United States and found that they have characteristically
performed in the 75 to 95 percentile on Stanford and Iowa Achievement Tests. Frequently,
these children are taught by highschool-educated parents no more than an hour or two a
day.
Dr David Elkind, in his book The Hurried Child, describes the modern public-school classroom: "Little time is given to actual instruction in classrooms: management busywork, waiting, leaving and arriving, and other diversions reduce gross instructional time to around ninety minutes a day. In class, attention to single students may average, per student, only six hours per year."
Tutorial (one-on-one) education offers tremendous advantages. Perhaps this is the reason why the children of royalty have historically been educated by this method.
My son James, age 13 (no link to any earthly royalty, by the way), recently finished The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer-A Christian Worldview. This is a five-volume set of books numbering over 2,000 pages. James completed this noble effort in just 10 weeks, with periodic quizzes that satisfied me he understood what he was reading. James isn't a genius-he's simply in an ideal learning environment. His sister Jessica, age 15, is enrolled as a part-time ballet student at Akron University. Home schooling in the morning allows her to pursue the rigorous training schedule required in her college courses. She receives college credit for her ballet classes.
For many homeschooled children, high achievement is a byproduct of the confidence and inquisitiveness that is nurtured by the homeschooling parent Homeducated students currently attend many of the major universities in the United States, including Brigham Young, Harvard, Princeton, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and Yale.
AN INDIVIDUAL CHOICE
Author John Naisbitt, in his 1982 best seller, Megatrends, cites the growing
movement toward home education as a long-term trend in our society, and estimates the
number of home-educated students to be as high as one million.
We, like Samson's father Manoah, have to approach the Lord personally and ask, "How shall we rear this child"(Judges 13:12 AMP). Home education will make some unusual demands on parents who are geared to the status quo of society But we are admonished by the Apostle Paul "not to let this world squeeze us into its mold" (Romans 12:1-2 Phillips).
The challenge to all of us is to thoroughly evaluate the educational options, and to
sincerely inquire of God what is best for each of our children. For growing numbers of
parents, the answer has been homeschooling.
