Why I Won’t Homeschool Until I Do
On fear, safety, and trusting God with our kids (and ourselves)
This is part of a series on what I call “evangelical safety culture.” To catch up you can read part 1 and part 2.
I’m a daughter of 90’s American evangelicalism. And I was homeschooled.
I like to think that if you met me today it would be hard to tell. But the mannerisms of the formerly home educated can take many years to fade. I’m learning to embrace my quirks, though, as special abilities instead of liabilities. It’s a process.
I cannot speak for anyone else’s experience, but growing up these were the most common rationales I heard for homeschooling.
Superior Academic Achievement
We weren’t destined for just any ordinary jobs or vocations. We would be the next generations of missionaries, pastors, evangelists, Members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, or maybe even the President. We couldn’t settle for whatever the local school district happened to offer.
Education With a Christian Worldview
Sex ed? Evolution? These had no place in an education crafted from a Christian worldview. Homeschooling would allow our parents to disciple us, not just by reading Scripture and talking about their faith, but through math and science and every subject.
Time = Influence
Truly committed Christian parents would not be content to let non-Christian teachers and peers influence their children for more waking hours than they did. Home education meant more time to influence their hearts for Christ, in hopes that they would not walk away from the faith like so many other adolescents.
We’ve been exploring both the ideas of radical Christianity and evangelical safety culture, and a closer look reveals that these rationales fall into categories of either radicalism or safety. At first glance these values seem inherently opposed to one another, at the distant ends of some theoretical spectrum. Homeschooling, however, transforms that spectrum into a venn diagram and sits perfectly in the space where the two overlap.
Choosing to homeschool one’s children is a rare and radical choice. Both in the 1990s and today it is a minority decision. Even post-COVID, with many states experiencing declining public school enrollment, only about 6% of American kids are educated at home.1 Christian home educators see it as an integral, perhaps even essential practice of living out their faith. Living on a single income or appearing odd to others are small sacrifices to make in exchange for faithful obedience to God’s command to disciple one’s children.2
But home education is also, conveniently, the safest choice. Parents can have full control over what their children learn, who they play with, and where they go. In an increasingly secular and violent world, sending one’s children to be taught by and make friends with unbelievers is considered a risk not worth taking.
While the initial decision to homeschool might be a radical choice, once one has trusted God enough to make that decision, trust will rarely become necessary again. But Scripture presents a picture of the Christian life that is neither radical nor concerned with safety. In Christ we are called to ordinary faithfulness, to live peacefully among our unbelieving neighbors, working quietly with our hands, all the while with our eyes firmly fixed on a heavenly citizenship. Walking in this vision of faithfulness does not preclude home education, but it also does not prescribe it.
I find myself in a group of toddler moms, most of whom have decided to homeschool their children.3 And I’ve found the rationales have not changed in the decades since I was a child. In fact, the scales seem to have shifted dramatically toward safety, the anxieties of Christian motherhood palpable as we watch our cherub cheeked toddlers roaming the playground.
In part because of our understanding of the temptations of both radicalism and safety in our own hearts, my husband and I have so far decided not to homeschool our kids during elementary school. Here are our rationales.
Homeschooling would make it nearly impossible to pursue the work God has given us.
My husband is pursuing a writing career that precludes him from working most traditional jobs. He works as a freelancer and substitute school teacher to maintain the flexibility to chase the dreams God has put in his heart. As his partner and helper I contribute to our household by working a full-time job that provides us with health insurance and other corporate benefits, and on the side I pursue my own goals of writing and speaking. Homeschooling would require us both to abandon the work God has called us to do in this season.
Relationship = Influence
Our children are influenced by us (for better and worse) because of the relationship we have with them as their parents. We are not concerned that it will be threatened by attending public school. It might even be strengthened as we talk openly about the things in this world that do not align with God’s heart, as well as the common grace God lavishes on us all. Being involved in our community through public school will also open doors for us to build relationships (and therefore, influence) with teachers, administrators, children, and fellow parents.
Decisions based on fear are nearly always faulty.
If we choose to homeschool we want the decision to be intentional rather than reactionary, especially if the fears we might be reacting to turn out to be largely unfounded.
We want to consider what our unique children need.
Education choices are not one-size-fits-all, because our children are each different. Our children are only toddlers, but as they grow we want to consider their emotional, relational, and educational needs, as well as their spiritual ones.
As our oldest approaches kindergarten in a few years, my muscles of trust have been strengthened as we walk freely in our decision to enroll him in a local public school. It has been difficult at times to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit when fear blossoms across social media and mommy groups and threatens to stick to me like glitter, and when I was formed by my own childhood belief in self-righteous radicalism. But I return to these renewed rationales and my husband to tune out the noise and to be reminded that our freedom to choose this path also means we have the freedom to change our minds.
Beauty on My Playlist
I don’t listen to a lot of music, and when I find something I like I tend to stick with it. Time by John Lucas has been on my playlist for a while, and lately I keep coming back to it.
And I don’t know the end
Or tomorrow’s story
But I have found the one who gives me rest
And I will make my bed in His promises
For He holds true when nothing’s left.
Beauty in The Kitchen
A friend of mine has been trying to get a sourdough starter going for several months now and was finding it difficult to keep up with. I was able to introduce her to the dry starter method I use and she successfully baked her first sourdough focaccia last week after sending many pictures of levains and doughs back and forth. For a sourdough enthusiast it doesn’t get much better.
In pursuit of Beauty,
While their interpretation in exclusive support of homeschooling is questionable, these are some of the most common verses referenced by the community. Deut 6:5-7, Prov 22:6 2 Tim 3:14-15, Titus 2:1-8, etc.
Some were homeschooled themselves while others will be the first generation in their families to homeschool.
When we were deciding to homeschool about 15 years ago, my wife and I wrote down separate lists of reasons to homeschool. This was mine:
-for the fun and challenge of it
-to share an experience with your child
-to read the same books
-to continue our own education
-it seems natural
-you like your kids, and there’s plenty of time later to NOT be around them
-freedom
-to curb the compulsory part of school
-to avoid the herd-like nature of school
-to keep home the organic center of life
-to foster the sense that learning is not a specialized activity–education is not the province of “trained experts”
-to keep the idea of education as career training to a minimum
-school gives the impression that knowledge is impractical because it’s so far removed from the rest of life
-who knows what they’re doing in those classrooms?
(That last one was a bit facetious. I’d worked in schools, both public and private, so I knew pretty well what they were doing and it was a pretty mixed bag.)
thank you for this encouraging post! I've always loved the idea of homeschooling, even before I became Christian. However life did not ever make it possible for us and I've made my peace with it. I love the point you make about how in the Bible Christians are not called to live safe lives. I do think there are times the secular world can lead believers astray, but perhaps there's other ways to prevent this from happening. Your post made me think of a Mike Winger video I was watching and how he talks about how we can give our children immunity from unbelief, in the forms of good arguments to common objections to Christianity. This we can do by talking to our children about what they learn out school and how we might think differently. It's not easy though, I fail all the time, but I do trust God with my child and I know it is not in God's plan for me to homeschool at this point, or perhaps ever!