To begin any discussion on child-rearing and education is to invite a host of heated (and often hyper-emotional) opinions. It’s understandable. I, too, have found myself in the throws of a knee-jerk reaction when my parenting styles or methods have been challenged. There is nothing quite like the topic of parenting to raise everyone’s hackles. Most of us want to get it right, and yet we’re woefully aware of just how wrong we get things on even a daily basis. Parenting is humbling, and any conversation about education is going to have to be built on the premise that we all have a lot to learn. Without such humility, we can never be open to where God’s Word may lead us.

Often the discussion around homeschooling revolves around the negative aspects of the public school complex–the horrible behavioral problems, the poor quality in educational outcomes, the rampant leftist indoctrination, etc.–and while these are all valid arguments for why you shouldn’t send your children to public school, they are not the most compelling reasons in support of homeschooling.

Most of us are familiar with Proverbs 22: 6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Yet with familiarity often comes a distinctive zoning out. We’ve seen it stitched on one too many throw pillows to really meditate on its meaning. Who should train up a child? What does it practically mean to train up a child? Are we fulfilling this training up of our children? Here’s another passage:

⁴ “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. ⁶ And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ 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. 

Deuteronomy 6:4-7, ESV

Notice how we should be teaching our children, when we “sit in [our] house” and “walk by the way” and “lie down” and “rise.” We should be teaching our children throughout the daily course of our lives. There are many such passages in Scripture dealing with how we discipline our children and how we are to raise them in a God-honoring way (Eph. 6:4, Prov. 29:17, Prov. 22:15, etc.). To whom are these commands given? To family members or friends? To daycare providers? To public (or private) school educators? Or were they given to parents? Do we recognize that with the blessing of children comes the responsibility for raising them?

Outsourcing Parenting

Parents, we are the ones who are meant to parent our children. This may seem like a goofy statement until you consider that the vast majority of school-aged children spend at least 7-8 hours each weekday apart from those whom God has tasked with their care and instruction. And that’s not even taking into account the many extracurriculars children are often involved in. If parents were to tally up all the meaningful minutes spent with their children in a given week–time in conversation, play, and other direct engagement–most would find they actually spend very little quality time with the immortal souls whose upbringing they are morally obligated to carry out.

We have a bad habit in our post-industrialized context of what I’ll call hyper-categorization. We somehow believe that so-called academic education is a separate and distinct entity from, say, spiritual education. Or moral education. Or social education. Etcetera, etcetera. We’ve taken a whole child and broken him or her up into neatly boxed compartments. In so doing, it’s easy to see how parents have tricked themselves into believing that they can raise their children in accordance with Scriptural mandates even if they have no firsthand involvement with their “academic” education. Little Johnny or Sally needs to learn a list of mandated subjects at mandated grade levels to accomplish success in college to become profitable in modern society. Spiritual training can fill up whatever crumbs of time are leftover after soccer practice and piano lessons and… usually it boils down to whatever is learned at church that Sunday.

“We talk of lost ideals, but perhaps they are not lost, only changed; when our ideal for ourselves and for our children becomes limited to prosperity and comfort, we get these, very likely, for ourselves and for them, but we get no more.”

Charlotte Mason

One of the biggest problems I see in the public education system is that we are training children to become practical atheists. At best a public school education (and even the education found in many private schools) guides children under the misassumption that there is or can be neutrality in academic pursuits. Children learn about history without recognizing the providence of God. They learn about math and science without any theological context of how God has created and sustained a uniformity in nature which provides the very foundation for such disciplines. They learn about art and music without any discussion of the truth, beauty, and goodness of God. That’s at best. At worst, the educators you’ve tasked with parenting your children during the day are actively undermining the Christian worldview. A child simply cannot spend the majority of his or her life living in a Godless, secular context and grow to spiritual maturity.

But let’s say you’re serious about the spiritual training of your children. Let’s say, for instance, that you are solidly Reformed and your children attend a church-supported school run by people you know have nothing but impeccable theological and ethical standards. Or maybe they’re even attending a prestigious online Christian school from your home, complete with face-to-face interaction with instructors and peers you know and trust. In either context, let’s assume each subject is deeply intertwined with theological truth. So, what’s the problem? The problem, dear parent, is that they are supposed to be learning those lessons from you. I know this is a tough pill to swallow, but I really do believe Scripture is clear that you must be involved in their education and that education is not to be compartmentalized. Time is crucial in their educational well-being (we all know how fast they grow up and how little time we actually have) and sending your kid off, whether to a physical location or hidden away in another room of your home all day, is simply not fulfilling the spirit of what is written in Scripture.

Please don’t misunderstand my argument. Any parent who decides to homeschool will inevitably have to access the support of curricula, online or physical resources (including video lectures), co-ops, etc. in the education of his or her child. The issue lies not in the resources one chooses to use but in how one chooses to use those resources. Ultimately, a child should be engaging with such material alongside their parents and through their parents’ direct guidance, not apart from them. Parents have the moral obligation to parent their children, not outsource their education.

Parents Over Peers

What if I told you that the threat in sending your kids off to school is not that they would be parented by adults who are not their parents, but that they would be parented by their peers? The adult to student ratios in school and daycare settings are such that children spend the majority of their days, of their lives with their peers. Gordon Neufeld ( a developmental psychologist) and Gabor Maté (a Canadian physician) co-authored a book on this very topic, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. Their central argument is that children need to build attachment relationships with those who are responsible for them and that peer orientation has competed with a child’s relationship with his or her parents to the detriment of the child’s development and society at large. As far as I’m aware, neither of these men are Christians and yet they have recognized a profound truth, “The way to children’s minds has always been through their hearts.”

The belief is that socializing–children spending time with one another–begets socialization: the capacity for skillful and mature relating to other human beings. There is no evidence to support such an assumption, despite its popularity. If socializing with peers led to getting along and to becoming responsible members of society, the more time a child spent with her peers, the better the relating would tend to be. In actual fact, the more children spend time with one another, the less likely they are to get along and the less likely they are to fit into civil society. If we take the socialization assumption to the extreme–to orphanage children, street children, children involved in gangs–the flaw in thinking becomes obvious. If socializing were the key to socialization, gang members and street kids would be model citizens.

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté

Children can only begin to resist negative peer pressure and choose the path of righteousness if their true north is found in the stability of their parents, if they care more what their parents think and believe than what their peers do. As parents, we represent God to our children. The way we interact with them and how they view us is how they will understand who God is. If we are distant, physically or emotionally, our children are going to seek attachment somewhere else and that attachment is most likely going to be to the ones they spend the most time with, their immature peers. Not only are we conveying something untrue about who God is in separating ourselves from our children (i.e., that he is cold and unreachable), but we are teaching our children to seek replacements for Him. This is certainly not a formula for holiness in the lives of our children.

Neufeld and Maté document some of the adverse outcomes of peer attachment in their book, but one study that stuck out was from the New York Times which showed that “Youngsters who spent more than 30 hours a week away from mommy had a 17 percent chance of ending up as garden-variety bullies and troublemakers, compared to only 6 percent of children who spent less than 10 hours a week in day care.” Another study conducted by Thomas Smedley concluded that homeschoolers scored in the 84th percentile of social skills, compared to kids in traditionally educated environments who scored in the 23rd percentile (Rebel Educator: Bullying and the Dark Side of Socialization in Public Schools).

I’d exhort parents who still harbor a fear that their children will be unable to interact positively with their peers to check their church involvement. Are you and your children neglecting fellowship? Church (with all its associated activities) is one of the best ways for children to interact with people of all ages, in an environment that is centered around family structure. Homeschooling allows the time and freedom for parents and children to schedule their lives around the church (e.g. Bible studies, fellowship events, service to other believers, etc.) and to benefit from the community therein.

Public and private schools (and I’ve attended both) have become microcosms of Lord of the Flies hierarchies. 1 Corinthians 15:33 tells us that “bad company corrupts good morals.” Can we really expect children to learn and exhibit godliness when surrounded primarily by the influence of one another? How’d it go for the Golding boys? No, children need constant, present, guiding examples of spiritual maturity. They need their parents.

Roles and the Home

The foundation of homeschool is the home. In our hyper-focused pursuit of academic excellence, I often feel we’ve forgotten what we are to be training our children for. Little girls need to be learning to be mothers. Little boys need to be learning to be fathers. Whether God will ultimately use our children as biological or spiritual parents (or both) is up to Him, but we are to be training our children in those roles. A child, then, is only going to understand the context of his or her role as they interact with the members of their household and the members of their church. If we want girls to learn what it means to be “workers at home” (Titus 2:5), then they need to be at home, seeing how mom models that role. If we want boys to learn how to provide and protect, then we want them to understand those responsibilities primarily in relation to those in their family as they will one day have families of their own. And ideally, the father should be modeling and teaching his son to fulfill these duties.

So is it healthy for the family for dad to be gone all the time? Dad can go out all day and mom can hold down the fort alone? That may be the status quo but is that the ideal model Christians should strive for? We so often talk about how our culture has pulled women from the home, but we rarely recognize that it has done the same with men. There are examples throughout history of men who worked and provided for their families from home. I grew up in a farming community where many fathers worked the fields or ran a dairy operation from home. Many of them came in for dinner (that’s what they call the mid-day meal in the Midwest) and had the opportunity to spend time with their families. Throughout history you’ve seen similar work-from-home professions for men, particularly in artisanal work like carpentry, blacksmithing, etc. Often, a son would apprentice with his father at home, learning intimately a skill that would allow him to provide for his own future family.

In the same vein, the Proverbs 31 woman was no trad wife. Instead, she was contributing in all aspects of the home, including buying a field and planting a vineyard. Her “merchandise is profitable,” and she “works with willing hands” (Proverbs 31:10-31). What better model for young girls than to learn how to pursue entrepreneurship, arts, and other skills for the benefit of the home and not to its dereliction?

“School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need society as it is.”

Ivan Illich

I’m not advocating that we return to some idyllic past, but I am calling out a lack of creativity we’ve suffered at the hands of collective assumptions about home, roles, and work. I truly believe conservatives, and many Christians, have a narrow-minded and defeatist attitude about the current social climate. We’ve bought into the lie that we have to choose among a bevy of bad choices. Instead of adapting our families to the current model, we should look forward to how we want the future to look and begin to shape those ideas within our children. What types of work can young men pursue that would provide the greatest benefit to their families? Technology and commerce are constantly evolving, so how can we be forward thinking and prepare them for those roles now? How can we encourage our daughters to see their future roles as wives and mothers as not merely decorative, but lifegiving to their entire household. What skills might they need to that end? Let’s get out of the proverbial box. Absolutely our sons and daughters are going to need a solid foundation in all their academic pursuits as they innovate and adapt to a rapidly changing world. And they are all going to need a strong theological underpinning as they navigate these decisions and one day educate children of their own.

Responsibility is Opportunity

Compulsory education and the prevalence of state-sponsored education has tricked us into forgetting what we already innately know, that our children are our responsibility and we have been divinely appointed with the task of raising them up to spiritual maturity. Many of us are unaware that the educational system as we know it today was not always the way. The florescent-lit boxes we keep our children in for hours on end, unappetizing cafeteria food, and a miniscule allotment of outdoor time are seen as the norm. But in many ways our schools have much in common with prisons. In fact, for the vast majority of human history, education has not been conducted in this fashion.

“Trying to get more learning out of the present system is like trying to get the Pony Express to compete with the telegraph by breeding faster ponies.”

Edward Fiske

Compulsory schooling only came to the United States in the 19th century and its primary goals have always been standardization and compliance. Some of this design may have been nefarious in nature and some may have simply been a result of efficiency and practicality. For industry tycoons like the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Fords (men who shaped the educational model as we know it today), the motivation was primarily on creating and shaping the next generation of “human resources,” those who could work in certain industries. Children as future commodities. The parent, on the other hand, sees their children as individuals with unique skills and challenges and can tailor education in ways the public or private school system simply has no time, money, or desire to. A teacher will never be invested in your child, his growth and well-being, in the way that you are.

“We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply.”

General Education Board (created by John D. Rockefeller)

For the state, the vested interest was often on assimilation and standardization, often at the cost of a family’s traditions and values. The nefariousness of this goal was most apparent in the forced schooling of so many Native American children who were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools. Conservatives may balk at this characterization, but the main takeaway is that anyone who desires to educate your child is going to have a motivation in doing so, for good (perceived or actual) or for the ill (explicit or unintentional). For Christians, we need to recognize that any educational pursuit needs to have the end goal of glorifying God and training up the child in righteousness. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my child assimilated into any culture other than the Christian culture and traditions of my home and church.

“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished … When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher

What is the end goal of education, of knowledge itself? As Christian parents, we need to care less about how high our children score on whatever standardized test, on how much rote information they can regurgitate, on what grade they make in Algebra, on what college they get into, or how prestigious their job will be. Above all, we need to care about their souls. Do they know God? Do they love Him? Do they love His people? We need to care less about how intelligent our children are and more about how holy they are becoming.

Most of us are products of this “traditional” educational system and have difficulty seeing any other option. Perhaps we’re afraid of stepping out into the unknown, of what our family and friends will say, of the looks we’ll get. Maybe we’re afraid we’re not good enough, we don’t know enough, and that our children will suffer as a result. The school model as we know it today has led us to believe we are ill-equipped to do the very thing God has called us to do, that we need some certificate to educate our own children. It’s nonsense (particularly in the Information Age we live in).

We have the responsibility to take back our children. We have the opportunity to take back our children, to learn and grow alongside them, to foster their creativity and wonder, to impart wisdom and truth. We have to stop treating our children’s education as a burden, but as a beautiful blessing. You have the opportunity to shape the next generation of God’s people. But you need to be there to do it.

Until next time, salutations & selah.