Home Schooling - A Way of Life 1

Home Schooling - A Way of Life (part 1)

Home Education Defined Who Home Schools ? Why Home School ? Home Schooling Challenges

Home Education Defined

"Home education is the natural progression of teaching your child how to tie their shoes, count to ten, and say their name and address." A Veteran Home School Mom

"Education: The bringing up, as of a child; instruction, formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts, and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties." Noah Webster

"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth." Martin Luther

"True home schooling is tutorial, handmade, customized to each child. "Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore

As you can see, home schooling means many things to many people. For many families, home education goes far beyond academic instruction at home with learning taking place in many other settings (e.g. community service, field trips, home businesses, work experiences, apprenticeships, or special workshops). Training includes spiritual, moral, physical, and social areas. Some home educators delegate some instruction to tutors, video schools, or correspondence schools, while supervising the overall education of the children and integrating it with practical instruction and real-life experiences.

Home education is best defined in the Holy Bible. The scriptural beginning of education is "the fear of the Lord". (Proverbs 1:7, 9:10). The scriptural goal of education is II Peter 1:5-7, "Add to your faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, self-control, to self-control, perseverance, to perseverance, godliness. to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love." The scriptural answer to "Whom should be taught?" is Isaiah 54:13, "And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord: and great shall be the peace of thy children." And the scriptural style of education is Deuteronomy 6:7-9, "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontels between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house, and on thy gates."

Who Home Schools ?

Throughout most of the world's history, the training and education of children have occurred in the home, with occasional assistance (at parental discretion) from tutors, religious schools, and apprenticeships.

Massachusetts established the first compulsory, tax-supported state school in America in 1837, and the idea took over 70 years to spread nationwide. Yet, before the introduction of government schools, both literacy and Christian morality was much higher than now.

"A native of America, especially of New England, who cannot read and write is as rare a phenomenon as a comet." John Adams 1765

There have been many famous Americans home schooled: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abigail Adams, Florence Nightingale, Abraham Lincoln, William Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, John Tyler, Woodrow Wilson, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Booker T. Washington, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Sandra Day O'Conner . . .

According to the Wall Street Journal, there are approximately 1.2 million home schooled children in the United States. (At nearly