Why Our Choice to Homeschool Has Nothing to Do with Public Schools

So, occasionally, I slip into reading a popular blog post that continues the debate about whether or not Christians should homeschool their children or send them to public school.  I genuinely come in looking for a compelling argument, but rarely find one.  I love God, I love people, I care about my community.  My social worker heart is still alive and beating.  However, my family’s decision to homeschool has NEVER been about public schools.  Allow me to tell you why…

1. We know very little about it. My husband nor I have any personal experience with public schools.  We both attended private, Christian schools for the entirety of our pre-college education.  Our parents thought an education from a Biblical worldview was important.  We recognize that as a unique blessing.  Our parents sacrificed a lot to get us that education.  We are grateful.  But, for our part, there’s no personal testimonial about public schools, like “they screwed me up” or “it was good enough for me and it’ll be good enough for my kids” or “it was the best decision my parents ever made.” 

2. We don’t think it matters. We aren’t basing our educational choices off of what the society at large or even our immediate culture is doing.  As Christians, we believe God created families and parenting.  He also designed all the purposes of families and parenting, one of which is for parents to pass on knowledge and lead their children to wisdom and understanding.  When God revealed this truth to us, we felt compelled to see what that meant for our family.  We felt the weight of this responsibility and started there.  We started with this call on our lives as parents and moved forward.  We are thankful God taught this to us before we started any formal education for any of our children.

3. It could work.  Parents today have many educational choices: public, private, charter, homeschool, etc.  I’m quite sure any of these can work for Christian families.  I believe we are called, as parents, to be intentional and responsible for our children’s education.  That can take various forms.  For our family, at this time, in this place, we are homeschooling.  We believe God directly called us to homeschool.  We have already seen His purpose at work in our family’s life and we have been blessed.  My exhortation to you, as parents, is simply to start at the beginning.  Recognize your role as the person responsible for the training and education of your children. And this means all of it – not just the how, but the what, the why, and the when too.  Allow God to personally design the path for your family’s education and follow Him. 

No matter your feelings on public school education, starting from there is the wrong place to start.  Start with the Creator.  Start with how He designed education to work and see how He’s calling your family to live that out.  I frankly don’t see how any of the rest matters.