Friday, September 9, 2022

Homeschooling Is Indispensable

Moms often express doubts about homeschooling through high school. 

Homeschooling means parents have to take responsibility for teaching or at least facilitating their child's learning in all the subjects at a high school level including math and science.

Most reasonable and thoughtful people hesitate at the thought of doing this; They don't feel entirely confident or qualified.

So parents are drawn to traditional high school because experts are teaching the various subjects, and having experts delivering information seems like a way to ensure kids will learn all the different subjects as well as they should.  

But as I discuss homeschooling vs. traditional school with doubtful moms, I find homeschooling is actually essential to me and to what I want my children to understand about leaning itself and what I believe about how everyone actually relates to Truth. 

Speaking generally, in school, students will face an expert teacher and that expert will deliver selected information which students will passively receive then study to retain and give it back to the teacher on tests. 

So students in a traditional school set-up are often put into a relationship with a teacher of a subject and not the subject itself. 

They may never encounter the subject itself or the truth behind a subject itself, and they may never realize this, because of course, they "took Spanish." 

Maybe worst of all, to students in a traditional classroom where experts teach the subject, knowing a truth about science may end up being to them synonymous with relating to (or just agreeing with) their expert teacher in science. 

That's terrifying. 

But homeschooling high school with a parent who isn't an expert in Chemistry or Pre-Cal, who may only have specialized degrees in English Literature and Theology, is an altogether different experience, and mainly because it has to be. 

Homeschoolers come to understand quickly, probably more than anyone, the need for help from expertise. 

They can't look to their mom as expert and receive the subject or the truth in the subject from her. 

Rather, homeschoolers have to stand with their mom seeking truth together. 

They are both students in relation to truth. 

So yes, homeschoolers find expert texts and DVDs that will move us along in the journey. 

But homeschoolers can not passively go on a tour of the subject from an expert, they have to dig in to the material in a way that traditionally schooled students usually do not. 

They have to move forward inch by inch, step by step, perceiving the next truth and then the next truth and then the next for themselves, beholding Truth itself, taking ownership of the entire learning process in every subject moment by moment.  

Homeschoolers learn that learning is actually active and that Truth can be perceived with the help of the Holy Spirit anywhere and without an expert guide.  

Education is a relationship with the Truth and not a relationship with an expert or teacher. 

And homeschooling better demonstrates that than traditional schooling usually does. 

Therefore, it's indispensable to what I want my kids to learn about learning itself. 







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