Musings on Home Education

 Why I Homeschool Our Children

A Brain Dump

I think that when people learn that I homeschool our children, they assume that they know why. Really, no one has ever asked me why I homeschool or questioned it in any way that I can remember. It's usually something like 'Do you homeschool?...Oh, that's wonderful. *Smiles at children*". It's nice to have a positive response from people, but I hear things from time to time that make me think that people assume they know why we homeschool, when they don't really. Honestly, I was asking myself today, "Do I even know why I homeschool?" Since I was happily homeschooled for most of my school years, leaving my early and trying days of first and second grade at a typically-flawed Christian school, far behind, it simply seemed natural to keep homeschooling. I wouldn't just set up lesson plans for my kids, I would pick up from where I left off on my own education and keep my nose in as many books as they did, and we would putter and hum our way through the crisp fall days with open-windows, the blanket-wrapped winter sick days that are mostly audiobooks, or winter snow days that are rushing to get one required subject done before hitting the sleds, and then float (or trudge as the case may be) into spring, interspersing scholarly endeavors with forays into the garden and lunch at the picnic table. I just wanted to live this life.

But of course, the real reason we are home educating our children, is that there are no schools in convenient distance that are inculcating the truths and virtues that we desire for our children - such as worship of the Creator, deep family relationships, and the high hilarities of language, Greek, Latin and English - among other things. That's a good justifying reason. 

But as I've now kept the home school ball rolling for 6 years, and the thought that our oldest may someday need more instruction than I can provide, I realized that my attachment to homeschooling was not merely one of principle. It is perhaps even more an attachment of fierce independence. Imagine - having another person, separate from our family, dictate my daily schedule - my child's teachers at some school having power over when we eat breakfast and what books we have to read and what time we have to go to bed at night. I inwardly recoiled at the thought, and pitied in my heart all the poor, slaving mothers who toil to keep their kids on the school's schedule. It made my blood hot to imagine myself losing my days of idyllic independence in order to be at the beck and call of another institution. I also reflected that this reaction is not exactly virtuous. But really, how can people say home schooling is hard, when they have to roll out of bed in the darkness to send their child to a school that probably has fluorescent lights in the classroom and no fresh flowers dropping dried petals and spider webs onto the spelling book? Not even mentioning the leftover bacon and fresh banana bread that may be acquired from the absurdly nearby kitchen during school hours, I believe that homeschooling can possibly be too idyllic to prepare children for the harsh realities of life in a fluorescent lit office cubicle. But I'm not afraid to defy that fear and give out spelling words from the kitchen, with my hands buried in sticky granola mixture, which will soon sustain the weary apprentice of cursive handwriting and spoil his appetite for lunch (oh dear, what are we having for lunch?). 

I do not disguise from myself that this idyll has its shortcomings. I do not imagine that home education can give a child all that they need, any more than a public education. These will each leave a child with gaps, of either community or family or knowledge, that they will long to fill. But we will pray about filling those gaps. Ultimately, whatever way we prayerfully choose to educate our children, the education is something that God has provided, and we give thanks for the blessings and trust God to provide what seems to lack. My feelings about homeschooling may come and go, and be better or worse from day to day, but the life that God has provided for us is a reality for which I can give thanks, even as time brings changes. 

October Windows

The dogwood holds

one hundred tinted windows

to the westering light

It's summer-humming rooms

swept empty

of their seethe of green 

are quiet as a church,

and sun enters alone

to set aglow its floors

with rosy tones

as for a holy day.

The eye may enter here

the round returning room

of nature's rest

of nature's secret joy,

of nature's's treasured waiting

for the grand day 

of festivity.

- AFB 10-15-24

Mid-July, West Virginia

In winter, we did dream
of this extravagant heat,
this golden gale of light
that whips each sun-bared limb,
and makes our wool-wrapped, boot-toed tramps
through frosty grass
a distant planetary dream.

There's the indulgent bee,
rolled deep in velvet pollen,
half drunk on sun thick nectar,
oblivious of memories,
buzzing above the silent furnace roar
of pavement baking patiently,
some yards away.

The mockingbird, alone,
careless of blazing noon,
runs, tail high, through the bleaching grass,
after a hapless bug,
then flaps white-flashing wings
to the unshaded top
of some well-favored tree, to sing.

He sings a memory
of the north-flown cardinal,
who habited our winter
with his spark of cheer -
"'What cheer! What cheer!' is here!"
The cardinal is gone.
The red slow-fading sun
has come to linger long.
Its warmth embraces stones,
and deep, damp roots of trees,
and radiates into the humming, dusky night.

- AFB, 7-16-2024 

 

The Country

Grandma used to send our family Country magazine back in the 90s when Reiman publication magazines were glossy and ad-free. Remember those?

I remember my law-abiding child self reading the cover by-line: "For those who live in or long for the country" and thinking this was a requirement for subscribers. "Mommy, we don't live in the country, but I guess we long for it, don't we?" If so, we could read the magazine with a clear conscience. 

We lived in a small brick house in a neighborhoodish part of town, where Main Street was in walking distance. Grandpa and Grandma lived in the country for real - the kind with pastures and cows. I lived for our annual visit to that gloryland of barn and garden. Not less charming was the laundry-hanging room near the attic stairs of the farmhouse. Old newspaper covered the wood floors under the clothespin dotted lines crossing the ceiling, and at the back was a tiny closet stacked feet high with more of those Reiman publication magazines. Grandma let me go to town in there with scissors, collecting pictures and recipes while I lost track of time. 

When I was ten, and our family moved to Guyana, South America, some of those pictures went with me in scrapbooks and folders. As we lived in humid tropical towns and villages, surrounded by spiked fences, memories of a place where grass grew on hills and mowers trimmed its green plushness right to the edge of roads with no barred gates or sewage ditches stayed with me like a dream. 

Life has been hard in the past few years, with illnesses and weariness. But sights like these irises by the shed remind me of those Country magazine pictures, and how God's love is shown to us in many ways. 

When I was a teenager, and we were living in a village by the Berbice River, I found one of those old photos, children laughing in flowers and green grass next to a country lane. I almost wept over it. Then I remembered words from Hebrews, "If they had been thinking of that country from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. As it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one."

I'm back in the country. That's God's grace. But oh, all I want now is that better country. That will be glory.