Home education is not necessarily the best option for Christian families

For an alternative view see here.

I must come clean. Unlike with free speech, I am not a ‘school-education’ absolutist. While convinced that ’school-education’ can provide a healthy education and participating in Church schools particularly continues an historic part of the Church’s vocation to educate in faith and wisdom (Matthew 28:18-20), there was a time where I assumed that home education was the godliest choice. This opinion was driven by one miss-step, two fears, and a beautiful vision.

The beautiful vision

The beautiful vision was this: God is redeeming all things, under the Lordship of Jesus (Ephesians 1:10)! By “all things” I make no exception, not just people in the Church but all creation (Romans 8:21), including culture, science and of course education. Importantly this redemption is something that we as Christians can get on with now. As we enter local government, refuse centres, and schools we redeem these areas, uniquely doing these things the way they are supposed to be.

teachers, knowing God or not, can rightly know and teach excellently about his world

My miss-step

But I applied the vision poorly, leading to my miss-step. This was to read the responsibility of parents in a narrowly prescriptive way. While the Bible clearly gives parents responsibility for the welfare and instruction of their children practically (Proverbs) and spiritually (Ephesians 6:4) in all of life (Deuteronomy 6:4). It does not prescribe a method beyond authentic faithfulness to God, belonging to his people, and not exasperating your children. I had naively thought that the beautiful vision meant parenting had been redeemed in such a way that the ‘really Christian parent’ would be able to provide everything in the education and formation of their children and at home. To do anything less felt like failure to live up to the beautiful vision or an abdication of my God-given redeemed parental responsibilities.

While I am sure there are some super-competent families who are able to cover everything; the scriptures, Keats, quadratic equations, oxbow lakes and everything else. It is not true to say, as I did above, that homeschoolers have to provide everything from their own resources. The beautiful vision does not demand it. My homeschooling friends use wonderful online resources, curriculum guides, leisure centre swimming lessons and co-operatives to partner with, which go beyond what they could do themselves. In accessing these resources created and curated by the wider community, no-one thinks that parents are abdicating their responsibility to bring up their children. Rather these parents are judiciously using the expertise and God-given gifts of the wider community to provide what they lack. This too is surely what “school-education” parents are doing. While they continue to be the primary disciplers and educators of their children they are not the only educators. By working with schools, they open their children up to a wide array of experiences, resources and relationships, which go beyond what they themselves could provide. This will of course require wisdom in discerning who and how to partner with as co-educators, more on that shortly.

Read more:

Homeschooling has its benefits for Christian families but it’s not for everyone

“School is a waste of time!” What Christian parents can say in response

‘Christians should consider home schooling. Here’s how my family has benefitted’

My fears

The beautiful vision also laid the ground for the first of my fears that, because non-Christian teachers are not redeemed they cannot truly understand the world. How could they? Since they do not know its creator and saviour and so cannot teach in the properly redeemed way. This is because my vision was not nearly beautiful enough, it underplayed the goodness of the nature of creation (Genesis 1) and all humanity’s ability to understand it (Romans 2:14-15).

Let us apply the illogic of my fear of the teacher’s incompetence, due to not being a Christian, to a non-Christian doctor. Biblically, non-Christian minds are foolish and futile with a darkened heart (Romans 1:21-22), indeed it is impossible for a non-Christian to please God (Romans 8:8, Hebrews 11:6). But it does not follow that non-Christians cannot truly know and operate in the world. This is because our good and generous God has made the world in such a way that it is comprehensible even to fallen human beings. A non-Christian doctor really can know bodies, diseases, and how treatments work. That is why, when seriously ill, Christians don’t say, “I can’t possibly go to that hospital, it is run by the state and those doctors are not Christians. They won’t practice medicine in a redeemed way. Quick find me a Christian… a butcher will do!” A non-Christian doctor can practice truly excellent medicine because of the nature of God’s creation. By extension teachers, knowing God or not, can rightly know and teach excellently about his world.

‘School-education’ with engaged parents is not a second-rate option in God’s eyes

My second fear was, and is, that in schools, the culture of the world will harm my children. How do we protect them from it?

First, engagement. It should go without saying that sending children to school needs significant, proactive parental engagement with co-educators via personal conversations. Though perhaps institutional engagement as governors should be a higher priority for us as we pursue the common good. Engaging kids at home in the everyday conversations around friendships and the ideas they are encountering, are things everyone has to do and drawing in wise church family who are passionate or engaged in an area to talk the ideas over is good whatever your school context.

Second, wisdom. Knowing your child means knowing what school will serve them. Eastern European evangelical friends of mine decided against sending their daughter to the ‘Outstanding’ local girls school because it pushed ’gender affirming’ ideology. Among other things, they would clap and cheer in assembly any girl who began publicly identifying as a boy. Instead, they sent her to a very Roman Catholic school, which they never would have imagined doing before.

nor do we need to fear the culture of world, because God is able to keep our children in the midst of it, for He has “overcome the world

Third, and best for my fearfulness, is faith in our gracious God who looks after his children in exile. Daniel and his friends were taught ideas intended to indoctrinate them into the world by many pagan teachers, but the Lord was with them. God protected them from the harm of the world, blessed them and made them wise, presumably through the ordinary means of the scriptures and their errant instructors.

He still does that today. After a summer of reading “The Famous Five” our son would respond to his brother’s mischief with, “You are a scoundrel!” Last week, returning from school had him shouting, “What bruv! Yeah, Six/seven? Idiot!” I cannot say I am delighted. Yet over two nights this week in Bible time we heard how God wants us to consistently live for him, not changing how we act because of other people and how our words can ‘pollute or purify’ a place. The next morning my son said, “Dad, I think God has given me these Bible stories because he wants me to be more like Jesus. I’m not speaking how I should.” He kept Daniel, he can keep our children.

‘School-education’ with engaged parents is not a second-rate option in God’s eyes. The nature of his good creation means that we do not need to be afraid the teaching will be poor, nor do we need to fear the culture of world, because God is able to keep our children in the midst of it, for He has “overcome the world.”

For an alternative view see here.