Why I Thank God for Homeschooling (a response to Professor Elizabeth Bartholet)

I thank God for homeschooling!

I thank God for the wonderful privilege of helping my wife, Hope, homeschool our daughter, Joy. I thank Him for helping us overcome obstacles and challenges. I thank Him for the beautiful fruit those homeschool years have been bearing in Joy’s life since she graduated from high school. And I thank God for the other homeschoolers we know who consistently show a depth of Christian character, an inner strength, and a level of academic excellence that is a powerful testimony to homeschooling and which give glory to the God we serve.

What Prompted Me to Write at this Time

I was prompted to write this blog post by a terrible article in Harvard Magazine which describes alleged risks of homeschooling and calls for homeschooling to be banned. That article is written by Erin O’Donnell, but is based largely on a longer article by Professor Elizabeth Bartholet. Bartholet apparently  had the help and support of quite a few of her colleagues in writing her article. Bartholet and others plan to hold a conference on homeschooling that will continue her line of attack on our freedom to educate our own children (how the coronavirus has affected this plan I do not know). The Harvard anti-homeschool articles have already generated a lot of attention and some good responses, including a helpful response by Al Mohler. This is my own response.

My purpose in sharing this is to provide a positive testimony about homeschooling to balance out the distorted view of it presented by Bartholet. Bartholet seemed to especially be taking aim at Christian homeschooling, and that is precisely the type of homeschooling that my testimony concerns. I certainly support the right of non-Christian families to also homeschool their children according to their own beliefs. I suspect that this blog post will do little to change the minds of hard core liberals who hate evangelical Christianity and want to hinder us from passing on our faith and worldview to our children. I hope that this post will, however, encourage those who are already homeschooling and perhaps inform some people who haven’t thought much about it one way or the other. Perhaps I am preaching to the choir here. But when the choir is under attack and opponents want to use government power to stop the choir’s beautiful singing, perhaps the choir needs an encouraging message or two confirming what they already know to be true. So here is our testimony, followed by a few relevant thoughts.

A Challenging Situation with Good Results

We lived in Indonesia starting from two years before our daughter Joy was born until she was 12 years old. Our home was in the city of Makassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Those were difficult years in Indonesia (1996-2010) and there were no other Western expat children Joy’s age in our city. It could take months for us to receive homeschool materials via international mail. The main problem was not how long it took for a package to cross the Pacific Ocean. The greater delay occurred when a box ended up languishing in a part of the post office we called “the box dungeon” (it actually had bars) while trees grew taller and continents drifted apart. With minimal support, my wife took on the task of homeschooling our young daughter in that challenging setting.

By the time Joy was in 1^st grade we realized she was having difficulty learning to read. We initially thought some of the difficulty might have been due to Joy having learned two languages at once growing up. Hope worked patiently with her. It was not until we were back visiting in the US while Joy was in 3^rd grade that we had the opportunity to have her tested and discovered that she had dyslexia (during this same visit to the US Hope required some fairly significant surgery due to some health issues). We were so thankful for a wonderful friend and prayer supporter who helped us get Joy tested and then helped us understand the results, worked with Joy herself while we were in the US, and trained us to continue helping her after we returned to Indonesia.

What Hope lacked in professional experience working with dyslexia was more than made up for by a mother’s fierce love and determination. She spent countless hours reading to Joy and reading with Joy. I helped with some exercises tailored for Joy’s specific type of dyslexia. Reading for Joy did not really kick in until the summer between 4^th and 5^th grade. But when it did kick in, it kicked in in an amazing way. Not only had Hope patiently and gently taught Joy to read, by her example she had taught Joy to love reading. Soon we had a new challenge: keeping Joy supplied with the stacks of books she was burning through just because she loved reading.

Like many with dyslexia, initial difficulty in one area was combined with unusual aptitude in others. Joy loved math. Soon I had to take over math (Hope is a college graduate, but math was not her strongest area) as Joy quickly advanced to word problems that would be a real challenge for most adults. By God’s providence, I had studied Mechanical Engineering in college and so was able to keep up with her. By the time she graduated high school she had studied two years of calculus! In addition to the basics and advanced math, Joy chose to study chemistry, physics, two years of New Testament Greek, and two years of Spanish in high school. Extracurricular? She loved photography and learned to play guitar and she helped lead worship at our church. She seriously considered majoring in math in college, but there was another area she loved that won out: languages.

By God’s grace and through a mother’s devotion to homeschooling, Joy did very well on standard academic tests. She ended up getting a full academic scholarship. We were so thankful for that. We had gladly sacrificed a second income so that Hope could focus on homeschool, but that left us in a difficult situation when it came to paying for college. By God’s grace we have not had to pay for tuition, room, board or books as scholarships and grants have covered it all.

Joy is a couple of weeks away from finishing, Lord willing, a dual degree in Biblical Studies and Applied Linguistics. Through hard work, a good foundation, and God’s grace, she has continued to excel academically.

Did Joy’s social development suffer as a homeschooler? Not at all! She has many dear friends. She can relate well with young children while serving in VBS and with her classmates in college as well as her professors and is equally comfortable and friendly with the older members of our church. She is kind and loving and caring. More important than all that, Joy has a deeply rooted, strong Christian faith. She trusts her Lord and loves her God.

All of this is to say that Joy is a typical result of homeschooling. Of course, no two children are the same and one of the many advantages of homeschooling is the ability to tailor each child’s schooling to their unique needs, giftings, and interests. We have noticed that many other homeschoolers share the same academic excellence, the same quiet confidence, the same friendly and winsome demeanor, the same love for others, the same sparkle of joy in their eyes, and the same rock solid Christian faith that we are so thankful to see in our beautiful daughter.

So now I hope you can understand why I thank God for homeschooling. Likewise, I hope you can understand why I was dismayed by the article in Harvard Magazine that suggests that homeschooling should be banned. What a terrible and, quite frankly, evil idea.

A Few More Thoughts about Homeschooling

1. Bartholet cites cases of abuse by family members being more difficult to discover if children are homeschooled as one reason to ban homeschooling. Any good thing can be twisted and abused. Eating good food can turn into gluttony and obesity. Drugs that can heal and help can become traps for addiction and abuse. The police keep us safe but occasionally police power is abused. We need money to live and it can be used for good, but we must guard against greed and materialism. Should we ban eating, medicine, police, and money? More to the point, there have been cases of abuse in public schools by other students and even sometimes by teachers. Bullying has become widespread in public schools. In addition, there is a lot of negative peer pressure in public schools to engage in unhealthy and dangerous activities from sexting to vaping to underage drinking. Honestly, I believe the public school setting today is a much greater risk to children on average than homeschooling is. I taught as a substitute teacher in public schools for several months a few years back. If Bartholet thinks the typical public school system is a safer, healthier place for children than the typical homeschool setting, she must be living in an alternate universe that exists only in the liberal imagination. What about those rare cases where there is real physical or sexual abuse in homeschool settings? The answer is to put the abusers in jail, not to ban all homeschooling!

2. Bartholet specifically mentions that some homeschool families “question science.” I love science. Before being called into full time ministry I studied Mechanical Engineering and then worked as a nuclear engineer for five years. I later served as an assistant professor teaching thermodynamics and heat transfer at a university in Indonesia for three years. I enjoyed helping Joy learn chemistry and physics in homeschool. If by “question science,” the Harvard professor means that homeschool families question the value of science, or the scientific method, I haven’t seen that. But while we don’t “question science,” we do “ask questions in science.” I suspect her real concern is that many homeschool families do not buy into the godless molecules-to-man evolution, matter and energy is all there is, fairy tale. I certainly don’t! But my reasons for rejecting that kind of evolution are heavily rooted in science itself. Rejecting the evolutionary creation myth does not at all equate to rejecting real science.

3. The Harvard Magazine article seems to be worried that homeschooling is a danger to the liberal social agenda. They’re right about that one.

4. I fully realize that homeschool is not for everyone, but no one is arguing that all families should homeschool. Bartholet is suggesting that the government should use its power to prevent almost every family from homeschooling. What should the government do for the many families that are not well equipped or financially able to homeschool and also cannot afford to send their children to private schools? In my county and other nearby counties almost no one who can financially afford an alternative sends their children to the public schools. Despite some wonderful, heroic teachers, the public schools here are in very poor condition. In fact, they are in many ways unhealthy, dangerous places for children. Why not expand voucher programs? Instead of taking power away from parents and families, we should be empowering them with choices. Very few parents are going to send their kids to bad schools if they have a choice they can afford. Many parents would delightfully choose to send their children to excellent private Christian schools if they could use vouchers for that purpose. That’s why the left opposes voucher programs. Like homeschooling, it threatens their godless agenda.

Conclusion

We should not even think about banning homeschooling. Homeschoolers should be supported and encouraged. The government should expand voucher programs and allow those vouchers to be used for Christian schools. Homeshooling and private Christian schools are two good ways we can obey God’s command to teach our children to know Him and His Word and to walk in His ways while also teaching them reading, math, science, and more. Families who don’t want to teach their children Christian values and Bible truths don’t have to. That’s their responsibility before God. Of course, the government should step in when there is actual physical or sexual abuse and that applies whether the abuse occurs in a home, a public school, a church, a sports team, or anywhere else. Other than that, government should protect the God given rights and role of parents to raise their children and be responsible for their children’s education.

He established a testimony in Jacob and set up a law in Israel,

which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children

(Ps. 78:5 CSB17)

Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .