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Six, darling, little school desks line the walls of my den. An oversized dry erase board runs the length of the room and several thousand books are stuffed into a myriad of shelves all around our home. Most definitely, we have some kind of homeschool.
When passers-by see six children playing out in the yard during the day, they will occasionally stop and ask if their child can be enrolled in our ‘day-care center.’ Seeing all of us wearing matching tee-shirts, parents have actually asked if their child can join our ‘group.’ All of us get a kick out of that question.
But it is not a bad idea.
We parents loved school when we were little, but public school is not what it used to be; a disturbing paradigm shift has occurred. No longer can a child skip happily into our government institutions to safely explore the wonders of the big, wide world with high-principled adults. No longer can a parent realistically entrust their offspring to others in the morning and expect than their child will return un-damaged that night.
No longer.
Perhaps the cruelest results of this sin-ravaged world are revealed in the hearts of our precious children. Mirrored in their innocent eyes, we are horrified to recognize our worst fears. Rapidly, our babies are being exposed to incredible immorality, graphic violence and disgusting sexual perversion. Their innocence is being methodically removed under our very noses; it seems, with our blessings.
How can we continue to look the other way?
Even in Christian circles, it is politically incorrect to challenge the public schools in this country. Professional educators across the board generally distain the grass-roots homeschooling movement and consider it inferior to the nation’s system, but the fact remains that it is growing by leaps and bounds, anyway.
Homeschooling works.
A well-meaning person once insisted that I should expose my children to evil purposely in order to avoid culture shock when they left my home someday. Later recalling that God told Adam and Eve to avoid the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, I wondered if God was being fair, because after all, they did need to know the difference. My thinking was not right thinking. He loved his children.
He did not want them to know evil.
The truth is that our little homeschool is fraught with weaknesses, as am I, as its chief instructor. On some days, educational accomplishments are limited to reading our Bible and missionary story together and getting our household in order. As we spend time praying, talking, working and laughing, however, I cannot imagine sending my children’s impressionable minds and hearts out into the world for others to shape. It is my job.
It is a critical responsibility.
Not every Christian parent can home educate his or her children. Not everyone wants to. Every noble endeavor is always undertaken at a cost of great personal sacrifice. Nevertheless, the excuses I often hear wear thin when I see the damage being done to our children.
“Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.”
“And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
“If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.”
By the way, those six little desks sure are cute.
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