Look Ma! No Disciples! (Part Two)

And I took the book and read, and behold, the beastess arose out of Williamsburg and spake unto the people. And the people traded Bibles for Greek idolatry and Hindu history and lies about the first men. And the people went up unto the high places and sacrificed wisdom for the knowledge of the goddess of the well-trained mind. And yea verily the disciples were no more.

Homeschooling is in trouble.

I remember where I was.

I remember what I was wearing.

I had nestled my pregnant body in the shade trees of my backyard and read with eyes wide and mouth open.

Slam!

I snapped shut the book in disgust.

I.will.never. do this to my children!

I am not afraid of hard work, thick books, and deep thinking. Heaven knows I'm not. But I will not pursue the ego-feeding idolatry of knowledge in a book which refuses to make the glory of God preeminent in all things, most especially the education of my children.

Oh, that was just the publisher, you know...

Nonsense.

And I refuse.

Homeschooling is in trouble.

"There's probably a picture of you somewhere with a target on it."

His remark made me laugh out loud. "Yup. Probably."

A gentleman and I were talking of the bastard of homeschooling: the one-day-a-week academy (which, let's all be honest here, is really the "sign-my-kid-up-for-all-his-high-school-classes-and-phew!-I-won't-have-to-teach-a-thing" academy).

Let's just say my opinion is not a popular one.

But I maintain that if you keep saying you're bringing your children home, you really ought to do it.

In the Golden Age of homeschooling, parents taught their children at home.

I know.

Crazy-stupid idea.

But I'm just stubborn enough to stick to my guns on this one.

Just ask my husband.

Today, parents who think they're homeschooling (and, yes, they really, really do think they are homeschooling), have forfeit their position as discipler in the lives of their children to...

wait for it...

people with letters like:

BS, chemistry...

BS, mathematics...

MA, English lit...

Th.D...

...while I still submit the only letters that need be associated with the truly quality educator are:

D-A-D and M-O-M.

Homeschooling is in trouble.

We are putting away our books and plopping our children in front of computers and satellite classes.

Well, at least they're at home, you say.

Well, it might be helpful to point out that, while not all conversation implies discipleship, all discipleship implies conversation.

But the satellite has replaced conversation with the parent.

These are the Dark Ages of the homeschooling movement. There is no doubt about it.

Somewhere along the way, we decided it was more important to form a grammatically correct sentence than a Biblically correct idea.

Somewhere along the way, we decided it was more important to balance a stoichiometric equation than to worship the God of the periodic table.

Somewhere along the way, we decided it was more important to memorize the Greek gods than to meditate on the Word.

How utterly tragic.

If we can't form a Biblical thought, we should not waste our time writing a sentence--because we'll have nothing to say.

If we don't worship the Creator, then we simply create scientists who search for facts rather than Truth.

If we don't chew on the Word of God, but we input useless knowledge, we succeed only at raising children who have malnourished souls and bloated minds.

Dr. John Patrick, president of Augustine College in Ottawa, Ontario, says that the difference between good education and bad education is that bad education tells us we must understand to believe, but good education tells us we must believe to understand. That is the crux of the matter.

Truth must precede facts...

or the facts will be wrongly interpreted.

If we don't homeschool to the glory of God, we won't create disciples;

we will create Products of Academia.

If we don't homeschool to the glory of God,

then we shouldn't bother to homeschool at all.