Education is Discipleship
In my last post I asked,
“WHY is it so important to you to
home school?”
It wasn’t an overnight decision to
home school our daughter. It was
something I thought I wanted to do since she was born! Somehow, we ended up at the close of 4th
grade before we made the leap to home school her in 5th grade. Initially, it was dissatisfaction with the public
school system which propelled us forward in this decision. However, around the same time, in my personal
life, I was being pushed into discovering more about discipleship.
As I was scouring the internet for information about
homeschooling I discovered Dr. James Dobson’s radio program "Family-Talk." In the episode on homeschooling, Dr. Dobson
interviews Jay and Heidi St. John, founders of First Class Homeschool Ministries about, you guessed it, homeschooling. Heidi made a statement that really stuck with
me; I think because it was on a subject I had already been primed to pay attention to. She said,
“ …Jesus said in Luke 6:40 that when a student is fully
trained he will be like his teacher. We
need to be thinking about who is teaching our children and looking at education
as an opportunity for discipleship. When
we talk to home school parents or people who are thinking about homeschooling
we remind them education is discipleship.
Who is discipling your child?”
(visit
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/family-talk/listen/homeschooling-in-2010-ii-131002.html to hear the
25:55 minutes long episode. It’s
definitely worth it.)
Did you catch
that? Education is Discipleship. Wow.
Any of us who grew up in church recognize discipleship as a couple of
classes you have to take when you join a church. But a closer inspection of the Bible reveals
that discipleship is a lifestyle. It’s
welcoming others into your life and them welcoming you into theirs. It’s a time to learn and train, by example, in a hands-on
kind of way.
Daddy and I chose
to home school because DD was beginning to hate learning; her attention was
moving toward what others thought of her rather than increasing her
knowledge. I remember being that
age. It was such a hard time to balance
education, boys, friends, self esteem, chores, parents, etc….. We believed that by bringing her home for her
education she would not have to worry about wearing the right clothes, being
pretty enough, and knowing the right things to say to make others like her. By removing the distractions she would be
able to discover who she was and who she wanted to be without someone dictating
to her who she ought to be because they said so. And she would be able to focus her attention
on her education, especially the parts that she liked best!
I must say, although
it hasn’t always been easy and she hasn’t always loved it, the changes I am
seeing in my daughter make me proud.
While she was in public school I felt like I was losing her. Choosing to home school her gave me my
daughter back. And I couldn’t be more
proud of her or more happy with our decision to home school.
So? Why is it so important to ME to home-school my daughter? Growing up, one of the things I disliked most
about my father was his ‘Do as I say not as I do’ philosophy on rearing his
children. Some of the things I hate most
about myself now are things I grew up seeing my dad do. Heidi is right, education is
discipleship. And my opinion is that
discipleship is leading by example. I
didn’t like the example her teachers were providing her with. And despite my imperfections, I felt I could
provide her with much better examples of how to live while giving her an
education the public school system could only dream of providing.
When I started
writing this, I was planning to go in another direction with the next
post. But I believe this post, with all
of its talk about removing my daughter from the opinions of others and their “bad”
examples, lends itself to a question commonly asked of parents who have made
the decision to home school and is a pivotal consideration for those thinking about home
schooling:
What about
SOCIALIZATION?
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