Why We Homeschool

Why do we homeschool?

I have so many reasons, and my list grows over the years. I will share them with you, because my husband and I answer this question a LOT. This list encompasses the reasons our family has chosen homeschooling. These reasons do not necessarily represent other homeschool families. Outlining our reasons and goals keeps us focused and helps to avoid frustration and burnout.

Since some of these may need explanation, I will break them down in further posts.

We want to be the main influence in our children’s lives, not the secondary influence.

We want our children to have a Christ-centered education and upbringing.

We want to keep our family relationships close by having the kids grow up ‘together’ instead of separated into different classrooms (or schools) all day.

We want our children to experience life as it happens, instead of experiencing ‘school’ and then ‘after school.’

We want to be in charge of the content of our children’s education.

We want to shelter our children from unnecessary influences. (Sheltering, by the way, is not a bad thing!)

We want to know who our children’s friends are.

We believe schoolwork can be accomplished in 3-4 hours, instead of 7-8 hours per day, 180 days per year.

We like setting our own daily and yearly schedule.

We like planning our own field trips.

We want to give our children the opportunities to experience things that can’t be done during a normal school day/year.

We believe that parents have much more interest in their own children’s education and development than even the greatest school teacher could.

We want to make sure our children learn what they need, no matter how quickly or slowly they accomplish it.

We believe that parents are completely capable of educating their own children.

We believe that the public school system is set up to teach hundreds of children efficiently, not to teach them well.

Our goal is to raise good people, not just to teach them the academics. In other words, we don’t want the majority of their childhood to be about school. Instead, we want school to be just a part of their childhood.

Further research that cements our convictions

1. Notre Dame professor Dr. Patric Deneen describes his experience with college students today: “They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.”  Read the entire article, “Our Schools Are Committing Civilizational Suicide HERE.
2. The Federal Government has mandated transgender bathrooms, locker rooms, and sport teams for all public schools. If they do not comply, they lose funding. This is both a safety issue and a moral issue.
3. By now, you should already know how bad Common Core is. But do you know its dangerous roots? There is a deep Islamic thread running through it.
4. Many states do not teach all of American History anymore. In fact, because of that, a few states have added it back in BY LAW. Where it is taught, it is incomplete and biased. Read my post on the Revisionist History that is everywhere.
5. Sex Education is horrifying. If you can stomach it, read this article: At Anti-Bullying Conference, Middle Schoolers Learn About Lesbian Strap-On Anal Sex, Fake Testicles or Common Core: Pornography 101.
6. There is a definite culture of conformity, and peer pressure is alive and well. Homeschool Weirdos and the Culture of Conformity is a great article on this topic.

There’s so much more than this. If you want to see more disturbing articles about the current state of education, you can follow my News: Education Pinterest Board.

If you are a homeschooler, or are considering it, do you know WHY you do it? Having strong convictions about the WHY serves as a powerful reminder when your school day (or year) is not looking like you’d planned. It helps to keep you focused. That means, in our house, if we have hard times, or difficulty learning a subject, or naughty behavior, my instinct will never be to ‘just put them in school,’ because that doesn’t fit with any of our objectives above. Instead, it helps us to look at the actual problem and tackle it as an individual problem, instead of as a homeschooling problem.

So, do you have your list?

Hi! I’m Nicki! Welcome to my blog! A little about me? I’m a 9^th generation Texan living on a nine-acre homestead in North Texas with my husband and five children. I write about homeschooling, history, freedom, my faith, homesteading, reading, and quilting. If you want faith-based encouragement, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to my blog! 

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