By Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.
Buy it at Vision Forum
We knew we wanted to homeschool our children before they were even a gleam in their Daddy's eye. We heard a radio program, reading through Raymond and Dorothy Moore's book Home-Grown Kids, a book which not only discusses homeschooling but is filled with practical advice about how to build family unity by including children in mature, "grown-up" household activities, rather than cultivating childish immaturity by centering family life around the children's desires and dumbing down life for their "benefit." Those ideas immediately made sense to us, and we have been on that homeschooling path ever since. Of course, like many young couples who have no experience with family life, we were also convinced that we knew everything about raising perfect children.
When our first son was born, I couldn't wait to begin officially homeschooling. I attended homeschool seminars when he was a still a baby, preparing for that magical time when he would be ready for real curriculum. I was really homeschooling him from the day he was born, but I didn't know enough then to realize that. I thought that textbooks and phonics were the milestone that marked the transition from being just a mommy to doing real teaching. I never got carried away enough to have a daily pledge to the flag, but we did have desks lined up in a row for all the school-age children.
For many years we attended homeschool conferences and followed a few of the latest homeschool fads. We learned some very helpful things about how to do academics, and we were often encouraged by the many fine folks we met. But as the years flew by, we realized that what we needed was not a better math or phonics program. We needed more wisdom about how to raise children to pursue wisdom, not just knowledge for its own sake. We noticed that many of the star speakers at homeschool conferences were emphasizing the technical aspects of teaching academics, but the foundational reasons for homeschooling were being neglected. That is why R.C. Sproul, Jr.'s book, When You Rise Up: A Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling, is such an important treatise on the subject.
Most homeschooling parents are somewhat motivated by fear as they teach their own children. Fear, properly directed, can be a good thing. When we fear God, we are motivated to obey Him. But when we fear that our children won't measure up to a cultural standard of accomplishment, we are begin to base our educational standards on shifting sand. Dr. Sproul gets to the bottom line right away in this discussion. Establishing that all education is inherently religious, the first chapter in his book lays out the goal for every Christian parent: "...raising God-glorifying children, rather than raising responsible citizens who can manage to get along with the world around them."
While almost all Christian parents would agree with that statement, when the chalk meets the chalkboard, they live as if they care more about their children chalking up achievements and getting into a good college than cultivating humble obedience to God and encouraging a long-term vision of multi-generational faithfulness in their future families. Running themselves ragged with activities and classes so that they don't short-change their children, some homeschoolers don't even see much of their homes, and there's not time to build the family unity which the Moores encouraged in the book we first read when beginnng our homeschool adventure. By coveting higher test scores more than the highest aspiration of godly wisdom, families have caved in to what Dr. Sproul calls "the state's success in inculcating a worldview about education that keeps us from adopting a biblical view."
Perhaps many parents have bought into the NEA line that they are incapable of teaching their own children without special training. Every year that elite organization full of education experts passes a resolution saying that homeschooling is substandard education and should be severely restricted by the state (along with the resolutions giving a stamp of approval to popular perversities). The response of the homeschooling community is to say, "Oh, yeah?" and trot out the superstars and statistics which prove the academic superiority of God's program for education. While there is no doubt that homeschooling is superior in every way to institutional education, homeschooling parents ought to be vewy, vewy careful about using the standards of the world to judge their success. Whenever you become concerned about whether you are capable of meeting the requirements of this rigorous calling, take Dr. Sproul's competency test:
The test is rather simple to take. It should take only a few minutes, and then you will know. The first thing you do is wait until it is late at night. Then, very quietly, go from room to room in your house. Peek in carefully, and see if you find any sleeping children. Then be sure that these are your own children. If there are wee ones in your home during the wee hours, and if they belong to you, you are competent to homeschool.
I would also add that this test works if you have gangly, gawky, and clumsy onesÑwho used to be wee onesÑsleeping in those beds.
Addressing the critics who chafe at statements about the superiority of homeschooling, Dr. Sproul reminds us that the Bible is not just a doctrinal thesis which we are to affirm, but we are required to believe it by doing what it says. "The point is the value of the Bible in shaping our lives," he says. The Bible is not silent or ambiguous about educating our children. When we are searching for the perfect homeschool curriculum, Dr. Sproul cautions that we need to understand what it means to be Bible-based. According to the homeschoolers' signature passage in Deuteronomy 6:1-9, we are not to walk along the way, handing our offspring a volume of Plato and a comprehension test. We are to talk to them all day long about who God is and what He requires. Dr. Sproul says:
I have to wonder again, how different the world might be if we acted on our conviction that the Bible is the Word of God, if God's people were in the habit of interpreting everything in light of that Word. How might we teach our children if we loved and delighted in God's Word and in his world? We talk to our children when they lie down and when they rise up, we speak to them of who God is and how he relates to his worldÑthat is how we develop a Christian worldview. It doesn't come from reading worldview books, going to worldview camps, or taking worldview classes. Our children will adopt a Christian worldview as we talk to them about God and how he relates to everything. That's how we raise up godly seed.
Already I hear the chorus of "yes, but" in the background. No, Dr. Sproul is not saying that you shouldn't teach your children to read or that 2+2=4 (unless you are a postmodernist and prefer that it sometimes equal 5). His point is that we are not to live our lives living up to the world's idea of success, and we are not to create an alternate universe where we are satisfied with a G-rated version of success which does not conform to God's plan. We are raising soldiers who are fighting in the battle which matters far more than who wins the latest debate tournament. We want children who are zealous in their hatred of sin and their pursuit of righteousness. Equipping them for the battle is the curriculumÑtelling them the truth about the world as you are living life in that real world.
I appreciated the explanation in When You Rise Up of the distinctions in the roles boys and girls, men and women, have in this battle, and how we are to train sons and daughters differently to fill those distinct roles. Dr. Sproul boldly states, "We raise our daughters to be warriors for the kingdom by raising them to be keepers at home." While the family is a unit working together on its dominion tasks, there are different places for each soldier to serve in that commission. This does not imply any intellectual inferiority on the part of the female family members, but a smoothly-functioning army has soldiers who fill the posts for which they are best suited, and their training must reflect that.
As the past 18 years of homeschooling have flown by for us, we have noticed more emphasis in recent years on the peripheral things of life among those who have chosen the same path. If you peruse the line-up at the homeschooling conventions, more credit is sometimes given for academic credentials in the speakers' biographies than is given for time in the trenches. Credentials have their place, but experience based on the wisdom that the primary goal of raising our godly seed is to make them fit to take their place in the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, not to make them candidates for corporate America, is a vanishing commodity.
No matter how long you have been homeschooling, you should continue to refresh your education about why you are teaching your children and how to go about your important job. When You Rise Up is an important tool for this purpose as it strips away the extraneous details that distract us from the bottom line, and it gets to the heart of the matter, which is reaching the hearts of our children for the glory of God.
