Homeschool YOURSELF

It’s not just for your kids. Homeschool YOURSELF!

Homeschooling is good for children, but it is oh, so important for the parents. This is the secondary plot in the story of its success.

I know it is my story.

I attended public schooling for 12 years. I was considered a good student, never got in trouble, sat in the front row, and did very well on standardized tests. Unfortunately, very little of what I learned was useful to me in my adult life. This is not to say that I didn’t learn anything at all. No sir, there was plenty they tried to teach me!

According to the curriculum, I learned:

• That the intellect is all that matters
• That rebellion is a natural state and should be explored and appreciated
• That it is OK to exclude people who are different (I and other classmates were introduced to this concept via a group of Disney cartoons developed specifically for classrooms)
• That our country is a democracy, and that democracy is the most important part of our government
• That we should feel very guilty about being Americans
• That Darwinian evolution is the only logical view of the origin of life, since all scientific evidence supports this view
• That God has nothing to do with anything of consequence since He is not mentioned in any context, especially in the study of His creation (science) or when considering human history (HIStory) or relationships (family life)
• That what everyone else thinks about me is more important to consider than who God created me to be and what He requires of me (in other words, never, never stand up for morality or you will be ostracized, which should feel worse than death)
• That I can only trust sanctioned “experts”
• That I am not worthy of making educated choices for the sake of my vocation, my health, my family, etc.
• That there is no such thing as excellence, or virtue, or altruism, or heroism, unless it is for the sake of the current diatribe of the social engineers
• That I am not worthy of privacy in order to think, or work out my own problems, or forge my own values, or dress, or eat, or to take care of my bodily functions
• That it’s everyone’s responsibility to be in everyone else’s business to make sure everyone is keeping in line with the party line (whatever that is at the time)
• That parents are the enemies of progress
• That siblings are worthless and disposable
• That old people are obsolete–never mentioned, never considered
• That we should look to the modern and the new; old ideas are passe and irrelevant

I thought I was an original thinker, that I was an individual. I did not understand that even my efforts at becoming unique were pre-programmed by my education. There were invisible boundaries in my mind that I had been conditioned never to breech.

I entered school hungry for nutritious food for thought, and there were times when I felt satisfied as well-intentioned teachers did their best. But there was an underlying, malicious theme that colored everything. When I dared question, I was sanctioned and censured, if not by the curriculum or the (mostly well-meaning) teachers and administrators, by my own need for acceptance and inclusion…

…which could not come from my parents or other older members of my family. Family was tolerated as a necessary evil. School officials, government officials, pop culture, the cliques at school, were all deemed more important. It was a “new era,” always a new one, every decade, that we were stepping into ahead of all of the “irrelevant” (actually wise, loving, God-placed) people in our homes and churches.

Swirling around in my mind were a number of conflicting ideas:

1. God’s Word and the leading of the Holy Spirit
2. My public school education
3. The media (at the time it was television programming, movies, periodicals, current books)
4. Life advice from my nominally-Christian relatives (who had been mostly influenced by public education and the media)

Besides this, I think the schools I attended were trying to erase any vestige of literary excellence. I was considered to be in the top ten percent of students, groomed for the Ivy League, yet I never heard of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, or John Bunyan. Instead, my IP classes included titles such as Siddhartha. Read what this novel was about:

Siddhartha is a 1922 novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha.

Source: Wikipedia

No mention of Jesus was allowed except in critical review, but we could explore the positives of Buddhism or Islam all we wanted.

Another book was Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Here’s the synopsis:

The novel, set against the backdrop of World War I, describes a love affair between the expatriate Henry and an English nurse, Catherine Barkley.

Source: Wikipedia

As usual for Hemingway, it was autobiographical and discussed his obsession with alcohol. It also included fornication which resulted in pregnancy, described his desertion from military service, and ended with his nurse love-interest losing his baby. Nothing positive, nothing restorative, just a bunch of misunderstandings about life and its meaning. Not only was I tormented with reading it, but I was forced to write a thousand-word essay about it as well (the thesis statement was prescribed by the teacher, otherwise I would have started with something like, “I do not understand why people idolize Hemingway or why they think this novel is worth reading,” which would not have been good for my grade).

I wanted God to rule in my mind, but I didn’t know how to make sense of the rest of the information I had been fed. I lived in a constant state of confusion, and this affected multiple parts of my life. There were so many voices that encouraged the nagging doubts in my mind; doubts about God’s trustworthiness, about my country’s legitimacy, about my own legitimacy as a person. My emotions went from one extreme to another, which worked ill on my relationships and life decisions.

Then I started homeschooling and I found out:

• That science does not conflict with the Bible, it confirms it
• That the history of our country was very different than what I had been fed
• That politics and economics were very different than what I had been fed
• That EDUCATION was totally different from what I had experienced

My emotions settled down as I began to gain stability in my thoughts. God’s Word took on new authority, and my life decisions reflected the change in my thinking.

In essence, I had become deprogrammed from my 12+ years of brainwashing.

I think this is why people have misunderstood homeschooling.

To outsiders, we look as though we have departed from good sense, when we have actually rediscovered it.

Why have I, and other countless millions, been taught so much misinformation via our public school system?

Because…those who wish to gain power in this world know that you can’t get anywhere unless you have the consent of the governed, and the best way to steal gain this consent is to create a consensus.

So, all tyrants, despots, and utopian social engineers ask themselves:

“How can we create a consensus?”

Then they answer:

“Via education.”

Here are some quotes to help solidify this thesis:

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.

Adolph Hitler

It is not the task of an elementary school to impart a multiplicity of knowledge for the personal use of the individual. It has to develop and harness all physical and mental powers of youth for the service of people and the state. The only subject that has any place in the school curriculum is that which is necessary to achieve this aim. All other subjects, springing from obsolete educational ideas, must be discarded.

Nazi directive on elementary education, 1940

If the older generation can not get accustomed to us, we shall take their children away from them and rear them as needful to the Fatherland.

Adolph Hitler

“Well,” you say, “those quotes are from the Nazi’s. Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?” I suppose so, unless you consider these quotes from American educrats:

The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new–the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism

John Dunphy, The Humanist

Our goal is behavioral change. The majority of our youth still hold to the values of their parents and if we do not resocialize them to accept change, our society may decay.

John Goodland, in a report for the National Education Agency (NEA), 1980’s

Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you teachers to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future.

Harvard professor, 1973

Here is a funny coincidence...just as the country was shut down this last spring and everyone was forced to homeschool, Harvard was planning to hold a conference about how abusive homeschooling is--rotten timing, or God making a comedic statement?

There are two ways you can homeschool. The first is to keep it familiar; to try and stay close to the same system you grew up with. It will feel comfortable, like wearing your favorite pair of slippers.

But as you walk around a bit, you will find, as the rest of us have, that those house shoes are full of holes.

Be brave and kick those old things off into the garbage.

Then put on the education you deserve but never received. Sit down with your children and learn right along with them. Put on new shoes that will help you understand the universe as a system conceived and overseen by an orderly God of love.

Science, history, even math, will start fitting into their proper places. Things that were hard to remember because they were disjointed and distressing will become memorable and enjoyable.

Then you will know the rest of the story!

There are plenty of free resources here on my blog–posts, videos, printables, etc. Feel blessed to take advantage of them!