Even the most avid homeschool family stops periodically and asks, “Are we teaching our children the right things?”  Heavily swayed by outside pressures and our own influence by the state’s agenda, Christians easily lose focus of our educational responsibility before the Lord.

R.C. Sproul Jr. has written one of my favorite books–a book I think every family needs to read and then revisit several times a year. When You Rise Up “cuts through the haze surrounding the educational debate by offering a biblical approach that is elegantly simple without being simplistic.”  (Greg Harris)

I am always recharged and inspired when I pick it up.  I wanted to share a few thoughts with you from the book:

“We don’t start with the state’s curriculum, and then attempt to find a Bible passage to justify each part.  Rather, we start with the Bible and go from there, learning evermore of who God is, of what he has done and of what he requires of us…..”

Sproul takes a practical look at Scripture and explains its rock solid instructions for telling parents how to educate their children for “the good life.”  And the methodology?

“Here is how God wants us to educate our children–he wants us to talk to them.”

No, Sproul doesn’t throw out formal learning or text books.  But he rightly challenges us to get our priorities in order as we follow God’s curriculum.

“Why do we teach our children to read?  Most people, if they are honest, would explain that their children need to learn how to read so they can get a good job.  That it’s a tool for personal peace and affluence….we ought to teach our children to read so they can know God better.”

He describes the three G’s–what the Christian’s goals of education should be: teaching our children who God is, what God has done, and what He requires of us.

Another word that really hit home to me…(paraphrased)

“All parents DO teach their children ‘when they lie down and when they rise up’.  Psychologists say, ‘more is caught than taught’. Whether by abdication or diligence, whether we delegate our job or not, we are always teaching our children what is important about life.”

and…

“…we blend together the worship of the true and living God with personal peace and affluence….we cut God this deal:  ‘Lord, we know you are the master of all things.  We know you are the lawgiver.  So what we’re going to do, while we worship personal peace and affluence, we’re going to serve that God in accordance with your law. You will give us ethics, but the other god will give us purpose. We will pursue the world’s vision of the good life, but we’ll pursue it without stealing or committing adultery. We’ll pursue it, but we’ll be sure to pay our tithes along the way.”

I could quote the whole book, but there are babies to teach and housework to be done.

I would challenge you, as you embrace this awesome task, to wipe the slate clean of preconceieved ideas and go to the Scripture to find out how we are to teach these children.  Look to Jesus for his example.  Teach them history which begins in Genesis and “continues through to today’s morning paper.”

And one last word from Sproul:

“We are doomed to fail if we don’t teach our children why we teach our children, so that they in turn will teach our grandchildren.”

When You Rise Up by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Ah, math. It’s a subject we worship, we hate, we love or we just tolerate. Because, well, we have to. Everyone knows we have to teach our kids higher math because, college, and good test scores, and good jobs, and success and….

John Bennett, a high school math teacher, has a radical, logical, wonderful alternative to requiring higher math. I think you’ll love it. Please let me know your thoughts. As a homeschooling mother, seeing that some of my kids flourish in higher math and some are crippled by it, I found his theory to be incredibly freeing and intelligent.

Several hundred years ago, Galileo was not only the laughing stock of mainstream society, he was tortured and imprisoned (for the duration of his life) because he believed that the sun was the center of the solar system.

Just typing that sentence makes me shake my head. How could something so clear to us today be such a point of contention in his day? Why were people so angry at his suggestion?

Simple: he challenged a long standing status quo. Don’t do that if you want to be popular.

I believe we need more people challenging our education status quo. Yes, some of the ideas may sound strange and oppose our long-held beliefs, they may even sound wrong, but it actually doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

“What’s gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.” -John Taylor Gatto

So the reason you’re stressed out about homeschooling is you cling dearly to the long-standing beliefs about how children are supposed to be schooled, when in fact, education is different and far simpler.

We see it in the way a baby-turned-toddler learns the English language, complete with the conjugation of verbs and the accurate placement of syntax within a sentence, without any schooling or curriculum to teach him.

You’re stressed out about homeschooling because in your mind, there is a checklist of things a child must complete before he is properly educated, even though he’ll forget most of the things he’s made to do.

You’re stressed out about homeschooling because you don’t trust the innate ability humans were given to learn what is important to them, when they need to learn it, and the ability to solve problems that meet their needs at a specific time for a specific purpose.

Relax Mom. There’s so much to learn–and the first lesson is yours. Your kids are going to be OK, and they’re going to be able to meet the challenges they’ll face on their chosen paths.

Talk to them, ask them questions, read to them and with them, have them do copywork (that’s the easiest and quickest way to becoming a great communicator), show them how life works, encourage them to do real things and solve problems and explore, and try new experiences and get to know other people and especially pour themselves into doing things they love and are good at–these are the things that will prepare them to be successful in life.

“It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” ― Peter Gray

If you want to relax more in your homeschooling, but aren’t quite sure how to put it into practice, I have written Think Outside the Classroom (A Practical Approach to Relaxed Education) to help you. It’s a short, practical read that promises to take the stress off. Get it HERE.

“I just want to tell you how much I love this book! It changed my whole perspective on homeschooling and things have been so much better since I read it.” -Margorie

As my daughter slogs through another fraction problem, I explain it one more time, and she asks me when she’ll use it again. I assure her (read: repeat what other people say) there will be plenty of opportunities to add fractions and she (rightly) reminds me that she will have her calculator/computer/Google to work the problem. And I tell her something about helping with her thinking skills, which I’ve learned is basically a myth, can be learned other ways, and is still something we repeat to our children because we feel obligated.

The truth is, deep down, even though I make her continue her math book, I think there are more valuable ways she could be spending her time. I really do. (And in fact, math (the meaningful kind) is learned, all the time, without an actual book.) And I think again, about how we keep our children from becoming their best, without realizing it.

“Unlike literature, history, politics and music, math has little relevance to everyday life. That courses such as “Quantitative Reasoning” improve critical thinking is an unsubstantiated myth. All the mathematics one needs in real life can be learned in early years without much fuss.” (emphasis mine) From The Washington Post, by G.V. Ramanathan, professor emeritus of mathematics, statistics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Like when my younger kids built a fort this afternoon. It’s not just playing. It’s critical thinking–the real kind that helps them see a problem and find a solution–a remarkably important skill that will transfer nicely to life.  It’s Life Algebra (finding the answer to an unknown variable.)

And far more than tedious textbook problems are teaching her, is her side hustle of buying ingredients to make chocolate covered marshmallow sticks with sprinkles and selling them to her fellow gymnasts for $2 bucks each after she figures what her overhead is and how much she’ll profit. She’s saving money for camp and will repeat/hone this life-skill all year. Basic economy will be a lifetime friend.

“No one would argue that pupils should not be able to add, subtract and multiply. But I studied higher maths, from calculus to number theory, and have forgotten the lot. All the maths I have needed… is mostly how to understand proportion and risk, and tell when a statistician is trying to con you.

At the very least, today’s pupils should go into the world with a knowledge of their history and geography, their environment, the working of their bodies, the upbringing of children, law, money, the economy and civil rights.

This is in addition to self-confidence, emotional intelligence and the culture of the English imagination….The reason is depressingly clear. Maths is merely an easy subject to measure, nationally and internationally. It thus facilitates the bureaucratic craving for targetry and control…” –Our Fixation for Math Doesn’t Add Up (<—–This article is so good.)

Honestly, I still make her do her math because of fear–peer pressure you know, but I’m certainly keeping it in its place and am focusing more on real skills that actually make a difference in the quality of life. I certainly do not panic or let it become a source of constant frustration. And articles like the ones cited here, are making me more and more inclined to believe we’ve been duped.

By the way, the math people we need will always be there. Just like there will always be mechanics even though that isn’t a required subject–people gravitate to what they are good at.

Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to stop at basic math, letting them pursue the additional math as the need arrives (that’s the best way to learn anything).

Your thoughts?

“The math that people really need is neither theorem-based nor computational, but an everyday number sense shared by: street traders worldwide (legal and illegal), real-estate negotiators, successful poker players, many with little formal math education. The math and science training that really stays with people and is most useful, now that computation is almost a free good, is seat-of-the-pants, back-of-the-envelope thinking.” –Is Math Overrated, The Atlantic

“Don’t do that–you haven’t done your ‘school’ yet.”

I’ve been guilty of saying that before. But no more. Math (or whatever subject) is a small part of the big picture, and I’m DONE with our society treating these few things (the curriculum) like they are paramount to these other hundreds of amazing things. And you should be too.

So this morning my daughter wanted to make a cool video about her bath bombs (Brooklyn Bombs, to be exact). The one’s she’s selling this Christmas to help pay for her gymnastics.  People are loving the bath bombs, and she is starting to get some traction by posting about them on Instagram. So she was making a “satisfying” video, showing the effects of a bath bomb in water.

She had not done her regular school work yet and I almost instinctively scolded her for that. But then I stopped myself. “She is enjoying this. But more than that, she is doing something important. She’s is learning marketing. And that skill will be 10 times more valuable to her in the future than perhaps the school work she does today.”

So I let her.

Then, she came and asked me about the caption she should include with the video.

“Oh, you’re going to write that,” I said.

“But what do I write?”

And this is our writing assignment for the day, I thought to myself. Because this is where it matters. Writing matters when you want to say something important and you figure out how to say it. And this was her chance.

“What would compel you to buy that bath bomb?” I asked her.

And we talked about words, and imagery and compelling copy writing.

And that’s where real life makes sense of “school.” That’s why I don’t stress about whether she has finished the text book. The things that will stick with our kids are the things that matter to them.

And for this day, if she gets a feel for what it means to market a product, she has had a huge lesson for the day. She did the other work. But I don’t think she learned as much from it as she did from this project of merchandising, copy writing and marketing. We made it important.

The school work is fine. But let’s not let it crowd out all the meaningful things they’ll learn that their interests lead them to.  Curriculum is a tool; not a master.

Are you a homeschooling mom who is always worried that you’re not doing it right, measuring your methods against the conventional classroom?

Researchers tell us that the ideal teaching situation is one teacher for one or a few students; so by default, the one teacher per classroom full of students is NOT the ideal, it’s just the reality, and the classroom methods used are the best way to handle that disadvantaged reality.

Your reality looks different.  Shouldn’t you consider, maybe even delight in using different methods?

I suggest that you have, at your disposal, a huge advantage that you should fully realize:  the advantage of real-life learning.

I remember the first year we homeschooled.  I had a second-grader and a two-year-old.  Teaching a 7-year-old at home after standing in front of a classroom teaching high school students–this should be interesting.

“Um, I think we should do lots of work sheets or something.  Oh, and a bulletin board.  I know we have to have one of those.”

I seriously made a full-sized bulletin board with a caterpillar on it and something about reading, because I so equated the traditional school room with the “right” way to educate.

That was about the sum total of what I felt like was my second-grade teaching expertise.

But soon, I learned one of the most profound things through homeschooling:

It wasn’t about teaching second grade.  It wasn’t about worksheets or classrooms or lesson plans or bulletin boards.  It wasn’t even about “school.” All of those words had been created so we could better communicate, but the only real word I needed to understand was “education.”

It was about helping my children learn what they needed to learn.  And that changed a lot about how we looked at education, and about the words we had believed were synonymous with education.

I had my seven year old in a classroom at home doing “school.”  But I had a two-year old learning every bit as much during the day from me, his teacher.

One difference: he was more intrigued and curious about the world around him than she was, and was therefore actually learning more and learning what was more needful.

We had taught her a whole language without even trying.  Without a workbook, without a grade, without a desk.  How?  The answer to that question unravels a lot of secrets about educating children.

I remember flipping through her second grade workbook.  She did the work, but she looked bored and neither of us was very excited about homeschooling.  I looked at the pages of clocks with the hands drawn in and questioned, for the first time, if it was all necessary.

“It must be necessary, the “professionals” do it.”  There I went again.  Think about what it would look like if a teacher tried to teach her class room full of 7-year olds all their math concepts through casual dialogue.  I know from being in the classroom, order is paramount.  Quietness, stillness and uniformity.  That was the main objective behind the methods.

Which is fine, if that’s your reality.

The next day, we skipped the clock section.  But during the day I tried to pay attention to questions about time.  This was important–teaching a concept in the context of “need-to-know.”

“Mommy, can we eat, I’m  hungry.”

“We will eat at 12:00.  Do you know when that is?”

“No ma’am.”

“Look at the clock.  The small hand tells the hour, and the big hand tells how many minutes have passed in that hour.”

“Is it 12:00 yet?”

“Well, you tell me…where is the small hand?”

You get the picture.  She learned to tell time without another worksheet.

Since then, none of my children have ever filled out a time worksheet.  Or worksheets about money, or counting, or opposites, or colors, etc.

We have multiplied that concept to many other areas and have found that a whole lot of learning happens in real life.  This life-learning relieves pressure, is usually faster because a concept learned within a logical framework often clicks better than learning apart from context, and works well because of short attention spans.

Am I saying we never use worksheets or text books?  Of course not.  Nor am I’m opposed to having children sit down at a desk or table–my children do it every day.  But understanding the special advantage we have to teach through dialogue during the day relieves us of a lot of unnecessary “school”–to know that text books and desks and schedules can be our servants, not our masters.

Life is a classroom.