Train Up Your Children

What started as a brief lockdown to flatten the COVID curve has morphed into months of restrictions, shutdowns, and mask mandates. Now people are arguing over whether to send kids back to public school or implement some type of remote learning.

This seems like a good time to talk about why homeschooling is good and public school isn’t.

At this point, if you are sending your children to public school, you are contributing to the demise of America. Children in public school are not learning American values. You are sending your progeny to sit at the feet of people who hate you and your values. I know, I know… your public school is one of the good public schools, right? Riiiiiiiight.

I shared my thoughts about what it means to be American in a previous post. Whatever public schools are teaching kids these days, I don’t think many lessons include discussions on the Ten Commandments, the importance of the nuclear family, or what Jefferson and the Founders meant by inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

There may be a few K-12 schools that aren’t active enemies of America, but they aren’t active promoters of Americanism either. Colleges and universities are worse. Not only are they are undermining American values at every turn, they are putting students and parents in debt for the privilege. Sending kids to K-12 public schools is pretty bad, but paying to send your children to college is downright masochistic.

How many college students have to return home and condemn their parents as racist bigots before people wake up to the scam? More, I guess.

Thanks be to God that I earn enough so my wife can stay home and homeschool. We’re not rich mind you. We make sacrifices. We don’t eat out. We don’t drive new cars. We don’t subscribe to streaming TV services. We don’t go to the movies. We buy used furniture. We have a budget and stick to it. You can save a whole lot of money by buying groceries and cooking your own food.

But, those sacrifices are easy when I know that it’s me and my wife who are raising our children. We are teaching them our beliefs and our values. They read the Bible. They’re learning to cook and do laundry. They are caring for farm animals and tending a garden. They already understand the basics of supply and demand. It’s awesome.

A few days ago, I walked into the house to find my oldest daughter sitting on the kitchen counter reading a book. She was making lunch for the family and decided to read while waiting for the pasta to finish cooking. That’s homeschool.

Yesterday, my wife asked me to get some papers off the printer. I picked them up and saw a stack of cursive writing practice sheets. The sheets were the Declaration of Independence. Do kids in public schools practice writing the Declaration of Independence? I’m pretty sure they don’t even learn cursive writing anymore. My kids are learning to write cursive. They’ll practice their cursive by writing the Declaration of Independence. That’s homeschool.

There are a lot of great homeschooling resources available, and there are plenty of groups willing to help you get started. But the gist of homeschooling is simple. You teach your children how to read and write and add and subtract within your history, beliefs, and values.

When you homeschool, you can have your children read The Chronicles of Narnia, Plutarch’s Lives, The Hobbit, and Shakespeare. When you teach your children writing, you can have them practice by copying the Bill of Rights or Psalms. You can read history books that affirm American values. You can teach them songs like The Battle of New Orleans and Dixie’s Land.

Homeschooling isn’t hard, but it does take commitment and sacrifice. It’s a big responsibility and it takes time. If you love America and American values, then you are going to have to teach those values to your progeny. They aren’t going to learn those values in today’s public school system.

Some parents think they can correct the errors their kids learn in public school during the hour or two they spend with their kids in the evening and on the weekends. The truth is, that small amount of family time will never be enough to overcome the indoctrination kids receive seven hours a day, five days a week in public school.

Do you want your kids to learn the value of hard work, perseverance, and charity? Then homeschool. Or do you want them to learn how to put on condoms and experiment with homosexual relationships in public school?

“Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

(Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels)