The Future of Homeschooling

by Phil Lancaster, February 13, 2003

Viewed from the historic angle, home schooling is the most promising effort at family institutional reconstruction undertaken in America during the last 150 years. ——Alan Carlson

The modern home schooling movement in America began quietly over two decades ago. Since then it has grown into what is widely viewed by historians and educators as the most significant movement for educational reform in many generations. And as the quote above from Alan Carlson suggests, the effects of home education have gone beyond mere academics: Those engaged in this venture have often found their entire family life revolutionized. What now is the future of home schooling? Will it prove to be just a passing fad that parents abandon as they send their children back to school, or will it become a lasting alternative to institutional education, both public and private? Or is it even desirable that it endure?

“The End of Home Schooling”

In a recent article entitled “The End of Homeschooling,” Pastor Steve Schlissel suggests that Christians ought not see home education as the best and final form of training for children. Rather, he says, it should be viewed as a transitional model. He considers home schooling to be a necessary reaction against the “Leviathan” of government education, but the ideal is to return to the days of “covenant community schools.” Pastor Schlissel identifies the strengths of home schooling for Christians: It maintains the “Antithesis” between Christian truth and Humanist error, it produces children with superior social and academic skills, and it creates a strong bond among family members. On the other hand, he sees some “downsides” as well: The “dreadful inefficiency of the homeschooling enterprise,” especially when there are several children; the “radical reorientation” of family life which it requires; the difficulty of meeting the needs of the “super—gifted and/or special—needs children;” the extreme demand on parents who would become competent in all sciences, upper—level mathematics, and foreign languages; the absence of labs, gyms, and team sports; and the actual danger of home schooling for boys for whom the home is not their future “dominion headquarters.” His solution is for home schoolers to take the lead in establishing Christian schools, particularly at the high school level. His proposal is for single—gender prep schools “which will serve as feeders for Ivy League... colleges” so that Christians can “move on to cultural dominion” by becoming cultural leaders. Pastor Schlissel ends with his oft—repeated appeal for the necessity of Christian community and the fact that schools like he describes would actually create such community by attracting families to live near them. He concludes his article with these words: “This vision is homeschooling’s chief end. May it come soon.” Since I have been an advocate of Christian home schooling for nearly twenty years, it will come as no surprise that I don’t agree with Rev. Schlissel’s analysis and conclusions. But let’s start with that upon which we do agree.

We Are Still in Transition

We need to start by exercising a little humility. Those of us who home school tend to be found on the more strong—willed and opinionated end of the personality spectrum, and we are tempted to believe that home schooling as we practice it is simply the best way to raise children, period. But there are a couple of problems with that opinion. First, there is not even a uniform content to the word “home schooling.” There is a wide range of variables within the home education movement. Consider the differences among home schooling families when it comes to spiritual content of home training, academic emphasis and structure, the involvement of fathers, relationship to institutional schools, cooperation with other families, the age of the children parents choose to teach at home, etc. So you and I may not even be talking about the same thing if we were both to say that home schooling is the best method of raising children. Some definition of terms would be needed. No doubt some forms of “home schooling” are better than others, and we cannot lump the whole movement together without a measure of confusion. Second, we dare not give in to the hubris which presumes that we have discovered the best, the final way of doing anything. Naturally we home educators believe in what we do and defend it as a worthy enterprise, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it. But we need to acknowledge that our first—generation efforts will undoubtedly be improved upon by those who come after and seek to follow in our steps. They will have some insights we don’t have, and they will learn from our mistakes. It would be arrogant indeed to think that in such a brief time we had come up with the perfect educational model. So we do indeed need to be open to a discussion about the future of home schooling, and I think that we can agree with Rev. Schlissel that home schooling as practiced today is not the final and un—improvable method of raising children.

Cooperative Home—Based Education

Rev. Schlissel is correct also when he emphasizes the importance of Christian community. One of the chief sins of modern evangelicalism is individualism, and because home schoolers are cultural non—conformists, they are especially afflicted with this failing. But God wants Christians to live lives characterized by mutual dependence, service, and love. We cannot make it as disciples on our own, and we should not try. Read through the New Testament letters and note how often the expression “one another” is used. Every reference reinforces the need for living in day—to—day fellowship with other believers. Cooperation in our educational endeavors makes sense as an expression of Christian community. The principle of the division of labor is a scriptural idea that is derived from the doctrine of spiritual gifts. Each believer has a unique contribution to make to the welfare of the whole body. No one has all the gifts, and everyone has some gift, so we need one another if the body of Christ is to grow strong and to mature (1 Cor. 12). It would contradict this vital truth if in the training of children, one of the major endeavors of life, each family were to function in total isolation and independence from other Christians. Some form of interdependence would seem to be necessary and beneficial. Pastor Schlissel makes passing note of the “cooperative education” that is becoming more common among home educators: Using a core curriculum at home but gathering perhaps weekly to benefit from the competencies of others. Someone may offer a physics class, another may teach French, and yet another may offer calculus. He takes this phenomenon as evidence that home schoolers are beginning to figure out that home schooling cannot be the final form of education but is rather a transition to something else (again: Christian schools). However, it seems like cooperative education could also simply be what it appears: The application of the principle of the division of labor for the optimum use of family and community resources. It is a big leap to conclude that since we may benefit from having someone else teach our children chemistry that we need to move completely beyond home education toward institutional schooling.

Cooperative home—based education seems to be just the adjustment needed to make home schooling a viable enterprise for a larger number of families for the long haul. It is indeed a challenge for most parents to teach higher level academic subjects, and seeking the assistance of someone else in the community makes sense. I can envision parents within a church and community voluntarily banding together to encourage one another in their home schooling program and to “one another” in those areas where they each could use assistance. Perhaps the families could even combine in mutual associations with covenanted obligations, although it would be best for such efforts to be under the spiritual oversight of the elders of a local church. The association could even employ an educational consultant to be available to assist parents in planning and carrying out their home schooling program and to coordinate cooperative efforts. The core process of training would be home schooling, but it would occur within the support network of the larger Christian community. That is a long—term model that makes sense to me in terms of balancing family relationships, educational excellence, and Christian community. So while Rev. Schissel’s emphasis on community is a corrective which most home schoolers need to hear, and while cooperation can meet some real challenges in the home education enterprise, there is no need to abandon home schooling altogether, and there are many reasons to stick with it.

The “Downsides” of Home Schooling

Pastor Schlissel bases his argument for “covenant community schools” in part upon certain “downsides” of home schooling that, upon closer examination, seem to me to be insubstantial or nonexistent. 1.) First is “the dreadful inefficiency of the homeschooling enterprise” which is compounded in “households with several children.” He doesn’t elaborate on this, but he must mean that you have all these parent—teachers having to give instruction to one child at a time, as compared with a classroom in which a teacher can teach thirty children at once. However, this supposed weakness of the home schooling method is actually one of its greatest strengths: Each child can receive individualized instruction from a person who has time to spend with them. And it’s not just a hireling with a professional interest, but the child’s own parent. No one knows the child better nor cares more about his success. It is indeed inefficient to give personal attention, but it makes good educational sense. That’s why rich people have always hired tutors.

2.) “Homeschooling ... requires a radical reorientation for all family members,” especially those with “super—gifted and/or special—needs children.” Again, he doesn’t elaborate, but the point seems related to the first: It takes a great deal of effort to organize a whole family around the task of providing an adequate education, and even more if the education is to be superior or if the child’s needs place special demands on the parent—teachers. But what exactly is the problem with having to radically reorient family life? What more important things do parents have to do than to see to the raising of their own children? Prior to the home schooling movement, families had lost their reason for being, preserving almost none of the vital functions that families have performed in most cultures throughout history. Families have traditionally performed most of the occupations related to developing and caring for human beings: Birth support, child training and education, marriage preparation, business development, health care, and caring for the elderly and other needy folks. It will indeed radically reorient the nature of their life together if families return some of these functions to the home, reclaiming them from the institutions that have been formed to take over what were traditionally family responsibilities. But that is a good thing, not a problem! Most families could use some radical reorienting. 3.) “Home educators cannot both live their lives and attain competency in all the sciences, all levels of mathematics, and foreign languages.” While I suppose it may be possible to still live one’s life while mastering all these subjects, we won’t quibble. Indeed, we have already acknowledged the limitations of competency faced by any individual and the value of cooperation in education, particularly when it comes to these higher level studies. 4.) “Homeschooling is far more fitting for girls than for boys” whose future “dominion headquarters” is not the home. “The truth is that homeschooling can be dangerous for boys.” Boys need “challenging male role models,” and home schooling stifles their “godly instinct to be aggressive, a little messy, and overtly and physically competitive.”

I’m sorry, but this makes no sense to me at all. The truth seems to me to be the opposite of what he reports. It is the traditional school model that is dangerous for boys. For the classroom model to work efficiently, little boys need to act like little girls: “Be quiet, sit still, be neat.” And I strain to recall any challenging male role models in my twelve years of classroom education; most of my teachers were women. Now it’s true that some home schooling mothers tend to smother their boys with overprotection, but this is not inherent to the model. I know a lot of other families where the parents have enabled the boys to have far more freedom to explore, tinker, make messes, and be competitive than they would be allowed to do in a classroom school. And for those families who value competitive sports and such, there is no lack of those in the community. As for the “dominion headquarters” of future men not being the home, I beg to differ. The home is the dominion headquarters for everyone. While the entire scope of a woman’s dominion task is home—centered, the man also must be home—centered in the sense that he must succeed at home or he cannot be a real success outside the home where he is also called to take dominion (1 Tim. 3:5). His dominion role does not end in the home, but it certainly begins there. Boys can have home—based training and still have plenty of exposure to other manly environments. My sons are home schooled, but they have built houses, worked with tractors, volunteered to save lives on the rescue squad, dispatched wild dogs with two—by—fours and guns, and killed a deer with a knife. Their home—based schooling has had no lack of out—of—the—home dominion work. And, by the way, is the artificial environment of a school classroom the future “dominion headquarters” of boys? I’m afraid I don’t see Rev. Schlissel’s “downsides” of home schooling amounting to very substantial arguments for abandoning the enterprise.

Home Schooling’s Unique Benefits

While he seems to strain to find arguments against home education, Pastor Schlissel seems to pass lightly over the profound strengths of the practice. As we saw, he acknowledges the spiritual, social, academic, and familial benefits of home schooling. Not too shabby, that list. What else is there? Home schooling sounds superior in most every way. Yet he clearly believes that Christian community schools would provide a superior academic training. But where is the evidence of the superiority of classroom schooling? While the academic content of a Christian school program may at times be equal to, or even better than, a particular home school program, the school model falls short in four important ways.

First, God has assigned parents to be the teachers of their children (Prov. 1:8; Eph. 6:4). This irreplaceable relationship is the one God has revealed as important and effective in the transmission of truth from generation to generation. There is nothing like a school classroom in the Bible and no evidence of parents delegating their teaching duties to others. Now while we would certainly grant that parents have the liberty to make use of others in the child—training task, the implication of the scriptural data is that parents need to be involved as the key players in the educational enterprise. Second, the method of education revealed in the Bible is the process of discipleship, life—to—life and heart—to—heart training. The purpose of life is to love God with the whole heart (Deut. 6:5), and this purpose is realized in children as parents have God’s Word in their own hearts and then impress it on their children (vv. 6,7). The method must match the aim. If the aim is the mere instruction of the mind in abstractions, then a classroom taught by a professional may be the best model. But the aim of training in the Bible is a transformed person. A student does not just glean information from a teacher. A student becomes like his teacher (Luke 6:40) when learning occurs in the context of real life lived in community day by day. Discipleship cannot occur very well in a school classroom. The efficiency gains of the mass schooling model work against the relational dynamics of learning which are designed to reach the heart and change the life. Third, age—segregated mass schooling hinders Christian character development. Everyone knows that when kids get together with kids, they tend toward the lowest common denominator in their behavior. This is consistent with the Scripture’s teaching that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child” (Prov. 22:15). And what happens when young fools get together? “Do not be deceived: ‘Evil company corrupts good habits’” (1 Cor. 15:33). No matter how godly a teacher might be, the “efficiency” of the school model means that children will be relating primarily to children throughout the day, and this tends toward the hurt of the children. “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed” (Prov. 13:20). One of the chief benefits of home schooling is the superior socialization it affords children who walk with the wise, their parents, and who are allowed fellowship with a wide variety of ages rather than their narrow peer group. Fourth, classroom schooling disrupts the vital, formative relationships within the family. The family is the social group into which God places children for their training, and nurturing the bonds between parents and children and brothers and sisters is vital to the Christian mission. Scripture warns of dire consequences when the intergenerational bond is weakened and promises blessing when it is strong (Mal. 4:6; Lk. 1:17). In its drive for efficiency, the classroom school takes children out of their natural community and fragments the family, and this is harmful to the children and to the corporate life of the home. As Pastor James. W. Alexander wrote in Thoughts on Family Worship (1847), “No customs of society are laudable or safe which tend, in any considerable degree, to separate parents from children, and brothers from sisters.” Traditional schools are the major offenders when it comes to separating family members from one another.

So as compared to home schooling, a Christian community school model would sacrifice the principle of parents as teachers and the discipleship method of training. It would also be a backward step in terms of socialization; and in particular, it would weaken family solidarity. My problem with Rev. Schlissel’s proposal is that, in order to deal with a couple of challenges faced by home schoolers, he proposes abandoning a system that conforms well to the Bible’s revealed method for training children and adopting a model that does not so conform. Pastor Schlissel’s argument in favor of community schools amounts to this: They are a more efficient means of providing superior academic training so that our children can enter the “la—di—da colleges” (his term) and become cultural leaders. I’ve noticed that many of the intellectual leaders of the Reformed renaissance in America promote such a high standard of academic excellence that they have a hard time believing that most parents are up to the task. Many of them are instrumental in starting Christian schools which do indeed set high standards, and their message to the rest of us is that we ought to do what they have done (or want to do). The problem with this is twofold, what we might call the academic excellence fallacy and the institutional efficiency fallacy, both of which are evidences of the influence of modern secular assumptions even upon contemporary Christian thinking.

The Academic Excellence Fallacy

It is simply not biblical to place academic excellence at the pinnacle of child training values and to sacrifice other important values in the process. But this error comes quite naturally to westerners who have breathed deeply of the humanist air drawn from ancient Greece and filtered through Enlightenment Europe. The humanist worldview puts man at the center of the world and man’s mind as the supreme arbiter of truth. In this system, education is all—important, education being defined in terms of intellectual achievement. Notice how the humanist solution to every problem known to man is more education, as if a well—trained mind will lead to virtuous living. Are premarital sex and its related diseases rampant? We need sex education. Does a teenage boy drive too fast and get speeding tickets? He needs more driver education. And on it goes. Now I’m not saying that our brothers who propose the superiority of Christian schools over home schooling are Enlightenment lackeys. But I believe they are showing a bias toward intellectual achievement that is not drawn from the Bible. Peter wrote, “giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge” (2 Pet. 1:5). The Christian life is founded on faith, and faith issues in obedience (virtue) and knowledge. The process of learning is one of faith seeking to put on godly character and understanding, the yielded heart increasing in both virtue and knowledge.

So the most important question in the educational enterprise is whether the method is designed to pass on the faith and to reach and transform the heart, not whether it will lead to the highest intellectual achievement. As we have seen, God’s method for reaching the heart of the next generation with the Christian faith is home—based discipleship with the parents as the instructors. We should, by all means, add to our faith and good character the excellence of knowledge, but only in that order. And we ought not, in our pursuit of intellectual excellence, adopt methods which undermine the transmission of the faith from parents to their children.

The Institutional Efficiency Fallacy

Those who strive to promote academic excellence readily conclude that creating institutional Christian schools will be the best way to assure that the rising generation is well—trained. Rev. Schlissel made reference to the “dreadful inefficiency” of home schooling, and we concluded that he meant it is more efficient for one person to teach thirty students than one student. This necessarily requires the establishment of Christian institutions of learning. We must beware, however, of adopting values that derive from a modern, technological society and not from the Scriptures. The concept of efficiency is one such value. Modern men, Christians included, don’t hesitate to conclude that the most efficient methodology is always the best. But efficiency has to do with the effective operation of a system as measured by a comparison of production with the cost in energy, time, and money. Efficiency is the supreme value of an industrial—technical society and has led to systems of mass production in which a product can be made with less energy and cost. But the standards of efficiency ought to be applied with extreme caution to any human enterprise, and in particular to those that pertain to the training of Christians. When the task is the production of mature Christian disciples, efficiency is not the standard. There, effectiveness is measured by the fruit in the life of the person being trained, not by a cost—to—production comparison. And whatever bears the best fruit in terms of faith, virtue, and knowledge is the most effective method. It is the “dreadful inefficiencies” of home schooling that are the source of its great success when it comes to the biblical values of faith, character, socialization, family solidarity, and intellectual achievement. Even very ordinary parents have had great success because this inefficient, one—on—one system is so much closer to God’s revealed method for shaping human beings than its current alternatives.

Conclusion

It would be a giant leap backward for Christians to abandon home education in favor of establishing new institutional schools. We ought to stick with our wildly unregulated, dreadfully inefficient, hopelessly homey system, simply because it works better than any other system in terms of achieving the goals God sets before Christian parents. But we ought to have the humility to be teachable and to improve the model of home education. Some form of cooperative home—based education seems to me to be the mature form of what we have begun. And by all means, we ought to have academic excellence as one of our goals, just not at the expense of the more fundamental Christian values.