Why I Homeschool

This post was written a year or two before moving to Moscow where Logos School is located.

Dear Pastor Lawyer,

I have a small son who is close to the age where we need to send him off to school. I have heard that you are homeschooling your daughter and was wondering if you could give me some of your reasons for not sending her to the public school.

Thank you,

In the Planning Stage


DEAR PLANNING,

My wife and I thought about what to do with our daughter's education for a long time. Since we are Christians, we decided to study the Bible to see if it had anything to say about educating our children. Here’s some of what we found. First, the Bible teaches that it is the parents’ responsibility to make sure their children are educated properly. Being responsible means that they can do what they want with regard to where their children are educated. They are free to send the kids to school or they can homeschool. The point is that the parents are responsible before God for how their children grow up.

Beyond this, however, the Bible also gives us some guidelines about what kind of education is good education. The Bible teaches that the content of what our children learn is to be in the context of how everything fits into Gods creative plans. This is why, in Deuteronomy, God told the Israelites to teach their children about how everything they see relates to God’s commands and dictates. Everything in their lives related in some way to God and what he was doing in the earth. This means that for Christian children to be properly educated, everything in their world needs to be related to God and his purposes in the earth.

Third, besides relating everything to Gods creative acts and purposes, education will lead them into more mature and effective worship. When they look at a flower as a second grader, they should be moved to worship God for the simple beauty of the flower. As a High School student, they should be looking into the flower at the cellular level and they should revel at the fact that God created even this wonder. Biblical education will teach the student to take information and worship God more efficiently in the light of new facts. To properly educate our children we need not only to relate everything to God’s presence, but should also move on to the next step of worshipping him for that creation.

Finally, reading and writing, math and logic, grammar and syntax are not what education is about. They are important, but they are tools to be used in order to be properly educated. While it is true that the more efficiently the students handle the tools the more educated they have the ability to become, we must not forget that real education will lead them to live in front of God more completely and more correctly.

We are homeschooling our daughter because we believe the Bible requires us to bring her up in the training and admonition of the Lord (C.f. Ephesians 6:4). The public school system is incapable of teaching her about God and about how things in the universe fit into his plan. Most private Christian schools, though the teachers and staff tend to be Christian, don’t usually educate in any different way than do the public schools. With this in mind, we have decided to homeschool for now.

I hope this helps,

Pastor Lawyer