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Homeschooling

Encouragement for women who have been called to nurture, teach and equip the next generation to honor the Lord Jesus Christ.  

Jennifer's daughters in 2009, taking a walk together in Germany

Homeschool Scandal

9/8/2014

 
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Well now. The homeschool community has just received a big, ugly reality check. Doug Phillips of Vision Forum has been involved in a scandal with his family’s female nanny. The facts remain unclear, but pretty much the man was naughty. 

Then we have Michael Farris of Home School Legal Defense Association strongly distancing himself from Phillips in his latest magazine column titled “A Line in the Sand,” really kicking the guy when he’s down and accusing Phillips of damaging families with his leadership.

Then, Doug Phillips' wife Beall issued a scathing response that sounded verrrrrrrry much like something her husband would have written. Go girl for standing by your man, but I think Doug Phillips wrote it.

Boys, boys. Let’s all regroup a bit, shall we?

All of this nastiness has confirmed something I’ve been thinking for a while now, which is that homeschool families are – gasp – absolutely no different from anyone else. Homeschool fathers are – shock – no different than any other flesh and blood dude. 

I’ve heard Doug Phillips speak at conferences, I’ve read his books, listened to his speaking CDs and bought wholesome dolls for my daughters from his company. That fellow has some very cool things to say, and he has taught my children and me a lot about history from a Biblical worldview. Because of Doug Phillips, my book shelves are full of treasured resources that could not be found in any Christian book store. What’s disappointing is when we are shown in a disturbing way that someone we admire is simply human.

I’ve also heard Michael Farris speak at conferences, I’ve read his books, listened to a lot that he has to say and supported his organization for years. Mr. Farris is widely accepted as not just legally defending homeschooling, but as being the voice of homeschooling in our nation and even in the world. He's smart, articulate, classy and working hard in Washington, D.C. to keep the rest of us free to homeschool. He is brilliant in defending the Constitution, and my children are taking his course. He and his family are admirable people.

But I don’t like that Mr. Farris is now publicly proclaiming that one guy, Doug Phillips, is misleading and even “damaging” families, when Mr. Farris himself is capable of doing the very same thing. I’ll give you two examples. One, Mr. Farris is very passionate about homeschooling and paints it in a rather Biblically sound light. Two, his books make birth control seem very unbiblical. These two issues are simply the Farrises’ very sincere opinions but that’s all they are. Opinions. Now what if a wife were to follow along behind these two theories of the Farrises’ against her husband’s wishes?

Wife: Homeschooling good, birth control bad.

Husband: Public school good, six children bad.

We’ve got problems. We don’t have affairs with nannies but we’ve possibly got divorces happening. Thankfully, we are smart enough to think for ourselves. I appreciate Mr. Farris's very important warning not to follow after any teaching that isn't purely God's. Ezekiel chapter 13 poignantly echoes his warning not to be led astray by another person's opinions. The homeschool community needs to hear that. But Mr. Farris would have us believe that, because of his arguably "out there" opinions, Mr. Phillips is somehow more susceptible to sin and scandal than the next guy, as if abusing nannies is part of Mr. Phillips' schtick. Mr. Farris implies that we all should have seen it coming. 

We have in Galatians 5:19 a list of no-nos that includes adultery. “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.”

Perhaps Mr. Farris’s own sin nature would not likely ever come to adultery, but does that make him any less sinful than the next guy? Has he ever envied anyone? Has he ever idolized anything in his life? Has he ever felt hatred in his heart, or tried to emulate someone other than our Lord? 

It is distressing to learn that great men have erred. And then are bickering afterward. All of this is very confusing and disheartening to your standard homeschool family and it really brings us down. Perhaps the solution is that homeschool leadership guys need to stick together and stop trying to keep up the exhausting charade that says “real" Christian homeschoolers are somehow better than everyone else. If our liberty hinges upon our integrity, I don't know that we can deliver.

Jesus, as we well know, invited whoever was without sin to throw the first stone. He was writing in the sand when He said that. The only line that could have been drawn in the sand then, or now, would be a line between Jesus Christ -- and everyone else. I understand Michael Farris's intent is not to directly question anyone else's sin, only his theories. But of course, questioning theories is itself a theory. Who gets to decide which theories are from God and which are not? In that sense, we're all on the same side of that line in the sand.  If a new goal of HSLDA is to wipe clean the image of homeschooling, then no one will be left.


Practicing Harmonious Character

3/20/2014

 
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Note: A revised version of this blog was published in Pennsylvania's homeschool magazine. 

Little eyes are watching me all the time. I've searched the scriptures to try to be the person I want to teach my children to be. I'm nothing but a saved sinner. I try to live out my faith and demonstrate how the Lord works at my heart. One reason I'm highly motivated in this area is so that I can pass along these character traits to my children.

No curriculum or Bible study can replace seeing a mother who lives out good character every day.

So we're always on display as demonstrating Godly character for our children.
And it's powerful.

But the other day the Lord showed me that I have been relying too heavily on modeling the good character, and not actually discussing it specifically with my children enough. Hearing a lovely piece of music is nice but, sometimes we have to hunker down and stare at some sheet music and study the notes to master it. Learning by example is the best way, but we do have to come right out and say some stuff sometimes too. He brought this to my attention when I was really grieved and humbled by a very harsh conversation between my children. And some mean and sarcastic comments among them another time. This oughtn't be so, thought I.

Sometimes as a homeschooling mother I slack off on character. I am admitting this gigantic failure to you. I confess to y'all that I sometimes slip into thinking somehow my children magically have better than average character, just because we, sniff-sniff, homeschool. Look at us in all our homeschool glory. All mothers can find themselves doing this, if their children go to a Christian school or to church every Sunday, we can start thinking we've checked off the character block. I confess to you that I catch myself doing this and I don't want to have that sort of superior attitude. That's probably the last thing I ever want to teach my children. I know I want them to regard others in higher esteem than themselves, to see themselves as nothing without Christ, to possess genuine humility.

Not a lot of that flying around my home lately.


So I prayed, refocused, and dug out some good materials on character. Had a little conversation with the Lord and He and I agreed that good character is more important than being a math whiz or language genius. I usually start out our homeschool language group time in our living room by reading a chapter of the Bible to my children. We're in Romans these days. I do that first because I want them to know that hearing God's Word is the most important thing. Today we followed that with our new discussion of character. Then the normal academic stuff after that. I want to try to make that our new routine.

Bible, character, then academics.

Marilyn Boyer is one of the coolest mothers you can find, and she has a wonderful little booklet discussing about 45 character traits called Kids of Character. She has a scripture reference and flash card for each trait, with a corresponding workbook to fill out. My children and I got as far as the fourth character trait maybe a year ago, but we gave up and I think it was because we were getting fussy over filling out that workbook together. I thought our character study was a big fat failure because we ended up all fussing and grumping at each other over some workbook pages.

Sometimes I forget that I'm the teacher, principal, superintendent and school board (along with Daddy). If workbook sheets are stressing us out, then just skip it already. I wish I hadn't abandoned the thing altogether. So today we started again with the Boyer character curriculum, this time Jennifer style, which is handing out each child a character card to read aloud with the Bible passage. Then I read the workbook out loud and we talked about the questions, rather than everyone writing out answers. Which had ended up in such an ugly display of not so great character before. I adapted it to the way I like. It took less time with just talking about it rather than writing also. I plan to display the character cards on our fireplace mantel during the school week. We don't have a schoolroom which maybe is a good thing in this situation because the character cards won't be tucked away somewhere. They will be in everyone's full view.

I like Mrs. Boyer's character cards and workbook but heaven knows we could all come up with our own just by observing the weaknesses in our children in a 24 hour period and seeing what needs working on. You probably already know scriptures to go with each weak area too. You don't need to copy anyone else's way of teaching character. We could all easily write on paper, some big words like "kindness," "obedience," "cheerfulness" or whatever else we're seeing a lack of in our family, and talk about those and display those in our home.

This is not one of Mrs. Boyer's examples but one that I like to stress in my family is tone. Tone is huge. If we could just soften our tone of voice around here, it would do wonders for the happiness and harmony in our home. You can say the exact same words but soften your tone and give it a genuinely loving sound, and it makes all the difference between communicating "I care about you" and "them's fightin' words!"

I also plan to ask the children to notice when they have victory in one of these character areas and share those with everyone during school. Or I will try to notice and praise them when I see these things being lived out.

Perhaps most importantly, I participate as a student. No one is ever finished with achieving good character. It's a lifelong thing and we don't award ourselves a PhD just because we're the mother. I think children, especially teenagers, truly love it when we get real with them like that and admit times we've failed and times we've had victory. It's a comfort to know that the big people don't have it all together any more than they do. We do have more wisdom and spiritual maturity. But we don't have to pretend to know everything or be perfect for our children. And...I'm thinking they know us so well that they realize we're not perfect already. I think they appreciate feeling like they are on a spiritual journey just like you. That they have struggles just like you. And that they are learning about those just like you. What a safe place to be, with a mother who doesn't expect perfection but only wants to see a heart that truly seeks after Godliness.

I decided lately that I want to turn character into an official school subject. Godly character doesn't come any more naturally than sight reading a piece of music from Beethoven. And it's a lot more important.



    Author

    Jennifer Houlihan lives triumphantly in Georgia (USA)
    with her husband and their five homeschooled children.

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Photos used under Creative Commons from Waiting For The Word, katerha, Mr Thinktank, Patrick Hoesly, Adam Tinworth, ravas51, { pranav }, russellstreet, MattysFlicks, neil conway, fdecomite