any other Christians doing home ed or thinking about it?

[horseymum]

thoughts please! Why do you do it, pros, cons. Any ex-home-edded Christians with experiences to add?

Yeeeeeeees... but I don't home ed because I'm a Christian, or in a specifically Christian way, so I'm not sure I'm really relevant....

Yes, Home-edding Christian, partly doing it with faith issues in mind, and trying to do it, like everything else, with a Christian flavour. Cons are the same as every other HE situation I would have thought - difficulty getting time for yourself, self-confidence easily knocked, no blinkin money, and personally, the challenge of four different ages with different educational needs. Plus you sometimes get called a fundy, too

Pros are having the time to really explore the world with them, getting to know each of them, being able to have a certain amount of editorial control over what and when dependent upon the individual child, enormous amount of freedom legally, which I value greatly in terms of the educational style choices we can make.

'fundy' ?

fundy = fundamentalist - the kind of Christian that a lot of people would think was really OTT about the whole thing

We are... except we're not really doing anything at the moment as my oldest is just nearly 3.

The reason I want to do it is because of the example of other HEdded (Christian) kids and families that I've met (7 families so far, just in my area!). The benefits seem to be enormous.

I know some people would say that if you're a Christian HE is the only way to educate your kids to ensure that they're raised according to Biblical princlples. i.e.
Deut 6:6 "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them upon your children when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
Proverbs 22:6 - "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."
Luke 6:40 - "A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher."

I don't think I'd agree that it's the only way to go, but it is a good way. But I do know friends who have found that when their kids go to school they have to do quite a bit of work 'unlearning' things they've picked up (undesirable behaviour, language etc).

I am wondering more and more why we just assume that the govenment and our culture has got it right when it comes to education!

Why are you asking HM (if you don't mind me asking!)? Where are you in thinking about this?

well, ds is 3, dd 1 so have plenty of time. I agree loads with you, ibblewob! As an ex-teacher, i have always toyed with the idea but think i am probably too selfish to do it. However, another friend at church said last week that she would give her ds 1 year of school and then reassess whether to home ed. or not. I have not met any others in my area, but relatives of a couple of families at church do, with varying degrees of sucess. i really agree with the unlearning thing as lots of folk at church have commented on this - not saying that we are are perfect as christians and they will learn everything bad from school, more the general ethos and mindset is not aligned with our thinking. As a parents bible study group, we spent a lot of time in proverbs last yer, looking at training in righteousness, which does not feature big on most school curricula. My big worry is about secondary school though as even though ours is ok, i think the behaviours etc generally goes very downhill and teachers struggle to get much respect.

Hi horseymum,

TBH I think if you are going to HE for Christian reasons, it's even more important for the formative, primary years rather than secondary - give your children a solid foundation and base from which to work from, and then hopefully you will have equipped them to cope well and react to 'the outside world' (i.e. secondary school etc).

Totally agree about the 'not perfect as Christians' thing, didn't mean to come across like that . You're right - we're just coming from a totally different perspective / way of life - and unfortunately, it's much more likely that our kids will pick up a secular way of thinking, than be influential on their peers. They are complete sponges at this age and will soak up anything and everything you choose to expose them to.

Be warned though - if you're interested in HE now, it's only going to grow on you! It's begining to seem like however you look at it (Christian / social / academic / family etc) HE can be fantastically beneficial. Good luck with your research

I know this is the home ed section, but do you have any Christian schools near you? We are sending our children to a private Christian school, because they will be taught by Christians and the curriculum will be taught from a Christian viewpoint. I don't think I could do home ed personally, although I admire those who do.

the only people i do know personally, who home ed, are sorry call themselves christians.
my aunt and her husband.
and the only reason they do it is to brainwash the children with as little competition from outside influences as possible.
they are so delightfully 'christian' that they do not speak to anybody from either of their lives before meeting each other because, apparently, we are all evil. or terribly misguided by evil. and they, esp him, are the only people who really understand god. even the vicar who married them has been dismissed as a bad influence (presumably for not hallowing the ground this 'man' walks on)

all this 'unlearning' stuff... all this quoting of proverbs and righteousness talk... all rings alarm bells for me. if youre so sure that your religious beliefs are the right way to go about life, cant you trust your children to see that for themselves, even while mixing with the world at large?

I'd like to make a similar point to BSTTR, though coming at it from a different direction

I think that when you HE for any ideological reason, you have to bear in mind the tendency for young children to pick up a much more "black & white" message than the way you look at things. So an adult view of "I want to protect my child from certain influences until they have the maturity to decide for themselves" can be picked up by a child as "school is full of bad people that mummy wants to protect me from".

If you add to that the fact that the "nice people" that you are happy for them to mix with are Christians, that you bring them up from a Christian perspective, and maybe use Christian resources, there is a real risk that, in the mind of a small child, what they pick up is "good people = Christians, bad people = others".

Yes you can teach them about the Good Samaritan, but that doesn't have as much impact as living that story in their everyday lives, at the level of "grazed knee" and "hug", and that is something that they would get in school. Even schools which don't have much representation of "other faiths" will certainly have a lot of children who don't identify themselves as Christians. And that day to day exposure gives children the opportunity to understand that there are good and bad people of all religions or none.

I don't mean that you should not HE because of those issues, but I do think you have to look at the positive messages which mixing with people from a wide variety of backgrounds can give, and consider how you can make sure your children do get those experiences.

you make a v good point there, beautifully MIS. definitely worth some thought id say.

(unlike the clumsy way i made mine. i do apologise if i offend, im not always as eloquent as id like. i do not assume that anyone else is operating in the same way as my aunt and her husband, who behave, imo, appallingly.)

Don't worry BSTTR, the biggest disservice to Christianity is done by people who call themselves Christians Plus, I do trust that children of Christian parents will hopefully see the attractiveness and (IMO) truthfulness of their parents' faith whether they go to school or not, which is why I said I disagreed with 'HE the only option' POV. I included it to give a side of the argument that I know exists, which seemed to be what the OP was looking for.

The trouble is, as soon as you start talking about beliefs, religion, faith etc you hit choppy waters. Anonynity on here is great, and means that people can discuss things they might otherwise be a bit shy to state, i.e. my honest belief is that God has blessed me with children in order that I might raise them to know and love Him.

Obviously I hope to do this in a non self-righteous / self-congratulating way (Christians are no better than anyone else, and often worse - my kids are going to have good evidence of that on a daily basis!). But the point is, the person we believe in, Jesus, is... and it's his life and teachings I want them to have primary exposure to (primary, not sole, before anyone shouts at me!), not anyone or anything else.

Definite 'fundy' alarm bells ringing, I'm sure, but that's what I believe and there's no point in being anything other than honest!

no ibblewob, nothing you have said rings alarm bells for me. you sound measured and thoughtful.
i spose the nutters of any group do a disservice to other members of that group... i just seem to notice an awful lot of them among people who claim to be christians. tho, as far as I understand it, what on earth hatred, segregation, superiority complexes and intolerence have to do with christianity is beyond me... tho obviously not beyond a scary number of v vocal and oft powerful people , worryingly.

I do respect my 'HE is the only way' friends, even though I don't share their view. Tbh, I know plenty who hold to that view who aren't actually Christians anyway It's an opinion, like any other, no more or less valid than those who hold to the opinion that school is the only way.

And there are many Christians who hold to that one purely from a 'child-as-evangelist' viewpoint, which I personally find just as questionable as the hyper-sheltering view.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm quite unashamedly giving my children a faith foundation, because that's the culture of this family. I don't subscribe to the idea of neutral, being a good post-modernist so I'm not going to attempt to present a neutral worldview to them. Our ethos is pretty much the 'classical' approach, which in a very rough shorthand, means teaching them to think, analyze, use logic etc.

At the moment, my children are all at an age when everything is concrete and black and white anyway, so I'm not imposing anything on them iyswim. My eldest is just beginning to grapple with interesting questions, and coming to terms with the fact that not everyone sees the world in the way she does.

I certainly agree that isolationist motivations can lead to seriously distorted viewpoints, but I think, as long as you help them engage-brain, it's very avoidable. My family isn't Christian, so I couldn't cut them off from non-Christian influences if I tried (and actually, with my family, I've ruddy well thought about it before now, but I digress...)

Actually, i'll stop there, i can hear the computer hamster dying on me...

"My family isn't Christian, so I couldn't cut them off from non-Christian influences if I tried (and actually, with my family, I've ruddy well thought about it before now, but I digress...)"

sadly, thats exactly what my aunt has done
not that that is relevant to the conversation...

(oh, sorry, have changed name to avoid confusion elsewhere, if you can believe that )

Ah, well, my desire to actually have a different family entirely is nothing to do with them not being Christian, and everything to do with them being dysfunctional in epic proportions. Can't choose your rellies, though.

I am Christian, and I too wonder asbout home ed, but for slightly different reasons. I live in an are of london where it is likely that ds will go to school where he is both an ethnic and faith minority. I worry about him, the only kid from a white christian middleclass home, in a school of mainly asian muslim kids - he'll be so obviously different i worry he'll be picked on! I'd like him to go to a school with many other faiths and types of people, and if it was a proper mix it would be great, but it's a bit monocultural in the schools round here, so he'll definatly be the odd one out. I don't think I'd homeschool to give me more influence over his religious beliefs tho - he gets klots of input from kids church and church friends, and at home, so I think it will be quite good for him if he gets to hear about/see other perspectives. I want his faith to be a choice he's made (as much as that's possible for a young child) rather than what he believes because he doesn't know anything else iyswim.

sushistar, your last line is exactly how I see it. While its our duty to inform our children and inform them of the beliefs we feel are good for them - it is extremely worrying when parents set out to mould their child completely. While right and wrong needs to be taught, an individual's faith is personal. How outrageous to force yours on someone else!! If its a good religion they will see that for themselves if they are allowed to compare with others.

The joy of having children is to see what people they grow to be..they are not supposed to be a 'mini-me' so it IS brainwashing to 'keep them from other influences'.

there are loads and loads of Christian home ed resources out there - mainly American - as well as a "curriculum in a box" whose name I can't remember offhand. Lots of project-y type stuff based on/tied into Bible verses, but very much "school at home" as a lot of the US HE stuff seems to be.
Can't help with the religious/ethical side of it I'm afraid - none of the home edders I know in RL are doing it because of their religious beliefs afaik. There are a few Christian HE Yahoo groups, again mainly American, but there is one UK one - try the Education Otherwise website for links.

"While its our duty to inform our children and inform them of the beliefs we feel are good for them..."

That's the trouble, I think, for Christians who believe what the Bible says... it's not about our faith being good for them, rather a matter of salvation or not - Christianity is, for many people who want to take the Bible seriously, literally a matter of life and death.

I would never keep my kids shut up in a box - I want to ensure that they grow up with a respect for, understanding of, and a love for all people.

Nor will I expect them to grow up into 'mini-mes' (horrendous thought!) - with approx. 2.1 billion calling themselves Christians in the world (just did a google search) I'm sure there are enough ways of approaching it to qualify as it being 'individual'.

However, I will be devestated if my children end up rejecting a belief in Jesus Christ altogether.

"I want his faith to be a choice he's made (as much as that's possible for a young child) rather than what he believes because he doesn't know anything else iyswim."

IMO it is very very unlikely that a child will grow up not knowing 'anything else'. I was thinking about this the other day, and one analogy that came to my mind was that of speaking a foreign language.

Say you were French, and living in Britain (so in a small minority). You were incredibly proud of your heritage and language (which is very different from everyone else's around you). You want to do your best to make sure that your child grows up with an intimate knowledge of your culture, and fluent in your language.

Now there is no way that a child growing up in Britain is not going to learn English... television, advertising, road signs, neighbours, friends etc - as soon as he steps out the door, (and even in the house - food packets, leaflets through the letterbox etc) he will start picking it up.

So there's no danger of him not learning English - you just want to do your best to make sure that he knows French as well.

Obviously there's huge limits to this comparison, but taking this out of the 'religious sphere' might make it a bit more understandable. (And one of my friends who just recently moved back to France did exactly this - sourced French pre-schools for her child, etc. while in this country.)

ibblewob, that's a good analogy.

For us, religion isn't about just 'learning right and wrong', it's much more all-encompassing. And then there are all those controversial philosophical notions like 'true' and 'false' (at which point I'm not a very good post-modernist, because I believe there is only one 'true'). I don't mind that there are parents doing the 'attempt-to-be-neutral' approach, because I really do believe in every parents right to raise their children as they see fit. It's just not the way we do it, and we call it HE, not brainwashing

Anyway, excuse me, I must get my eldest out of the cellar where she's been reciting Leviticus...

[pulls soapbox out of backpack and sets it up with the other loonies on Hyde Park Corner]

Do you know what really annoys me about the "Christian Home Education is tantamount to brainwashing" thing? (and I speak as a non-Christian)

It is the double standard.

It's fine for children to be indoctrinated with the prevailing cultural ideology (moral relativism, the dogma of multi-culturalism, environmentalism etc etc) in schools and in many homes, but for a family to be living according to a different ideological framework which doesn't pose any threat to the prevailing one, unless the ideas in it are better, I mean it's not as if the Evangelical Christians in our midst are going to suddenly start a machete waving crusade against all the heathens in their midst is seen as brainwashing.

You'd have to work reeeeeeaaaaaally reeeeaaaallly hard for your children to have no exposure to the norms of our culture. Like, no TV, no internet, no visits to shops or libraries, no talking to anyone outside the sect. I meet evangelical Christian home educators. Oddly enough, they talk to me, and don't keep their children in cupboards for fear of them being turned to the dark side.

My experience of the Christian Home Edders I've met, honestly, and as a non-believer, is that they are good people with strong moral convictions. If those convictions mean they don't feel comfortable with their children being in the multi-cultural-espousing environment of schools, then all power to them. It's not them that have lost the traditional British values.

[steps off soap box and ponders sending this in as a Daily Mail op ed. Good lord, this really is a pretty outrageous post.]

Agree with Ibblewob's foreign country analogy. Also definitely agree with Onward's rant!

And now to hi-jack the thread: Are there any Christians home-ed-ing in the Peckham/South-east London area? Wd really like to find playmates/good friends for my two DDs, 6 (quite shy until she gets to know you) and 4 (precocious, shy of nobody). I also have two DSs of 2yrs and 4 wks.