How we started homeschooling Pt 5

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschool; Math on 22 Jul 2014.

Part 4 was a peek at how language arts featured in our literacy lessons. In this 5th installment, our son Elliot writes about learning numbers and math. If you have just popped in, you can catch up on our family’s homeschooling journey by checking out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

LEARNING THE 3RS: Elliot discovers numeracy

It is one of those hot, muggy Malaysian nights when Dad asks how we learnt our numbers. I shrug, and say that Mom taught us, of course. This is something painfully obvious, but he persists in asking. But how did we learn numbers? How did ones and twos and threes suddenly become something beyond scratches on a piece of paper? Mom looks at me and I look back at her. Math books? I hazard. Mom mutters something about looking at price tags while shopping. Multiplication tables? I mean, numbers don’t have a significance in our family. Words do. Words are king. I remember what the formative books of my childhood were. Formative number things? Hah.

Maybe numbers are something that just happens to you, like catching a cough or a cold. If you hang around too long with twos and fours they might start multiplying and then you are suddenly burdened with the knowledge that with the addition of a certain symbol, they equal eight. I know that at some point we became aware that numbers could interact with each other and behave in fascinating ways but as to when that point actually happened, who knows?

Some things are not meant to be questioned…
I know that numbers were never alive for me in the study room where I would sit hunched over on my chair, idly doodling on the margins of math books. They weren’t alive cross-legged in my grandparents’ house, where the stillness and quiet of the hour and the gentle creaking of the electric fan would carry my attention far from fractions and decimals.

But we memorized our tables and dutifully repeated them anyway. We did our math-work, from yellowing Lifepac materials and hardcover Saxon math books to Singaporean syllabi. These are just things that are done to children, and questioning these traditions is like asking if one can change the colour of the sky.

The verdant rainforest is something that many can only appreciate through the safety of a thick plastic shield.Small children especially, are kept away for fear of sharp objects and things that crawl into ears and do not crawl out again.Instead children are taken to zoos and museums, where each plant and animal is labelled and classified and sterilised, with ice-cream after. It’s only now, after many years without opening a math book that I’ve begun to see the forest and not the trees. It’s only now that I wish my education in numbers began a little dirtier, and a little wormier. That might have spared me hours of discontent.

Numbers come alive in unlikely places
Numbers came to life in games and books, in the practical experiences we had (like grabbing the measuring tape and checking out the dimensions of all the furniture in the house). Games like Monopoly and Risk and Scrabble all require a fundamental knowledge of addition, subtraction and multiplication, and they taught me to recognize the patterns of basic math. Books like Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth introduced mathematical concepts such as fractions and infinity with charming aplomb.

Numbers were alive to me in the counting down of the hours until Dad came home from work. Or in the hurt that PINKIES was definitely not a word and that the seventy-six points my Aunt made was distinctly unfair, never mind what the dictionary said. I remember choosing, when my brother and I were dividing our chores, to throw the garbage on even numbered dates, knowing that there were a full seven days more of odd numbered dates for him to do work on. It was glorious in its smallness.

So, my numbers were learnt in relation to things that were not numbers. But If you really want to know where I got my numbers, I found them lying around the house. Someone had left them there, I think. How very terribly careless.

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22-year old Elliot Tan’s parents are founders of HOMEFRONTIER David and Sook Ching Tan. Elliot plays the piano in church and occasionally leads worship. When not sleeping too much for his parents’ liking, he reads and does things on the computer and occasionally writes weird things. Surprisingly and in spite of his upbringing, he scored an A for Math in his IGCSE O Levels. He was in university studying Communications for a while, but took a break and is now in the process of what people call ‘finding themselves’. He also teaches English in Frontier Learning Centre and have an affinity for potatoes.

CHRISTIAN HOMESCHOOLING DIALOGUE 2

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement on 30 Jun 2014.

 THE TRUTH IS there is no such thing as a “christian” homeschool. However, what we have are Christians who educate their own children in the home in very personalised ways. And no two homeschoolers are alike, because no two families are the same. But homeschoolers who choose to have their children educated at home share very similar convictions.

Join us to hear how these homeschooling parents educate their own children on the road less traveled.

REGISTRATION

RM10 per adult parent. RM5 per child above 12 years. Free for children under 12 years.
(Payable at the venue)

To register, please email names of all attendees (parents and children) and include your children’s ages to: ckeong7@gmail.com; dbctan@gmail.com

WHO WILL BE SHARING

Natalie Ng
I am 23 years old. I am currently helping my dad with admin work in the office as well as serving actively in church as a youth leader. I have 2 younger siblings as well as a 2 year old Golden Retriever named Simba who frequently teaches me patience.

Elliot Tan
I’m 22. I play the piano for my church and occasionally lead its worship. I like to read and do things on the computer and occasionally write weird things. I was in university studying Communications for a while, but took a break. I also teach English on a part time basis in Frontier Learning Centre.

Eliza Tan
I am 15 and have been homeschooled for seven years. I just completed her second year of high school (Grade 10) with The Potter’s School, an online Christian school, and I aim to attend a Christian college in the US. I enjoy photography, videography, and researching issues related to apologetics.

Amy Wan Ratos
I am mother to Lea 14 and Mayern 12 who have been homeschooled from birth. I am a freelance corporate trainer who made an early choice not to be a tiger mom nor a kiasu mom to motivate and train my children up in God’s way.

David and Sook Ching Tan
We are the founders of HOMEFRONTIER, an informal network of Malaysian Christian families who homeschool their own children in the home. We are the parents of 2 adult sons, Ethan (24) and Elliot (22) who were both educated entirely at home until they went to college.

Alfred and Stacey Chong
We are parents to 17-year old Jemima and 16- year old Nathanael. Our journey was born out of necessity as Jemima was born with severe hearing impairment. However we also felt called to homeschool and are convinced it’s the best way to raise our children.

There will be a Q&A at the end of the presentations.

LIMITED SEATS. PLEASE SIGN UP EARLY. If you have always wondered what is homeschool and how parents educate their own children, this dialogue session is for you.  If you are already homeschooling, here’s an opportunity to network and find encouragement as we learn from one another.

Journeying with High Potential Children

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement; Gifted Children on 17 Jun 2014.

Are you a parent of exceptional or gifted children? If you are, do join NAGCM’s Parents Session to learn how to meet their emotional, intellectual and social needs.

National Association for Gifted Children, Malaysia (NAGCM) was established in 1987 to advocate for the needs of gifted children in Malaysia. As a non-profit, NAGCM supports parents of children with high learning potential regardless of circumstance, age and background.

How we started homeschooling Pt 4

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschool on 16 May 2014.

In Part 3 of our homeschooling journey, I shared how we learned to focus on things that mattered. Part 4 is a look at how we taught our children, and this installment will touch on Literacy. If you missed the previous installments, do join our family’s homeschooling journey by checking out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

LEARNING THE 3Rs: Literacy
Homeschooling or unschooling? Imperfect labels as they are, both share a common attribute: we are our children’s main educators. While a homeschooler prefers a more structured approach with emphasis on subject mastery, an unschooler is inclined towards non-formal and naturally spontaneous learning.

There’s really no need to get hung up on terminology as there will be significant overlap whichever side of the fence you belong. Either way, there’s structure and spontaneity in varying degrees. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, what passed off as ‘education’ in our home? What about the 3Rs?

Here’s a peek at what we did when our own boys were under twelve.

Start with reading
Educators tell us a learning environment or a reading culture is vital to children becoming learners. Fortunately we were readers ourselves – books lined the walls of our home, books were our friends, bookstores our favourite hangouts. The big payoff for learning to read comes when your children read to learn. So we were pleased when our boys caught the habit earlier than later.

Initially, the standard language readers were our textbooks, but what got our boys hooked were real age-appropriate books. Picture books soon gave way to those with structurally richer sentences and vocabulary.

Two things were key: We read aloud (ending on a “to-be-continued” note), and we talked a lot (about what we’ve read). It’s hard to beat shared book reading to improve listening and comprehension skills. It’s great for family bonding too. There we were plonked down on a sofa, paying attention and waiting for one another to speak or ask a question after Mom or Dad was done reading. And we had to keep it civil, being considerate to one another while keeping interruptions to a minimum.

Writing and copywork
Once our kids graduated from their ABCs, we introduced them to writing full sentences as well as copywork. They filled up exercise books with text from storybooks, and poems. We also had them copy Bible verses such as these:

Proverbs 12:15 – The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.

Proverbs 3:5-8 – Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.

The point was not merely writing, but understanding the ideas that words communicated. Again, that led to all kinds of conversations.

Journaling
After learning from a fellow homeschooler about journaling, I gave each boy a hardcover A5 journal. Write an entry a day, anything, any length, I said. Sometimes we offered suggestions.

When my Dad was alive, I asked them to interview their Gung-Gung. I told them he was a young man during the Japanese Occupation and oh boy, wouldn’t they love to hear about war and severed heads, how he was almost arrested at a checkpoint while smuggling cigarettes.

Once on a trip to Penang, I made a special vacation scrapbook. We looked up the internet and identified places we were visiting, and then had them write and sketch all through the trip.

In time their language blossomed. We were gratified that their daily entries were becoming more thoughtful and more varied in subject and length. What tales they recorded – their curious perspective on life, their observations on happenings in the neighbourhood, what they did with friends, how our maid Rosalie saved Elliot from choking(!), what they looked forward to.

Detours on the journey
I must confess we did not do much about grammar (not that we didn’t care), and phonics was not on our to-do list either (growing up in school, phonics wasn’t part of our syllabus then). Instead we learned when the occasion called for it, picking up verbs, tenses, parts of a sentence, letter sounds and even some Latin, like found items on a language trail.

It wasn’t all work and no play. Breaks were frequent in the Tan Homeschool and there were many detours requiring a temporary shift in priorities. That’s okay; we are allowed to be flexible. After all, it is the tree that bends in the wind that will not snap.

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Founders of HOMEFRONTIER David and Sook Ching Tan have two adult sons who were homeschooled all the way until college. Ethan (24) recently graduated and got married to a wonderful girl Katie. Elliot (22) is thinking through his options and will be down under to do creative writing before the year is up.

Holt: why the home is a natural place for learning

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Family; Quotables on 6 Apr 2014.

A family chooses to educate their own children at home for many reasons. It is usually because schools have failed them. For a lot more people, it’s because they want to fill up what schooling threatens to take away through negative socialisation – namely, the inculcation of values or faith convictions, modeling of character, intimacy, nurture of family affections, the exercise of parental authority, time for children to be and grow, acquisition of a broad range of knowledge, etc. Due to social and economic factors – and political expediency – brick and mortar schools will probably remain a vital necessity for a long, long time.

In many societies, schooling may be the only means of education and possibly the first steps to a hopeful future. Does this mean that homeschooling is only for parents who can afford it?

The late author and educator John Holt however, thought differently. Holt, who is credited with pioneering the unschooling/homeschooling movement, shared the following insights during a magazine interview in 1980.

Why homeschool?

“THAT’S A BIG QUESTION. The great advantage is intimacy, control of your time, flexibility of schedule, and the ability to respond to the needs of the child, and to the inclinations. If the child is feeling kind of tired or out of sorts, or a little bit sick, or kind of droopy in spirits, okay, we take it easy, and things go along very calmly and easily. When the child is full of energy and rambunctious, then we tackle big projects, we try tough stuff, we look at hard books. And I think schools could do much more than they do in this kind of flexibility, but in fact they don’t.”

I want to make it clear that I don’t see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools. I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were. The proper relationship of the schools to home is the relationship of the library to home, or the skating rink to home. It is a supplementary resource.

But the school is a kind of artificial institution, and the home is a very natural one. There are lots of societies without schools, but never any without homes. Home is the center of the circle from which you move out in all directions, so there is no conceivable improvement in schools that would change my mind about that.”

Homeschooling: The Rakyat Post doesn’t get it

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Alternative education; Commentary; Malaysian schools on 3 Apr 2014.

A RESPONSE TO THE RAKYAT POST
Why homeschool critics are missing the point

I appreciate that critics of homeschooling may be wondering what’s the fuss about alternative education? Arguably, ‘school’ is not necessarily a very bad idea after all. Be that as it may, schooling in Malaysia leaves much to be desired, and that’s not good. Indeed the state of Malaysian education is dire. Very. Which is why homeschooling parents and advocates like myself believe alternatives are valid as well as necessary. All you need to do is talk to stakeholders. Let me point out 3 groups:

Do our educationists and academics believe in Malaysian schools? The overwhelming evidence is that schools in the country have not only failed, they have failed miserably. Ask educators. Ask the World Bank. Ask Malaysian graduates who have left the country by the thousands. Talk to employers. Few people deny there is systemic failure. We see it in declining education standards, outdated teaching methodology, crowded classrooms, questionable pedagogy, dumbed down curricula, overt politicisation of education, thoughtless flip-flops, unending quarrels over medium of instruction, etc. That every Minister of Education has seen it fit to introduce all kinds of change during their tenure is telling. Hence all that hand flapping every other year at the parents’ expense!

We are now told the new blueprint for education is the way forward. Is it? (See The Penang Institute Roundtable  on Education report) Will it turn education around for the better for our children and their children? Will factory-model schools prepare our kids for today’s knowledge economy? Sir Ken Robinson doesn’t think so. Are we turning out thinkers and problem solvers? Do our kids leave 12 years of schooling with a greater sense of patriotism and love for their country and its people? Why is there rising concern that our schools are contributing to polarisation and increased racism?

If our academics and educationists admit to serious reservation regarding the state of our schools, is it not highly irresponsible to subject another generation of children to a dodgy enterprise such as this?

Are Malaysian parents happy with their children’s schooling and education? Do our parents greet the school day with delight and enthusiasm? I think not. No parent will dispute the importance of education. But almost every mother will tell you with a wan smile that they wish our schools were better, or that teachers were more competent and caring. And don’t get them started on all those extra tuition so Junior learns what schools are not properly teaching. Besides, isn’t the school curriculum padded with propaganda? If they could afford it, their children would be in a reputable private international school (but that’s another story).

Is it any wonder that one of the primary causes of stress and family tension across the nation is our children’s schooling? All in pursuit of a piece of paper that is valued less and less in centers of learning abroad. Like our neighbour across the Causeway. No amount of pontificating over socialisation, holistic education (whatever that means in Malaysian schools), patriotism, etc will hide the fact that a tree is known by its fruit.

Do Malaysian students enjoy their day in school? Are they engaged learners in their classroom? If we would only talk to our children and ask them what their school days are like, what they think of their countless exams, we will see how much schooling means to them. You can tell something is seriously wrong with our schools when coercion and an act of Parliament are the only means to keep our kids in school. When students wish they were somewhere else, you know schools are missing the point.

On the other hand, those who homeschool or educate their own children at home, are strikingly different. Here’s how:

Education reformers agree homeschooling is nothing to scoff at. Research and longitudinal studies have shown how well homeschooling kids have performed compared to those in conventional schools. Simply google and you’ll see numerous reports that show how homeschoolers have excelled. The brilliant and exceptional ones notwithstanding, these studies show that homeschooling students do just as well if not better than students in traditional schools. If homeschoolers have not been significantly disadvantaged academically and socially, how is this a bad thing?

Homeschooling parents are among the happiest folks around! They’re enthusiastic, resourceful, socialise across ethnic and religious boundaries, celebrate diversity, and are proud of their children and their achievements as homeschoolers. They teach their own kids using all kinds of books and stuff. They are involved parents whose investment in their children’s education is driven by love and not by fear.

It’s not often said, but homeschooling families are patriots whose children’s education does not eat into the Ministry of Education coffers or waste taxpayers’ money. They do not have to fill in forms or engage in faux political sloganeering; they don’t have fancy facilities and gadgets or buy textbooks they won’t read; they don’t wait for permission from authorities to engage in joint-activities, and neither do they care for politicians to flag off their get-together and meet-ups. These are parents who come from all walks of life, believers in life-long learning, volunteers who make time to learn and play together for their children’s sake.

Is not this positive socialisation a thing to encourage? Why are these families able to do what so many of our schools can’t unless you wave a stick at them? Simple – because they truly believe and love what they are doing as homeschoolers. Happy homeschooling families who interact across age, race, and religion put the lie to claims that conventional schools in the country do a better job.

Homeschooling children are among the brightest I have met. Ask any homeschooling child if they enjoy being educated at home, and I’ll bet you’ll get a resounding Yes! They love learning because they find security and acceptance at home, and they have the freedom to do it at their own pace. Educator John Holt can tell you that’s how children learn – they have time, and they are given space.

Our homeschooled kids are respected and loved; they are gifted, smart, a little weird perhaps, but mostly they dislike being boxed-in or typecast. More importantly, they are all exceptional individuals who will make a difference in our world in their own way and on their own terms. Our homeschooling children are big on formal and non-formal learning, and they are loving it. Aren’t happy self-directed students what this country needs? If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, these children are a testimony that homeschooling works.

Of course, not all parents should homeschool, but those who do know they’re into a good thing with few regrets.  Let critics say what they like about how homeschooling misses the mark. You know what? We have seen Malaysian schools for what they are, and we’re not missing what they are offering.

How we started homeschooling Pt 3

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschool on 24 Mar 2014.

Continuing the story of our homeschooling journey and what we learned along the way. If you missed the previous installments, Part 1 looks back at how we arrived at our decision. Part 2 tells about early days when we started out. Here’s Part 3.

Learn, unlearn, relearn
SOMEONE SAID THAT TEACHING HAS A LEARNING CURVE that’s steeper than most other professions.  Now, you only have to take responsibility for your own children’s education to know how true that is.  This is probably the reason homeschooling in our first years was very much about getting into stride, or as they say, “finding your groove.”

It’s not hard to understand why.  We had barely begun – not unlike first-time travellers, hearts thumping with a mix of excitement and apprehension as they arrive in a place they have never been before.

To top it all, we had to deconstruct a deeply flawed mindset that mistook schooling for education, teacher-directed instruction for learning, and examination grades for intelligence.  That’s the sticky part.  But if we wanted to homeschool and facilitate our children’s education, we too would have to take care to learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Lessons from a misstep
Shortly after we began homeschooling, Sook Ching bought into a pricey home-based accelerated learning programme.  There were flash cards of the human body, musical instruments, vegetables, and math problems.  Pretty soon our sons were effortlessly impressing friends and family with their “encyclopedic knowledge.”

It didn’t take long to discover that (a) kids really have a natural appetite for learning, and (b) I could make my own flash cards cheaply – which I eventually did.

While I have no doubt that thousands of parents are grateful for these expensive learning kits, I found out that words quickly learnt were just as easily forgotten in a matter of weeks.  Our infatuation with that big box of flash cards and stuff lasted less than 6 months.  Were we half-hearted about “bringing out the genius” in our boys, perhaps?

Nevertheless, having a lot of information in one’s head is obviously not the same as having knowledge.  Knowledge is understanding concepts, not spewing out random data.  It’s the ability to connect bits of information in a meaningful way, and then apply them effectively.  Like so many parents we too mistook precociousness in a child for advanced intelligence.

Deciding on things that matter
Yep, we fell for the “multiplying baby’s intelligence” sales pitch.  Are you anxious for your kids to have “encyclopedic knowledge” or “Mozart music to enhance spatial reasoning”?  Do they really need all those enrichment classes to make them brilliant before they turn 7?  Think twice before you dig into your pocket.  Don’t buy tickets for guilt trips your kids can do without.

Better to use a natural or more organic approach to teaching and learning instead of over-engineering for quick results.  Besides, what’s all the acceleration for – the child, or her parents?

What did this episode teach us about what really matters?  Get knowledge, not information; nurture wisdom, not just intelligence.  Enlarge the heart, not the head.  These are values you need to work on day by day, one day at a time.  It’s not how fast you’re going, but where you’re heading.  It’s setting ablaze the intrinsic desire in all children to learn, and helping them to keep the fires burning.  Then, you get out of their way.

Next:  What we did in our homeschool

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Founders of HOMEFRONTIER David and Sook Ching Tan have two adult sons who were homeschooled all the way until college. Ethan (24) recently graduated and got married to a wonderful girl Katie. Elliot (22) is thinking through his options and will be down under to do creative writing before the year is up.

How we started homeschooling Pt 2

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschool on 18 Mar 2014.

So we’re sold on the idea of educating our own children at home. The fun begins! Here’s Part 2 of how we started out as new homeschoolers.

IT’S THE STANDARD PARENTING SCRIPT – if your child is 4 years old you put her in a kindergarten. Not knowing better, that was where Ethan was at 4 years. Now that we had decided to homeschool, we would have to pull him out.

Dropping out of kindergarten
I spoke to the kindergarten Principal on the phone and told her that we had decided to stop. She expressed regrets saying Ethan would miss out developing “motor skills” as there would be contraptions and learning toys for his class  in the coming weeks.  Erm, yes,  but he’ll be fine, I said, thanking her and her teachers.

One weekend after a miserable month in kindy, we told Ethan he didn’t have to go back there when Monday came around. We, his mom and dad, would be teaching him and his brother Elliot at home. Every day was going to be like a holiday and we were going to have fun learning and doing all sorts of things together! We said he was going to learn more at home anyway. The boys were nonplussed. There were shy smiles but no audible cry of relief. Ethan’s wide-eyed expression said it all: Yay!

It amazes me every time I see how trusting young children are of their parents. We offered no further explanation for our conviction except to say that we were in it together. Certainly, the boys were simply too young to appreciate their parents’ crazy notions or the significant turn their life was taking then. Double yay!

Starting out by slowing down
Cutting the umbilical cords of institutionalised learning set us free to take it easy. What joy to spend unstructured time with our children, being there for them, watching them grow! Not having a pile of expensive toys at home, the boys displayed an inventive streak stretching their imagination and making do with what they could lay their hands on. Ethan was like a bird let out of a cage while Elliot was content to play along and do what his older brother did.

Meanwhile, there would be a lot of exploring, figuring out our next steps: we dug into a mountain of information and resources available to homeschoolers online and in bookstores in the city. Like most homeschooling newbies, we were anxious about curriculum and were initially flustered. Sonlight? Alpha & Omega? Bob Jones? Thankfully we were advised by a friend to slow down and put all that aside for awhile. Where’s the fire? It’s okay to try stuff, she said. We made the best of what we could afford and took advantage of public amenities such as the Science Centre and the community library.

New routines for mom and dad
What changed most for us when we started was a deliberate ordering of our lives. We agreed on lines of authority, decided on boundaries (i.e, no TV or computer games on week days, etc), worked on values that meant most to us as a Christian family and as homeschoolers.

Parenting became an intentional discipline. We clarified our roles as mom and dad – Sook Ching would be the primary tutor, while I would do my part to provide leadership, read aloud to the kids on certain nights and tucked them in bed. We were quickly learning that homeschooling works, but parental involvement was key.

Next: Homeschooling one day at a time

[If you haven't read the first part, click here: How We Started Homeschooling ]
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Founders of HOMEFRONTIER David and Sook Ching Tan have two adult sons who were homeschooled all the way until college. Ethan (24) recently graduated and got married to a wonderful girl Katie. Elliot (22) is thinking through his options and will be down under to do creative writing before the year is up.

How we started homeschooling

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschool on 14 Mar 2014.

I received an email asking how to start homeschooling now that they’re close to a decision. Instead of a point-by-point reply, I thought it best to share how our family started to homeschool.

IT STARTED WITH A LETTER from my sister-in-law who wrote about homeschooling her then 9 year old daughter. My brother was completing his Master’s in the US and his family would be heading home to Penang soon; is education compulsory, she asked, and are there laws in Malaysia that forbid educating one’s own children at home?

Why would anyone want to be their own children’s teacher?
This is so strange, we thought to ourselves. Why would anyone want to keep their child away from school? Who would have imagined that in a few years we would abandon conventional schooling and leap into that happy unknown called homeschool!

By divine circumstance, much of what we wanted to know about being our children’s educators came together in one extended serendipitous period.

Our boys were 4 and 2 years then. My wife Sook Ching attended a workshop on homeschooling conducted by an American couple; I found a book by Gregg Harris that made a compelling case against an education system that had more in common with the military and the factory floor. More damning was his take on the casualties of that broken public institution called school. We were sold!

It didn’t take a lot to convince us of the benefits of homeschooling. After all, the messy  reality of schooling in Malaysia was common knowledge. The effects of an education system suffused with the toxic mix of race and religion was the subject of incessant rants in the media. Besides, every one we knew had a horror story of their own about incompetent teachers and dumbed-down curricula.

You never have all the answers
Did we feel sufficiently confident or equipped to teach our children at home? Would we be able to survive on one spouse’s salary and endure the long haul of homeschooling? Should we be worried about legal implications, if any?

In retrospect, we did not have all our questions answered. We only knew what was at stake: what would our children be like after 12 years of schooling (or as we saw it, indoctrination) under a flawed education system?

Sure, there were initial fears and the usual queries about oh, fractal equations (what if we’re idiots at math?) and science labs (so do we need to get an electron microscope?). But we knew in our hearts that the call to parent and raise our children to be all that God wanted them to be far outweighed our natural instinct to take the easy way out.

At some point a line was crossed. We stopped vacillating.  What now? Putting away the what-ifs and maybes and with a heart full of prayer, the grand experiment known as homeschooling began for our boys.

Next: Starting out, digging in

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David and Sook Ching Tan have two adult sons who were homeschooled all the way until college. Ethan (24) recently graduated and got married to a wonderful girl Katie. Elliot (22) is thinking through his options and will be down under to do creative writing before the year is up.

Curiosity

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Quotables on 12 Feb 2014.