So you’ve decided to homeschool

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: FAQ; Homeschool on 1 Dec 2000.

So you’ve decided to homeschool. Yippee! How are you going to tell a 6 year-old child he’s not going to school with Timothy and Charmaine (Hooray!) and all the other kids his age in Sunday School? After the yippees and hoorays die down, you might want to share these pointers with him:

1. Mom and Dad want you to learn in a different way Mom and Dad chose homeschool because we want you to have an education that is ‘holistic.’ Okay, that’s a new word, a big word. That’s English Vocabulary 101 for starters. We can’t promise if you’ll end up a walking dictionary, but if we work hard at it, you’ll be giving Auntie Mun Ri a run for the money at Boggles (and Scrabble) when we’re through!

Anyway, ‘holistic’ as we understand it means learning and growing beyond head knowledge. We pay attention to the heart and spirit too. The heart needs to grow in love and passion for the things of God and the world He’s created; the spirit needs to come alive in a living, personal relationship with Jesus our Lord and Saviour. Homeschool lets us – your parents – do all these things without unnecessary distractions and unwholesome influences.

You might wonder why we didn’t think to ask you for an opinion seeing you’re the interested party. Here’s why: we’re bigger and taller than you. So we can see further, across the fence, to what lies on the other side.

Besides, school isn’t what it’s cut out to be these days. Friends like Mrs. Joseph and Auntie Cheong can’t agree if school is more a tuna factory or a battlefield when talking about the troubles their kids go through. One thing they’re sure about is headaches: it seems school is giving their kids headaches and their headaches are giving the two aunties the same.

2. Everyday will be like an adventure Learning is like a trip into a foreign country: full of fascinating sights, beguiling smells and curious languages. You meet strange people with even stranger customs, and streets with impossibly weird names.

But when you are a homeschooler, learning takes on an added dimension – you’re not on the same tour bus as other kids your age! Did Mum and Dad forget to buy the ticket? Nope, they just think it’s much better to see places at their own pace and on their own terms. (Remember how it was when we last travelled in a tour group – all rush, rush and touristy info in mangled syntax? Absolutely no fun)

Do your parents know what they are doing? Er, not all the time. Though they think they know where they’re heading.

Like Abraham who uprooted himself from his comfortable home in the city of Ur for a promised land that only God knows where, we’re living out this wild but wonderful adventure one day at a time. And you know what? God will be with us all the way. For good measure, we’ll be clinging to His hand real tight.

3. Your parents are going to be your tour guides Although Mum and Dad are the teachers at home, our job is really to ‘guide’ you through your daily school lessons. We’re like tourist guides leading you to new places of adventure; but you have to make the discoveries yourself. For instance, if you don’t know the meaning of a word, Mum will point you to a dictionary – but you flip the pages and look it up. Don’t know what’s the capital of South Africa? Dad might give you a couple of hints, but you’ll have to pull out the atlas and check it out yourself.

Oh yes, there’s one other thing: we’re not anywhere near Einstein’s stratospheric IQ. Mum isn’t blessed with Solomon’s wisdom, while Dad thinks attaining Job’s patience is beyond him. Sorry. Although we’re the ones with the street map, we (as in you our child, and us your parents) are in this thing together. Honestly, it’s a new experience for us too. So we’ll have to work together. We’ll have to help one another every time we run into a cul-de-sac, or miss a turn.

4. Homeschool is not another name for no-school You’re not going to be bussed to school like Hussein or Chee Seng next door. You won’t have uniforms to put on. And because Mum and Dad have bad memories about screeching school bells, you’ll be spared of that. But we’ll have school. Kind of. There’ll be lessons, homework, and assignments even. (If you behave yourself, maybe we won’t freak you out with exams and surprise tests – not just yet, anyway).

First, we’ll sit down and work out a timetable – some sort of schedule that fits everyone’s biorhythm, and Mum’s wash day too. Most of all it will be age-appropriate of course. Mercifully, there won’t be 6-hour stretches of interminable cramming daily. (Don’t you just pity your poor Std Three cousin Ivan?

Sometimes we play, other times we study. When school begins, play time stops. Studying for most parts means following that timetable we’re talking about. We will expect reading and writing assignments to be completed. What is important is to work as hard at studying as you do at playing. The neat thing is, sometimes learning comes disguised as play too!

5. Life is going to be one BIG living textbook Mum and dad will be adding new subjects to your homeschool curriculum as we go along. Like Economics, and extrapolating the cost of a kilogram’s worth of tomatoes. Or Domestic Science, which could include anything from the exacting science of pancake making, to the mind-expanding challenge of serving up a perfect half-boiled egg.

Helping Mum hang out the laundry will teach you new things like evaporation, cloud formation, and our prickly tropical weather condition. At the risk of spiritualizing, Jesus’ question to Nicodemus about where the wind blows will become a little more meaningful when you watch clothes dance in the afternoon breeze.

Dad on the other hand will introduce you to nuts and bolts stuff. Drilling holes, sawing timber, changing lightbulbs. And how not to smash your fingers when hammering nails. You’ll get a chance to peer under the hood of the family car too. And guess what? We’ll even let you have the phone number to the nearest workshop, access to which is a lesson in humility – especially since Dad can’t tell the difference between carburetor and radiator to save his life.

6. People will shake their heads, but don’t mind them Finally, you have to know that some of our friends and relations will think us ‘weird’ to be homeschooling. Now and then, there’ll be strange looks, odd questions and awkward silence. Ah, well. When that happens, always remember that there’s nothing a sense of humour cannot handle. Tell them Mom was going to register you in a regular school, but no one would take you because you flunked kindergarten! Haha.

Short of dazzling our friendly inquisitors with a brilliant discourse on Paul’s letter to the Romans or a brief history of Temujin and the Mongol Empire (I wish!) just tell them what you really do in homeschool. No, it’s not cool putting others down to make yourself look good. Let them know what a great time we have doing school and how much we thank God for the privilege. Really, it’s okay to be different as long as we know we’re in the middle of God’s will. As you grow older, you’ll see it’s the safest place to be in the whole wide world.

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