Homeschooling

Before I discuss the importance of home schooling with regard to older adopted foreign children, I wanted to discuss home schooling in general. To do that, we must first discuss the Biblical principles regarding the education of children.

Without going into the Biblical reasons, I believe that the following principles apply to the education of children.

1. The goal of education is to teach your children to love God with all of their heart, soul, and minds.


2. #1 cannot be achieved without the help of the Holy Spirit working through God’s Word.


3. The primary subject of learning is to be the Godhead. Where the creation is studied without relationship to its Creator, no true learning occurs.


4. The secondary subject of learning is wisdom. True wisdom cannot be learned without a proper grounding in the knowledge of God.


5. Training for a life vocation is of lesser importance than #3 and #4. However, when properly understood, it is contained in the learning of wisdom.


6. The training of children is first and foremost the responsibility of the father.


7. It is not wrong for the father to delegate the responsibility to others qualified to teach a given subject, given that the other principles are obeyed.


8. Each child is a unique creation before God. This implies that there can be no one sized fits all method of teaching. Each child must be evaluated to determine the best means of education them.


9. Children must be taught how to apply what they know in non-Christian environments.

Based on these I think it is clear that, home schooling is a viable option. It is certainly not the only option. It is quite possible for a family to home school and violate any or all of these principles. At the same time, it is possible for a child to be educated in a classroom situation and all of the above criteria to be met. As a side note however, I do find it difficult to imagine that there are many public school situations that are appropriate because of #3 in particular. The main exception I see being older children who are firmly ground enough that they are ready to pursue #9 in the public school arena.

Next time, I will begin to discuss how these principles apply to older adopted foreign children.