Thursday, February 25, 2010

On My Mind

I've been reading a lot lately about education. Like everything else in our life, decisions about educating our children are complicated by living and working overseas. In Vietnam, our best option is homeschooling. We're not comfortable with the government schools, and international schools are way outside of our price range (read that as WAAAAAYYYYY outside). I've never seen myself as a homeschooling mom and am trying to learn more about it.

I've come across several books or articles that make a compelling argument in favor of Christian education or home education. The argument is this: education is about training the whole person and is primarily about shaping character rather than conveying information. If this is true, the conclusion is that we can't train a child without being deeply engaged in the education process and without being able to teach from a biblical perspective.

It's hard to find fault with this argument. On the other hand, I've known many godly and wise parents who have shepherded their kids through public school. This is clearly one of those issues that isn't answered by one prescription for every family.

I'm curious, how have you made decisions about educating your children? Do you home school, provide for them to attend a Christian school, or guide them through public school? If your kids are in a secular school, how do you help them form a biblical worldview? If they are away from home most of each day, how do you stay involved in shaping godly character? If you homeschool or send your kids to Christian school, how do you stay engaged with the community so that you are able to share Christ's love with others?

Enough questions. In short, I would like to learn from your experience. 

4 comments:

  1. H-

    A friend of mine with kids a little bit older has run the gamut. Her blog www.liftmynoise.blogspot.com often covers this topic. Just click on the "school" label to pull up relevant posts. No answers there, just food for thought.

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  2. Hi Heather, We just made the commitment to homeschool our 2 boys next year after a lot a lot a lot a lot of thought. It's an interesting dilemma. I'd love to hear more about your journey. You'll probably hear about how disastrous or victorious (or both) our experiment is on our blog occasionally...
    Jessica

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  3. As a public school educated person who has worked for Christian schools for 9 years I should be some sort of expert. I guess my opinion comes down to: it depends. How's that for helpful? But given your circumstances, home schooling does seem like your best option. I know that you of ALL people can do it really well. Will there be any such thing as a homeschool or co-op you can join? I know this is often helpful for socializing and other opportunities. But this may not be avialable where you're going.

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  4. Thanks, Sarah, Jessica, and Kel, for commenting. I will definitely check out the blogs periodically. I'm not sure about a co-op. When we were last in Vietnam, the only people I knew with kids the same age as ours were German or Vietnamese. It would make a co-op interesting to say the least! I'll have to keep an eye out for possibilities, though.

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