Sunday, August 9, 2009

Homeschooling for a World View

I was looking around our homeschool room yesterday and had a thought. No, it didn't hurt. :) Our homeschool room looks quite a bit like a typical classroom. We have school boxes, and the months of the year on the wall, and a pocket chart, and a map, and a white board. So someone who didn't know might wonder, "why not just send them to school? It looks like they are doing just what kids in school are doing."

But there is so much going on that can't be easily seen from just looking at our room. I know there are as many reasons to homeschool as there are homeschoolers, but my philosophy on the whole thing has changed even since we began. Well, actually it hasn't changed....more like expanded.

One thing I am profoundly grateful for is the chance to use Christian curriculum with my children. I thought it was a nice bonus when we first started, but now I think it is far more important than that. Teaching my girls science from a Christian, Biblical point of view is a SUPER thing. (History also!) I think they are learning to defend God's word, in addition to just being in awe of His creation. Many, many times this year Sweetheart has pointed out inaccuracies on TV shows or in books. These are things I hadn't even thought of until last year, but my daughters are already aware of them. That's very cool.

I read a book last week. Have you seen this book? It has some interesting points. I won't go into all of the research here, but suffice it to say, we MUST work on how we teach our children about God's word. They must be able to see that the Bible is more than a collection of stories. They must be able to see that absolutely everything in the Bible is true.

So we are homeschooling. And it will take effort. And these are not things I had thought about when we first became parents.

How are you teaching your children to view the world?

17 comments:

  1. Very cool Brenda. You really have it togehter and you know exactly what needs to be done...and the fact that your daughter's are pointing things out that are against what they are learning from you IS awesome. It shows you are doing your job but also that they trust you and what you say to them :)

    Well done and good points!

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  2. Great post Brenda~

    It is so true, no matter what our "school" looks like, it is all about the worldview! It is the most important thing to educate our kiddoes about!

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  3. Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home, but went to public school. I just had the thought TWO YEARS AGO (I am 32 now) that there never were cave men, that God created Adam in an educated form, with language, ideas, etc. I had just totally mixed creation and all the paleontological history in my mind.

    And I felt really dumb.

    So I am working toward that never happening to my kids. *sigh*

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  4. Oh JulieMom----ha ha. I've got you beat. Last summer I was researching science curriculum and saw a comment about Apologia assuming a "young earth" perspective and I looked at S and said, "What does THAT mean?" He had kind of heard of that, but honestly we had not thought about these things. YES, I believed creation--but like you said, assumed many other things in there with it.

    And I was 37.

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  5. There is much evidence for a "Young Earth" given in scientific data. Scripture tells us that the Earth is between eight thousand, and twelve thousand years old, and I agree. If the Earth were the zillions, and billions of years old, as the evolutionists claim, the sun would have been much larger and hotter then, and life could not have survived, much less evolve. There have been studies on the consumption rate of our sun, it is shrinking every day just a little, and they can measure this rate by its energy production. Super old Earth, super big Sun. Niagra falls is inching its way into Canada every year at a consistent rate. If you run this formula backwards 8 - 10 thousand years, it takes the falls to the mouth of Lake Erie. Go back even a million years, and it puts the falls in the Midwest. I also believe there were dinosaurs on the Ark with Noah. They existed in Job's day.

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  6. Anonymous--yep. These are ALL things I have learned about this year. WHY did I not know this stuff before?

    The church does not deal with science. The church, for the most part, has let schools handle the science and we handle the Bible stories. This is talked about in that book I referenced in this post. So kids have questions about this stuff and guess who we are allowing to answer our children?

    If this stuff is being taught---WHERE is it being taught? How did you learn this? On your own? Or where? I'm curious.....

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  7. B~
    Anonymous is K. He knows the majority of all these things because it is throughly taught in his seminary classes. Anyone can go to these, men, women and they have one 13 year old who attends. It is open to anyone who yearns to learn more about the bible in depth.
    Also, he taught this at our old church as the pastor and you would not believe the amount of grief we as a family got over it, some families even left because they refused to believe everything in the bible was true.

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  8. So.....how would a person learn this stuff who had NOT gone to seminary? :) I'm just saying it's not taught much. False teaching is EVERYWHERE.

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  9. A man by the name of Kent Hovind. Here is the link to his website. He has numerous videos/dvd/books. I believe he even sells homeschool curriculum books as well for like 30-40 dollars.

    http://shopping.drdino.com/index-exec/

    They are bringing him up on possible tax evasion charges. He is scriptually sound though and honestly the amount of taxes we as families of faith (Pastors and clergy) have to pay is ridiculous! It is extremely hard for even K and I to afford to pay our taxes and with Obama in the Whitehouse now, I'm sure it will get even harder on us.

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  10. First let me say that Hovind is a good guy and has done nothing illegal.

    Second, our pastor will preach on this stuff in church, where it should be taught! Does your church really NOT teach this stuff from the pulpit? How sad.

    We are hoping to be able to send our children to school. But we will also be teaching them at home about what the truth is regarding these things.

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  11. I really think that it is a minority of churches who are teaching these things. The research in that book shows that to be true.

    OR--kids do hear stuff at church, but they hear more convincing arguments against all this and begin to doubt the Bible. If you doubt Genesis--why not doubt everything in the Bible?

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  12. Unfortunately they do hear things at church that lead them to stop going to church all together when they reach adolescence and young adult hood.

    When we first came here, we were shocked to find an adult man teaching one of the children's classes who did not believe that Hell was real. There was no doubt in our minds that he also had been teaching his belief of no hell to the children in his class. Once K took the pastor position of that church this was one of those things that had to be dealt with. It caused much grief, but really in regards to the teachers of our children in Sunday Schools around the nation, we as parents should try to know that teacher as best as possible and ask them what they believe. In this particular situation the prior pastor had neglected to deal with it for fear of the ramifications it would have put him through. K does not worry about that at all, his stance is he MUST worry more about making God happy than any others around him. That teacher was able to convince many in the church of many things that are not true. We must be diligent in making sure our children are taught by teachers in church that are of sound doctrine.

    I have also had experience with young adults who say "well, I was born and raised in church and I believe the bible, but I won't be able to have any fun if I don't leave the church while I'm young. When I get all my fun stuff out of my system I'll just come back to the church like my ________ did." Fill in the blank there , it could be an older sibling, father, mother, friend. They feel as though they would be 'missing out' on learning life experiences on their own if they stay in the church and live their lives as God expects them to. Sadly, I have seen this way to often.

    My goodness this is a long post, I apologize B!

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  13. Think: COMMENT, not POST. :) Just kidding!!!!

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  14. This is absolutely why we want to homeschool, Brenda! And why I'm so looking forward to finishing grad school next year and staying at home -- not just so I can devote more energy to being a mom and wife, but so I can work on ways to improve the "layperson's" understanding of science. I am very excited about a "breaking down the science" blog that my husband and I are starting to lay out the details for, focusing on things like the intersection of faith and science, science that's important to moms, misuse of science in creating policies, etc...

    Now I should get back to the lab so I can wrap up my PhD and get to some real work! :)

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  15. I'm so thankful that we can homeschool in America! It's such a blessing from God. I am already eager to homeschool, though I need to get married and have some children first. :)

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  16. Yeah, I think that's a good plan! :)

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I don't get to talk to a lot of actual grown-ups during the day, so your comments make me really happy! :)