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Homeschooling

Published on October 24th, 2014 | by Christie

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Be nice to homeschoolers

Imagine if you could travel through time back to the dark ages. Most people 
were illiterate then (only priests were educated enough to read), and those 
who could read a book as we do would have to be extremely privileged or 
lucky to actually find a book to read.
Now punch the fast-foward button and come to the 20th century. Books are 
everywhere. Even the smallest town has a small collection of books in what 
we call a library. Almost every house is graced with the presence of the 
Holy Bible.

On top of that, more than half of the United States is literate, 
and is priviliged enough to be able to read a book at any time they wish to 
by simply visiting a local library.
 But….do they? Now they have little time to read books. Kids have school, 
and homework after school, so they have no time. Teenagers just out of 
school are either too busy with college or too busy flipping hamburgers, so 
they have no time. Even adults must eke out some sort of life for 
theirselves or their off-spring, so they have no time either.
It’s ironic.

Here we are presented with an absolute wealth of knowledge, but 
most people simply don’t have the time to take it, or are simply 
un-interested.
Un-interested, you say? How could someone be simply ‘un-interested’ in the 
pasttime of reading, of gaining knowledge, of learning new things? I’m 
sorry, but it’s really happenned. The biggest detriment to this is public 
school, because it knocks an individual over the head and says,

“Read this, 
pal, and memorize it, or you’ll be stuck here in this prison for an extra 
year.”

After being forced to read and memorize something for year after year 
I’ll bet you wouldn’t read much either, except the token amount that you 
could get by with.
I know very few public-schooled bookworms.  I asked my neighbor once if she 
read much.

student ipad education

“Just average,” she answered.
”How much is average?” I asked.
”Maybe two or three books a year.” She shrugged.
I was appalled. I read two or three books a week, if I could manage to 
squeeze them in. I figured she meant real books, something by Toklien, 
Stephenson, or any other classical author. But, no, she meant those little 
dinky “Baby-Sitter’s Club” books. I rather doubt you could even learn a 
token amount of baby-sitting from these books – much less anything else!
It reminds me (yes, he’s going to scripture!…) of Hosea 4:6, “My people 
die for lack of knowledge.” Of course, that means both spiritual and 
physical. But it’s the physical knowledge that I’m focusing on now. There 
are whole chapters in Proverbs devoted to the art of gaining knowledge 
(Proverbs 3:20). Society will not going to gain much from the 
”Baby-Sitter’s Club”, or the multiple parties and sleep-overs that they 
manage to attend. If the average public schooler reads only two or three 
books per year (compared to the average 6 hours of television per day) then 
we’re in one serious bit o’trouble.

But you and I are homeschoolers. We have plenty of time granted to us to 
read, and if your parents are like mine, you’ve got a gazillion books to 
feed the reading frenzy for your education. Like Proverbs 4:5 says, “Get wisdom, get 
understanding, and forget it not;”. Worshipping God is the first step, and 
if you’ve got that, the most important part, going, then time for the 
second! I know quite a few homeschoolers who really aren’t reading much – 
mostly those with TV’s, computers, or live in those weird places called 
”suburbs”. That’s primarly to whom this is directed – those homeschoolers 
who either don’t realize how important reading is, or take it for granted. 
You an Mr. or Mrs. I-Just-Don’t-Have-The-Time are presented with the 
oppurtunity that is singular to now, unavailable in past centuries; you are 
presented with a wealth of knowledge and learning that only takes your 
participation to begin.
So go read a book!



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