Why We Left Public Education

My wife and I (John Lovell) were both schooled through the public education system. She grew up in a family of public-school educators, so we're not trying today to say that all public-school education is bad or evil. 

But at least for now, in the early years of our children's lives, we have decided that we are going to homeschool them, and here's why.

Public Education Takes Our Kids Away from Us

This isn't the case in every situation, but over the years we've heard from a number of parents who are shocked at how their children turned out. John Rosemond touches on these impacts proficiently in his novel- Parenting by the Book.

They took them to church, read the Bible as a family, taught them right from wrong, and yet when their kids left the nest, they had an entirely different set of beliefs and ways of looking at the world. 

This could partly have been caused by children being separate from their parents 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. 

Increasingly, too, public schools seem to want to usurp the authority of parents, even helping children make important life decisions without the input from parents. 

But here is the God-given truth—our kids are our responsibility and we have the mandate to mentor them and guide them, not the state. It's difficult to do this, though, if the state and other children have them eight hours a day, 5 days a week.

America Doesn't Need More Cogs in the Machine

Our children were not created by God to fill the role that the state and society prescribed for them based on industrialized living and Marxist ideology—which is increasingly the ideology of educational institutions. 

Our children were created to be what they were supposed to be as individuals, and, especially for boys, sitting in a desk eight hours a day, medicated so that they'll sit still and be good, is not the way to foster creativity and health and real learning. 

When we were growing up, we were told to leave the house and figure out the world. This was good for us. We might have nearly died a few times out in the woods doing stupid things, but we didn't die and, more important, we learned how to live and be tough and explore. 

When you stick kids in a building for most of the day under the supervision of people paid to be there, they aren't getting the exploration and the mentorship and nurture they were built for.

Our Kids Need to Become Independent, Critical Thinkers

The Christian writer G.K. Chesterton said that we need to give children enough structure and discipline and understanding so that we can then "let good things run wild." 

That's basically what we think education should be. Providing the skills and structure and love that children need to then navigate the world, to think independently, to explore, and cultivate a love of true learning. 

This is contrary to education that cultivates role memorization, collectivist mindset, groupthink and neglects the many disciplines that were foundational for generations gone by. Groupthink could be the death of us all. 

Reading the classics, rhetoric, logic, and learning about the early church fathers and other pillars of Christianity help children think clearly and independently. They also install in children the fact that our faith is actually robust and can stand against arguments and stand the test of time and culture.

Homeschooling is not for the Faint of Heart

It's not easy, but we also want you to know that it's also not just for the socially awkward among us, though that stereotype persists in some circles still. Homeschooling is the way schooling was done for a very long time, before industrialization and Marxist thinking came in and made public education the "standard" fare. 

It certainly takes work, planning, sacrifice, expense, and all those things, but when you're developing the future generations in your family and in the world, can you really afford not to consider what's shaping the young lives entrusted to you? 

Train Hard. Train Smart. And for the sake of our future, get rid of the devices and give them the world's best books.