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homeschooling

Homeschooling: “Only the Experts are Qualified”?

by Kelly Crawford April 20, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

There are a few common questions I get from time to time about homeschooling that stump me–revealing the deeply entrenched LIE that so many believe about parents’ capabilities to provide an education for their own children.

The question is something like, “But how will you teach them chemistry (or fill in the blank)?” (And that without even knowing what set of skills or knowledge base we have.)

We’ve been told “only the experts are qualified”, to which I would sweetly reply, “Hogwash”.

An illustration nicely presented itself recently when my daughter brought the unfinished portion of the beautiful Regency era dress she is making.

My Grandmother turned to me and said, “Kelly, I didn’t know you could sew!” Assuming I had taught her.

“Oh my gracious I can barely sew a hem”, I said.

Then the epiphany….guiding our children to learn something–ANYTHING is not contingent upon my expertise or lack thereof. Is this so simple the doubting homeschool questioner misses it?

Can not parents simply endow their children with a thirst for knowledge, and then lead them to the people/resources/information from where they can freely drink?

Is this not the foundation of any true education?

Can not a mother, even with no literacy, love her children enough to learn to read right alongside them? And can we not see that this is a right and good education?

Bria is also a violinist, and my son is becoming an incredible artist. My husband and I, however, are neither of those things 😉 How did they learn without an expert?

Perhaps I could challenge those who have asked this question to ponder a little more deeply? Give the child, the parents, the miraculous capacity to learn and the pursuit of knowledge a little more credit.

You may even consider homeschooling after all!

Think Outside the Classroom

$6.97

Are you a homeschooling mother who worries that you aren’t “doing enough”? Are you thinking of homeschooling but feel afraid that you aren’t qualified? If so, r ead more…

April 20, 2009 41 comments

homeschooling

Homeschooling: Living, Breathing Education

by Kelly Crawford April 1, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

“I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free.”
– John Taylor Gatto

Think Outside the Classroom

$6.97

Are you a homeschooling mother who worries that you aren’t “doing enough”? Are you thinking of homeschooling but feel afraid that you aren’t qualified? If so, r ead more…

April 1, 2009 15 comments

Conversation: A Practical Tool for Homeschooling

by Kelly Crawford March 16, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

I try to revisit my own ebook on relaxed homeschooling from time to time. (Funny how easy it is to forget one’s own advice.)

In Think Outside the Classroom, I tried to offer practical application to the relaxed method of homeschooling.

Even if you are not a relaxed homeschooler, any and all of these methods could be applied to enhance your process of home education.

Some are very simple, like the concept below in an excerpt from the book, but its very simplicity is what causes us to look right over it.

“Conversation.

One of the most basic tools in a parent’s hands for teaching his children is conversation. One of the missing elements of a classroom setting is good dialog. It’s overlooked because it seems so simple, but keep my language analogy in mind.

Dialog, or conversation, is so vitally important to the educational process and to human existence itself. Tragically, the typical American is becoming less and less equipped in this area. The constant access to television, video games, computers and radio keeps us so distracted that we are losing the art of conversation (we can hardly even find a restaurant that doesn’t have a TV in each corner)! Worse yet, as our ability to verbally communicate diminishes, so does our power to defend our faith to the world around us.

As I talk to even my youngest children throughout the day, I try to engage them verbally and intellectually. When we go for a walk, whether I’m with my two-year old or my fourteen year old, I point out as many details about things we see as I can. For example, my two-year old naturally sees the bright red flower, so she stops to ooh and ahh over it. “Fower, mommy,” she says. “Yes, that’s a red clover…isn’t it pretty? I think the colors are brilliant, don’t you? Bees like red clover.” I may go on and on, using different words besides “brilliant”, so she hears a variety of the same-meaning words.

Silly? Think back to how we talk to a child who hasn’t yet learned to speak. We repeat things. And the more they hear them, the more they learn. Use some words that are above your child’s understanding…remember, all words used to be above his understanding! This is a real, living education.

After embracing the importance of conversation for some time, I recently heard Geoffrey Botkin, a father of five brilliant children who are having a huge impact on our culture through writing books and creating media products, say, ‘Most of our homeschooling was accomplished through conversation.’ “

From Think Outside the Classroom: A Relaxed Approach to Homeschooling

March 16, 2009 8 comments

homeschooling

Escaping the Homeschool Matrix

by Kelly Crawford March 7, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

“The room was brightly lit and cold. She was sitting at a table, across from an empty chair. She knew the questioning would begin any minute. The door opened and a stern-faced man with a disapproving glare walked in and sat down in the empty chair.

Mrs. Anderson,” he began, “we’ve been monitoring your homeschool. Apparently,you have been living two lives. In one life, you’re Katherine A. Anderson,homeschooling mother and wife in a respectable community. You have a homeschool curriculum. You have a schoolroom. You volunteer . . . to help out with your homeschool support group. The other life, Mrs. Anderson, is lived in your pajamas. Your kids are unable to complete their assignments, and if you can get them bathed and dressed before your husband returns from work, you consider it a good day. One of these lives has a future, Mrs. Anderson. The other does not….”

Read the rest…
Escaping the Homeschool Matrix

March 7, 2009 17 comments

homeschooling motherhood/family/parenting public school

Gatto: State Controlled Consciousness (Public School)

by Kelly Crawford February 11, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

I think I’ve posted this video before, but it’s worth posting again. If you are hesitant to believe that the original model of public school began with a dangerous agenda, J.T. Gatto details the proof and origin of that agenda.

Interestingly, though his book and this interview took place years ago, we can see all the more clearly the truth of his claims in our current system.

Remember the post the other day about “doing away with traditional family ideals”? This was the very intent from the beginning–“family structure is a hindrance to a Utopian society and children have to be separated from it”.

PLEASE listen, ponder then pass it on–don’t be afraid!

February 11, 2009 35 comments

homeschooling motherhood/family/parenting public school

The New Dumbness–Gatto and Public School

by Kelly Crawford February 11, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

“Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is dumbness.”

I realize it’s quite possible you get tired of my posting about public school. But if you asked me to narrow down our social problems to ONE thing, I would probably owe the bulk, or at least the beginning of it to the mass public school crisis.

Crisis? Yes. As readers have proven before, most people don’t see the public school system as a *bad* thing and certainly not a crisis. This is part of the plan. “They” tell us it’s wonderful and we believe them and send our children there. The frightening results of the terrorist lifestyle begins as they “teach” their small children to think a certain way; so it is here…”whoever controls the children controls the culture”.

(And please don’t take my passion against public school as a personal insult; I have wonderful friends and family with children in the system; I’m not *against you*…the very reason I address it is because I’m FOR you! I ache to see Christians understand the dilemma and begin discipling their children.)

“Old-fashioned dumbness used to be simple ignorance; now it is transformed from ignorance into permanent mathematical categories of relative stupidity like “gifted and talented,” “mainstream,” “special ed.” Categories in which learning is rationed for the good of a system of order. Dumb people are no longer merely ignorant. Now they are indoctrinated, their minds conditioned with substantial doses of commercially prepared disinformation dispensed for tranquilizing purposes.” JTG

With all that’s going on in our nation, it has caused me to reflect even deeper about “how we got here”. There are no easy answers, of course. And no one answer. But I keep going back to the fact that we created a group of people who willinging accepted a socialist agenda. We have just said “yes” to a socialist government.

We–formerly hard-working Americans who built a country from the ground up…who believed the government had very little power beyond enforcing the civil law…who believed in personal responsibility–Americans who worked til we dropped and were willing to die so that our grandchildren could have a free place to live, have, in a few short years, become lazy, selfish, immoral idiots who want everything given to us and have such a perverted sense of government and personal responsibility that we’re paying for it like no other nation ever has. Where suffering was once a bedrock of building character, now the constant attempt to escape any hardship has pushed us to kill our own children!

And as long as I know Christians who still don’t understand the seriousness of what the public school system has to do with this, I will keep talking about it. I know I risk upsetting people; but this is one of those “cliff up ahead” that I cannot keep silent about.

If anything else, read, learn, research. At least be open to consider the arguments that exist.

John Taylor Gatto’s “The Underground History of American Education” is probably the most telling work about the public educational system. A public school educator himself for 30 years, he stands as qualified as any to reveal the system’s destructiveness.

His assertion, in a nutshell, is that we have systematically and purposely mass-produced a nation full of dumb people in order to control them. What do you think?

“The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of] conditions…Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed…years of intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties.”

And just an interesting side note, I’ve heard so many times in an argument against homeschooling that “public school children are given the opportunity to think”…which is directly opposite the observation above.

“A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.” Luke 6:40

And the main reason I keep talking? I don’t believe the damage to our nation is irreversible. I believe when God’s people begin understanding their crucial responsibility to train and disciple their children in godliness, character and love–take them back from the government, we will begin to see a revolution. And THAT is why I keep talking 😉

Excerpts taken from: The New Dumbness from The Underground History of American Education

February 11, 2009 22 comments

homeschooling motherhood/family/parenting public school

Reason 824 to Get Your Kids Out of Public School

by Kelly Crawford February 10, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

“The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that people have the right to sue schools over sexual discrimination….

And I think what it ultimately will mean is –that schools will pass as a reaction to this [will require] homosexual sensitivity training programs. [T]hey’ll call them ‘no bullying’ laws or ‘sensitivity’ or ‘tolerance’ laws, but actually what it will be are laws that will focus on homosexuality,” he contends. “And anybody who says anything that is negative against homosexuality or in support of traditional morality-which, by the way, discriminates against nontraditional immorality — is going to be subject to these particular laws”

Laying all ethical/moral issues aside, (and there is plenty for Christians to discuss) how can the public school really be a place of academic instruction when they are consumed with petty litigation, walking on eggshells to prevent lawsuits that “easy-money” parents will be waiting to jump at?

Schools continue to fail miserably in their basic responsibilities to teach children and instead grow as a social reform institution whose job is to remove any and all preconceived ideas about family, tradition or truth.

Let me repeat what is happening in case you missed it in the quote: the public school system is basically being forced to be neutral (actually it’s biased to the *other* agendas, but they don’t want us to know that) to the extent that talking about the traditional family will, by default, be *discrimination*. Children are being indoctrinated to believe there is no such thing as a family the way societies have always structured them. Family has been redefined as any group of people who live together??? If that.

I recently had a conversation with a new school teacher, fresh out of college in her first year teaching. She said, very condescendingly to me while shaking her head “no”, “Kelly, the family is dead…it doesn’t exist anymore”. This is what they’re telling the teachers, and that is the message being perpetuated to a new generation.

I’m not even tip-toeing anymore…Christians, get your kids out of public school.

Public Schools are Tolerance Training

“Public school is a place of detention for children placed in the care of teachers who are afraid of the principal, principals who are afraid of the school board, school boards who are afraid of the parents, parents who are afraid of the children, and children who are afraid of nobody.”
-Anonymous

February 10, 2009 10 comments

dating/courtship homeschooling

My Story: What the Locusts Have Eaten

by Kelly Crawford January 29, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

“Grace, Grace, God’s grace….grace that is greater than all my sin.”

Twenty-one years old, still rebellious and lost.

Upon several requests, I thought I would tell our story about our journey into homeschooling and other related issues. As I’ve mentioned before, I first heard of a real homeschooling family when we moved to our current home and a neighbor homeschooled their four children. They were wonderful people, but even then, in my “wise” teen years, I thought I knew everything, including the fact that these people were ruining their children.

Fast forward:

I lived a total life of rebellion starting as soon as my parents placed me in public school in the 8th grade (upon my firm insistence), the place where I assured them, with all the power of of my strong will, I was going to “evangelize.”

I was quickly desensitized to the garbage around me, and 13 years of my Christian upbringing was laid quietly on the shelf.

Looks can be deceiving. I was a smiling Homecoming Queen on the outside, and an angry, broken, compromised child on the inside.

I dated regularly in high school, hanging out at friends’ houses with boys before my parents would actually let me go out, and getting special permission for an early date to a ballgame a few months short of my 15th birthday. That’s the day I lost my virginity.

Engaged before I graduated high school, then going through 3 or 4 more serious break ups that felt like small divorces, I entered the party scene mid-college, and found myself pregnant at 20 by a man-boy who didn’t bargain for a family.

Raising a baby as a single young woman, I managed to work and graduate from college a fairly stark feminist.

I graduated magna cum laude and learned very little except that life is all about me.

By God’s grace, I met a wonderful man (we were both working at a restaurant), actually while I was engaged to another employee there (and when I say God’s grace, you have no idea what he saved me from, and the kinds of guys I almost married several times before meeting my husband). Both my husband and I were saved, or for me “returned” to my faith shortly before we married. I had a 4-year old little girl and a whole lot of baggage from my past. But we were walking in the right direction and I cannot express enough how I believe God was working in our lives.

I got a job teaching high school English about a year after we were married, and we enrolled my daughter–for free–into a Christian, private school. The only nagging problem was that I would have a 5-month old son by the time school started. But, everyone else dealt with it, and so would I.

To be honest, I can’t remember the exact sequence of events that started our train of thought toward homeschooling. I do know that for both of us, we were highly concerned with helping our children avoid the dating pitfalls we had fallen into, and we began a chain-reaction of thinking concerning that one issue.

“If that lifestyle is normal to them, we will never convince them of anything else.” (I had attended a wedding of the homeschool children we knew who had never recreationally dated and it had a deep impression on me.)

At the same time, we were dealing with major behavioral problems with my son, and we felt, deep down, that it was his sporadic schedule and not enough time from me.

We decided to talk to a few people we knew who were homeschooling (we still thought they were all a little weird, and a friend loaned us “The Basic Homeschooling Workshop” by Greg Harris.

That message was a major turning point in our decision. We both simultaneously felt homeschooling would be the right thing to do, as scary as it felt.

At the same time, the Lord was moving my heart closer and closer to home, and making me more miserable every time I had to leave my son behind.

I remember walking down to my boss’ office one day crying. “I can’t do this anymore.” My husband asked me to finish out the year, but we knew after that we were an official homeschooling family.

What’s interesting is that it didn’t make sense for me to quit work financially, but we truly didn’t think much about it. Once you know something to be right in your heart, you push through the fire to do it!

Little did I know that the leap of faith to literally slash our already too-little income would work out to my having my dream job (other than the dream of being at home with my family)–writing, speaking, encouraging women and running a business from home!

Of course, once you take a step in that direction, it kind of snowballs from there, and more and more light is revealed. We delve deeper into the idea of rejecting the recreational model of dating and it totally met our spirits with peace.

A little farther down the road the idea that children are a gift kept pressing on our hearts and we couldn’t shake it. Eleven children later, I’m glad.

Looking back, I can’t imagine anything else. I can hardly imagine the way my life used to be. The relationships we have forged with our children from our lives being intertwined daily is irreplaceable. Academically, they are leaps and bounds ahead of where I was. I am being educated all over again.

When I consider all the joy our later-born children are, and how we could have so easily refused them, I become more and more thankful that the Lord turned our hearts.

When I see my daughter glow as she talks of the excitement she anticipates as she gives all of her heart to her husband one day, I can hardly believe the Lord has been so gracious to spare her from the diametrically opposite attitude I had toward boys. (Update: she did give all her heart to that husband and is head over heels in love.) By her age, I was neck deep in marriage-like relationships with boys who now are complete strangers to me.

Spiritually, we have the opportunity to teach our children the things of God as we walk by the way, lie down at night, when we rise up, and sitting in the house. That alone would be enough to do it all over again.

We have so much to learn still! We’re just very ordinary parents with all sorts of shortcomings, problems and things to work through. But one of my passions in life is to share this incredible experience with as many other parents as possible, extending hope to Christian families that they don’t have to give their children up to the destructive vices of the world.

“There is a way that seems right unto man, but the end are the ways of death.”

But “faithful is He who called you, who also will do it!”

To answer the question of talking to husbands about homeschooling, I am an advocate of sharing your heart and sharing any information you can find that would inform your husband in a positive way. Godly submission does not exclude sharing your heart, stating your concerns and beliefs. There are great books, on-line resources and audio messages that can have a huge impact and cause someone to think about things in a very different light.

As I mentioned, Greg Harris’ series was great; very balanced and informative, and convincing.

And most of all, fervent prayer that God would move his heart and direct him.

January 29, 2009 39 comments

homeschooling

Homeschooling Idea: English/Grammar

by Kelly Crawford January 28, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

(I thought I had mentioned this on Generation Cedar, but I guess it was on another blog.)

A creative idea I wanted to pass along to fellow-homeschoolers includes blogging. My daughter, Bria, loves to write and loves photography–especially taking photos of nature. As both an inspiration and practical experience, we allowed her to start a photo/science blog of sorts.

She does a wonderful job and gets so excited over the posts! The beautiful thing about this arrangement is that having a public forum pushes her to research and find interesting content to blog about. She is learning so much from it as she pores over science books and different resources.

I look over her posts and though I don’t correct everything, I try to point out areas she needs to improve on, and make her aware of general grammar and syntax rules. This is basically her English class this year, and it seems to be a great project. (Sometimes she has a hard time sticking to Science, but she does pretty well.)

In addition to the blog benefiting her, we were hoping it would also provide an interesting and educational resource for other homeschoolers. So be sure to let your children check out Candid Creation.

And you may consider doing something similar for the writers in your family!

January 28, 2009 8 comments

homeschooling

Missing: A Real Education

by Kelly Crawford January 28, 2009

written by Kelly Crawford

I love to revisit the topic of “real education” because I think there is such a dearth of it in our day. And while I wrote more on this topic in the ebook “Think Outside the Classroom”, we read an article this morning that really inspired me again.

Whether you are a Lincoln fan or not, it is worthy noting his “unusual” education, at least compared to our day, and contrast it to the vast dumbing down of our current educational system.

Lincoln had one year of “formal” schooling which was called “blab” school. Basically, a room of children recited the alphabet, Scripture, and multiplication tables out loud. There were no books but the Bible, and they stood in line to read from it.

After that, his learning was self-directed. He read. He copied what he read. He rehearsed and ruminated on what he read. He hung on every word of the aged visitors that came to his house. That was basically it. He didn’t have an “expert” feeding him from a text book.

Too simple?

Yes, for those of us brainwashed to believe an education must involve heavy expense and labor-intensive programs. (They tell us more money = better education…has anyone seen proof of this?)

Ironically, Lincoln’s insatiable desire appears to hinge largely on the fact there was so little available to him.

Listen to this author’s observation:

“Perhaps the defining element of this paradigm [reading aloud, copying and memorizing] rests in the literature that formed the young boy’s palate and fired his insatiable appetite for learning. These were NOT textbooks, nor ordinary works, but rather texts that comprise part of the canon of Western literature. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated when juxtaposed against a contemporary culture so rife with mediocrity.” (Emphasis mine.)

Lincoln, and many other great scholars, were not fed a steady diet of “See Jane Run”. They were immersed, at very early ages, into rich works of literature, the greatest of which was the Word of God.

(Remember where the beginning of wisdom is found?)

Other great works that became the foundation of his learning: Shakespeare’s plays, Robinson Crusoe, Aesop’s Fables, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and Life of Washington.

Could it be that those in ultimate control of our educational system know the danger of self-learning, and realize it would have disastrous effects on their goal to mass generate “lemmings”? (Did I just say that?)

Little angers me more than to hear educational elites talk about the “damage” done to children who are taught a biblical worldview. Every sage of the past was taught a biblical worldview, and there is hardly to be found his equal among “scholars” of our day. Don’t feed me a lie that won’t stand against clear evidence.

May we all relax and trust the proof of real education. God was right, yet again.

“But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law does he meditate day and night.”

January 28, 2009 12 comments

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