Homeschool Is Not Anti-School

The goal of good homeschooling and good brick-and-mortar traditional school should be the same: the effective education of its students.

As human beings, we are sinful and imperfect. We can end up corrupting our true goals, cutting corners in the process, or even hurting the people we are supposed to help. I am a proud product of homeschooling. I am a primary administrator for a homeschool provider. But I have also been a classroom teacher. I have also witnessed the fulfillment and purpose to be found in the traditional school setting.

So very often, homeschooling families who are being unfairly vilified for their choice to homeschool can become defensive. I see all over social media people who are complaining about school in general (whether it's the schedule, or the teachers, or the classmates). Sometimes, the complaints are reasonable and true. They are reflections of imperfect people in an imperfect system. I am never the perfect teacher either, no matter how hard I may strive to be. Sometimes, however, the complaints that show up on my social media feeds feel more resentful and unreasonable than they are helpful.

Homeschooling done right has innumerable benefits.

Traditional school done right has innumerable benefits.

As someone who has benefited from both my parents and my school teachers, as someone who has been a teacher to both homeschooled and traditional schooled children, I embrace both.

They are not antithetical.

The unfairness can work both ways. Families who believe in their choice to homeschool can easily fall into the trap of accusing everything about school as bad. At the same time, individuals who do not prefer homeschooling can sometimes unfairly blame anything imperfect about a child on the fact that he's homeschooled.

Neither are true. Neither are fair.

Homeschooling in and of itself is not a magic potion. Just like traditional school, there are good days and bad days. There are easy subjects and hard subjects. There are challenges, and there are rewards.

Many of my dearest family and friends choose the challenges and rewards of homeschooling, and I am here to cheer them on and do whatever I can to support them. If the Lord allows my husband and me to have children of our own one day, we also hope to use homeschooling to educate them.

But I also know families whose children are being benefited by the traditional school set-up. Maybe, at some point, the topics truly are too hard, and the family believe it's best for the children to learn from professionals in a school setting. Maybe their parents wish to educate in a more hands-on way but are unable or unavailable because of other responsibilities.

Homeschoolers don't like their choice being dismissed or considered inferior.

They have every right to feel that way.

But may all of us who are involved in the homeschooling world be equally fair to our brethren who choose traditional education for their children, either for a season or for life.

Neither is exclusively superior over the other. The Lord can use both for His glory!

Full Circle: Journey of a Homeschooled Child

Being the homeschooled kid of our church has been part of my identity for as long as I can remember. By the time my brothers came along four and ten years respectively after me, people had gotten used to the idea. Me? I was a novelty item.

“So what do you do all day?”

“So do you have, like, no friends?”

“Does your mom know everything?”

Those were just a few of the questions regularly thrown my way by fascinated strangers and family friends. For a practice that’s been around far longer than Father Abraham, homeschooling sure seems mysterious to many.

Primarily due to that mystery, my mother—juggling duties of homemaker, homeschool mom, and pastor’s wife for the past 24 years—has long accumulated a mental list of homeschooling benefits, ready to advocate her family’s choices at a moment’s notice. From time to time, people would visit us to inquire about or copy from my parents’ practices, eager to understand what homeschooling in the Philippines entails.

In the midst of all that, I remained blissfully oblivious. As far as I was concerned, I followed whatever schedule my parents set for me from day to day, learning all sorts of fun and exciting things along the way. While my friends in church were complaining about projects, traffic, and annoying boy stalkers, I was enjoying myself with trips to grandma’s house, activities in church, playtime with my brothers, and even off-season vacations to various destinations.

Life wasn’t about living in starchy uniforms and stuffy classrooms. It wasn’t about enduring one more boring class after another.

Life was real.

Life was about learning to run a household, from meal planning to sewing up my broken stuffed toys. Life was about making friends with little babies all the way to old grandmas in our church. Life was about reading, endless reading, of books that acquainted me with the whole wide world before the Internet was a way of life. By the time high school came around, life became a time for blogging and writing and reaching out to various communities

And life didn’t stop with home and church. It got bigger.

By God’s grace, I moved on to different chapters of life. I completed my college degree in Florida, U.S.A. I became a high school teacher in MGC New Life Christian Academy, a school whose administration and students I still love to no end. I dated and married my wonderful husband. Life was real and blessed and happy.

Then God called me back to my roots.

Last year, the Lord led our church to make the decision of establishing a homeschool academy—a school that would provide multilingual, biblical curriculum and guidance for homeschooling families. The need is present, and someone has to answer the call.

So here I am, administrator of Kairos Homeschool Academy.

Am I nervous? Yes.

Am I excited? Yes, yes.

Am I perfect at this? Not a chance.

But more than anything, I believe with my whole heart that the Lord’s grace is ever sufficient. It is the heart of every person involved in Kairos to build up a school that will bless, guide, and enable the next generation of parents who, like mine, want to bring up their children in a godly home.

I never saw it coming, even if others did.

Being a homeschooled child established the essence of who I am. It’s not a perfect system; there are no perfect systems. But my parents’ efforts and sacrifices in homeschooling have equipped me and my brothers with the love and skills we possess today, each of us still following God’s leading one step at a time.

And by His grace, Kairos will be making the reality I so enjoyed as a child into a reality for many, many more children to come.

Kairos Homeschool Academy