Why
Latter-Day Saints Should Homeschool . . . and how to do it!
#3:
You
Will Have Joy in Your Posterity
Some
mothers weep in the fall. Others rejoice, feeling
liberated when the children go back to school. Marjorie
Hinckley was one who wept:
"[Marjorie]
loved the sound of the screen door slamming shut as children ran in from
the backyard. . . . [she] savored the days she had her five to herself,
and she went to great lengths to keep summers unstructured so her young
ones would have time to lie in the gully and listen to the birds sing if
they wanted to. She wept each fall when it was time to send her
brood back to school; even when school was in session she looked forward
to the moment each day when her children burst through the door and
started scrounging for an afternoon snack. One day when Dick had to
stay after school for some grade-school discipline, Marjorie marched over
to his classroom and announced to his startled teacher, 'You can do
anything you want with this boy all day long, but after 3 p.m. he's
mine.'"
(Glimpses
into The Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley, Virginia Pearce,
p. 53)
As
Latter-day Saints, we place great emphasis on the desirability of a mother
being at home, but what is the point of mother being home if the children
are gone? Mothers who weep in the fall are lonely.
They do the housekeeping by themselves while someone else bonds
with their children. They miss the laughter and the
energy of their children. They miss the companionship,
the conversation, and the opportunity to teach and serve those they love.
No wonder life outside of the home looks so attractive.
In
our cultural rush for earlier and earlier schooling I wonder why we give
so little concern to what damage is done to mother and child by the
separation. We do recognize the loss to the mom whose child says his first
word or takes his first steps in the day care center, but we seldom
realize that when the separation continues into the school years the
losses continue as well. Few moms have ever even
thought of reserving for themselves the joy of teaching their own children
to read or of working out math problems with them with pennies and
popsicle sticks. Few have experienced the joy of
reading aloud from a great book until they are hoarse. Few
have experienced the joy of studying scriptures with their children during
the best hours of the morning, when the children are awake and there is no
hurry to catch the bus.
In
an Open House connected to the April 2007 General Conference, Sister Susan
Tanner, the Young Women general president, spoke of a family that
struggled for time together. The mother said "We
also found that one of our teenage daughters wasn't coming to family
scripture study and this was something that was important and a focus to
us, so we ended up having family scripture study in the bathroom around
the mirror while this daughter was getting ready."
How
has it come to this? Scripture study in the bathroom is
a noble act on the part of the family, but it's a horrible condemnation of
our culture.
If
there were a clever devil somewhere who wanted to destroy families, he
could hardly come up with a better plan than long school days beginning in
the early morning and extended into the evening with soccer practice and
homework. Add to that a drift toward socialism that
requires so much of the family income to be "redistributed" that
many mothers must work for basic necessities. Then add
the wash of immorality that seeps right into our homes and turns our
values upside down. Yes, there must be a clever devil
out there somewhere.
Sometimes
mothers who rejoice in the fall fear having their children home more
because they assume that the stress they already have will just extend to
more hours of stress. One mother was feeling very
frustrated on a school holiday when her children were home for the day.
They were hanging all over her, not knowing what to do with
themselves. "How can you stand to be with your children all
day?" she asked me. She could see only misery.
She didn't realize that her children were used to having their
activities passed out to them and waiting for the teacher to tell them
what to do and how to do it. She couldn't understand
that I could spend a couple of hours in the morning studying with my
children, that they could then do some learning by themselves, and that
after that they had plenty of creative projects of their own to keep
themselves challenged. She couldn't visualize the joy
of a family set free from outside domination.
Our
family began homeschooling in 1975 when our oldest daughter was in fourth
grade. It was a rich and full life for our eight
children and a foster daughter who joined us in her teens. We
were free to come and go by our own calendar, and we often went places
when everyone else was in school. Mostly we stayed home
where our children were free to "lie in the gully," or read all
afternoon. Our children were creative and capable and
kept the love of learning they brought with them from their life with
Heavenly parents.
After
our morning studies (it takes less time at home), creativity lessons
began. Our sons built and rebuilt bicycles, took
anything with a motor apart and made something else from it, and watched
hours of education TV at their bedroom workbenches. They
rode their four-wheelers in the foothills by our home and helped the local
farmers with the cherry harvest.
Our
daughters played dolls in their indoor playhouse, and dressed up.
They danced to Seven Brides and other movies on video. With
an old cash register, rubber stamps and inkpads, and a good supply of
blank forms and old checks they played store, bank, library, and
restaurant with their neighborhood friends.
Our
children were, and still are, the best of friends, never hesitating to
serve each other in times of need. When I look back on
the happiness of our lifestyle and the opportunities our children had
because of their freedom, and when I see many of our grandchildren
enjoying that same happy lifestyle, I wish all mothers could know how much
fun a family can have when the stresses of classroom schooling are gone.
As
a grandma now, my home is different than it would have been because of my
many years of homeschooling. Educational things are
everywhere. The grandchildren gravitate to the library,
the globe, the craft box, the rock collection, the binoculars.
Our homeschool lifestyle has given me a certain energy and mindset,
and I hope that my grandchildren have a certain expectation that grandma's
house is a bit of a fun school.
Sometimes
I am able to help my grandchildren with their educations. Those
in charter school occasionally need help with their homework projects or
with working out a math concept with my powers-of-ten blocks, although
they have few free hours for visiting.
Two
of our homeschooled grandsons sometimes spend a day with us so their
mother can have more time with her special needs child. They
study something with me in the morning, and then they spend the afternoon
with Grandpa. He teaches them electronics or takes them
with him to the tire store or on a bike ride. We
treasure these days.
Recently
we spent a week with our daughter and her family in a distant state.
I brought the grandchildren a notebook of poetry I have collected
over the years. Most were ones their mother and their
aunts and uncles had memorized in their childhood, and they already knew
many of them too.
These
children have thrived in their homeschool, each in his own talents.
We watched the oldest, at 13, play Mary in The Secret Garden
at a local theater. That's a challenging part, but she
was raised in a theatre family and she was great, of course. Her
father had a lead part as well, making it a treasured experience for them.
This girl wants to be a writer, so she reads a lot and writes a
lot. She plans to study writing in college, not theatre
(college theater departments, like most theater, are spiritually dangerous
places).
The
11-year-old loves to read, tolerates math, and he loves to draw. He
can't wait to paint theater scenery. His parents just
received a contract to operate a family-friendly theater in a nearby town,
so he has the opportunity to help his father and his father's partner turn
an empty storefront into a live-stage theater in two weeks' time.
Joseph Smith-like, he is strong for his age and works like a man.
During
our visit we seldom saw the nine-year-old unattached to something
electronic - a computer, a video camera, a TV for the van. As
a two-year-old he used to give his best tantrums on the mall whenever they
passed a Radio Shack store and his mother wouldn't take him in.
This talented boy would be miserable in a classroom.
We
had brought a Utah granddaughter along with us for this visit.
The two girls have always been very close, as are their mothers.
The four children decided to prepare a music and dance program for
us. I was the only adult home at the time of the
practice, and I watched with great joy as they worked together on this
project. I was especially moved by the way they
included the almost-four-year-old little sister. This
sweet little girl has felt nothing but harmony and love from her older
siblings her entire life (at least that's all I ever saw in an entire
week). She is also learning the alphabet, so I had fun helping her
with that.
Our
daughter, as a second generation homeschooler, has great confidence in her
homeschooling. Though she has the occasional fears all moms have,
she has confidence in her abilities as a mom and in her children's
likelihood of success. Her testimony is firm.
(Maybe it takes that long to feel confident.) Her husband,
like most dads, had been opposed to the idea at first, but one evening
during our visit, after the children had performed their program for us,
the conversation turned to family. He spoke with great
tenderness about the blessings homeschooling has brought them and the
camaraderie he feels in his family.
Please
understand that we are not saying that homeschool families are somehow
better or more righteous than other families; what we are saying is that the
religiously-based homeschool family education model can give a family a
great advantage. There are successes and failures
in any educational model, and much depends on our parenting skills and the
personalities of the children we are sent; nevertheless, the family that
has severely limited time together and whose children are enveloped in
unwholesome peer influences and atheistic, toxic school environments must
spend a lot of it's time just fighting off enemies. The
homeschool model simply cuts off many of the enemies that destroy children
and suck the time and the happiness from family life.
We
are not forced to accept an educational model that is not healthy for our
family; we are free -- and obligated -- to design our own family
educational model from all the options available, one that will take us to
a Zion society and bring us happiness along the way, one in which our
children will thrive and our home will be a place of peace and joy.
If
you can't homeschool full time, maybe you can find a way to lift some of
the burden from both your children and yourselves to provide a little more
family time. The third reason for homeschooling is to
have more time with your children and to spend that time in significant,
happy ways -- to have joy in your posterity!
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©
2007 Joyce Kinmont
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