I have a little time right now, so I'll see if I can add to my latest post. To review, I was beginning to compare and contrast public, private and home-school. Here are some of the listed pros and cons for public school that I previously listed, and I will go on from there.
Public school....
Arguments for it include:
1. It's a good financial decision. Going into debt to pay for your child's elementary school doesn't seem like good stewardship (which we are Biblical called to have). Public education is "free" and may give the mom time for a part-time job while the kids are in school to supplement their income without taking time from the kids.
2. The mother and/or father are not good teachers or would be miserable or terribly stressed trying to teach. The kids would get a better education at public school and their parents might be more emotionally stable after having a little break.
3. It's a great opportunity to teach children to apply what they learned in church in witnessing to their unsaved friends. The public schools are huge mission fields and we can send little missionaries there free.
Arguments against it include:
1. World-view matters in every subject. If we want them to truly think like Christians we must educate them as Christians in all areas of life.
2. Negative peer pressure can draw them away and cause them to abandon their faith, or at least get caught up in sin for long periods of time.
3. Standards are dropping, and children will not get a really good education in most public schools.
Private Schools....
Before I list pros and cons of this specific choice, I should perhaps again talk about what I am familiar with. The private school I teach at is a classical, Christ-centered school. I have seen "Christian" schools that are poor examples of Christianity, as well as being equally terrible academically. Such schools are unfortunate. Those are two faults that my school strives to avoid, with what I think is a great deal of success. Again, we will try to consider the "ideal" private Christian school.
Arguments for private schools:
1. Good for training students in a Christian world-view. Ideally the students who graduate would be able to understand all subjects in light of Christ and His word, and would be able to impact their culture better because they understand how Christianity differs from the culture.
2. Higher educational standards combined with more classical techniques can help students achieve excellence.
3. Students are daily encouraged to grow in Christ by teachers as well as other students. The positive peer pressure can have a great impact on their lives.
Arguments against them:
1. Can be very expensive. If parents do not have the resources to pay for it, it can be financially irresponsible.
2. Can produce prideful and arrogant students who know too much and love too little.
3. We as Christians are called to make disciples of the nations, and there is no age limit on that call. By taking Christian children out of a public environment we are arguably denying them the opportunity of contributing to the accomplishment of the Great Commission.
Arguments for and against home school are generally pretty similar to those for and against private schools, so I will only list a couple additional points.
For Home school:
1. Parents are responsible for the training of their children as they are the only ones actually commanded to train their children. They can still train them if they are not home schooled, but they will definitely have more control over the teaching and training of their children by homeschooling them than they would in either private or public schools.
Against Home school:
1. There is not enough social interaction and home schooled children will no be able to properly relate to their peers. It is argued that home school does not properly prepare children for what they will face in "real life."
2. This could take a considerable toll on the time and the energy of the mother. Not all mothers are up to this.
3. The education that the father and mother are able to provide could be inferior to that provided by a school. For example, if parents who struggled in algebra attempt to teach it to their children, well, chances are good the children won't understand it either.
That's what I have for arguments off the top of my head -- the most common and most reasonable ones I have heard. (Feel free to leave comments with any other reasoning you've heard.) I can see the point of many of them, and I can give a response to many. Its the ones that seem to be contradictory and yet both good points that I have the problem with.
As this post is rather long already, I'll post it now and in the next post start going through some of my responses to the aforementioned reasons.
Oh, and Happy New Year!
7 comments:
It may be a decision to be prayerfully made for each individual child, depending on their spiritual maturity & other factors. Though homeschooling would be my 1st choice for at least the younger years, so I can invest extra time into my children's character & spiritual formation...
I heard someone say recently that "There are kids in public school who shouldn't be; and there are kids in private school who shouldn't be." Every person is different - this parent sends one kid to the public high school and one to a Christian school. I'm leaning away from any broad generalization that says every Christian must go to public or private or home school.
I was homeschooled until 6th grade, then I was in public school until I came to Petra, and I can definitely say that Petra was the best experience of the three. But they each had their pros and cons.
When I was homeschooled, I was free to make most of my own decisions, and therefore I developed a very independent way of thinking and living. I was hardly ever forced to learn something before I was ready, which worked great for me, but I know it wouldn't work for everyone. I think I would have struggled a lot if I had gone to school at a younger age for this reason.
In public school I learned that I was just as smart as everyone else, and I gained the confidence I needed to do well. The only trouble I had with socialising was that I have always had a hard time getting on with kids my own age. I would always gravitate towards older people, and I still do. I also turned a little snobbish because I thought I knew more than everyone else.
Petra made me realize that there are other kids out there who know much more than I do, and I was forced to work harder to keep up with them. My teachers at Petra were amazing....I miss them most of all. The one thing I have against private school is that it does tend to take the fun out of things, such as reading. After I graduated, I didn't really enjoy reading for about five months. It deadened me.
Why do you think that private school deadens the fun? I still haven't figured it out; but I also read less and less for fun after Petra. I use to be voracious, now I barely get through a book every two months.
(I hope you selected to email follow-up comments, or it could be a while before you see this :)
I personally question the validity of having government education at all. As far as I know it's not very constitutional, and debate of issues is rarely encouraged. If, instead, the church stepped forward either to run more private schools or to place more Christian teachers in public schools, that would be more effective. Religious restrictions would have to be lessened in the public schools, therefore making it easier for kids to be "lights" there without falling away. Or, if there were only private schools, and those mostly Christian, you would have many more non-Christian children in the Christian schools, therefore allowing the kids to minister to their peers without the restrictions of virtually anti-Christian teachers, textbooks, and curriculums. Everything privatized! By the living and active church, of course. Realistic? I believe it is possible.
yeah, so, lots of good thoughts here, and I really do mean to continue posting on this topic...someday. The practical leaves so little time for the theoretical. ;)
Good arguments. I don't think any single solution can be the answer for all children.
That said, when it comes to homeschool I think it's actually MORE effective at preparing children for the 'real world' when done properly. You spend more time with people outside your age group, interest group, and of multiple activities (more natural than only in a herd with those exactly your age doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time). You tend to go with parents on daily chores more - shopping, bank, etc. As long as discussions and explanations take place along the way you're learning everyday life skills all the time. Budgeting, doing math in your head, learning about interest rates and how mortgages and such work, and all kinds of other things.
We also benefited because we could finish a day of school in about 3 hours and then had lots of free time to learn and do all sorts of things. My brother became an amazing mechanic starting at about age 8 by repairing a $5 weedwacker from a yardsale... he wouldn't have had time to putter had he been spending 6 hours a day in school plus transporting too & from.
Having done public, private Christian, and Homeschool myself I surely do have things i like and dislike about all of them. But the 'social' aspects were actually far more positive for me while homeschooled and doing church and 4H activities than they ever were in the formal school settings. Our public school was particularly bad, though...and HORRIBLE in terms of actually educating me...
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