This is Part 3 in a series.
This post, Part 3 of Off to a Home Ed Start, concludes the answering of our 3 questions – in reverse order. Part 4 will summarize, in proper order, “How do I start homeschooling?”
The following offers a good place to start answering this “Question #3”, that is really the first question to answer. The first part of “What else do I need to know to begin homeschooling?” should really start to be answered by asking, “WHY should you teach your children at home?” These books, available from Me and My House ministries, answer that question. I see 3 primary categories of reasons – Biblical, academic, and social. These books explain them well.
**”Excused Absence: Should Christian Kids Leave Public Schools?” by Douglas Wilson – is the most recent of these books, and perhaps the hardest hitting from a Biblical standpoint. As Marlin Detweiler from Veritas Press put it, “In this tiny volume, Doug Wilson makes the case for Christian education so strongly that, aside from willful disobedience to God’s Word, Christian parents have no reason to continue educating their children in officially agnostic public schools.” The case Mr. Wilson presents is not specifically for home education but for strong “distinctively Christian schools or home schools.” If you are looking for a “soft, nice, relativistic, make you feel good about doing whatever” book, this is NOT it.
**”Homeschooling: the Right Choice” by Christopher Klicka – of the Home School Legal Defense Association has been revised and updated for the 21st Century. Mr. Klicka points out the failure of public education in 3 critical areas – academic, moral, and philosophical, as well as the “rising hope of home schooling”.
**”Let Us Highly Resolve” by David Quine – (listed in Part 2) not specifically about “leaving public schools”, but rather about resolving to equip our children to live strong Christian lives in the 21st Century.
Gregg Harris’s **”Basic Homeschooling Workshop” tapes and **”Advanced Homeschooling Workshop” tapes were the introduction that “sold us” on not just removing our children from the negative influence of public schools, but to being sold out on HOME education. Mr. Harris’s book **”The Christian Home School” is also available.
**”Government Nannies: The Cradle-to-Grave Agenda of Goals 2000 & Outcome Based Education” by Cathy Duffy – more on the agenda of the NEA and government schools.
Marshall Foster’s, and other previously mentioned recommended authors and resources also contain much information that helps answer this question.
A few other books (that are not available through us) that may also be helpful. “Why So Many Christians are Going Home to School” by Ellyn Davis – is an easy, quick read on some of the problems of institutionalized learning. It was the first book of this kind we read, and although we had deep convictions for home educating, it pointed out many reasons we hadn’t thought of.
“Is Public Education Necessary?” by Samuel Blumenfeld – presents the myths that nearly all of us have/had bought about public education and its history. Probably the grand-daddy of them all.
“Who Owns the Children” by Blair Adams and Joel Stein – is another excellent book dispelling those myths that it is in our children’s best interest (and the state’s responsibility and right) for the state to educate our children. Long and detailed.
“Dumbing Us Down” by John Taylor Gatto (Also the “Underground History of American Education”) – an “insider” of public education, award winning teacher who left the system and now exposes and speaks out against it. Long, detailed book.
There are many other excellent books on this topic, many of them from the early days of the modern home education movement, that forged the way and provided the foundation for us, of those homeschool pioneers we are all indebted to. A few of those titles, that are worthy inclusions if you are studying the history of government/public education and the rise of Christian home education are:
“Child Abuse in the Classroom” by Phyllis Schaffly
“The Bible, Homeschooling, and the Law” by Karl Reed
“The Day they Padlocked the Church” by H. Edward Rowe
I could go on and on, but I’m writing an article not a book. For one more article on “Why Homeschool?” read our back post entitled:
“thoughts on public school”, Sept. 21, 2002.
Go to Part 4.
