What Is the Main Reason to Homeschool?
Many times, as a veteran home educator, former homeschool support group leader, and a homeschool store owner, I am asked, “Why homeschool?” I can name lots of convincing reasons to educate your children at home (and they are all good); however, if you ask me for my primary reason, I will refer you to this verse:
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Matthew 6:33
To Know and Love the Lord
The primary reason to teach our children at home is to teach them to know and love the Lord. When we started on this journey over 40 years ago, my husband and I knew that this was our primary reason. It was also the same reason for most of the other homeschoolers we knew at the time.
We didn’t have any “proof”. We couldn’t show you any statistics because homeschool graduates were scarce in the eighties. Just finding them to survey would have been tough. But we moved forward because we believed God’s promises about our children are true. We put our trust in Him.
Over the years, we’ve seen that the principal reason to homeschool has gotten fuzzy. Perhaps because it is much easier to homeschool today than it was when we started along with the fact that there are more folks doing it now than there were then. Or perhaps it’s because there are so many more reasons people want to homeschool their children. It seems the movement has lost that sense of urgency—that sense of the calling: To train our children to be focused on righteousness.
Our primary purpose as Christian parents is to pass on our Christian beliefs to our children and lead them to salvation. I came across some rattling information when I read the statistics about the imparting of Christianity to children of Christian parents who were public schooled versus those who homeschooled.
To sum it up: over 90% of children of Christian parents who go to public school WILL NOT be saved when they graduate.
In contrast, over 90% of the children of Christian parents who are home educated WILL BE saved by the time they graduate.
That puts it all in the proper perspective. If there is only a 1 in 10 chance that a child will become a Christian when sent to public school, then is this an acceptable risk? For our family, it wasn’t a risk we wanted to take.
We found God to be faithful to our family in that home education works! You can see proof of that now at the NHERI website. There are now enough homeschool graduates to gather statistics and complete research.
So in answer to the question, “Why homeschool?”, my husband and I want to be sure that each one of our children is a Christian who loves the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that he loves his neighbor as himself.
That’s my reason—all the other reasons just can’t compare, even though they are very valid today.
Blessings,
Harriet Yoder