Do Home School Parents Need a College Degree to Be Successful?
Many of your letters have not only been passionate, but touching and poignant. Some of you, perplexed that Mr. Sandlin continues to lecture in home schooling circles, have observed the trend of mean-spiritedness on the part of this cleric which can be traced over the last couple of years to barrage after barrage of uncharitable name-calling, innuendo, misrepresentation, and out-and-out accusation against brothers in Christ. As one mother who did not want to be considered a “birthing machine” observed: sticks and stones will break bones, but names can really hurt a mom.
Nevertheless, the straw men and the mean-spirited name calling continues, something we will examine when we publish a formal and more comprehensive response to this current attack on patriarchy, home schooling, and motherhood by Mr. Sandlin. For now, consider the following claims by Mr. Sandlin:
They counter the idea that Christians should work to recapture such culturally relevant spheres as major media, popular music, theater and ballet, and elite universities with the mantra, “The main thing is to have lots of children and to teach the boys to shoot pigeons and whittle and discover dinosaur bones and girls to make homemade biscuits, crochet blankets, and gather huckleberries.” I’m being somewhat facetious of course, but the resistance to cultural leadership in favor of agrarian domesticity is genuine. (2002 CCL Article as quoted in Buried Treasure Books.
There are many Christians who hold these views, and I don’t want to be mean, but they are wrong. They counter the idea that Christians should work to recapture such culturally relevant spheres as the major media and popular music, and theater and ballet and elite universities with the attitude “Well, you know the main thing is just to have children and to teach boys to shoot pigeons and whittle and to teach girls to make homemade biscuits and crochet blankets and to gather huckleberries.” ... And the real problem is that you would get the impression from these folks is that this is the only godly way. In fact, some teach — I saw this recently, and it frightened me — some teach that if you fathers send your daughters off to college, you are abdicating your responsibility as a dad. In fact, some teach that girls shouldn’t go off to college at all. Heaven forbid that we should have educate women! Heaven forbid! Sad, just stay home and raise chickens and crochet blankets.... And by the way, speaking of our dear ladies, where are we going to get those world trained mothers who want to home school their children? They are going to need some college training. (Sermon given on November 8, 2003 in Corpus Christi, Texas, entitled “Very Pious, Very Bad Ideas.”)
With all due respect, I have been around home educators for the better part of my life, I have personally spoken to well over a quarter of a million home educators as a conference speaker, and I have yet to meet one person who believes daughters should not be educated. I know many Christians who object to training daughters to be men, but none who believe that daughters should not be trained to their full potential, practically and academically, consistent with the vision of biblical womanhood so clearly and constantly communicated in the Word of God. Many fathers and mothers take seriously the biblical mandate to protect and train their daughters until they are “given” in marriage, and are exceedingly wise not to release them to a virtual state of independency in God-hating, pagan-culture-drenched universities for four years. Unfortunately, Mr. Sandlin’s simplistic overview is a polemicist’s caricature, not a thoughtful critique of a position which was the nearly universal view in Christendom for two thousand years.
Secondly, I must honestly ask — where has this California cleric been for the last twenty years? The idea that only college-trained mothers (or fathers) can be successful in their home education is not only offensively elitist, but it is a proposition which has been comprehensively and exhaustively refuted on theological and statistical grounds. This type of bad logic was used against home educators by the National Education Association (NEA), local school superintendents, and others during the early days of the modern home education movement. It was refuted so soundly that one hears little of these types of arguments, except when coming from those who are unfamiliar with home education. Tens of thousands of moms and dads without a college degree, yet with outstanding home school success stories, are proof positive that there is no significant correlation between formal college training and the ability to give a child an outstanding program of academics and discipleship. To learn about the home schooling statistics, may I recommend that you visit the Web site of my friend, Dr. Brian Ray at NHERI.
Finally, may I recommend my two-tape or CD series, Making Wise Decisions about College and Life After Home School, for a presuppositional analysis of the issues and facts which it would be wise to consider when evaluating the who, what, when, where, and why of higher education.