I Was Home Schooled:

Confessions of a Slightly Freakish Citizen

Part I: Introductory Remarks, Followed by a Very Important Question

Since completing my term of formal education in 2008 (and declining, subsequently, to journey on to college), I can no longer officially label myself as a “student”. But, like most Americans these days, I used to be one; and like most kids, some of the commonest questions I fielded from adults had to do with what grade I was in, and where I went to school. For me, the answer to the first question was generally, “Umm. . .”; and to the second, “Oh, I’m home schooled” (which served, incidentally, to explain the ambiguity of the first). I remember, in my smaller days, a general air of perplexity and concern emanating from the recipients of these abnormal responses to their commonplace questions. “You’re what?” was the standard comeback. Over the years, however, as the home schooling movement has stretched its tentacles throughout the land, people have become more accustomed to the idea. They respond to it with less startled confusion, sometimes even asking some follow-up questions. Do you like being home schooled? What is it like? Is your mom a teacher? Where do you get your books? Do you get recess?

What I find a little surprising is how few people have asked what seems like the most obvious and fundamental question of all: Why do you home school?

Why? As annoying as they can sometimes be, the majority of two year olds actually have the right idea about this question. Essentially: never stop asking it. Given sufficient humility to probe honestly for true answers, this little inquisition can prove incomparably valuable in discovering where our hearts are and what’s really important to us.

Quite often there are layers on layers of motives behind any given action, all peeling back ultimately to reveal whether God or some other god is at the center of our lives. Why are you eating lunch? Probably because you’re hungry, which is uncomfortable. But to what end to you desire comfort? You’re probably also eating because if you continued not to for long enough, you’d eventually starve to death. But to what end do you desire life? Are pleasure and existence ends unto themselves, or are they means by which we seek something higher? Service, perhaps – but service to what, to whom? What do you live for? If you poke and prod at them enough, I think you’ll find that, though there initially appear to be countless options from which to choose your master (family, community, country, church, sports, science, the arts, education, and so on, ad nauseum), there are actually only two choices – one of which wears these myriad disguises. You’re either serving yourself (and therefore, indirectly, the devil), or your Creator. And since God is the source of all truth . . . I think we all know which is the conniving weasel with all the masks.

All these words, and I have yet to even touch on the subject of education in general, home schooling in particular. But I wanted to preface this subject, with its slight-to-middling potential for controversy, with the suggestion that, for the Christian, there are few questions more important than this:

Why am I doing this?

So the grand summarizing finale of this introductory note is: I’ll be back with more. In the meantime, tell me what you think – about this, about education, about anything. If there are questions you’d like me to attempt to answer, points you think I should make (or have already missed), or objections you’d like to see addressed, please don’t be shy. These ramblings illustrate my convictions, but I’d love to hear yours too, whether you agree with me or not.

I think, though, that before I continue down this path, I’d better take a commercial break and post a review of the movie “I Am Legend” that I keep telling my pastor I’m going to write. Is that weird? . . . Perhaps. . . but so am I. I was home schooled; what can I say?

jonah

Not particularly pleased with life, but I cleaned out the garage today, and there was this tomato cage - chicken wire wrapped in clear plastic. It belonged in a different building, so I took it there. Funny how things strike you sometimes. The quonset is dirty and full of all manner of mismatched junk. Beautiful? I don't think so. But when I got to the open doorway I stopped, because it was. There was something strangely massive and ethereal about it, like a dream, or a painting of a dream. The quiet silver light of an overcast sky filtered in through the hole-ridden roof, gentle on the old wood, beaten as it was by weather and worn by time, burdened with memories it could not share. Two long wooden ladders leaning against the back wall swept up with startling age and grace, and a pile of wire and plastic cages - like the one forgotten in my hands - lay at their feet, out of place, almost other-worldly. Like a nest of queer transparent eggs, like insects of colorless iridescence caught sleeping, like something I ought not to have disturbed. What is this world we inhabit? The ribs of the building arched up to a point, rib after rib after rib, like the inside of a whale. Like Jonah's whale, or fish, if it was a fish. I thought of Jonah. Was I like him? Was I angry about the fruit of my reluctant obedience? Or where it grew? Or how slowly? Would I dare? I might . . . oh, foolish girl.