By Kirk Smith
Executive Director of ICHE
As our children near high school age, we begin to think, “What about trigonometry? What about calculus? What about chemistry? What about accounting and statistics?” We need to remember what 1 Thessalonians 5:24 says. “Faithful is He who called you (to homeschooling), He will help you do it.” As followers of God, we are not to be motivated by fear (2 Timothy 1:7), but by faith. Let God surprise you with the opportunities which He can open up for our high school and college age children when we look to Him as the Author and Finisher of our children’s salvation and education rather than capitulating to worldly thinking and automatically defaulting to a purely humanist education.
Home discipleship is the biblical normative for child-rearing, and there is no place in Scripture that suggests once our children hit high school, we should turn them over to a system that is totally secular and therefore pagan. As a matter of fact, some would argue it’s the absolute worst time to do so. Our children are going through so many changes spiritually, emotionally, and physically. While the parent/child relationship is necessarily evolving, this doesn’t mean we fully release our children during this wild and wonderful season of life. If you have ever shot a bow and arrow, you quickly realize that even though you show meticulous effort in taking your initial aim, if you jerk during the release, the arrow flies as errant as if you never aimed in the first place. How we release our children into adulthood needs to be on purpose, not default … with tender oversight, not abdication.
When homeschooling parents put their high school children in public school for purely academic reasons, they put their children at an increased spiritual risk. The Bible clearly states that a student, when fully trained, will be no better than his teacher (Luke 6:40) and that we shouldn’t be deceived; bad company will corrupt good manners (1 Corinthians 15:33). No matter what justification we want to submit to our consciences, we must not fall into the deceptive trap of pragmatic thinking. We must remember that everyone…EVERYONE…has gaps in his or her education. As parents, we must know what gaps we can live with and what gaps we can live without or can catch up on quickly, later. The one gap we Christian parents can’t tolerate in our children’s education is a spiritual gap. Shall they gain the whole world but lose their soul?
The Lord can bring along the right curriculum aids to help in those challenging academic areas. There may be someone in your local church who would love to invest in your child’s educational needs. There may be a godly peer who would be thrilled at the opportunity to help share from an area of personal strength. We must also ask, “How much of this particular subject matter does my child really need?” If your son wants to be a structural engineer, he probably won’t need a lot of botany, but he will need geometry and trigonometry. If your daughter really has a heart to be a stay-at-home mom, she needs to have a good grasp of consumer math, but probably won’t need calculus. Just don’t let your apprehensions put God in a box. Time and again He fed and watered three million people in their wilderness journey; He has an endless supply. May we trust a God of inexhaustible means to supply a way in the wilderness and a stream in the desert as our children enter the glorious high school years.