A Discussion About Freedom

This is my first official "homeschooling" post. By the way, after I've blogged a billion little posts, and you want to go back and review your favourite one, look at the BOTTOM of this blog. I'm starting to organize them by category. Hopefully I don't wind up making a million categories and confusing everyone. But the "labels" are at the bottom of the page should you ever need them. I rock, but not enough to figure out how to MOVE the labels to the side of the page...

I just want to talk a little about the freedoms we still do have in our country. I know EVERY homeschooler in America knows about the Busekros family, but for those of you who might not be aware, homeschooling is ILLEGAL in Germany. As in, they will fine you thousands of dollars and take your children away for psychiatric help. That kind of illegal. If you're not up on this issue, you might want to go look at the HSLDA website and educate yourself if for no other reason than to understand that "it could happen here, too."

Which brings me to the point: Who has the right to decide how to educate our children, and where do those rights come from? I would have to say in my opinion that my children are given to me by God. The responsibility to educate them is mine and my husband's. Therefore I am against any interference in the decisions I make concerning how to educate my children. That means that yes, I am against mandatory schooling. That does NOT mean that I am against any and all public schools at all times and in all places. And it certainly doesn't mean I'm against education!

I guess I had never really sat down to question the educational system to the extent I did until I began homeschooling. It is so refreshing to have my child here at home with me. I'm learning so much from "Elf," my six-year-old, since we began this process together last November. It was so nice to get through the entire Christmas season, knowing that the only things he was being taught as a matter of educational instruction were the facts about Christmas from the Bible. I didn't have to deal with Kwanzaa colouring sheets, the "value" of other religions or have to hear yet again from the staff about how mean it is for my children to "spoil the fun" of other kids who believed in Santa. (Give me a break! If you LIE to your children, and then expect ME to teach MY kids to lie to them as well, you are seriously messed in the head. Get over it.)

I am teaching my son to read from the King James Bible for English. In Science, we've purchased a curriculum detailing the days of creation and what happened on each day. (Did you know that God made the plants BEFORE he made the SUN?? Go look it up!!) We have so many fun experiments to do and we're growing all kinds of plants. We also learned the hard way that not every science experiment worked. We've figured out that sweet potatoes from the grocery store all come to us WAXED, so the science experiment of leaving the potato in water for weeks on end so we could watch it grow was a little, um, smelly before we gave up on it. We left that part of our notebook blank!

In short, all the mistakes as well as the triumphs are ours. It's a very big responsibility, and I KNOW there are going to be quite a few "gaps" in Elf's education. But do you know what? It's ok. I'm fine with that. I mean, Patrick is going into the eighth grade and recently I found out the child does NOT know how to use a phone book, or address an envelope. By the way, Patrick is very intelligent and in the gifted program at the public school. He does math about a million times more advanced than I can at present (I'm learning! LOL!), but I suppose envelopes and phone books aren't on the MAP tests. (But that's a whole 'nother blog post!)

I hope everyone reading this appreciates the freedoms we still have in our country. I hope we all guard it wisely and teach our children that we really do live in a special place. May God bless America.

Please use your freedom of speech and leave me a comment! I'd love to see what everyone has to say.