The Homeschooling Gospel.

Homeschooling not being a salvation issue is a popular topic on the blogs of late. You all know that I do have two older boys in public school. The eldest will be a freshman next year and is "gifted," and will probably take several college-level courses before his senior year is out. The 13-year-old is autistic and in special ed. He needs a lot of extra help and his autism is such that the rigidity of the school schedule helps him a lot. And he sure doesn't want to have a meltdown on the floor in front of all his friends. (He saves that love for home! Mmmwwwah!! Thanks, G!)

Dana's posts are usually pretty middle-of-the-road. She's not a rabid Christian, but she doesn't come at things from an entirely secular viewpoint, either. Lately her post on salvation and homeschooling being separate issues has stirred some debate. I think there are some folks who are so extreme in their pro-homeschooling dogma that they can't see anyone, at any time or in any place, putting their child in *any* school and still fulfill God's commandment to teach and train children in a godly manner. Other people think the second you leave the hospital, you ought to sign up for the "visiting nurse" to tide you over for those six weeks before you leave the kiddo in daycare and go on with your life.

Ok, whatever. If I had to do it over again, I'd like to think we'd consider homeschooling the older ones. But then again, we'd have to know a lot "then" that we didn't know when it was "now." And there's no way to translate into "then" the idea that our future child would be mistreated by school officials.

I also couldn't have known when I started homeschooling that it necessarily makes my children little homeschool ambassadors wherever they go. Just yesterday at the checkout, the bagger noticed my son's "homeschooled" shirt and asked him about his day homeschooling.

"Oh," he told her, "we do math and English and stuff like that. And we're learning something that begins with P in social studies... what's that called, Mom??"

"Um... the Preamble of the Constitution?" I ventured.

"Yeah, we're memorizing that and the King James Bible." (Mmm, yup, the WHOLE King James Bible must be memorized this year, too. LOL I was too bemused to correct him.)

"Wow," she said, "I'm 20 and don't know the Preamble! I'm impressed."

Of course, she's impressed only because she didn't see one of my kids write that the Louisiana Purchase is one of our states during our social studies quiz today. But how often have we worn Christian shirts around town and had people ask us to tell them about Jesus? HA! Not very often. How about never? Homeschooling may not be THE gospel, but people are very ready to hear the gospel, or "good news," of homeschooling.