So I flippantly said that I believed that homeschooling still had the advantage over classical Christian schools and a rude person asked me why ?

I am tempted to answer: because. Or better yet: because I said so.

The last few days I have been pondering why I do truly believe that and I am going to begin to answer the question in this post. I don’t anticipate getting to the heart of the matter in this post but perhaps we can keep it on the table for a while.

I am going to be discussing this issue from my perspective, from the schools I have been around and the criticisms I have heard aimed at homeschooling. In some sense I believe this will deteriorate into a straw man but that can’t be helped. I will be speaking in generalizations because, frankly, if I don’t we won’t get anywhere at all. All picky eaters should now vacate the building.

There are many, many circumstances that would cause me to be very thankful for a local Christian school, classical or otherwise. I will not be discussing those circumstances. If you have made the choice to put your children in an institutional school for one reason or another, I am not here to judge you or condemn you.

It occurs to me that one of the main arguments for starting community schools is that they are efficient. Why have 20 moms teaching Latin when one teacher will do? I personally believe the efficiency argument will not hold up because if we are going to argue for efficiency we will have to start arguing against the classical model altogether. Many classical educators espouse agrarianism because it speaks their language. Efficiency is the destructive god of our day not the key to the hearts and minds of students in the classical model. This very efficiency is what makes the school setting unyielding. Contemplation is lost among the wheels of efficiency.

The truth be told, and I have told it often, almost all classical schools I have been around are just somebody else’s mother teaching the kids. While many classical educators argue against children being with their own moms all day long, they have substituted a system that is vastly inferior. They take women out of their homes and spheres to teach each other’s children in a institutional setting. I think the problem here is that many of the men who start classical schools are visionary. They don’t intend for their school to be run by moms but that is just the way these things pan out. In the meantime they have created a system that is hard to change.

And that leads me to my next point. Home schools are small and adaptable. I can change the focus of the vision for my school tomorrow morning. As soon as a school becomes an institution it loses this ability to change and adapt. Many a classical school administrator is looking out the window wondering how such a lovely model turned into 6 subjects and lunch. Yet, how does he change that? If he changes things too quickly he will lose his financial base which is already paltry, which is why he has so many moms teaching which is…..

As long as the classical model is struggling for definition, home schools will have the advantage.

This leads me to the next point. What is a classical education? I believe a truly classical school would teach Latin, Greek and Mathematics. There would be absolutely no need for this sort of school before 5th grade at least. The classical schools with which I am familiar are still busy teaching numerous subjects all day long. Give me a school teaching only Latin, Greek and Mathematics before lunch each day and working on a farm operation after lunch and I would be tempted to enroll my sons. As it is the only way I have for my sons to learn hard work out in the weather is to keep them away from the time consuming institutional school. Homeschooling is the only option the provides the flexibility to pursue the truly classical. The true classical education should be rigorous and liberating.

I think homeschooling is vastly superior in the grammar stage. Especially while there are people defining grammar as singing silly songs and memorizing dates. I want my grammar-aged students memorizing Robert Louis Stevenson and hearing Andrew Lang’s Fairy Tales. I want them exploring the world around them not reading about it from a 2nd grade science text.

I have not yet begun to fight.

I have at least one more area I want to discuss which is mentoring and discipleship but I will hold off on that until later.