The End of Yet Another Year!

Wow! It is hard to believe that we have reached the end of yet another year.

For some, this will be the end of your home education journey, as the youngest of the family “flies away,” perhaps even leaving you as empty nesters. This is usually a very difficult time for home educators as you have invested so much into your children.

Most of us actually start on this most difficult of life’s tasks with this in mind, but few understand how this will play out until we get there.

We seem to live from hand to mouth and day to day, until we wake up to discover that our job is done, at least this stage of it. This is a good time to reflect on just how gracious God has been, a time to turn around and see all the goodness and mercy that has followed us throughout our child rearing days.

Others are likely to be wiping their brows saying “whew, made our first year.” You are also likely saying, “that wasn’t so bad” or “that was not nearly as difficult as I imagined.”

Needless to say, the “retirees” from home education are now much more confident in what home education entails, finding themselves facing the outcomes of their effort. Are we not all so much smarter and more confident after any job is done?

Still others will have successfully completed another year on “cruise control,” having already experienced some of the nail biting that novice home educators go through when embarking on a brand new journey into the unknown, and now at peace with the fact that home education is not only the best “choice,” but the only option when considering that government, schools and churches cannot give birth to children.

And all of us should be thankful for the opportunity to have had the privilege that home education brings, which is to simply be a family in keeping with God’s love and directives.

Somewhere during this past year, I said that “made at home children” should be trained, taught and educated where they were created, by the loving parents that created them; that the safest, most protected, caring, and fertile environment on earth for learning is still within the family at home.

I must admit that we created this video a long time ago and that there were likely some events and issues that have occurred since that time that may have given us cause for concern.

If you are seeing this video, it is because these events were not likely “life threatening” to the home education community. Otherwise, you would not be seeing this video, but a replacement more in tune with the current events.

In any case, even though we may have witnessed still more evidence of the slow, perhaps deliberate, deterioration of the home education community at the hands of a mercenary home education industry in this province, nothing will ever stop dedicated, loving mothers and fathers from wanting the best for their children and nothing will ever trump the power of the sacrifices they are willing to make for them.

Parents have a much clearer vision of the future, dealing directly with it when ministering to their children. Schools, home education providers and agencies, and especially government, are incapable of seeing past their desire to survive and thrive. Their temporal focus lacks the eternal vision most parents want to foresee.

As a consequence, these “non-parental” agencies must develop methods and techniques that ultimately pervert the cause and the reason to home educate. Having no foresight, they become self-serving bureaucracies which can be compared to beings that eventually learn to feed on their own young!

Harsh words, I realize, and they likely seem harsh because the majority of you have very little knowledge of what is transpiring within home education in this province.

Again, risking being called all kinds of things by those who do not understand the gravity of this situation or those who stand to lose the most from my constant reminding that temporal goals have clouded the eternal vision of home education, I must repeat the need to be truly informed of what is really going on in the home education world of Alberta.

Let me leave you with this thought. I have found two main reasons for the general decline of Christian home education.

The first is that we almost ubiquitously believe that government, schools and churches are uniquely qualified to not only set the parameters of education, but to deliver the product.

The second is actually the reason for the first. We have lost our first love. We have far more confidence and fear of man than a trust and faith in God.

Until those problems are fixed, we will continue to see home education deteriorate with the industry cashing in on our ignorance. We need to be informed so we can be vigilant.

Have a great summer. Lord willing, I will “Blog” you again in the fall.

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