Latest / Homeschool Insights - Biblical Home Education Inspiration in Under 10 Minutes! / When Homeschooling Becomes an Industry, What Changes? — Israel Wayne
Transcript
- speaker-0: When I step back and look at this from a a kingdom of God perspective, I believe that's why homeschooling has had such great academic and social success. It's because we've aligned ourselves with seeking first the kingdom of God, and these other things have been the fruit ⁓ of obedience. speaker-1: compared the homeschool industry and kind of what it's becoming to kind of what we saw and see in the you know worship industry so in the mus Christian music industry. but before we even kind of dig into that I do want to just ask, you know, what do you feel like were some of the like what are some of the changes in motivation that you've seen? So like from when you know your family when you were a child started homeschooling even your personal decision to homeschool your family. You know, and the motivations there. What do you see now? What's that shift? speaker-0: Well, when you think about what got people initially involved in home education, even back in the early days, it often was some of the same things that people are getting involved with homeschooling for today. you know, that they had a bad experience in the public school, they had a child who was being bullied, they had a special needs student who needed one-on-one individualized attention. There were a lot of reasons why people initially first opted out of the government school model into home education. But the the homeschool movement, if I can use that term, some people don't like that term, but it really was a movement. I kind of used some similar in that Facebook post, similar comparisons to like the Jesus movement of the early 1970s. ⁓ the 1970s was this organic awakening, which really ⁓ wasn't led by any kind of corporation or any industries. It was It was a move of God. The Jesus movement was a move of God in and it started on the West Coast in California, and then spread across the United States. And the homeschooling movement was a move of God as well. And so people who got into that movement began to understand that this was more than just academic choice, that this was really a fulfillment of what the scriptures spoke about. In the very last passage of the Old Testament in Malachi 4, 6, where God said that He would turn the hearts of fathers to children and the hearts of children to fathers. And God gave this stern warning at the end of the Old Testament where he says, If this doesn't happen, then I will strike the earth with a curse. And so it is really God's heart for family unity, for parents and children to have ⁓ their hearts be knit together. And unfortunately, by sending our children away from us to be raised by the government, they have really given their hearts to forces and influences that are not their parents. And you know, that started back ⁓ with Horace Mann in eighteen fifty-two when he f first started the compulsory attendance ⁓ public school laws ⁓ in Massachusetts that then spread all across the United States. ⁓ and really the government schools had this monopoly, this lockdown on education for many years in the United States. ⁓ it wasn't until nineteen seventy-two. So by nineteen hundred, every state had compulsory attendance laws. By nineteen seventy-two, the Amish ⁓ won a Supreme Court case where they were able to opt out and start their own parochial schools. ⁓ the Christian school movement really started in the nineteen seventies. And ⁓ then the homeschool movement the next decade in the early 1980s. ⁓ but but there was such a a monopoly that the government school system had that as these families began to come out from under that, they began to realize that, ⁓ this is really much more than just teaching academics at home. This is really about us being able to pass on our faith and values to our children and to be able to ⁓ teach them about Christ and to teach them about The Bible and the things that had been banned from the public school system, the prayer and Bible reading and those things had been cut out of the compulsory attendance government school system. So these families didn't really understand initially the ride that they were on. ⁓ it was just individual families making what they thought were the right choice for their children. ⁓ but it became very clear, very apparent, that this was something that God was doing and Soon it was tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands, and then soon into millions of families who began home educating in the same way that it was these indiv individual hippies in the Jesus movement who had this crisis of belief and then came to faith in Christ. And you know, individuals here and there ⁓ quickly added up to ⁓ the tsunami, ⁓ the spiritual awakening that began to sweep the nation. And and I think what happened in the Jesus movement was that it became very institutionalized. ⁓ what became, you know, the early cr Jesus music ⁓ soon became the Christian music industry. ⁓ and as ⁓ secular companies got involved and began to buy out these record companies that were started really just for evangelism and and to share music about Jesus, ⁓ they began to see dollar signs and huge companies. ⁓ began to buy up these Christian music labels and and things changed ⁓ because the power brokers who were in charge of it really began to ⁓ to to create ⁓ a a a culture that necessitated compromise ⁓ in most cases and and if you didn't go along with the and conform to the new industry standards if you will ⁓ you just didn't have a place anymore. And so what ended up happening was a lot of the original Jesus music artists, what they're doing today, fifty years later, is they've gone back to doing the same thing that they were doing in the early nineteen seventies. They're playing in small churches and playing in coffee shops and doing free music concerts and still just singing and talking about Jesus. And so I I feel like in some ways the same thing's happened in the homeschooling movement where ⁓ post-COVID, you know, we had this boom where many new families got involved, but ⁓ the demographics have shifted to where you know the Washington Post did a survey and said that prior to COVID, ⁓ approximately ⁓ two-thirds of all homeschoolers were doing so for religious reasons. And now, post-COVID, it's only one-third that are doing so for religious reasons. So we've really had a shift in terms of Hate to use these terms, but the power dynamic, if you will, the people who kind of control the homeschooling movement, it's really not the Christian homeschool community anymore. We're the minority. We're one third, not two thirds, in a very short period of time. And and very large ⁓ organizations, investors, ⁓ secular publishers, ⁓ you know, business entrepreneurs, ⁓ public school teachers and leaders. Are starting to see, hey, there's a big market here. There's a lot of money to be made. And they're beginning to infuse ⁓ this industry with a lot of capital and marketing. And I just see the focus is changing. The focus is really moving away from this being about parents discipling their children to this being this huge educational smorgasbord that's all about educational choice. And so when I when I step back and look at this from a a ⁓ kingdom of God perspective, and I ask myself, like, ⁓ you know, you think about those passages like Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these other things will be added unto you. I believe that's why homeschooling has had such great academic and social success. ⁓ why we've had studies that show that homeschoolers are More socially well-rounded than public schoolers and do better academically and all that. It's it's because we've aligned ourselves with seeking first the kingdom of God, and these other things have been the fruit ⁓ of obedience. And what I see now is that we're seeking after the fruit, right? We're seeking after the good results, but we're laying aside what I think is the most important thing, which is What what is Jesus doing? And what is Jesus about? And what Jesus has always been about is about his kingdom. That that's his that's his priority, right? He's not he's not excited about educational choice. That's not what Jesus is really invested in. What Jesus is invested in is is discipleship. And so as we shift off of his goal and his mission and his vision, and we start moving into just an alternative educational empire, I'm gonna suggest that that we're losing some things very substantially. And I think the the primary thing that we risk losing is the Holy Spirit. speaker-2: This episode of Homeschool Insights is brought to you by Liberty HealthShare. Choosing to homeschool is about making intentional decisions for your family. Liberty HealthShare is another way families across the country are choosing a different path, one that offers a community-centered approach to health care cost sharing that can help you keep more of your hard-earned dollars while getting the medical care your family needs. Learn more at Liberty HealthShare.org. That's LibertyHealthShare.org.