Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Have you found yourself judging those who don’t home school or judging other home schoolers who live differently than you? Today on Home School Heartbeat, Mike Farris, president of Home School Legal Defense Association, challenges home schooling families to treat others graciously.

Mike:
It’s good to be challenged to be gracious. I believe that if we are going to have long-range success as a movement, we need to be gracious in all of our communication, to both insiders and outsiders.

We need to be gracious to families who don’t home school, as well as public school officials and legislators. It is damaging to our cause to use boastful generalities when comparing home schoolers to public schoolers. It’s more advantageous to say that home school students compare very favorably to public school students and give the precise statistics. For example, our test results are about 20 points higher than public school test scores. State the facts, matter-of-factly even understate them. The basic message should be, “We’re doing well” not, “We’re better than you are.”

We also need to be gracious to our fellow home schoolers. We are a big enough movement to have quite a bit of diversity. Some people have started saying, “Home schooling is good, but the best way to home school is to use the unit studies (or organic foods, or home birth, or some other practice).”

We must not place our preferences upon others. If it doesn’t say it in Scripture, don’t brag about it and don’t put it on other people.

As fellow servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, let’s treat each other with the same kind of grace that God has shown to us. This is Michael Farris.