Why Preppers Should Consider Homeschooling (Public Schools are an 0bamanation, Kids Deserve Better)

I don’t remember when I first become convinced that homeschooling was the only type of education I wanted for our children. I do know it was long before I ever became pregnant! Now that we’ve finished our fifth year of homeschooling and we’ve started taking “prepping” seriously, I’m more glad than ever that we chose this route for our family.

Homeschooling provides a continuous flow of education in spite of changing circumstances.

A dramatic decline in income might force a family to move to another neighborhood, city, or even to a different state. Other than losing some time in the moving process, kids pick right back up where they left off in their studies. The trauma of leaving one school and starting over in another is a non-issue. A multitude of free homeschooling resources online can take the place of more expensive curriculum if need be.

In the case of a pandemic, kids would already be at home, along with their textbooks, computers, and everything else they need to learn. We wouldn’t have to worry about school closing down nor be concerned about what to do with the kids in the case of a quarantine. Think I’m crazy? Look at all the schools that shut down during the (very) mild Swine Flu “epidemic”!

Any event that would normally disrupt the school year doesn’t have nearly the same impact for homeschoolers. During a time of intense stress and change, a homeschooling family is together, along with the reassurance and the anchor that only parents can provide.

Summer has just begun. If the idea of homeschooling has ever crossed your mind, now is the perfect time to take a closer look. You’ll find a variety of helpful articles here. There are thousands of resources online, but for basic information, here are a few of my favorite sites.

You’ll find expert advice at these sites and hundreds of others. Additionally, please feel free to ask me your homeschooling questions on this blog or via email.

“Follow your heart,” isn’t always the best advice, but when it comes to homeschooling, I think it’s an excellent guide. If your heart is telling you to, at least, consider homeschooling, there’s no better time to do that than over the summer!

At the college level they shouldn't have any concern with the ‘values in the home’.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Who is “they”. The parents? The student? They professor?

I suppose you and I have different parenting and living philosophies.

As a parent, yes, I do care that my children adopt the values that I have taught them in the home.

Individually, I do hold to the value that were taught to me by my parents.

As for professors....Far, far, far too many of them are Marxists who despise Western Civilization and, in particular, the values upon which our nation was founded. Far too many of them use their classrooms for proselytizing their Marxist “progressive” ideology.

“So you think your husband’s parents were loony, and wacky, because they insisted that their son learn to be financially independent? LOL!”

Nope. I think it’s looney to expect a 14 yr old to be financially independent.

Nope. I think they were looney because they had no idea what their kids were doing because they spent so much time in their Church rather than raising their kids. They didn’t have a clue that their daughter was a drug addict. They had no idea that their two sons were rebelling against everything they were taught. Their kids also thought they were looney since none of them have any relationship with them and all moved out of their lives once they graduated high school. They weren’t a family. They were 5 strangers living in the same house (according to my husband and his siblings).

When my husband went to my parents (his girlfriend’s parents) for basics (food, a loan, cosigning a personal loan) while still in college, yep I think his parents were nuts. When none of their grandchildren mourned their paternal grandmother’s death, because they didn’t know her, and none of the grandchildren know their paternal grandfather, when my husband and siblings learned of their father’s remarriage via email a few months after the fact, yep I don’t call that a family. I call that looney.

When my sister-in-law was 18 and pregnant, and her evangelical parents suggested abortion, and told her if she had the baby she couldn’t live at home (it wouldn’t look right), gave her no support whatsoever, yep, I call that nuts. She lived in a home for unwed mothers, gave her daughter up for adoption (and the kid found her a few years ago) and had no support, emotional or financial from her “parents” and the sons learned just what their “family” was all about.

Yep. They taught my husband to be financially independent when he was still in high school. Only positive thing they taught him. Like he and his sibs say, they were 5 strangers living in the same house. They weren’t a family.

“They worked summers, and sometimes had part-time jobs during the school year, though we didn’t encourage that because we wanted them to concentrate on their studies”

My kids work during the school year, although they don’t work during their sport season other than some weekends. They all know that college is a privilege, something they earn, and we’ll help pay for as much as we can. They know they can’t go to any college they want and that it depends on how much academic and even athletic scholarship money they get, unless they want a mortgage payment once they graduate. However, they know they have family and we’ll do whatever we can to help them out.

“They all understood, but also understood that if they truly needed some extra money from time to time, we’d help them out. They worked summers, and sometimes had part-time jobs during the school year, though we didn’t encourage that because we wanted them to concentrate on their studies. They’ve all turned out to be thrifty people, and have even told us they were glad that we didn’t hound them about their grades, and scholarships all through school. We reminded them once or twice, and that was it. They took it from there.”

That’s the way it’s supposed to be, imo.

I’m so glad it’s clearer for you. So now do you understand that it’s not the responsibility of colleges to parent adult students? When 18 yr olds “go off to college” they should be treated as adults. I don’t hold colleges/universities responsible for their paying students behavior. Parents shouldn’t either. Unfortunately, some parents expect college admin to parent their kids. It’s so much easier than holding their kids responsible for their behavior or actually raising one’s kids to be adults.

One of the pet peeves I had in college was having to “watch” or “parent” other students (friends) who had no idea what it was like to be an adult and responsible for their behavior. I was the friend that made sure the drunk friend got home ok or didn’t get so drunk they did something they regretted then called it rape. Some of these “kids” were so sheltered or so used to having someone look out for them that they expected it to carry over in college. There were far too many times I had to forcibly take some drunk friend away from a potentially bad situation, and get verbal abuse and sometimes physical resistance, it was nuts. My attitude was come on, you’re 18, 19, 20, etc. years old and you need a freakin’ babysitter?

Far too many parents send their kids to college and expect the college to parent. Same with classes, imo. Comes a time when we have to let them go and trust what we taught at home will be realized. It’s not the Profs job to make sure our kids/their adult students are following what was taught at home. Same thing when it comes to any schooling, imo. Parents should be parenting their kids, and those kids will make their own choices some of which we won’t like.

It’s too easy to blame school/colleges.

LOL! I wouldn’t honor looney or wacky parents and certainly don’t blame the children of those parents when the kids don’t honor them.

Sure, Honor thy Mother and Father. I know that Commandment. Honoring doesn’t mean following blindly.

Should Osama bin Laden’s kids honor their father? To what extent? An extreme case for sure but an interesting question. Nope, imo. Honoring and following blindly are two very different things.

And what possible “honor” could a parent like Osama bin Laden receive or deserve from his kids? People, even parents, earn “honor” and respect.

You and I might be cut from the same cloth. :-) My parents taught us well about money by letting my brother and me work - indeed, EXPECTING us to work - earn our own money, and pay for things on our own, beginning at a young age. That's how they were raised, and that's how they raised us. And that's how my husband and I are raising our children.

I started babysitting when I was 11, and throughout high school I usually had two jobs at the same time, bought my own clothes and my own lunches, and paid for my own entertainment. Back then, many other teens I knew did the same. I was very thrifty and saved my money. At 18, I paid cash for a trip overseas and bought a car.

So, I never expected my parents to pay my college tuition. And, because I'd saved so much money, I had to pay full tuition. :-( But, guess what, I never had any debt that whole time. And, because I had to pay tuition on my own, I took those classes very seriously. ;-)

OTOH, my folks DID help because we always were welcome in "our" home, whereas other teens I knew were tossed out at 18. For the first two years, I stayed with my parents and commuted to college.

I've come across a few people my age who weren't allowed to work as teens. Their parents wanted them to focus on their studies. And I can understand that. Other parents not only paid their children's college tuition but bought them cars and paid for mostly everything. The way I see it, it's their money, and they can do what they want with it. They wanted them to learn independence living at college. But, personally, I believe people learn independence when they are expected to do for themselves.

As I tell my own children, there's POWER in working and earning your own money. They can't wait to be old enough to work. However, as homeschooled students, they'll be expected to start college early, so we'll have to pay their college tuition in the beginning. By 18, they'll be expected to take their education further on their own, but our door will always be open for them. Of course, nowadays, I'm not sure how those plans will work out... With the downturn in the economy, many teens are having trouble finding work. The plans could change later...

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