Qualifications

Do you love your children with all of your heart? Are you willing to put the needs of your children before your own, including their educational needs? Then you’re qualified!

Actually, most of us start out homeschooling our children. We help them develop – to walk, talk, and use a spoon. We teach them right from wrong. We are homeschooling our children each time we sit down to read a book, listen to music, color or paint, visit a botanical garden, bird-watch, count small donut-shaped cereal pieces, build a block tower, take a walk outdoors or simply enjoy the wonder of God’s creation together. Think about how much your child has learned from the time he was born through the time he was five.

Did you hire a professional? Who knows your children better than you? Who knows better than you how to solicit the best response in a given situation? Who loves them enough to encourage and motivate them? Who has their best interests at heart?

Practically speaking, there are many materials available to make our job easier. Many programs include teacher guides (some of those are even scripted), others offer video or online instruction, telephone help or full-blown advisory. The extent to which you feel qualified to educate your children at home may depend in large part on how you view education. If we assume learning isn’t something that happens TO us but is something that we can only do for ourselves, then all that is required is a warm and loving mentor and tutor – and there is no one more qualified for that position than a parent. And let’s never forget that learning is vastly more far-reaching than the ABCs.

Further Reading

• An Unlikely Candidate for the Job
  Article by Vicki Farris, homeschooling mother of ten, relates how she is uniquely qualified to educate her children at home.
• Amateurs Outdoing Professionals
  “Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master’s degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student– which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.” Why amateurs outperform professionals as explained by Thomas Sowell.
• Are Parents Qualified to Teach Their Children?
  “The tutorial method of teaching has always been the superior method. Home education epitomizes this method, providing essentials for success — a close student/teacher relationship, family-consistent values, motivation, flexibility, and individualization.”
• God Doesn’t Always Call the Most Equipped
  “I am reminded of Moses, when God called him with a burning bush. Moses argued; he didn’t speak well in public. God was persistent, and finally Moses relented. How closely that rings to my experiences. I was called to homeschool eleven years ago, when my daughter was three. But I argued….” None of us are qualified…on our own.
• ‘Mom, Dad Better Than Certified Teachers’
  “Sam Peavey, professor emeritus of the School of Education at the University of Louisville, also concluded: ‘I wish I could tell you that those thousands of [teacher certification documents] contributed significantly to the quality of children’s learning, but I cannot. … After fifty years of research, we have found no significant correlation between the requirements for teacher certification and the quality of student achievement.‘”

Wise, imaginative, patient, and intuitive parents are aware of baby’s efforts and growing stages and will give him practice to expand and improve his abilities as they appear. They respond lovingly always, firmly where necessary, and with some imagination. This is teaching of the highest order. The warm, responsive, consistent parent is the world’s best teacher.

Raymond & Dorothy Moore, Home Grown Kids