Homeschool Idol

April 30, 2019June 22, 2019 Juggler 0 Comments classical conversations, homeschooling, parenting

I have the smartest friends ever, ya’ll.

Last night I had a friend over for dinner. She and I have been in the thick of it together with everything – we have a photo of our babies together on a blanket before they could walk, and a photo of our babies together on the first day of Challenge A. I mean, we have been through all of it together, including the decision to leave CC.

You know, it’s actually all her fault that we’ve left.

(Not really, I’m just saying that because I like to be sassy. It’s actually the fault of poor team leadership, an expectation of blind loyalty and illogical decisions in the face of complete over reach of roles… to name a few things. But she was the one who realized before me that I could no longer choose the good of protecting and maintaining our community over the liability risk to my family.)

At that time I was wallowing back and forth in indecision she looked at me and said, “Could you lead an Information Meeting right now?”

Her question… it broke my heart, because the IM is the thing I have loved doing sooo very much over the years. Yet I realized that now, having actually read my contract and seeing the way things are playing out in our state and across the country, I couldn’t in good conscience recruit anyone else to travel on this vehicle through the homeschooling journey. So the decision was made. Road Closed, Detour Ahead.

Well, last night she did it again.

Right in the middle of chowing down a piece of pizza and the chaos of children swirling around, our husbands watching a video clip of Derek Zoolander’s School for Kids Who Don’t Read Good (and who wanna learn to do other stuff good too)(and they think that’s a prime name for our homeschool, by the way), she dropped a truth bomb:

“All this time I’ve been saying I couldn’t homeschool without CC. What I should have been saying is I couldn’t homeschool without GOD.”

She stuck her fingers right into the middle of why this has been a gut-wrenching decision. We’ve been putting an organization in the center of what should be a holy endeavor.

We know better.

It’s not like I haven’t already heard this “making CC an idol” idea:

Brandy from Half a Hundred Acre Wood identified it when she came out that their family was stepping away from Classical Conversations. She writes, “[CC] had become an idol in our lives… we had poured so much of ourselves into the program that it was drawing us away from each other and away from God… we kept blindly following a system instead of listening to God’s leading…”
I’ve spoken to leaders and told them, “You should never sacrifice your family on the altar of CC.”
I’ve literally told parents at practicums, “CC is not a church, it’s not a religion, just a tool to help us frame our home education journey.”

And then, God forgive me, I’ve behaved differently in my own home. I’ve been an idol worshipper.

Thank goodness we have time for a course correction! Let’s make it count!

Recently another of my friends told me that this departure from CC has made her question everything she thought she knew about homeschooling. (They jumped into CC from the very beginning of their home education journey.)

“I met you at the Info Meeting and I fell in love with Classical Conversations. We committed that this is what we’d do through high school and didn’t have any doubts,” she said. “But now, I’m realizing that it’s like I moved to a new town named Homeschool and never got to know any of my neighbors. I need to know my neighbors to know what to do next.”

If you’re wanting to get to know your “neighbors,” the blog post is very detailed regarding the seven popular types of educational models: Homeschooling: Which Model Is Right For You?

Remember – you can choose something besides classical and the homeschooling police won’t come after you.

The last thing I want to say today is something I’ve forgotten in my time supporting and pursuing CC: God doesn’t actually tell us whether to homeschool or not, or what educational model to use… He tells us to teach our kids to: