Homeschool News & Views
Issue 13
From Homeschool Helpers
In association with Pass It On Ministries
March 9, 2007
Greetings. This is Dan
White with Homeschool Helpers, and issue number 13 of Homeschool News &
Views.
We conduct a tennis class
for the local homeschool Shared Learning.
This tennis class is a lot of fun, for us and for the kids.
Many public school
students are very much into athletics.
Sports are often used today as a means of self exaltation, both for
professional athletes and for the high school boy or girl who wants to be
cool. Youngsters may spend hours and
hours of their lives every week putting a ball through a hoop. They will work and work at it, hours every
day, because they think that’s a way to be somebody, to be cool.
In fact, the whole country
is sports addicted. On a given Sunday,
turn on the TV and you can see basketball or football or baseball, college or
professional. Plus there is arena
football, golf, tennis, ice hockey, auto racing, ice skating, skateboarding,
snow skiing, snow boarding, biking maneuvers or whatever they call that, and I
am sure I am leaving out some sports that are on our weekend TV, and we don’t
even have cable. Whole TV networks are dedicated to nothing but sports. Tune in to AM radio at night and there are
multiple sports talk shows, where they do nothing but talk sports all night
long.
When people lose God and
His purpose for them, they try to find their purpose in themselves. When they lose the meaning of their lives,
they try to find it in their activities.
If they can push themselves athletically to a point they have not been
before, somehow that is supposed to have inner meaning. If they risk their lives and climb a mountain
that few people have climbed, that is presumed to take them to new spiritual
heights. Ultimately this is vanity,
trying to find God in the self.
Many homeschoolers are not
into athletics. First of all, when they
learn that their purpose in life is to follow Christ, then they don’t have to
be cool. One of the very worst things
that the public school culture, which is the culture of this world, teaches is
the overwhelming push to exalt oneself, to be somebody, to be more noticed than
the person next to you. Or as it was
phrased at the
Many Christian homeschool
parents do not view excellence in athletics as something to dedicate one’s life
to. Athletics are just games, to have
fun with friends. In the ultimate
analysis, putting a ball through a hoop is just putting a ball through a
hoop. No lives were really changed, the
hungry were not fed, the lost were not rescued. Michael Jordan was a great success at putting
a ball through a hoop. He did it
multiple thousands of times. He was a
great failure at life, having left his wife and children.
All that being said,
athletics can be uplifting, if we play them to have fun with friends, and to
exalt Christ in the way we play, and never ourselves. In our homeschool tennis class, most of the
kids have never played tennis, and some have never done any athletics at
all. Tennis is a hard game to
learn. Almost everybody, the first time
he hits a tennis ball, will either miss it completely or knock it on the other
side of town. Tennis scoring is
strange, but you don’t get a point for either one of those.
Tennis is usually taught
with long hours of repetitious drills.
We don’t have time to do that in our class, and one of the most
important factors in learning is to have the student enjoy what he is
learning. Drills aren’t usually
considered fun.
In our tennis class, we
try to learn by actually playing tennis.
John Holt, a New England former public school teacher who actually helped
start the homeschool movement in America, thought that it was better to have
the concrete explain the abstract, rather than have the abstract explain the
concrete. In other words, instead of
giving a long lecture on how to hit a tennis ball, I throw a tennis ball at the
player and actually have him hit it.
Or try to hit it.
We put four players on a
side. Tennis is normally played with no
more than two on a side, but out of necessity, we put up to four on a
side. We call it Killer Quad Tennis. The only problem with quad tennis is that
sometimes you get bounced in the back by your own teammates. It does tend to make it more exciting when
you have to watch balls coming from both directions.
To start with, I throw the
ball to the beginning player, giving him or her a
perfect bounce to hit. That starts the
rally and then immediately they are playing tennis. With four players on a side, someone is
always where the ball is, so we quickly get into the fun and excitement of the
game.
These homeschool teens are
so teachable, so respectful, so enjoyable to be with
that after a Thursday class we always feel uplifted. You know, if you have ornery pupils teaching
can be onerous. If you have great kids,
it makes you feel great to teach them.
In three years of teaching this class, we have never had one hint of
disrespect or dissension out of any kid.
God bless the Christian
homeschoolers!
After our last class, some
kids were waiting for their ride back to the church where the Shared Learning
classes are held. Our tennis class is
held in a beautiful indoor facility, part of a civic center complex, and the
kids were standing at the main lobby.
For some reason, some other kids were there that afternoon. A group of boys saw our pupils standing by,
and took it upon themselves to bother them.
The homeschool kids were doing nothing except waiting for their ride,
bothering no one, without insolence or sassiness, and the boys took it upon
themselves to come over to them and accost them with innuendoes and inappropriate
remarks.
Right there you have a
good example of Christian home school socialization and public school
socialization. The Christian homeschool
kids were respectful of others, and obedient to what they were supposed to be
doing. The other kids had not been
taught that. I guess they were just
trying to be cool, which is what their culture teaches
them.
Some homeschoolers do go
in for athletics in a bigger way. A big
regional homeschool basketball tournament was held here in
Homeschool basketball has
some notable differences from public school basketball. In almost all homeschool basketball programs,
every kid who goes out makes the team.
This is radically different from a normal high school program, where
only a dozen or so out of hundreds get to play.
Further, in the schools you often have the same gifted athletes playing
in more than one sport. One player may
be on two or three teams throughout the year, while most students are on no
team.
Some upper level
homeschool teams become more selective, but in most programs, everyone who
tries out makes the team. If the teams
get to where they have too many kids, then they start another team or another
program. Also, during the games, almost
always all the team members play.
This can put a certain
pressure on a coach, patiently coaching kids who have never played, and having
to draw a fine line between trying to win a game and trying to play all the
kids. I have been in that position and
that’s where the guidance of our older brother is most valuable.
Our local public high
school teams practice or play seven days a week during the basketball
season. I have talked with some of the
local public school players, and sometimes after they graduate they don’t ever
want to play basketball again. They did
it so much, every day, day after day, that they are burned out on it.
Homeschool teams will
usually practice or play two to three times a week. Our girls played on several different
homeschool basketball teams, and those teams played twenty-some games a season. That takes a lot of time and money, paying
for facilities, referees, supplies and traveling to the away games. We are Sabbath keepers, meaning that on the
Sabbath, or Saturday, we do God, and don’t do business or recreation. So when our girls were on the teams, half the
games would be on Friday night or Saturday.
The teams were always extremely gracious to us over the Sabbath, and our
girls were able to play on the teams even though they missed half the games.
The other homeschoolers felt bad for us in that we didn’t get to be in all the
games. However, having a practice once a
week and then one game a week was just about right for us, so we didn’t really
mind missing those other games. We like
to keep things very much in balance, and if we feel like we are being run
ragged then we are probably out of balance.
We sure don’t want to focus more on basketball than we do on the
Bible. That we will do every day.
The homeschool teams are
always coached by volunteers, of course, usually a parent of one of the
players. These homeschool programs are
amazing, in that no institutions support them, yet they function so well. It goes without saying that since the parents
are coaching the teams, these parents are not professional coaches. They may not be very good as far as strategy
and coaching technique, as would be expected, but they must surely rank high in
Christian giving. The teams do not have
a large fan following, as the public schools do. Mostly just the parents, siblings and grandparents
watch the games, and discuss with each other in the meantime the latest
homeschool happenings.
The
In a publication called Creative Loafing, covering major
cities in the southeast, a left wing commentator likened homeschoolers to
terrorist cells.
“What’s scary is that a lot of the homeschooling
faithful are as fueled by a fanatical, religious based belief in their mission
as Islamic terrorists, and seem to be just about as brainwashed… They’re not
only terrorist-like in their convictions that their calling is divinely ordained, homeschoolers also often have a broad martyr
streak. Rather than suicide bombings,
though, they commit “suicide book-learning,” sacrificing their own lives to
teach their kids. I’ve known one or two
to get pregnant as an excuse to get out of homeschooling hell, but the true
martyrs keep right instructing, with the newest little pupil glued to their
breast… What’s really scary about homeschooling is what it can do to the sanity
of a mother deluded into thinking it’s her Christian duty. No woman was ever meant to be trapped in a
house all day with children old enough to spell “homicide.” So if new neighbors
move in next door and you notice that the kids never leave for school and mom
wears her hair in two braids, be afraid.
Be very afraid.”
That’s the left wing argument against Christian
homeschooling. Islamic-like
suicide studiers. “Be very
afraid.”
Meanwhile
In other
words, it appeared to the folks in
Pro 3:1-4
(1) My son, don't forget
my teaching; but let your heart keep my commandments:
(2) for length of days,
and years of life, and peace, will they add to you.
(3) Don't let kindness and truth forsake you.
Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart.
(4) So you will find favor,
and good understanding in the sight of God and man.
This is
Dan White with Homeschool Helpers. God
bless the Christian homeschoolers.