Our town is hopping with Mennonite schools—elementary, middle and high school, university, and seminary. Many of the people at our church are employed by these institutions as professors, school board members, deans, and counselors. Still more are parents of students, graduates, or current students themselves. It’s a heady congregation. Academia is cherished.

Along with all that scholarly love, there is an huge (and wonderful!) emphasis on serving the greater community. As Christians, we believe we are to work for peace and justice and serve our neighbor. With these two values—education and service—uppermost in people’s minds, it only makes sense that many would feel that serving through the educational system is the way to go.

So there I was last Sunday, in front of this group of social justice academics, trying to explain the viability of homeschooling. How could I share my belief that school systems might not be the be-all and end-all? How was I to explain that keeping my children out of school is not synonymous with shirking my social responsibilities?

I started with an analogy, one that I figured should make sense considering we’re an Anabaptist church and all.

For the past month and a half, I have been living and breathing homeschool ideas, myths, theories, and practices. I get so caught up in thinking and writing that sometime I can’t sleep. This is exciting stuff, people.

It all started when one of our church’s issue-based adult Sunday school classes decided to do a series on the three different educational methods: homeschool, public, and private. Last Sunday I presented to the class about homeschooling, and this next Sunday I will moderate a panel of homeschooling parents (there are at least six families that are currently homeschooling). What follows will be a series on Home Education based on excerpts from my presentation.

Never before have I written so straight-forwardly about homeschooling. It’s going to take me a few posts to peel back all the layers, so hang tight. I welcome questions, additions, rebuttals, and confessions. Let’s have fun with this!

My philosophy about education is the same as my philosophy about child birth. All too often, judgement gets passed on a particular practice—home, hospital, midwife center, whatever—without actually understanding it or why someone might choose it.

I don’t care what birthing (or educational) method people pick, but I do want them to be informed. Know the facts. Consider who is handing out the glossy brochures and why. Talk to the little people. Listen and ask questions. Be gracious.

When they do all that (or at least give it an honest shot), then it’s fine to draw lines and pick sides. However, after all that mind-stretching pondering, my hunch (and hope) is that the lines will be lightly dotted instead of heavy and solid.

I always thought I’d marry an academic. A seminary student, perhaps, or a philosopher with a scraggly beard. Instead, I fell in love with a carpenter.

John was not an academic. As a child, he had struggled to learn to read. He did poorly in school, even—gasp—failing a couple classes. He took one year of college before dropping out and meeting me (not because he met me).

At first, I was caught off-guard by his razor-sharp mind. How was it that this non-scholar could be my straight-A-self equal? He couldn’t read words he hadn’t already memorized, writing was an agony, and he spelled like a caveman. And yet he loved to read, knew all sorts of random information, and was extremely gifted with his hands. Clearly, intelligence was not the issue.

I would never have admitted that I thought blue-collar workers were Less Than because that wouldn’t be politically correct or cool, but I did. Engaging in class lectures, whipping out essays, and acing tests was a high-level skill! Not everybody could navigate the academic pressures so smartly! My beliefs were reinforced by the greater culture. Good students got the grades, the smiles, and the awards. I could hardly be faulted for confusing “good student” with “good person.”

But John, despite being smart, didn’t have that same sense of school-induced self worth that I did. I shouldn’t have been surprised. A dozen years of struggling in a system that highlighted his inadequacies, labeled him learning disabled, and frowned at his efforts couldn’t help but leave a lasting mark.

Bit by bit, my culturally-taught assumptions began to crumble. Perhaps good grades weren’t the best indicator of intelligence? Perhaps “learning disabled” was simply “learning different”? Maybe schools didn’t have such a good handle on education after all?

Saturday was the warmest it’s been in a couple weeks, but the clouds were swollen black and kept leaking water. I got out for a walk in the morning, but by evening I was feeling twitchy-depressed anyway. When darkness fell—the natural kind, not the sky-with-a-mood-disorder kind—my spirits lifted. No longer did I feel like I was being squashed whenever I looked out the window.

But I must confess: I blew my top that last hour of daylight. The kids wouldn’t stop bickering and yelling. For some inexplicable reason, they insisted on sharing my space—all stinking four of them. I couldn’t think straight for all the irritability and cantankerousness. So I stepped outside and hollered at my husband to come here right this very minute.

When he walked in the door, I leveled him with my beady eye and hissed, “I can not take another second of being with these children. Get them out of the house. Now.”

The children out of the house, I switched on radiolab and started puttering around the kitchen. All too soon, my older son slipped back in. “May I go to my room? Dad says it’s fine with him if it’s fine with you.”

Ten minutes later he was back down, sheepishly begging permission to use the computer. Permission not granted (silly boy), but “Wanna cook with me?”

And that’s how it came to be that I spent a cozy Saturday evening (or half hour or so) working in the kitchen with my older son. He mixed the wet ingredients into the dry for the peanut butter and honey granola, whisked the homemade pancake syrup, and peeled and chopped apples while I rolled out the pastry for a pie. We chit-chatted, much of our conversation jump-started by the radio news—stuff about homosexuality and laws, birth control, etc. How should the government respond to people who feel the laws are in direct opposition to their ethics? It was fun to hear his thoughts.

He told me that he used to think “terrorists were just angry tourists” which pretty much made my day.

Maybe even my week.

Then the rest of the family trickled in. They got showers and munched on the veggies and dip I had sitting out for most of the day.

The children ate leftover oatmeal. We popped popcorn and watched Searching for Bobby Fischer. There was apple pie and vanilla ice cream for a bedtime snack.

And wouldn’t you know, the sunset was lovely.