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Kissed Kids
By Karon Ruiz
You are just beginning to homeschool your children! Let me encourage you. I embarked on my home education journey in 1989. The early eighties through the first part of the 1990’s were what many call the “pioneer days of homeschooling”. As with our country’s trailblazers during its westward expansion, finding supplies and charting our course was a bit challenging. We traveled light and move ahead cautiously; unsure and nervous about what lie ahead. Would there be dangerous opposition around the bend? Like our forefathers, we boldly trekked forward, hopeful for a positive outcome for our kids.
Most of the secular publishers refused to sell us books. Christian book companies were more accommodating yet still a bit baffled by it all. No one within the mainstream educational world seemed to know what to do with us. Accustomed to the busy classroom setting with a one teacher per 32 kids ratio, Mom and two or three kids at a dining room table was an unusual demographic to consider.
Besides hunting down teaching materials, opposition from friends and relatives, our fears and lack of confidence added to what seemed like an impossible impasse. During these pioneer beginnings, you had to be tough. You had to hold your head up and not let the whispers at Thanksgiving gatherings weaken your determination. Those who cared too much about what their mother-in-law or the retired teacher at church thought would have a hard time holding on to their convictions. And can you imagine trying to convince a skeptical husband? These were realities of the homeschooling movement that exploded across America like a wildfire. Once parents realized they wouldn't go to jail for doing so, they began withdrawing their children from public school in mass.
Educational supply catalogs were paper-thin and conventions hosted many homespun booths with self-published teaching materials. Whether they realized it or not, Plato’s “necessity is the mother of invention" became the mantra for many moms who found it essential to invent curriculum that would accommodate a Christian multi-grade homeschooling family.
Times have changed; the homeschooling market is HUGE! Secular educators are clamoring to get into homeschooling conventions. Much of their ad campaigns are targeted at the ballooning home education community. Try Googling the word ‘homeschool’ and this most popular search engine will find about 6,940,000 links.
Perhaps you have been online and feel besieged with the glut of information out there. Not sure which way to turn, what to buy, what step to take?
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