Spring 2018

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Iremember the day we decided to pull our
daughter out of school. The day we “made it
public”—this decision to homeschool.
I. Was. Terrified. Really. My knees were
knocking as I walked into our oldest daugh-
ter’s grade school. I liked her teacher. I had no
complaints, really, except that we knew in our
hearts there was something missing.school
We longed for more. More shared experi-
ences. More tailored education. A greater
focus on the Creator of the beauty that sur-
rounded us. A desire to dig deeper into fam-
ily life. More story time. More field trips. Less
rushing to go our separate ways every morn-
ing. More LIFE.
That was fifteen years ago. Our beautiful
second grader is now a beautiful wife and is
expecting her own child this year. Time goes
by fast.
In the past fifteen years, we’ve seen a lot
of changes in the homeschool community.
There is much more pressure being put on
homeschoolers to excel academically. We’ve
gone from a few brave moms who, without
access to mainstream “curriculum”, managed
to give their children an excellent educa-
tion—but we’ve forgotten what made it ex-
cellent.
It was excellent because these moms had a vision for home-
schooling—they weren’t trying to re-create school at home.
They were simply being obedient to the One who had called
them to be different. They knew that if He had called them, He
would equip them. And they were right.
When I was brand-new to homeschooling, I did the only
thing I knew how to do: I set up a classroom in our home—
complete with desks like the ones I had in school.
We soon began to understand that those desks, however,
were not going to work over the long haul. What we really
needed was a comfy couch, where we could curl up and read
about the life of a hermit crab named Pagoo or discover the
mysteries of the Island of Capri. Yes, a couch was what we
needed.
For years, I notebooked with our children. We took nature
walks and studied the seasons together. We did copy work
and read stories of brave men and women who followed God
with an abandon that most only dream about. And we spent a
lot of time on the couch.
My husband (the patience of this man knows no limits)
hauled the desks back up the stairs and out of the house. We
sold them at a garage sale in the spring of 1999.
And today, as I look closely at our homeschool, I have to ask,
“What makes me different?”
It’s easy to be held hostage by the expectations of the world.
I see it all around me—and I feel it myself. The pressure is
enormous. Why don’t my kids know Latin?
Am I doing enough?
Most of us took our children out of public school in search of
something more, only to be hijacked by the world’s system—
right there on the couches in our living rooms. We’re putting
our kids into hyper-academic “homeschooling” programs and
we’re allowing the pressure of the “what ifs” to determine
what we teach our children. Yes. We’re falling for it. Does this
sound familiar?
• We can’t read today, kids. We have too much math to do.
• Mommy would love to play with you; but you need to
finish your schoolwork first. And don’t forget about
yesterday’s work.
• We’ll do that later, after we do school.
• Where is your list of assignments from the co-op?
Our Bibles gather dust—or worse—become just another
thing to check off of our curriculum checklist.
So many homeschool moms today are suffering from burn-
out—and I get it. The pressure to do more is enormous. But I
Homeschooling Held Hostage
BY HEIDI ST. JOHN, 2018 HOMESCHOOL IOWA CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SPEAKER