Educating our Children

I received my Patriarchal blessing as a teenager. Being so young with my whole future ahead of me, many of the blessings addressed were a mystery for me. Many of them still are. One sentence that stood out to me then and even more now because I have children is this:

Become a good teacher to teach within the walls of your own home.

I have often wondered what this means and why it was included in my blessing. Even as a teenager, I thought there may come a time when I might need to homeschool my children. I am not a very patient mother, and I'm not even very educated, but I have always tried to keep an open mind about this subject because of what is contained in my Patriarchal Blessing.

My amazing sister has dabbled in homeschool, and I also have a friend from high school that is currently homeschooling her children. I am fascinated with the idea of having my children home with me all day and me being their teacher. I love the idea of being able to present subjects the way I want my children to be taught, to include values and morals into lessons of science and history, and most of all, including the Gospel in their general education.

With current events in our country and the world, I have felt an increasing desire to keep my children close to me...to keep them safe. Not only physically, but spiritually as well. I'm feeling like although I'm teaching what I can when they are home, I feel I simply don't have enough time to teach them all they need to know to help them through the tough times ahead. Because of this, I experimented this summer with homeschool. Every weekday during the summer we had a school bell (a hymn played on the piano), then we met together to have family prayer, a spiritual devotional or gospel discussion, we organized our day and then worked on some academics together. We ended with a family cheer (that we made up together) and then we went our ways to do our chores and play. I really felt like our home was a much sweeter place on the days we had school. I feel our little homeschool helped us to feel more unified as a family. I think the children enjoyed the structure, attention from their mother, and inviting the Spirit in the morning really made a difference on how the rest of the day went. I was actually sad this year when they had to go back to school.

I have done some research on what our church leaders have had to say concerning education and this is what I found:

President Gordon B. Hinckley
What has happened to our schools? There are still many that are excellent,
but there are very many that are failing. What has become of the teaching of
values? We are told that educators must be neutral in these matters. Neutrality
in the teaching of values can only lead to an absence of values. Is it less
important to learn something of honesty than to learn something of computer
science?. . . . Where today are the heroes from whose lives we learned honesty
and integrity and the meaning of work? The debunkers of Washington and Lincoln
have done their job and we all are the poorer for it. Speech given at the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, Salt Lake City, Utah, September 25, 1998

President Boyd K. Packer
In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to
school. And in many schools--and it's becoming almost generally true--it is
spiritually unsafe to attend public schools. Look back over the history of
education to the turn of the century and the beginning of the educational
philosophies....which have led us now into a circumstance where our schools are
producing the problems that we face. BYU, Oct. 9, 1996

President Boyd K. Packer
Moral values are being neglected and prayer expelled from public schools on
the pretext that moral teaching belongs to religion. At the same time, atheism,
the secular religion, is admitted to class, and our youngsters are proselyted to
a conduct without morality.....we are caught in a current so strong that unless
we correct our course, civilization as we know it will surely be wrecked to
pieces...The distance between the church and a world set on a course which we
cannot follow will steadily increase. Conference, April 1994

Elder Dallin H. Oaks
"We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is
good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can
do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better
than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in
our lives. . . . Consider how we use our time in the choices we make in viewing
television, playing video games, surfing the Internet, or reading books or
magazines. Of course it is good to view wholesome entertainment or to obtain
interesting information. But not everything of that sort is worth the portion of
our life we give to obtain it. Some things are better, and others are best. When
the Lord told us to seek learning, He said, "Seek ye out of the best books words
of wisdom." Ensign, November 2007

Elder Neal A. Maxwell
. . .this rising generation is the first generation to be reared in a time
when society's other institutions, previously supportive of certain moral
standards, have largely been neutralized, or worse, secularized. This rising
generation, basically shorn of such external support systems, therefore must
believe because of the word, and behave because they believe. As we all know,
current film, music, art, and theater too often promote drugs, alcohol,
pornography and promiscuity. . . .this is not simply a temporary tidal wave
which ere long will pass. It is the wave-tossed secular sea itself, and it will
not subside until He comes and all the winds and the waves once again obey His
will. Hence this is not a time for busy or preoccupied parents to leave our
youth unloved, unattended, or untaught. Conference, Apr '84

President Brigham Young
I am opposed to free education as much as I am opposed to taking property
from one man and giving it to another....Would I encourage free schools by
taxation? No! Journal of Discourses 18:357

President John Taylor
Whatever you do, be choice in your selection of teachers. We do not want
infidels to mold the minds of our children. They are a precious charge bestowed
upon us by the Lord, and we cannot be too careful in rearing and training them.
I would rather have my children taught the simple rudiments of a common
education by men of God, and have them under their influence, than have them
taught in the most abstruse [or complex] sciences by men who have not the fear
of God in their hearts. . . Teachings of Presidents of the Church, John Taylor,
p.90

President John Taylor
Parents . . . do you surround your sons and daughters with every safeguard
to shield them from the arts of the vile? . . Or do you leave them in their
ignorance and inexperience to mix with any society they may choose, at any hour
that may be convenient to them, and to be exposed to the wiles of the seducer
and the corrupt? These are questions you will all have to answer either to your
shame and condemnation or to your joy and eternal happiness. Teachings of
Presidents of the Church, John Taylor, p.198

After my experience this summer, I'm not sure if there is a more noble way for me to spend each day, than to fill the whole day teaching, loving, nurturing, reading good literature, and overseeing the education of the spirits our Heavenly Father has put in my care.