Every Good Path is a site for all matters of mature living in the Kingdom of God. Literally – “every” good path. But you’ll notice homeschooling takes up a lot of the site. Homeschooling is one aspect of learning. All of life requires learning. Even if we are not sitting at a desk completing a worksheet, we are learning. We are discovering, exploring, investigating constantly. This is human nature. We must sift and sort all our experiences and all the information we encounter. So this site is about learning. We read, watch, converse, and surf the web for one reason – to learn something we don’t already know. To find something interesting or challenging to discuss with others, to investigate solutions for life’s problems, and so on.
As maturing Christians, we must follow Christ’s command to us to go into the world and make disciples. Making disciples means teaching. “Discipleship” is a relationship where a more mature and experienced believer tells another friend what he knows and lives it out before the friend. It is preaching and practice.
The most common and most important discipleship relationship is that of parent and child. It is a nurturing, training, teaching, discipling relationship. Since the contact between parent and child is so close, teaching is unavoidable. The child will be like the parent in many ways. “Like father, like son” is not a catchy saying – it is the reality of life on earth. The parent has a responsibilty before God and others to disciple their children successfully. The parent must be maturing in wisdom himself, and successfully transfer that wisdom to his children. So all parents “homeschool” whether they do it deliberately or haphazardly.
Homeschooling is important on this site because of the impact it has had on our lives. When our kids were born, we did not realize that parenting was discipleship, that “homeschooling” was unavoidable, and so on as just mentioned. My wife and I went to public school. As our kids were babies, we didn’t think about school for them. As the oldest approached age 3 or 4, we decided to investigate the homeschool option since we saw other parents doing it. We grew from there – initially simply teaching reading and basic numbers. Our committment was non-existent. We thought we’d take it a year at a time and send them to public school or private school in a few years when we as teachers felt unqualified.
As we taught, we realized homeschooling was not very difficult and had many advantages. Our year-to-year approach gradually became a committment to see it through to the end. Then, whole areas of lifestyle change opened before us. Not a dramatic epiphany, but a subtle yet unmistakeable awareness that we were becoming different people. Our thoughts and desires were changing. As we studied scripture, we realized the changes occuring were consistent with biblical teaching. We saw areas in our life that needed more change. We realized lifelong assumptions about lifestyle and family were exposed to be worldly rather than biblical.
The rate of discovery and change for several years was great. The process continues, but the initial flood of issues needing re-examination has slowed to a steady drizzle. Looking back, we can see that God was showing us a richness of life and family that we did not imagine as newlyweds. This richness, joy, depth, and blessing are the ideas “Every Good Path” attempts to capture.
So homeschooling our kids was a catalyst that led to fundamental lifestyle change. Thus, as this site began, it seemed fitting to start with homeschooling ideas and resources. We hope it will encourage others to begin homeschooling and strengthen current homeschoolers. Homeschooling has been a major “path” in our family, but there are many other “paths” to explore and enjoy. We hope to cover these over time. The “Topics” list in the right margin gives an idea of other areas to be addressed. There will also be a fair amount of “Miscellaneous” as we cover things learned while preparing to teach. For the homeschool parent is not just a teacher – they’re a learner first. And much of what is learned is either a relearning of things forgotten from a childhood education, or a new interest generated from topics that were never adequately covered in the parent’s traditional education. These new interests are indeed interesting and we’ll share the best on this site.