Editorial
Deborah Wuehler,
Senior Editor
“You Homeschool?
You Must Be SO Patient!”
Iam sure I am not the only one who has heard that comment. Many peo- ple who find out that I am educating all of my own children all by myself
and all in my own home give me that
wide-eyed look accompanied with “You
must be so patient!”
I start laughing about then, but my re-
sponse normally is: “No, not really. And
I am not organized either.” This is when
the conversation goes into something
about me being a saint or being insane. I
guess I am a little of both.
However, there is a very big difference
in the patience it takes to wait for something and the patience it takes to bring
up children while you wait for them to
grow to maturity. Seems like people today have neither attribute.
Why are we, as a society, so impatient
with our children? Maybe it is because we
are too busy getting the good stuff of life
or too busy consuming the good stuff or
too busy gratifying selfish desires of “me
time.” Or maybe we have believed the lie
that has slowly taken hold of our West-
ern society—that children are indeed a
nuisance rather than the Biblical reward
they are promised to be. They take too
much time, too much money, too much
upkeep—too much patience We are too
rushed, too busy, and too selfish, and chil-
dren interfere with our agendas. In our
quest for as much as we can get as quickly
as possible, we end up with less time for
the patience and love that raising (let
alone educating) children takes. We have
no national collective patience for chil-
dren. This opens up a myriad of questions.
A Myriad of Questions
Parents may have no time or patience
to raise their own children, but interestingly enough, the government does.
We must ask ourselves not only why the
parents of today don’t want the hassle
of full-time responsibility for their children but also why does the government
want that job so desperately? Are government intervention and government
oversight in the most important facets of
our personal lives things we really want?
Why does the government want to teach
the nation’s children from cradle to college graduation? Do we feel like we owe
them a debt and we pay it with our own
children? Can this big government-run
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