My oldest son is four years old and a few months away from beginning kindergarten. Right now, at least for his first year, we are intending to send him to public school. Quite honestly, we did not make this decision because we are all that impressed with the public school system in Louisville (a political mess is an accurate description of JCPS), but private school isn’t an option right now and, despite the many proponents of homeschooling in Louisville, we still have significant concerns about homeschooling.
Anyways, that is the context for my reading of Robert Kunzman’s excellent book, Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling. And I must repeat, Write These Laws is an excellent book, well worth your money if this is a subject that interests or impacts you.
Kunzman is not a Christian, but he is not anti-Christian. A former high school teacher and present college professor, he is well-aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the public school system, sharing many of the concerns which homeschooling parents so often cite. He is also fascinated with the increasingly popular homeschooling movement, which is led (though not dominated) by conservative evangelicals. So in this work, he enters the home of six Christian homeschooling families and studies them, devoting a chapter to each.
In describing these families, Kunzman mostly succeeds in remaining objective: most of his volume is description, not prescription. This does not mean that he does not speak his mind throughout, but he does a good job at making it clear to the reader when he is about to offer his opinion. For the most part, even when he disagrees with the parents’ methodology, he is able to find something commendable in their goals. Write These Laws is certainly not an anti-homeschooling volume.
As a Christian who knows many evangelical homeschooling families, many of the families in the book struck a chord with me. I often found myself saying, “I know that family, they remind me of ______!” Sometimes I meant that as a compliment. Other times, not so much . . . . Ultimately, examining six unique families is not enough of a sample to really understand homeschooling families. Every family is unique, as they should be. At the end of the day, however, this volume succeeds in exposing the greatest strengths (such as individualized learning) and the greatest weaknesses (such as the ridiculous notion of unschooling) of the homeschool movement.
