What I Love about the Church of Christ: Homeschool

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states parents are primarily responsible for their children’s education. Tenderness, forgiveness, respect, integrity, and service to the poor must be the foundation on which all academic education is built. No one is going to be able to give a better example of this morality than a parent. Parents must also discipline without crushing the child or breaking their dignity. 

Many parents in the Church of Christ take this teaching quite seriously, even though it’s not spelled out like in the Catholic Church. Homeschooling is seen as the best way a parent can fulfill the duty they have to their child. Consequently, support groups for homeschooling is plentiful in the Churches of Christ. 

While socialization is important, it’s not typically seen as the chief virtue in both Catholic and Church of Christ families. It’s usually a secondary role to acts of service such as serving in a soup line or preparing packages for the poor. More traditional Churches of Christ will utilize door-knocking as a form of evangelism, encouraging their children to participate in the act. 

As a child, field trips were both religious and secular. Sometimes our homeschool group would go to another Church of Christ to learn four-part music, or we might go to the California coast and learn about sea life. We would also go to the park and have free-play which is something I fondly remember. Homeschooling also allowed my family to do service projects to the elderly in our church. One lady nearing 100 would buy us lunch or breakfast as appreciation for taking her shopping. It was certainly an opportunity to put addition and nutrition knowledge to practical purpose. 

I appreciate the homeschool material provided by Church of Christ publishers such as Apologetics Press. The Discovery magazine was filled with moral lessons and elementary science such as the different types of rocks and plants. Although I’ve moved on to theistic evolution, I think the material provided a good experience to my pre-teen mind. It’s certainly important to education children that people are special and that the soul is created by God. There’s nothing wrong with waiting until the proper time to educate the child on heavier science. It certainly would have been less disruptive my faith as an early teen if evolution had been taught from a Christian perspective, but that is for another article. 

Rich homeschool tradition is something that both Churches of Christ and the Catholic Church offers. You have a very limited time to lay a foundation for your child before they begin developing their own world view. Teaching Godly morality and service to others before academics is something that many in the Church of Christ and Catholic Church can fully agree on.