Homeschooling: the privilege of the educated

I would like to start out by stating that my perspective on this is unique, since I although I am an American, I do not live in the States, nor is my husband American. Almost everything I have read about homeschooling is written by Americans.

I have heard it said many times that anyone is qualified to home school their children. But I have to challenge that statement. Everyone is charged by God to teach their children, but many people in the world are not able to school them.

Case in point: my mother in law. Rosaura was born in a remote jungle village, into an almost unknown indigenous tribe. One of many children, her life changed forever when her father died while she was still a young child. She never saw the inside of a classroom, I doubt there was even a school in the vicinity. Orphaned, life was about survival. She knew hunger firsthand, and the desperation of poverty.

Married as a young teen, she began her family without the support of relatives, her children born in the same small hut where they lived. Life was not kind to her.

My husband Alex is her youngest, and only with her second husband. He grew up speaking only Woun meu, their native language, at home. He doesn't remember how old he was when he started school. The Wounaan aren't a culture focused on numbers like we are. He estimates that he was 9 or 10 when he first stepped into a classroom. There he learned Spanish, something he parents couldn't teach him, since they didn't speak it either.

Alex's cousin told me how upon starting school she couldn't tell the teacher she needed to go to the bathroom; she didn't know how. So every day she would have an accident in school. What an introduction to education.

Not only was he faced with a new language, but upon arriving home with his first homework assignment, his parents were helpless to come to his aid. They understood neither the language, nor the letters on the page. So he did the best he could.

Alex still mourns the education he didn't get. In 7th grade, he began to struggle in school. As is usual in his culture, he parents encouraged him to drop out and begin working. It was only later, as an adult, that he finished his high school and even went on to university.

And he wants so much more for his daughters. He wants them to excel, to receive what he wishes he had received. Something his parents couldn't give him. What he received in the public school here in Panama was deficient at best. Yes, he can read and write. But I am humbled every day to realize what a treasure I was given in my schooling. I went to GOOD public schools, with a few years of homeschooling thrown in. I had GOOD teachers. I liked to learn. I was given the tools I needed.

That's a gift that many parents can't give their children. Some because they cannot read and write themselves. Some because they don't speak the language their children need to survive in the ever expanding world.

Those who home school are given a sacred privilege. No, all parents are not able to teach their children. And it is something that I never want to take for granted, next year as we start our homeschooling adventure with Princess' preschool. We are blessed.