Faithwire Managing Editor Dan Andros recently caught up with actor and homeschooling parent Kirk Cameron while he was in New York promoting “Revive Us“. They discussed “Revive Us” at length, but the pair also discussed a number of other issues, including homeschooling. WATCH: Kirk Cameron talks “Revive Us” with Faithwire
There’s a stigma attached to homeschooling.
Families who choose home education are often met with skeptical inquiries from well intentioned friends and acquaintances. While many of these friends are mortified at the choice, it’s mostly due to their lack of insight on how homeschooling actually works. Their lack of knowledge, experience and understanding with homeschooling leads to what these things always do: fear and resistance.
This usually manifests itself in a series of questions:
But won’t your kids be unable to get into college?
What about socialization? How are they possibly going to interact with other human beings?
Won’t your kids be lonely?
Are you qualified to teach?
Is this some sort of religious thing?
They believe it’s going to ruin the kids, so they immediately set out to “help” correct this allegedly terrible mistake.
Cameron and his wife, Chelsea, homeschool their six children. In his conversation with Faithwire, Cameron explains the reasoning behind the decision made by he and his family.
“We prefer the term life schooling,” Cameron said. “This (park) would be a class for us. You can talk with your kids about, if they’re involved in biology, if your kids are involved in architecture, if they’re involved in engineering — you can go down to the subway and talk to the people who actually do these things for a living. It’s awesome. It brings every subject to life because the world, as they say, becomes your schoolroom.”
Cameron said the Thomas Jefferson quote, “I prefer dangerous freedom to comfortable slavery,” resonates with him when it comes to their decision to homeschool. While admittedly Jefferson said it in a much different time, under a much more controversial context, Cameron said its core meaning still applies to education.
“It’s the freedom to dangerously craft your own children’s education, so that they can be free to learn the things you know are important for them to learn. And not be locked into a system that only will show them what, say, a certain group of people want them to hear. I think home education is such a fantastic thing, but it takes a lot of guts and courage to do it.”
Andros, whose family also home educates, said that in addition to requiring guts and courage, the decision to homeschool may require a small sample of naivety, because life can be so crazy. Be prepared to swallow a little more than you can chew.
Cameron warned that parents who homeschool should get used to “a lack of sleep” as well.
“It forces us as parents to expand our knowledge, because we’re now educating our kids so we’ve got to be at least one step ahead of them.”
Andros said his family discussed how many hours the kids were spending away from home, being taught by someone else at such an early age.
“That was a deciding factor.”
Cameron agreed, saying he felt like only having a short time at night and on weekends just couldn’t compete with the sheer amount of time kids spend at school, being influenced by “somebody else, things I may or may not agree with, and may or may not undermine everything I want them to know.”
Time with family is irreplaceable, Cameron argued.
“The family is like DNA. It’s the building block. It’s what contains all the information to build the whole organism. Families are built around relationship. It’s built around ‘I trust you’ and ‘you’re for me I’m for you’.
“When we’re home educating kids there’s so much time spent together. Sometimes it’ll drive you nuts and you get a little cabin fever, for sure. But the value of the relationship is priceless. You just can’t replace it. Because you can’t find time anywhere else. There’s no other dimension where you can import time.”
If you missed Kirk Cameron’s Revive US event, November 1st is your last chance to see what Cameron describes as the ‘family meeting’ America needs:
On November 1, in cities across America, we’ll gather for a 2 hour national family meeting. We’ll worship together, led by PASSION, VERTICAL CHURCH BAND, and my daughter, ISABELLA. We’ll pray together with “MISS CLARA” from the movie, WAR ROOM. And we’ll hear from pastor FRANCIS CHAN, DR. BEN CARSON, pastor JAMES MACDONALD, ERIC METAXAS, and JENNIFER ROTHSCHILD. We’ll also have a live Q&A time, answering your questions from the theaters, and learning how to TRANSFORM this nation from the inside out, and the bottom all the way up to the top!
WATCH: Kirk Camera talks “Revive Us” with Faithwire
Buy Tickets to Revive US