Wanna Be a Steader!

Did you read the article in the paper?" asked a friend at church. Since I had not read it, she added, "It said that homeschoolers are well-meaning amateurs who ought to leave the education of children to the professionals."

I was stunned. After 24 years of home educating my children, after all the derogatory comments I have heard, I thought that I was immune to this pain. The insult disturbed me, however, and I meditated on it for days before I arrived at some insight that helped me cope with yet another assault on our home. What I discovered helped me relax and shed the annoyance of it. Perhaps these thoughts can do the same for you.

FIRST, SOME DEFINITIONS

I began by defining terms, an exercise I always recommend to those who face name-calling. Sometimes it is possible to see that the person swinging the sword at you is handling the wrong end of it.

The root of amateur is the word amare, meaning love. An amateur is someone who works for love. "That defines us," I mused. Of course, we would expect that an amateur at almost any activity would perform according to a different mindset than a professional. Is it a lower mindset, though, as the news article implied? Do we not expect an amateur to produce higher excellence, in his own way, because of his greater dedication to a higher goal—that Godly thing called love?

A professional, on the other hand, is someone who "professes" to be something. He has studied, has passed proficiency tests, and has hung out a shingle announcing to the world, "If you want to hire someone reliably skillful, call me, because I am a professional." We expect that his stockpile of education and accreditation automatically confers upon him the ability to deliver a better product or service. But is that always true?

An example from our family might be my mother's cake decorating business. She attended training classes, opened a bakeshop, and made and sold hundreds of amazingly beautiful and expensive cakes during her career. I, on the other hand, although I had received hours of training from the time I was old enough to see over the edge of her work table and have decorated many cakes in my lifetime, did not charge for one of them. I gave the service, the ingredients, and even lessons of my own to family and friends, just for love. Professional decorators have agreed that my efforts were very good. No one ever said that I should stop. In fact, because they liked the results, folks often asked me to do more. My guess is that we all know stories like this.

ABOUT MONEY

So, although we homeschoolers know what we are doing and how to do it, because we work for the sheer love of it and love of our children, we are amateurs. There is no pay.

Or is there? Who receives the payback when our children grow up sane and safe? Who receives the pay when our children escape being burdens to society? Could we say that there is pay, but that it is not in money? Could we also say that the intangible benefits, such as lower crime rates or a higher lifestyle, are enjoyed by society at large?

ABOUT TRAINING

After filling my brain with such thoughts, I decided to rest on the financial aspect of it and concentrate on the training that a professional must have. No person would ever think of doing as we d provide a service that he had never studied in a formal school and then turn around and call himself a professional, right? Of course, there are a few minor exceptions to this overarching rule, such as Bessemer, Carnegie, Goodyear, Edison, and Einstein, but largely, it is true. Folks uneducated by professionals simply are not professionals. Outside of the few, such as Bronte, Austen, Barton, and Bell, we would not think of giving them payment or calling them professionals. It is a given that people such as Johnson, Lincoln, Madison, Marshall, Adams, the Roosevelts, Fillmore, Franklin, Garfield, Washington, Henry, Jefferson, Boone, and Wilson seldom come along, and would normally be considered unable to perform to a level that included reimbursement for their hard work. Is that not correct? I mean, there are not many Brownings, Blakes, Mozarts, Nightingales, Dickens, Pascals, Disraelis, Tennysons, Goethes, Wagners, or Whittiers. At least, if these folks do exist in large numbers, they are not very well known, right? Especially these days, they are very seldom self-taught in their professions, such as Gates, Adair, Stewart...

Usually, when we look for a professional, we turn to someone who knows his field, someone who has received certifiable teaching on all aspects of his profession. All others are amateurs and likely to fail us in some way. The professionals know everything about their profession and never make mistakes or fail. Amateurs do not know what they are doing and always make mistakes. Right?

SOME EXCEPTIONS

So why did our doctor once tell me not to bring our four-year-old son to visit him? This son had thrush for the sixth time and my doctor told me, "Mrs. Trauger, I think you know thrush when you see it. I do not want you sitting in this waiting room with flu going around. I am calling in your prescription and you can just go pick it up." I was pleasantly surprised at this turn. But how could I know thrush that well? I had not gone to medical school. I could not treat diabetes or sew up a gaping wound. I knew nothing about goiter or IBS. What would become of our son, since I had diagnosed him myself?

My diagnosis was correct and he recovered. The medicine was exactly what he needed. I did know thrush on sight. The reason I knew so much about thrush was that I had been attending this son, studying this son, for four years, and I knew him and his problem very well. You could say that I had a four-year degree in diagnosing and medicating this son.

Actually, it was a dual degree, one in doctoring him and the other in educating him. He knew colors, shapes, the alphabet, everything that a child his age ought to know and more, and we had been his sole teachers. Ours was a success story that repeats itself daily, across the nation and around the world. We are amateurs, yes, but we do know our subject and what we are doing.

WHICH KNOWLEDGE?

I do know my children far better than anyone else on this earth knows them. In fact, I know my children better than almost any professional does. I say that because if I had taken my son to any other doctor besides the usual one, he would have had to study my child. He would have had to ask questions of me, the only one who actually knew what was going on. The words written on his medical chart would have been based upon what I said. This is not an isolated example, either. If you doubt it, think about all the children's remedies that appear on the shelves of every store that carries such products. The mom is supposed to make a diagnosis, prescribe, purchase, and use these substances on the child, and it works.

This example applies to educating the children, too. Otherwise, our culture would mandate that children's books be available only to professional educators, when in fact, government sponsored billboards advise us to read to our children daily. How could we correctly make such input without a university degree? Some school districts require that entering kindergartners tie their shoes or name the colors. How can they expect us nonprofessionals to accomplish that in them? Will we not somehow warp the children? Are we not simply well-meaning amateurs who should leave it to the professionals? At what point does their education suddenly convert to something that is over my head?

In fact, does it not make even more sense to trust a child's education to his mom than to trust his health to her? A slight mistake in the alphabet or in algebra could hardly have the consequences that a mistake in medication would have. Thinking this way made me feel much surer of myself.

CONCLUSION

Sometimes we need a doctor to give us an initial diagnosis, teach us how to medicate the child, and direct us to more help if necessary. These are typically the exceptions, however, not everyday occurrences. Is the same not true for education? Occasionally we may need a professional to let us know we are working with something like dyslexia, to teach us how to deal with it, or to show us how to connect with higher professionals who can further help us. We hope that we never need them, just as we hope that we never need a firefighter, that we could simply use an amateur's fire extinguisher and keep going.

Most of the time, my husband and I provide all of our family's needs on our own. Sometimes, though, we have called for help with fire, plumbing, cooking, doctoring, cleaning, and many other life tasks. I even hired a professional cake decorator once, and paid her.

Professional educators have taught our children, too. Our pastor teaches them from the Word of God every week. Professional hunting educators have taught them gun safety. Professional driving educators have had their input. But who teaches them to read their Bibles daily, lock the gun closet after every use, and ask for the car keys? It is we: the same ones who taught them to color, tie their shoes, read, do sums, spell, type, parse sentences, speak Spanish, locate Eritrea, understand the Constitution, use reagents, and master CLEP college algebra. We were the ones who led them to college scholarships, cum laude degrees, and profitable jobs.

We meant well, but we were only amateurs. I guess we should have left it all to the professionals.

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Katharine Trauger has homeschooled her six children for over twenty years. She and her husband, Gerald, live in Arkansas, and enjoy gardening, reading, and Bible study.

This article was originally published in the May/June '07 issue of Home School Enrichment Magazine, a national publication dedicated to encouraging and equipping Christian homeschoolers. For more information, visit http://HomeSchoolEnrichment.com