Are “school” and “education” synonymous? Or is education a much broader and much more important concept than school? Is it possible that sometimes the routine and concentric learning of schools actually get in the way of real education—as in the case of the parents who were traveling to Israel for a week and wanted to take their two middle school children but were told by the school that they couldn’t take the children out of school for that long.
Who is responsible for your kid’s education: The government? The schools? The church? The coaches and teachers and lesson givers? No. We need and accept help from these and other sources, but it is crucially important to realize that it is us, the parents, who are responsible for our children’s education.
This means two primary things: 1. We need to supplement the education that schools give our children in things like the “three Rs” of reading, writing, and arithmetic with what we call “the other three Rs” of relationship-forming, responsibility, and right-brain learning. 2. When the timing works, it’s okay to take our kids out of school for brief periods when traveling or other educational opportunities arise that can’t be learned in school.
To explore this priority further: