Introduction
In the last number of weeks, I have had a number of conversations with folks about various Christian education options available to Christian parents in our local community. And in many ways this is a sign of significant progress and health. In Moscow alone, we have Logos School, Jubilee, Logos Online School, White Horse Hall homeschool coop, Classical Conversations, a new boys school, and probably other options I’m forgetting or I’m not aware of. I know many homeschool families also band together for various classes, hire tutors, etc.
The central thing is that Christians parents are required to train up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord Jesus. Deuteronomy says that means talking about God and His Word all day long (Dt. 6). So, anti-Christian education is out, and Christian parents are responsible for determining how to best carry out that mandate. And what I want to talk about in this short essay is the reality of trade-offs. Not all Christian education methods are created equal. Different educational methods have weaknesses and strengths; different families have different weaknesses and strengths; and the same thing can be said of cultures, communities, and eras — not everyone has the same options in front of them. Wisdom is not utopian or sentimental or romantic; it reads the story you are in (not the one you wish you were in) and then makes the best of the options available, taking into account the trade-offs.
Some Background
But before making that point in detail, I’d like to review my experience, just so it’s clear that I’m not just making this up out of thin air or that I’m necessarily biased in one direction.
As it happens, my wife and I have been involved in a number of different options over many years. I accidentally started a boys’ school back in 2001 that ran for about 6 years here in Moscow. We put our oldest son in Logos when we moved back to Moscow after seminary in 2008. And then somewhere along the line we helped start a homeschool coop, originally called Logos Recitations, which later became Whitehorse Hall. Jenny and I really liked how the structure of Logos School impacted our sons at a young age. The uniform, the teachers, assignments and grades – that set-up was good for their souls. Boys need pressure and weight on their shoulders, and a traditional day school can be a means to do that. At the same time, we liked having our daughters home with mom for a few more years, but our inclination was to have them finish at Logos. So that is why we helped start Logos Recitations, which became White Horse Hall. Our initial goal was to create a homeschool coop that was closely associated with Logos School in order to build an on-ramp for homeschool families that might be inclined that way. But as both were growing quickly and space was limited, we parted (on friendly terms) just to make room for everyone.
At the same time, I’ve served on the board of Logos School and White Horse Hall, and as I mentioned earlier, I helped run Atlas School – the boys school – for 5 years. So I’ve been heavily involved in different kinds of Christian education options for over 25 years, not to mention that I was homeschooled by my parents through 6th grade and then attended three different Christian schools through high school.
So with that said, the point I want to make is that every educational option is a trade-off, and the question is which trade-offs are you best suited to make? Which would be the best for your kids?
Day School Trade-Offs
Institutions lean, well, institutional, which means that if you let institutionalism take over, you can end up with a straight-jacket. For example, thoughtless families can have their family culture eaten up by school schedules. Some traditional Christian day school parents go on autopilot and are then shocked when their kids made friends with fat heads and start acting like fat heads themselves.
Some institutions can lean in a heavily feminine direction. Boys tend to be rough and tumble, and testosterone-fueled fruit of the spirit often looks different than the non-testosterone versions. If a traditional day school does not actively lean against the normalization of feminine virtue, you will end up giving all the spiritual and academic awards to the sweet girls who color in the lines and leave Bible verses in their best friend’s locker. And if a boy happens to actually meet that standard, he will likely be coming out as a flamer in the next few years.
There are also potential temptations for girls at traditional schools as well. Cattiness and gossip and cliques can become a cancerous legion, and where daughters should look to their fathers for counsel and security, strong male administrators or teachers can become inadvertent substitutes if steps are not taken to guard against it. And sometimes that can even turn into scandals.
Homeschooling Trade-Offs
However, homeschooling leans, well, home-ish – informal, casual, etc. If you are not careful, a homeschool can start to resemble a small barbarian tribe with jelly for face paint. I like to say that when homeschooling is done well, it can be honestly breathtaking and when it is not, it can be, well, breathtaking. As C.S. Lewis has the senior demon in Screwtape Letters say, the thing is to have the humans constantly guarding against the danger they are least likely to face. And many homeschoolers are deathly afraid of being too structured, which is rarely the danger they actually face.
At home, daughters are in their natural habitat, but it can be quite challenging for boys, especially as they hit puberty and are starting to feel the awkwardness. Good dads compensate for this through personal involvement, coop classes, and contact sports, but it’s something that has to be addressed. Sometimes in families where there are many children, there are hours and days without accountability. And some dare to lean into this by calling it intentional “un-schooling,” but I would call it “looking-for-trouble.” This can mean time alone on computers with access to raunchy stuff online. This can mean opportunities to cheat on school work. This can leave time for older teenage boys to get into sexual trouble with younger siblings. So basically, there has to be a lot of vigilance, structure, and accountability.
Sex-Segregated Trade-Offs
I said earlier that I accidentally started a boys school many years ago, and that happened because I was tutoring homeschool boys who were middle school aged, and two brothers turned into 12 boys over the course of a summer and then we were talking about having classes every day. As the oldest of five boys, I’ve always looked back in gratitude for the opportunity, as I was very accustomed to bossing around a pile of boys. And while I didn’t set out to start a segregated boys school, I came to see some of the advantages.
Teaching math or Latin with a little bit more of the style of a football coach has its perks. Boys naturally love to compete, and you can play to that strength in an all-boys context. Sometimes, in a co-ed school, you have one nerdy boy at the top of the class, a pack of dutiful girls, and then the rest of the boys, who don’t want to be a girl or a nerd, decide not to care about academics. An all-boys context can cut out that excuse. At the same time, after five years of that, I can tell you that I increasingly thought that what those boys needed was a few girls around. An all-boys school very quickly descends into locker room sloppiness – if it is not carefully guarded against, as in military-school discipline.
I would also note that God created us male and female and put us in a co-ed world, and therefore, even if it is wise to segregate the sexes periodically for particular purposes, it seems unnatural to make that an ordinary part of a boy’s life growing up (or a girl’s for that matter). I would also point out that sex-segregated schools are less common in America, and that means that we are simply less familiar with the downsides or dangers that will need to be guarded against. While the English boys schools were often boarding schools (and that would be yet another wrinkle on this discussion), C.S. Lewis and others have pointed out the rampant homosexuality that developed in their boys school experiences. So there’s that.
Conclusion
So the question for a wise father is: given the options you have in front of you, what is the wisest course? And specifically, which dangers would you prefer to compensate for? Which trade-offs would you prefer? Depending on your gifts and abilities and the gifts and abilities of your wife, I can imagine different answers to that question. But speaking for myself, I have preferred the default structure of a co-ed day school. In our case, the board and administration of Logos is very aware of the dangers of day schools (mentioned above) and actively takes steps to lean against them and supports families that also want to lean against them.
I would rather the structure of Logos and then work to push against the temptations of institutions, rather than the default of less structure at home and needing to push hard to create that structure. I prefer the accountability of lots of teachers and administrators and a curriculum plan and the strong cultural momentum of a generally healthy student body, and then I feel free to make adjustments for the blessing of my family.
Homeschoolers tend to want more time as a family, and many of them do a great job of balancing structure and family time. But sometimes I wonder if there are high hopes of sweet family times which in reality end up being lots of time for getting into trouble or academic laxity. I would rather work hard to create the family time than to have all that time and be burdened with creating the structure. And I suspect that really would be better for many.
Likewise, I’d prefer the trade-off of a co-ed school, while acknowledging that I have to work hard to create male and female specific spaces for my children. But I prefer that trade-off to a sex-segregated school that then requires me to spend most of my time trying to create co-ed opportunities. Again, some of that is simply based on familiarity. I know how to run one play much easier than the other. But we only have so many hours in the day.
One final word: in a Christian community like ours, it is important that we understand the difference between principles and methods. The principles are (in no particular order): the necessity of Christian education, obedience and honor of parents, vigilant love and discipline of children, love of the Lord Jesus, academic integrity and excellence, sexual honor and purity, and vocational training. Since the Bible doesn’t mandate exactly how a father is to apply those principles, there is true Christian liberty in methodology. And a strong Christian community must be united and like-minded around those principles, without rivalry or resentment about methods.
At the same time, this doesn’t mean that no one may say anything about potential weaknesses or failures. If a dad has failed to keep tabs on his daughter at a Christian day school and she’s now known as miss-flirty-pants, it is perfectly in bounds for close friends and elders to bring that up. If a dad has failed to lead his homeschooling family to be organized and his kids to be well-disciplined, and the neighbors refer to them as a traveling circus of chimpanzees, this may certainly be addressed by close friends and pastors – and perhaps that is not the best educational option for them.
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