TLP 82: Should You Consider Homeschooling this Fall? | Scott and Becky Aniol Interview

I think the biggest hindrance, the biggest fear in people's minds about homeschooling is ability. So what it comes down to, I think, is what your end goal is for your kids. Is it that they become really smart people, or is it that they learn the best things about God's world and learn to love those things, that they can become wise and God-fearing and have habits of Christ-likeness, the peaceful fruits of righteousness?

Christ-Honoring Schooling Options and the Role of Education

Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, A .M. Brewster.

As you know, we're coming to the end of our discussion about Christ-honoring schooling options. We've talked about the parents' role in their children's education, we've asked the questions, should you consider sending your kids to a public school this fall, and should you consider sending your kids to a Christian school this fall?

If you haven't heard those episodes, I highly suggest you check them out in order to be well-informed. It's difficult to be a wise, premeditated parent without adequately researching your options. Too many of us make choices for our families simply because that's all we know.

My goal through this series has simply been to give you more to think about. As most of you know, I'm not doing a very good job being unbiased in this discussion today. Even though, by God's grace, you can successfully parent your children through their public school experience, I don't believe most Christian parents should consider that their first option.

Last time we discussed the Christian school option, and I shared with you how much I love the Christian school movement and how valuable it can be. But I have to admit that I've saved the best for last.

Today's question is, should you consider homeschooling this fall? When my wife and I answered that question, we answered it with a resounding yes, and our two special guests have also answered it in the affirmative.

Today we're joined by Scott and Becky Anuel. Thank you so much, you guys, for joining me today.

Thanks for having us.

Good to be here.

Now, Scott has his Ph .D. in worship ministry. He's also the executive director of Religious Affections Ministries and the chair of the worship ministry department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas.

Becky is a full-time mom, I should say a full-time homeschooling mom, with her master's degree in education. And if I'm not mistaken, Becky, you were recently accepted into a Ph .D. program as well, is that correct?

Yes.

I'll be starting a Ph .D. in education in the fall.

That is awesome. Well, congratulations.

Thank you.

And, you know, I think maybe we'll have to have an interview with just you later on to find out how a Ph .D. program while homeschooling your kids is working out for you, because I think there are a lot of parents out there who would be very interested in that information.

Well, I will be, too. I'll be interested in that information as well.

And of course, let's not forget about the fact that you guys have three delightful and incredibly bright children. How are they doing?

They're doing great.

They're hiding in their rooms right now.

Yes. Keep them quiet. Your youngest one is how old?

He's 11 months.

He's 11 months.

Okay. Awesome.

And your oldest is?

10.

10.

Okay.

So he's the same age as my oldest.

So 10, 8, and 11 months.

Okay. Yeah.

Your two oldest, very similar in age to mine. Well, a fun side of this interview, for me anyway, is that not only did I know Scott and Becky, and we did our undergrad work at the same university, but Scott and I actually spent a good chunk of our junior high and our early high school years hanging out.

And I have a hard time even saying that without a smile coming to my face. I really, I'm not going to mention it. I'm not even going to talk about, I won't even say a word about the ridiculous games that we played and the videos that we made.

But I will say that as much as I enjoyed hanging out with him back then, I've enjoyed far more seeing how God has used him specifically in the realm of church worship and culture and aesthetics. I guess I have to lie here for a second.

I do need to say something. I remember standing in Scott's bedroom and he pulled out a quarter and he held it on the tips of his fingers and he waved his hand over it and the thing vanished. And I always liked magic tricks when I was younger.

And he just blew my mind.

I don't remember that at all.

You don't remember it? So should I mention that you were wearing a magician's top hat? Maybe I shouldn't point that out.

I have no recollection of that.

Yeah, you waved your hand over it and you snapped and the coin was gone. It blew my mind. And it took some prodding, I don't remember how many days, I probably begged you to tell.

Me.

And you eventually actually showed it to me. I just want you to know, even though you don't remember, I use that trick every year, I think, hence with the guys who come to Victory Academy. They love it.

It's great. So thank you. Thank you for that addition to my life.

Oh. Alright.

But despite the fact that Scott spends most of his time teaching, writing, and speaking on the worship culture of the church, he and his wife have actually become respected voices in the homeschooling movement.

In fact, they speak frequently about homeschooling and Becky writes regularly on the subject as well. So the three of us, you know, we're homeschooling parents. I know as well as you do that there must be some type of a story behind why you chose to homeschool.

You know, Scott, I'm pretty certain you attended a Christian school your whole life. I'm not so certain about Becky. So did your past experiences influence that decision to homeschool your kids or were you swayed by something else?

The Formation of the Whole Person

Yeah, it really comes down into sort of a shift in our thinking about what education is and our philosophy of education. I think a lot of times we think education is just imparting knowledge and that's kind of how we used to think.

But we've come to view it as the formation of a whole person. So it's shaping our children's worldview, it's shaping their values, their affections, their tastes, their imaginations. And we've come to recognize that all of that is done in and through education, whether we know it or not.

And so we felt that it was our biblical responsibility as our understanding of education changed, we realized it was our biblical responsibility as parents to be the primary shapers of everything that our kids believe, everything they love.

And we came to see that we could do that best as an integrated whole where education and parenting are actually one in the same process.

Yeah, I also attended private Christian school K -12, like Scott. So I had a really strong academic experience, especially in high school. A lot of my teachers had doctorates in their field. So originally, that's what I wanted for my kids.

I never planned to homeschool, but through talking to a couple of friends who were homeschooling and through my own reading, our thinking about education really started to change and we realized homeschooling better fit our philosophy of education as we grew in our understanding of that.

Now, you're talking about you're growing in this understanding and whatnot. I'm curious, you guys met in college and I'm no doubt like every other dating couple, you guys talked about potential baby names and whatnot.

At what point in your relationship, at what point in your family did you actually start seriously considering homeschooling?

I don't think we really started talking about it seriously until after I think probably both kids were born, Caleb and Kate. And I sort of had an inkling that I kind of wanted to homeschool, although maybe for different reasons.

I'm not even sure why I really wanted to at that point, but we began to talk about it. And like Becky said, because I mean, both of us really had very strong Christian school experiences. She especially, she went to Bob Jones Academy in high school.

So she I mean, the people who wrote the textbooks were her teachers. So, you know, it was a really great experience. I think she was hesitant at first to homeschool because she wanted the kids to have that same experience.

But again, at that point, our understanding of education was it's to impart knowledge to their brains and to give them skills for life so that they can have a job one day. And it wasn't until we both started reading some things and talking to some people and began to see education as something far greater than that, that we realized that we that we wanted to do it all as an integrated whole, that that education and parenting are essentially part of the same.

It's really what it means to disciple them.

Education and Discipleship as One Process

Yeah. I mean, I think homeschooling eliminates a false dichotomy between school and the rest of life. It allows us to see everything as educational, informative, all of life as an integrated whole. We certainly, of course, you know, cover subjects in school or I guess a better word would be disciplines.

But school education isn't divorced from parenting, you know. And I think disciplines really is the better word there because it's really important that we think in terms of discipline and discipleship when we think about educating our children, because if we think in terms of discipleship, then we're better able to see how parenting and education are inextricably linked.

And the Bible, of course, is clear that parents are in charge of discipling their children. So an education is a discipleship ministry.

So for us, really, education and parenting aren't separate. They're part of the same thing.

Yeah. In fact, what you just said was exactly where my wife and I came. I actually was homeschooled all the way up with an exception of I went to kindergarten and went to seventh grade. But so I loved homeschooling from the get go.

My wife went to Christian schools growing up. But well, when we had this decision we needed to make, you know, do we really, really, really? Is that the decision we want to do? We do really want to put our child into the homeschooling atmosphere.

We and we it was a big decision for us because it was specifically tied to a life change for our family. Then we came to this conclusion that we really wanted to be what I what I coined intentional, full time disciple making parents.

And the key thing for me, I think, was really the full time because you're right. We're all supposed to be disciple makers. We're all supposed to be intentional. But in our minds, we saw the fact that we could be full time disciple makers of our kids.

So let me ask you this. Let's just say that there is a young couple out there very much like like what you guys were. They've maybe graduated from the public school experience, maybe the homeschool experience, who knows?

And their kids are young and they're really for the first time realizing that, hey, you know what? Choosing where my kid goes to school is a big deal. So if someone came to you for advice, how would you answer the question?

Should I should my wife and I consider homeschooling my kids this fall?

Why Homeschooling Serves the Goal of Wise and God-Fearing Children

Well, practically speaking, I think the biggest hindrance, the biggest fear in people's minds about homeschooling is ability. People don't think that they can provide their kids with a good enough education.

And I have people tell me that all the time. So what it comes down to, I think, is what your end goal is for your kids. Is it that they become really smart people so that they can get into a really good college so that they can get a really good job?

Or is it that they learn the best things about God's world and learn to love those things, that they can become wise and God fearing and have habits of Christlikeness, the peaceful fruits of righteousness?

Yeah. So like, you know, as you said, if if if this hypothetical young couple, you know, wants to have, like you said, the ability to to disciple, educate, shape and form their children from the morning they get up to the morning they go to bed, then homeschooling is certainly the easiest way to do that.

I mean, it is possible to send your kids off to school and then just be really actively involved as a parent and work with them in the evenings and talk with them about what they're learning. I mean, both Becky and I had parents who were very actively involved in our schooling.

So it's possible to do that. But we've seen how it's actually really so much easier when you're with the kids all day. You're the ones teaching them everything. And you can really, like you said, be a full time discipler, you know, and nothing is outside that realm, whether it's their formal what you might call formal education, reading, writing, arithmetic or their music lessons or their playing or whatever they're doing.

You're always there to help them transition from being a child to being an adult, essentially from from being someone immature to hopefully a God fearing mature Christian. So I think ultimately the answer to that question is, you know, some people think, well, homeschooling is going to be harder.

Well, in some senses it is, especially for the mom who's doing all the work. But it makes, we feel, it makes discipling your children actually easier because you're doing it through everything, every aspect of their education, every aspect of their life, really.

Correct. And I think, to be fair, Becky, if a young mom were speaking to you and she knew about you and she knew you had your master's degree in education and she knew that you were accepted into a PhD program for education, she might be kind of like smirk at you and go, yeah, OK, well, you know, you're saying that it's easy.

And I think I think one of the ways that I like to encourage parents on this particular note of, you know, I'm not an educator. Well, first of all, that's not true. I mean, God has commanded us to educate our children.

Right. Now, I think when people say that, they're talking about, well, I was never taught how to educate in math or English or history of science. And that's true. But one of the things that I actually used to encourage my wife, because my wife, she has her undergraduate and it was not in education.

And she was very hesitant because she felt that way. She felt and she looked at me, she said, Aaron, you know, you have your master's degree and mine was in counseling, but involved a lot of education classes.

And she said, you know, what am I supposed to do? I said, well, actually, remember that the books were written primarily for the student at that age to understand. And what I found is that when I actually taught in a Christian school, I taught a Christian school for seven years.

I taught some subjects that I had never, quote unquote, learned to teach. And when I picked it up and I opened up to lesson one and I read through it, I was like, oh, well, that makes sense. I had now I hadn't thought about the cotton gin since fifth grade.

And I hadn't done any of that. But it really, really, really wasn't that difficult. And I think that I have to encourage the listeners to pay close attention to what Becky just said there, because it's not a situation where you can't do the education.

Yeah. And like Scott said, it's it's about making the discipling easier, though the education might seem a little rough at first, it actually isn't that difficult.

Education as Formation, Not Mere Information

Yeah. And but again, it really I think it's it comes down to how you define education, right? Because if you define education and what we what we've really come to understand is sort of a really more modern understanding of education as experts imparting information to students using carefully crafted methodology, then, yeah, you might feel inadequate and you might want an expert to be able to do that for your kids.

But if you understand education as something more profound than that, right, it is it is formation of spiritual people. Then what you said earlier is exactly right. Biblically speaking, every parent is what every good Christian parent is, by definition, equipped to do that.

And and so, you know, yeah, I mean, I think Becky would say math is not her favorite subject. And, you know, so she really wrestled with what curriculum, you know, could I use that best helps me and that kind of thing.

But some of the earlier conversations we had when we were talking about this, she was bringing some of this up. And my comment was, you know, the most important thing in my mind for our kids with this understanding of education is their understanding of history, their love of good literature, their ability to read and write well and think well.

Those are the most important things. Science, math. Yes, of course, you know, you're going to read about the world. You've got to learn math. These are important things and they're very, very valuable.

But the most important thing, and I think anybody who, you know, anybody is equipped to do this is to teach their children to love God's world, to love what is true, good and beautiful, to cultivate virtue within them through all of the subjects and beyond.

And any any parent can do that.

Yeah. And yeah. And in 2017, I mean, this isn't 1980 resources aren't the issue. You know, there's so much out there these days to really support parents in this endeavor. You know, you can accomplish the necessary academics with all the help that you can get.

The issue is, do you want to accomplish those academics through the Christian discipleship of your own children? Do you want to be the one to shape your children spiritually and emotionally? Do you want to be the one to train your children's habits and loves?

Or, you know, do you want their peers to have those jobs?

Homeschooling, Music, and Enrichment Opportunities

Wonderful. Were there were there other facets? Is that the main, like, for example, if a young couple came to you and said, should we consider this? And you say what you say, what you told them about, you know, we want we want to rethink more biblically about what education is.

We want to make that the part of the broader picture of discipling. And then they're sitting there going, OK, yeah, yeah, that would be great. We want to we want to disciple our kids, but they're not convinced.

What might you say to them? I think one of the great benefits for us, too, is because we have sort of a larger view of what education is. I mean, really, for us, everything is part of our kids' education.

There is a certain portion of the day when they're doing their math and they're learning Latin and they're, you know, doing their specific assignments that Becky's given them. But everything is education.

And when you view it that way. So for us, you know, you know, we're a very musical family. Our kids take piano and violin and cello. We try to take them to concerts. We try to take them to parks. We, you know, we try to do things that in in a normal, again, sort of modern view of education, those are extracurricular.

Right. So you do the education. And then if you have time, then you do those other things. Well, what homeschooling really provides is the freedom to see those as just as important. Right. Music and enjoying God's creation and going to good concerts are all just as important as their math lesson or learning Latin.

So, you know, and and if if your kids go to what our kids call out schools, right, home schools and then you have out schools, if your kids go to out schools, sometimes that's harder to do. So let me give an example of this.

A couple of months ago, I received word that there were some free concert tickets available that evening to hear Hilary Hahn, who's a famous violinist in downtown Fort Worth. Well, if this was a Tuesday evening, so if our kids went to out school, right, I probably would have thought, oh, well, that would be a wonderful experience.

And we really think that would be beneficial for them. But it's a school night. And if we take them to this concert and don't get home till 11, then they're going to be groggy all day in school tomorrow.

But because we homeschool and because we recognize that taking our children to a Hilary Hahn concert is part of their enrichment as people, then the ability to take them to that concert and then let them sleep an extra hour in the morning and still accomplish everything that they needed to do school wise the next day, that would not have been possible or at least would have been far more difficult in what you might call a traditional school setting.

With homeschooling, we have a lot more liberty to take advantage of those wonderful opportunities for our kids when we might not have otherwise had that freedom.

And I think that that answers another criticism that sometimes comes up about about homeschooling is the fact that they don't have as many experiences. You know, you can't be part of a drama department if you're if you're not in a school that has a drama department.

You can't play on a sports team if you're not part of a school that has a sports team. Well, though, sometimes that may be true. Obviously, you know, there are homeschool co-ops and whatnot that have their own sports teams and drama departments.

But even if that weren't true, there are many other things like what you just said. Growing up when I was homeschooled and it was wintertime, my mom would take us to Pine Mountain and we would have our ski lessons there while everyone else was in school.

We were learning to ski. And like you said, that was part of our educational experience. I was part of life learning. And so, yeah, that's that's definitely a critique that some people bring up thinking that somehow the homeschoolers miss out when in actuality, I think they have far more access oftentimes in their educational pursuits.

Socialization, Church, and Intergenerational Relationships

Now, I'm curious what you would say to this young couple who goes, OK, yeah, I know that sounds really cool, but, you know, I've heard that it's really important for kids to be, you know, socialized, you know, what what's going to happen if I keep my kids at home?

Yeah, that's a common question, right, with homeschooling. And what I would say is if by socialization, you mean that our kids need to learn how to respect others and interact with them in ways that are right and biblical, then absolutely we want them to be socialized from that point of view.

But we actually believe that the best way for our children to learn how to interact rightly with others is if we teach it to them, not if not just by throwing them into, you know, peer groups. And so we're very we're very active in our church.

And in fact, you know, ultimately we want them mostly we want them to know how to interact with adults. We want to we want them to know how to interact maturely with all ages, not just with their own peers.

And so that's you know, we're very active in church. We we have families over to our home and we are constantly, you know, trying to impart to our children. This is how you act with others. And not not just you know, we don't want our kids to only want to be around people their own age.

They have friends their own age at church, but we don't want them to have this segregated mindset. We want them to to know how to interact with with people of all ages. And we've seen this, you know, evidence itself in our kids.

Like Caleb just had his 10th birthday in January and we had a party for him and we asked him, who do you want to invite? And he didn't give us a list of children his own age. He gave us a list of families in our churches.

He said, we want to I want to invite the Jacks over and the Devenport's over and the Teichler's over. And so we invited their whole families. And yeah, there were kids his age, but also there were their teenage siblings and their parents.

And our children are learning how to interact with all ages, not you know, we live in such a segregated kind of society where everyone is is cornered off into their own, you know, cultural age demographic.

And that's really that's that's not a biblical picture of the church, right? Biblical picture of the church is the older and the younger integrated together. And we found that homeschooling actually helps us provide that true biblical socialization better than segregating our kids off into their peer groups.

Yeah, I noticed that with my children, too, especially on Sunday mornings. Obviously, my kids hang out with the kids that are their own age. They love them. They have very good friends in that age. But I find that my children really enjoy spending time with elderly people in our church.

I had I had a wonderful lady come up to me last week and she just said, I just want to say thank you so much. Your son comes up to me and he hugs me and he has these conversations with me and we talk about everything.

And, you know, there he is, this this elderly lady and my son and my son against 10 and right in the middle of this church. And there are kids all over the place and there are teens all over the place and all these people.

And my son just feels drawn to sit there and to have this conversation with this woman. And you don't see that too often. And that's I think that's a good side of socialization.

Yeah. Awesome.

Homeschooling, Temper Tantrums, and Sanctification

All right. So I'm curious. I think I think I know the answer. This one will be to I guess I should say before I move on that criticism or that question, you know, how my kids be socialized. I think one of the nice things is that when homeschooling was first becoming popular as a movement back in the 80s and whatnot, that was a big question people were concerned about.

But the nice thing is that the research has proven time and time again for decades now that that's just not the case. Homeschool kids are doing fantastically well. And like Scott said, with people from every age group and there really are this this socialized this idea of being socialized far better oftentimes because they have had to interact with adults more often than they've interacted with people of their own age.

And that's not a bad thing. Great. So I think my last question, I want to get some feedback for you because the question we're asking is, you know, should I consider homeschooling this this fall? And I have to say that I've heard a number of parents say when they find out that my wife and I both homeschool, I have the unique ability that I am at home during the time that my kids are doing their their disciplines.

And they say to me, wow, I just I don't think that I could spend that much time with my my kids. I think we kill each other. Now, obviously, in a moment like that, you know, you want to be tactful. But I've heard that so many times.

And perhaps what what might be your encouragement to them?

Well, I'll let Becky speak to it because she's home all day. But I get the text messages. You know, it's real life and there are struggles. There there are temper tantrums and stubbornness and grumpiness.

But again, if your view is.

Discipleship.

Becky and I talk about this all the time, right? You can't view the temper tantrum as this is interrupting education. You have to view it as this is part of education.

This is an opportunity to point my child to Christ. And so what if, you know, the math lesson breaks down in tears or temper? Then the nice thing about homeschooling is you can save that math lesson for tomorrow and, you know, it makes no difference whatsoever.

And you can take that time instead to deal with the hard attitudes. And, you know, so save lesson eleven for tomorrow. You know, you don't have to check off that box just because, you know, lesson eleven was in your lesson plan for today.

You can use that time to disciple your children. And that is every bit, if not way more important than finishing the entire math lesson for the day.

I mean, so it probably is true that we see more of our kids sin than if we sent them off to school because we wouldn't see them for, you know, several hours. So we do that there in that sense. Maybe there is more strife or there is more difficulty, but but we see it, which is a good thing, right?

So if they if they have a problem with temper, but they're only, you know, but they're having these temper tantrums off at school and we never really hear about it unless it reaches, you know, a level where the teacher notifies us, then we never have that opportunity to help our child through that.

But if if that sin problem that our child is experiencing, I mean, they can't not demonstrate it in front of us because we're always together. So we're going to have to deal with it. And yeah, it is hard, right?

Parenting is hard.

Well, and it's a sanctification issue for us, too. You know, it grows us as parents in ways that, you know, it stretches us in ways that we wouldn't be stretched if we were just here by ourselves all day and not dealing with that conflict.

Well, I love what you guys are doing. And if I'm not mistaken, Becky, the most of the homeschooling articles you write, they are published at Religious Affections. Is that correct?

Yes.

OK, great. Do you publish anywhere else?

Occasionally different places, but most of what I write is for Religious Affections.

OK, great. I'm going to be I'm going to have a link to that site in the description. So if your parents are interested in hearing or at least reading some of the things that Becky has written on this subject and would like some more encouragement, please do that.

Obviously, you can feel free to email us at Counselor at TruthLoveParent .com because I want to I want to be able to answer these questions. And I know this is a longer show than usual, and I want it to be because I want you guys to have as much information as you can to be able to make a Christ honoring decision.

So if you if you're if you're asking for more, it's like, yeah, OK, I get that and I love it. It sounds so great. But what do I do about this? Well, then, by all means, please send us those emails. We want to help.

And once again, I want to thank Scott and Becky for investing their time in us. I believe they did a great job enumerating what I believe probably are the single most important considerations for anyone desiring to homeschool their children.

The question is this. How much of their discipleship do you want to have? Do you want to have the discipleship from 5 p .m. to bedtime and in the morning hours, or do you want to have the discipleship of the entire day?

Thank you guys so much for being here with us today and sharing that with us. Please check out the links to Scott's ministry, Religious Affections Ministries, and his Twitter account in the description.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about God's thoughts on worship, culture and aesthetics of the body of Christ, they will provide amazing resources. When I said I saved the best for last, I wasn't being entirely honest.

I believe homeschooling is the best choice for my family, and so do Scott and Becky and hundreds of thousands of people in the world. But some of you may not be able to homeschool, and that's OK because homeschooling likely isn't God's best for everyone.

In fact, our next episode in this series is about an educational option few people consider, but many may benefit from. So join me next time to hear about this unique academic experience. We pray your children's summer break is a growing and glorifying time, but it will be time for school again before you know it, and we're happy to help you out with any questions you may want to ask.

Feel free to email us at counselor at TruthLoveParent .com. Have an amazing week.

Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional, premeditated parent. Join us next time as we search God's word for the truth your family needs today.