Boys beg mom to teach them at home
- Aug 18, 2007 - comment
Elis Mateus taught in private school 13 years, earning a tuition break for her sons to go with her salary. In 2000, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and “retired” from teaching. The family budget could no longer handle private school tuition and Isaac and Ezequiel went to public school. By the end of the year, they were begging their mother to homeschool them.
Stuck in crowded classrooms with teachers whose only control method was screaming, the boys couldn’t concentrate. They promised their mother to do “anything she asked” if she would just homeschool them.
Her husband, Manny, a Southeastern Seminary student, reminded her that when they first married she told him she wanted to homeschool their children and he thought she was nuts. Now was her chance.
Raised in non-Christian homes, both Elis and Manny are first-generation believers. They feel God has changed their lives and – like other Christian homeschoolers – they don’t want to submerge their children in an environment that seems to be arrayed against their core values.
Instead, she can, “keep them at home, teach them about the Lord, teach them math, writing, history and everything in this environment and not have to put them on a bus at 6:30 a.m.,” she said during an interview in her home.
Many public school students do not make a smooth transition to college, Elis said. “They’re not prepared. They go and sink. They struggle and think maybe college is not for them and it’s not true. They just weren’t ready, weren’t prepared well.”
While many homeschooling families feel capable of teaching their children through middle school, they shrink in the face of high school curriculum. But the Mateus’ feel those four years are most important to spend more closely tuned to family.
Besides, new self-guiding curriculum, co-ops, team teaching, hard work and the discipline students learn make homeschooling through high school feasible.
Homeschooling families enjoy mutual decision-making and time together that many others do not. Families together choose extracurricular activities “which are better and safer,” Elis said. “Students’ parents know their friends,” and other homeschooling families form a mutual support network with common understanding and goals that elevates trust to uncommon levels.
“We protect each other’s kids,” Elis said. “You don’t see that a lot in other environments.”
Elis and Manny moved to Wake Forest a year ago so he could finish a master’s degree he started 15 years earlier in Dallas, Texas, before he interrupted his studies to fulfill a promise to practice chiropractic with his father in Ecuador. He soon moved his practice and family to Florida where he also started a church among professional Spanish speakers that grew to ’0.
Fitting Profile
Elis and Manny – who estimate that half of Southeastern Seminary families homeschool their children – reflect the homeschooler profile.
In a study by L. M. Rudner homeschool parents had more formal education than parents in the general population; 88 percent had post high school education compared to 50 percent for the nation as a whole. Ninety-eight percent of homeschool students were in married couple families. Most homeschool mothers (77 percent) did not participate in the labor force and almost all homeschool fathers (98 percent) did work.
The median income for homeschool families ($52,000) was significantly higher than that of all families with children ($36,000) in the United States.
Homeschooled children appear to perform better on tests, as well. According to another study, by Brian Ray, “Home educated students generally score at the 65th to 80th percentile on achievement tests, 15 to 30 percentile points higher than those in public schools.”
Their sons Manuel Ezequiel, 16, and Isaac, 10, are inquisitive, polite, respectful and self-confident. They freely express themselves, enjoy a raft of friends at North Wake Baptist Church and in their neighborhood and easily entertain themselves.
Their school year starts at the end of August but learning is as much a part of a homeschool environment as eating. “This is not just school, it is our home and ‘ hours a day we are learning,” Elis said. “Every part of our life is learning.”
With no time wasted riding buses, standing in line, waiting for other children to be disciplined, a school day is typically five hours and much more ground is covered than in a typical public school day. And flexibility is an essential element of homeschool.
When Isaac indicated an interest in becoming a missionary to China, Manny said he will need to learn Cantonese or Mandarin. So they are casually investigating those languages.
“I’ve met women with high school degrees, and their children are learning Greek and Latin in their homes and I’m like wow,” Elis said. “They know God has called them to do this, and God going to help them do this. They are ambitious, and they are go getters.”
As evidence of the growing trend of homeschooling, the Mateus’ cite their experience in Broward County, Fla., where 500 families homeschooled when they started. When they moved to Wake Forest last year, more than 4,000 families in Broward County were homeschooling.
And, said Elis, “It is easier to do it here than in Florida. I can’t believe how many families we meet who are homeschooling.”
This article is reprinted from the August 18, 2007, issue of the Biblical Recorder, the newsjournal of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.