By Wendy Young
Recently we had a very interesting debate around our dinner table when all our
adult children were home. One of them had been asked whether they
felt like homeschooling had prepared them for the real world.
The reply that was given was surprising to me - but when expanded upon in the discussion which followed, it made perfect sense, despite being the very real experience of this, now adult, child.
It was important to define the “real world” as a starting point for the discussion.
In terms of the question being asked it was meant to imply the world of tertiary
study, a career, possibly marriage and home making as would be applicable in
the homeschool graduate's individual situation.
The “real world” in my graduate's life actually meant facing college at a much
more senior age to others, finding that the peers did not in fact have a good work
ethic, but rather a party ethic, trying to juggle a marriage, studies and a
home….this child also needed to face peer pressure on a huge scale as well as
realizing that they WERE indeed different to those in the “real” world. This she
was not prepared for.
Except, as the debate continued, the realization dawned that what made her get
through as the top student in the college, manage the home, balance her
marriage and still come out relatively sane was due to the character learnt by
doing hard things through the years of homeschooling.
While the stress was immense in the “real” world and much pressure was placed
to fit in with the crowd, she was able to draw from lessons learned about right
choices, hard work, excellence and more to finish as a champ.
The debate continued between us all as to what we, as parents, could have done
to help our children be better prepared for the challenges that they all faced at
secular arty colleges. It was decided – NOTHING – because they each needed to
make their choices with regards to what was on offer from this secular culture,
they needed to determine what ideals they would follow, they needed to test
themselves and see if their values could stand.
We concluded the discussion by agreeing that there comes a time when we
need to trust the deposit we have placed in our children as to how they will
operate in a world where truth is no longer objective, but subjective, where there
is more worldly pleasure on offer than ever before, where they have a choice to
excel or be subpar in their work and other such choices.
It becomes their life to live and they need to choose how to live it in amongst the people and choices that for the majority of their life they were not exposed to in the concrete sense due to homeschooling.
We also realized in this discussion, its not that our homeschool grads always
made the right decisions, in fact they will say in some situations, they didn’t, but
their “bounce back” from those wrong turns were generally quick and they
recalibrated to who they were and their personal core values. This is the
testimony of how the child felt prepared for the real world. It was a good debate.
