Homeschool or Private School?

Philip All right. Welcome to All Are Yours. This is one of the episodes — one of the two-digit episodes.

Sean Whoa.

Philip Yes, so we’re almost into the second part of two digits. I think 16 is my note.

Sean Yep.

Philip And still the same people talking to you. You know our names. No need to introduce ourselves ever again. So there you go. That’s that.

We are entering into the spring season here. It is sunny-ish weather, and it’s also toying with us. And so it’s also a busier season, with the school year end, and then it’s kind of the season of reenrollment for the school. And so a lot of our thoughts have been around school, education — that has been some of the conversations that we’ve even been having around our community.

And so we thought maybe it’d be good to bring this to the All Are Yours audience: our thoughts on not just education, but what are some of the options we have for education, and why specifically both Sean and I choose the education approach for our kids that we do? So that’s kind of the banner at the top of this episode.

Sean So far we have not actually talked about, as a complete episode, Evangel Classical School.

Philip I don’t think so. Yeah. We talked about Comeford.

Sean At least twice.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean That’s right. And that has just blown the doors off of enrollment at Comeford College. So probably, maybe we shouldn’t talk about ECS.

Philip That’s true. That’s right. Yeah, I think we’ve mentioned some of that, but I mean, we have education figured out. Like, that is not a problem area for us at all.

Sean Thankfully.

Philip That’s right.

Sean We have competence in the area of education.

Philip That’s right. At least some care. So —

Sean Lots of care.

Philip That’s right.

So, to kick things off from the start: some options for Christian education. So, Christian parents in education. We are also particularly in Marysville, and so we have other Christians here, thankfully, who are not just a part of TEC and our community, and who also have other thoughts on education. So Christians everywhere maybe not just disagree in spirit or principle, but at the very least in practice.

And so, three basic options for education: government, homeschool, and private school.

Sean Right.

Philip So maybe, what are some thoughts there? How should Christians navigate in choosing their field, their model, for educating their kids?

Sean You went to public high school.

Philip I did.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Yeah, it was the worst.

Sean Yeah. And I as well. Me as well. I, me, whichever one it’s supposed to be. That’s because we went to public school. We don’t know which is supposed to be.

Yeah, when I started being asked to think about it — well, I don’t even know if that’s true. Because when I moved to Marysville, the church that I was the youth pastor for also had a Christian K–12 school that was connected to it. And I’d only been in my office for a couple days when the administrator of the school at that time came over and asked me if I wanted to teach a class. And I said, maybe at some point, but I had just moved and I wanted to spend more time building relationships with people, and then maybe after a year or two I’d be ready to teach a class, a Bible class.

And he said okay. And then it was about a week before school was starting — so a few months later, school’s about ready to start — and he came back into my office and said, we’ve decided that we’d like you to go ahead and teach this Bible class for us, because they couldn’t find anybody else.

So from that point I actually started teaching at a K–12 school. I had Bible classes, and I taught almost every year that I was the youth pastor. I also had at least one, if not two or three, different high school Bible classes.

And throughout that time, Mo and I were getting ready to have kids. So we had our oldest, and we were talking about how we were going to educate her. And Mo, my wife, had been homeschooled herself and was pretty interested in that, and then started reading some more books about it, and then started telling me I needed to read books about it.

And even at that point — I mean, there’s more to some of those parts of the story, which I’m sure I’ll feel the need to get into. But even when I really started thinking about my own education, it wasn’t so much that I was taught evolution. It wasn’t so much that I was taught crazy historical things. When I was going to school in Ohio in the eighties — most of my K–12 schooling was the eighties, and then I graduated from high school in ’92, in Ohio, kind of a country-ish, not big city kind of place — wouldn’t have radical gay, lesbian, transgender ideology, rainbow flags. Wouldn’t have any of that.

What we did have was a complete lack of reference to God at all. My science teacher was not a Christian at the time. But he wasn’t bashing God. He just talked about all of these things like God was irrelevant.

The biggest thing, when I started thinking about education, was not even thinking about it in terms of public school trying to ram atheism down my kids’ throats, as much as it was the assumption that even if there is a God, he doesn’t matter for all of this work. He doesn’t matter in all of these subjects. Like, we can study all of these things, we can learn all these facts, and they are just for everybody, whether you’re a Christian or you’re a Muslim or you’re an atheist.

And as I was more and more coming to understand the implications of Christ’s lordship — so I’m not even sure that I had Kuyperianism as a nickname in my head, as a label — but I knew that it was wrong to try to act like you could have this neutral space, that education was a neutral thing. So the biggest problem, looking back, in my education was that I went through all of it being assigned — I didn’t actually do lots of work, but I was at least assigned things — and I sat through the classes where it just didn’t matter whether there was a God or not. And I didn’t want that for my kids.

So I also happen to think that’s probably the best case scenario for public schooling. And now, especially in Western Washington, and knowing what we do about the public Board of Education and about our local public schools, it is much more aggressive in trying to establish values —

Philip Right.

Sean — in the minds of the students that don’t actually seem to be academically related. They seem to be culturally related. So our public school systems are very much so enculturation centers, starting with the foundation that there is no God, and then moving into now all of the other crazy, more aggressive, more proactive, false ideas.

Philip Right. They are now more consistent with that starting point.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So in terms of, is public school a good option for Christians — obviously, maybe. If somebody is listening to this podcast and they’re listening to it under Christian nationalism in —

Philip That’s right.

Sean — 3025.

Philip Mm-hmm. In the millennial kingdom.

Sean Sure. Then maybe. So we’re talking about it from what we currently have and where we are. Maybe there’s somebody listening in another part of the world, or another part of the country, where the public school systems are different, and that’s fine.

But still, the failure to give God credit. In Romans chapter 1, it actually talks about the wrath of God coming on men who fail to honor God or give him thanks. And why would we then send our kids into an arena for hours every week, and years of their lives, where it is encouraging them to at least avoid giving God thanks and honoring him for all the things that he’s made? Let alone the consistency that comes from not having — well, who is holding all this together, and who made it?

And I get that evolutionary thought, macroevolutionary thought, is less prevalent, maybe, because nobody can repeat it. It’s not actually scientific. But they still are telling those stories, for lack of having interest in saying that there’s a creator. So I just can’t see public school as being a good option, for the apathy about who we’re serving.

Philip Right. Yeah, I think apart from the sphere sovereignty conversation — should taxpayer dollars be paying for my education? What sphere does education belong in? Is it a state thing? So in the millennial kingdom, will it be a state-sponsored endeavor, or will it still be in the family? So I think that is a separate conversation, maybe.

But in our specific context, I don’t think it’s even necessary to push it that far. Like, I don’t know how a parent can obey Deuteronomy 6, right? When it says, “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand; they shall be as frontlets between your eyes; you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

And what are you teaching them? That the Lord our God, the Lord is one. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” So the greatest commandment, that Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6, is in the context of parents teaching that to their kids — to love God with all they are, all the time, wherever they are.

And so how can you obey that? How can you do that if you are sending your kids to a place where, again, today they’re actively taught against that, but even in a “neutral playing field” where God’s authority does not matter here, it is irrelevant?

And so yeah, I had the same experience coming out. I was born the year you graduated high school.

Sean There you go.

Philip There you go. But yeah, the same experience coming out, where there is a whole area where God is irrelevant. Most of life, God is irrelevant. And so definitely had to learn that and figure that out later — how does all this actually make sense?

And so, to present to your kids, to present to people, that there is even a place where the authority of Jesus has no say, that math or science is kind of everybody’s domain and Jesus rules only over the spiritual things in the church — that itself seems disobedient. It’s not just a strategic question, it’s almost a moral issue.

Sean Yeah. So I guess if I was trying to get to the point of it — public school. I didn’t resist the idea of sending my kids to public school because public school was satanic. Trying to get out of public school was not a running away. It was not a retreating. It was not a hiding. It was not primarily a safety issue. It’s not because it was satanic. It’s because they’re too limited. They don’t even know what they’re doing.

Philip Right.

Sean So whatever the other option was going to be, it was going to be because there’s way more.

Philip Right.

Sean And it’s honoring to the Lord, and he’s got way more for us to learn and be able to pursue, that is also then honoring him and giving him thanks explicitly.

So: homeschooling that is a retreat and a hiding, that is for safety; private school that is just a place where then there aren’t guns and drugs and as many cuss words from the junior high boys, or bad things scrawled on the toilet stalls or whatever — like, that is not sufficient either. So, better than public schools? Yeah. But that motivation to just get away from something bad is not as big of the vision as what we’re trying to help people have.

Philip Right. Well, then I think that a key word there is to even have a vision — for parents, for fathers, to have a vision for their kids. When your kids are having their own kids, what kind of life are you wanting them to have? What kind of parents are you wanting them to be? What sort of Christians, what level of resoluteness and confidence in the faith, do you want them to have? And to apply that, to start even from that positive vision, and then sow the seeds now, or build now, toward that end.

That’s a different starting point than, like what you’re saying, just reacting to whatever was thrown at you today — the issues today are too bad, so I’m going to react and just try to figure out a solution for today.

Sean Yeah. And it turns out — and I’m happy to retell some of this story — but it turns out that part of the reason that, in our case, our family chooses not to homeschool either, is because our vision got too big and we weren’t going to be able to pull it off for ourselves.

So you want me to talk about it?

Philip Let’s get in. So, we all agree. All the listeners agree. Government school, no good. Don’t do that.

Sean No good.

Philip That’s right. No God, no good.

So then, options that Christian parents do have in order to align with that vision boils down to either homeschool or private school. Or you could just not educate your kids at all, I guess. Sure, that’s an option.

Sean I have been around some families that, more or less, that’s what it practically came down to.

Philip Right. “We homeschool.” Right.

Well, and I think there is — I mean, all kids having an education is also fairly new historically. That was not always the thing. Most people were uneducated. They could not read and write, for most of history.

And so if you are going to choose to educate your kids, you have homeschool or private school. So both Sean and I have chosen not homeschool. Sean actually first chose homeschool and then worked out of that. I didn’t even go that route at all. You know, they say that stupid people learn from their own mistakes, smart ones learn from others. So, take that as you want it.

Sean Sure.

Philip But yeah, so if you could go into some of your reasoning, experience — homeschool, not homeschool — just for your own family, before even getting into putting in the work to building a school. Why did you decide what you did?

Sean Yeah, I totally began life as a father, a husband and father, with the idea that education for my kids was going to be somebody else’s job. I did begin with that kind of mindset, or that default. Because I had a job. And specifically I had a ministry, because I was a vocational pastor. So I wanted them to go to school, get educated, whatever. Got to —

Philip — read the Bible.

Sean That sounded great. But that was going to be somebody else’s job.

And my wife had been homeschooled for the majority of her growing up. And her family — I wouldn’t say that they were rabid homeschoolers, but they were rabid anti-government-schooler people. And my wife is also very self-starting, so self-initiating. And when she got put into the position of being able to learn for herself, it was great. Like, she loved it.

And so even when we first got married and hoped to be able to have kids, when we talked about education, she was very interested in us homeschooling our kids. And so, because I was busy with the important things, I said to her, well, of course you can homeschool our kids.

Philip You supported that.

Sean I couldn’t have been more supportive of her doing the work.

Well, then we had a kid, and then that kid kept growing and getting closer to school age. And so Mo would talk to me about what we’re going to do. And I continued to supportively say to her, I would love for you to homeschool our daughter.

I was teaching at the other private Christian school. I’m sure that they probably expected we were going to put our kids in that school. And I actually just really didn’t even have any desire to do that. I was fine with Mo homeschooling our kids.

And she said, well, I really think you should start to read some about it. And I kept arguing, well, I want you to do it. My headship — I’m delegating to you this responsibility.

And Mo is very patient. Because I was totally wrong, to be clear. I was wrong in all those mindsets.

And it was around that same sort of time, in the jambalaya of my mind and God granting repentance for wrongthink — it was around that time that I was starting to become more Kuyperian, and seeing in Genesis 1 what God said was good, and I was not calling those things good. And so, well, I should see and then call good what God says is good, and then I should want that for my kids as well, and that’s all falling under the banner of the lordship of Christ.

So what’s the best way, now as I was changing my mind and getting more involved? I mean, Mo was like, well, at the minimum you have to do Latin. Because I like language. I don’t know if I like Latin, but I had liked Greek a lot. I had passed Hebrew. I speak English sometimes. So she was going to take care of the other things, and I was going to have to do Latin when Maggie got to about second grade. And I agreed with that.

So we started out homeschooling, and by that point we had already decided we wanted to try the classical model of the trivium. So, starting with grammar things in the different subjects, aiming toward then the logic or dialectic stage, on to then the rhetoric — like, we bought into the trivium. That sounded great.

We were not familiar with some of the other more homeschool co-op kind of places, like Classical Conversations is one that enables homeschooling families to co-op together for certain parts of a classical education. I don’t remember knowing about Classical Conversations. The closest classical Christian school to us at the time was in Lynnwood, so Providence Classical Christian School.

So it just seemed like, we’ll try it. Mo was excited about homeschooling. I was finally agreeing that education was important and that I needed to know some of what we were doing.

And we tried it for a few years. And a couple things were happening. One is that we kept realizing — both Mo and I realizing — that there was way more to know and love.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Like, in the division of labor, that’s one thing, but the division of loves is also significant for finite beings. I’m limited in my capacity to love. I want to love more things, and I think as I become more like Christ, I’m interested in what he’s interested in, and I love what he loves. And more and more, not just in terms of content, but capacity to love more of more things. And that’s great. But as a finite person, I’m still limited. I’m limited in my loves. I’m limited also in skills, limited in things that I know about, even if I’m trying to learn a bunch more things. And of course I’m limited in my time.

So while we’re thinking about it, our vision of what is possible in education is way expanding, and it’s expanding at a rate beyond what we, as the ones providing this education —

Philip And at this point you just had your oldest?

Sean It’s just one.

Philip And that would have been —

Sean — second grader.

Philip Second grader. Okay.

Sean Yeah, into third grade, I think. So our second born, Calvin, was getting close to kindergarten time, and then Maggie was getting close to fourth grade time. And so it was about this time of year, actually, so many years ago.

Philip There you go.

Sean When it was one of those brutal homeschooling days. And for whatever reason, our whole one student —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — our one third grade student was causing significant heartburn. And I totally remember having a conversation with Mo then, one afternoon, where she said to me, “Look, Sean. You need to be exhausted educating our children, so you better figure out the best way to do it.”

And that has continued to make me tired and haunt me, in a good way. In a way where I am much more blessed now than I was at that point. But “you’re going to need to figure out the best way to educate our children while being exhausted” then led us to trying out a classical Christian school the next year.

So we sent our oldest into fourth grade and then our second into kindergarten that year. And I think it was within the first day or two that we knew that this was the right thing. That the compounding nature of a bunch of people trying to do it was going to be way more than we could pull off at home. Even if that was the only thing that Mo was doing. Even if somehow that could be the only thing I was doing, the two of us still could not provide the amount of loves of subjects, and loves of expanding capacities, like we could in a community of people who are trying to do that — who then maybe even had some more specialized skills or specialized interests that they’d studied and they loved, that then they could love into our kids along with us.

So while we’re going to Providence, it happened to be that our church started that same year. So our church started in January of 2011. And I think it was actually the spring — it was just a few months after TEC had started — that Mo had the conversation with me about Maggie, and about what we’re going to do for educating our kids.

It was that fall that we had Maggie and Calvin start at Providence. And we loved it so much that the options in our minds at that point — we only had two. It was: buy a bus and drive everybody at TEC who was starting to realize this kind of education was possible, we can buy a bus and bus everybody down to Providence there and back every day. Or we can try to start a school and have it for our people up here.

So I knew that I could not provide for my own kids what I wanted. And the amount of resources have only grown since 2011, 2012. So I think ECS started in the fall of 2012.

Philip Oh, okay. So at Providence they were just one year.

Sean Just one year. Because even while I was thinking about how to best be exhausted to educate our kids, I was already anticipating the possibility of trying to start a school. But it seemed like we should get some experience of actually seeing one that was operating before we made the final decision.

At that time, it was also right around the time that Maggie and Calvin started — just a little bit before that — TEC hired Jonathan as one of the pastors. And one of the things that we hired Jonathan to do — and I already knew the answer — but we hired him to investigate the benefits, challenges, feasibility of starting a classical Christian school.

So he also had been at the previous private Christian school. He had taught classes. He was actually in administration there. So one of his pastoral duties was going to be to read some books that we gave him about this classical Christian education thing. See what he thought about it.

I kind of likened it to encouraging someone to walk right alongside a swimming pool, and it’s ninety degrees and sunny outside, and you’re just going to give them a little tap. And it’s not really a question whether they’re going to jump in and swim or not. And yeah, within a short period of time, he was loving what he was reading. This is Jonathan — he was loving it.

And so we started, even with me traveling, or our family, forty-five minutes one way without traffic, to take our kids to school five days a week. The kindergarten class only went maybe four days a week, maybe three days a week, something like that.

But the point is: homeschooling was great. My wife was homeschooled. She loved homeschooling. We agreed, when we got married, that we were going to try that out. But as our vision of what was possible to learn and love kept growing, we just realized we can’t do this on our own. We need to coordinate with other people.

Philip Right.

Sean And that means that then I can share some of my loves with their kids, and then they, as parents and teachers, can share some of their skills and loves with my kids. And that kind of compounding effort is just much more. There are other things than just that. But for me, there’s just no question.

Philip Right.

Sean Homeschooling, great. The flexibility of pajamas all day if you want, great.

Philip No.

Sean The flexibility — yeah, I’m saying if you want. The flexibility of “let’s all go to the store,” great. The flexibility of vacations — I mean, our family is not really big vacationers, because we have a variety of spheres in which we’re trying to do things. So the whole Kuyperian vacationism, which seems to be a thing that some of even our TEC people are more interested in.

Do you have more flexibility when all you’re doing is homeschooling? Of course you do. And is flexibility the vision?

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So flexibility is an awesome thing, and not the highest priority for education.

Philip Right. So I think there’s some overlapping context here, and even overlapping maybe starting points, so to speak, right? So —

Sean Run with all of them.

Philip That’s right, run with all of them. So, but those context starting points have spheres of responsibility.

So both you and I are parents, parents with specific visions for our kids, right? And so, like in government school versus not government school, there is a question of morality there. But even there, the approach is: we want something much more and better for our kids than what government school can offer. So apart from even the moral issue, the sin issue, all of that, there is a positive, big vision for our kids as parents — why we don’t send them to government school.

Sean So yeah, because even now, if all you want is just a step better than public education — well, that requires almost nothing.

Philip Right.

Sean And yeah, anybody can do that.

Philip Right, exactly right. So it’s not even just, as long as they mentioned Jesus’ name, then everything would have been okay. It’s more than that, right?

And then within — out of government school — the question is not just good or bad, the question is good and better, right? And that’s where wisdom comes into play, and even discernment. It’s much more difficult, or requires more conviction, to choose between good and better as opposed to just good and bad.

Sean Sure.

Philip And so as parents, all parents, we want what is best for our kids. Or that’s at least what we assume all parents want.

Sean That is what we say.

Philip But the other context that we do have, both you and I, is also as pastors, where we are responsible — there’s a different level of responsibility that we have for our own kids as we do for the people in our church, right?

Sean Yes.

Philip And still, for the people in our church, I do think that we are accountable, responsible, to cultivate their wants as well. So, for them to have not just good-versus-bad wants, but better-versus-good ones. We want them to also want the best things, right?

And so this sort of conversation could get touchy, sensitive, and also requires wisdom and some nuance — which both you and I love nuance. But in the sense of, is homeschool wrong? Is homeschool bad? That’s a different question.

And so right now we’re more talking about our reasons for sending our kids, in that realm, to not homeschool. And then even specifically for you, even more than me — I mean, all you, none me — you’re invested not just in sending your kids, but in building the school, right? So there is a lot of time and energy investment and money investment that you’re putting in to building a school that then surpasses the influence not just for your kids in particular, but our community, our city, and what that does for all of that. So the vision there is that what ECS specifically can accomplish is much, we believe, better and bigger than just if you and I were to homeschool our kids on our own.

Sean Yeah, this is so correct. I mean, qualifications are often necessary, like the nuances —

Philip — and also distracting.

Sean Right. So I always qualify before I make a homeschooling joke, that we did homeschool, and that means it’s okay for us to make homeschooling jokes.

But obviously, some of the least teachable people are parents. Which — when a parent is not teachable, when a parent is not a lifelong learner, it doesn’t really matter how much they try to push their kids to be. Their kids are going to ultimately learn the minimum amount to get by, to get whatever it is the thing that they think that they want.

So one benefit of homeschooling as an idea, at least in theory, is that it requires parental involvement to the degree that then the kids see that they also need to be involved. So parents are doing work directly. There’s not indirect, there’s not coordination; it’s parent to child directly. And again, theoretically, then that should be a great example for the kid.

As it turns out a lot — not always, but as it turns out a lot — homeschooling families do not have dad really that involved. That is how it started in our house. I was fully supportive and non-participating. And then when I did start participating, it was still pretty minimal.

And some of that is practical, because most families have it where the dad leaves and goes off to a job. So with the increase of remote work, can more dads be at home? Yes. But even there, are most dads preferring to have noise-canceling headphones on, and some other isolated room and part of the house where they can shut doors, because they either have to have remote meetings or because kids are too distracting? Most men are not as good at the kitchen table work, even when they try.

So even in a homeschooling situation where you do it because you want that parental involvement — well, you still actually don’t typically get a lot of dad. And mom still has all the other things that she needs to be doing, which includes feeding all the people, again, in general.

Philip Right.

Sean So she’s still got shopping to do, she’s still got laundry to do, she’s still got cleaning to do. And because very rarely do you have five kids that were quintuplets, and therefore they’re all at the same level and you’re talking to a class of five about the same thing — no, your kids are spread out, so they need different things, inevitably. There’s a baby when you start trying to homeschool as well. And so babies require a whole different level of distraction from the educational effort.

So again: does homeschooling mean parents have to be more involved? Only kind of, actually.

In addition to the fact that, because lots of times in homeschooling families the dad is not able to, because he’s got a job — I’m not saying dad is not excited about it, but his participation has to be different. And that also means that, especially for the young men as they are being educated, their primary teacher then is their mom.

And actually, a lot of times that doesn’t work out super awesome. Not because the mom is immature, but because moms, as women, are only supposed to provide a certain kind of pushback to their sons. Instruction, yeah. Even in Proverbs 31, it actually seems like it was King Lemuel’s mom who was giving him instructions about how to be a king. So it’s not like a man has nothing to learn from his mom, or even from another woman. But in a day-to-day scenario, lots of times the young men are not actually encouraged to grow up in manliness, or the family has to figure out other ways to supplement that.

Philip Right.

Sean Which again is great, and the prerogative of the parents. And dad should be paying attention to how his sons especially are learning to be men, even while spending the majority of their time at home. That’s fine, but supplementing then in other ways, whether that’s a sports team or some other club.

But the idea then that that is more pure than a good private Christian school is kind of silly. Again, lots of private Christian schools are run by women. One of the things that makes ECS unique is that we have so many men who are teachers. We have men who are full-time teachers. Most of our part-time teachers are also men. So we have a strong male faculty presence, including our headmaster is a man. Our board is entirely men, and that’s actually a requirement that we decided in our bylaws when we started —

Philip — is that —

Sean — the board can only be men.

Philip That’s right.

Sean While listening to our wives, listening to women. Obviously we have some women teachers who are fantastic at what they do. Our second-in-charge administration person is a woman who does a fantastic job too.

But the idea that homeschooling is a pure parent-to-child system —

Philip Right.

Sean — is actually —

Philip Right.

Sean — more theory than it turns out to be true in practice.

Philip Right. Yeah, and I do think that is one of the reasons that people bring up regarding why they decided that homeschool is better for them, for their family, than a private school. Whether it’s the parental autonomy and control, maybe, of what is being taught, how it’s being taught — both the parents then have the full autonomy and full control over the education of their kids.

And it is also true, like what you’re saying, where in practice a lot of times it is the kids teaching themselves, even where there’s like a lesson maybe kicked off —

Sean — with a video.

Philip With a video. So —

Sean As a parent, I got my kid a device and got them successfully to this URL.

Philip Right.

Sean Okay. Well, that is sort of parental involvement. That’s true.

Philip Right. Well, and maybe it doesn’t start that way. But it ends up, hey, this is actually a lot. There’s a lot to provide that as the parent, especially with the dad being busy with work. It’s all on the mom. She has little kids to take care of as well.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so this is a help meet kind of thing, so they fall into that as well.

The other thing connected with that is the time the parents get to spend with their kids. They want the kids, especially as they are little, they want them there with the family. They don’t want to have their kids away from the house for six hours a day, seven hours a day, four or five days a week.

Sean Sure.

Philip So there’s that level of, maybe, I want to spend more time with my kids.

Sean Which — how can you complain? There’s no negative to that desire.

Philip Right.

Sean But that desire, if that was the number one thing — I just want to spend time with my kids. Until, like, what age?

Philip Right.

Sean There’s a line. Like, there is: the only thing worse than a son who leaves is a son who doesn’t.

Philip Right.

Sean And that’s because it actually does hurt, in a way, to see your son grow up and then take on his own responsibilities and be a man. Like, well — but if my highest priority is making sure that we are spending time together as a family, well then when does that end? When they can vote? When they can drive?

Philip Like —

Sean So it’s not either/or, it’s not all or nothing. These are competing things that are good, many of them are good wants. And so how do you decide what — again, like we’re talking about, what is the vision of education? That’s a vision for family time, right? Not a vision for education.

Philip Well, I think parenting ought to be, by design, a position of giving. Even in instruction and discipline, you are giving your kids wisdom, right? You are giving them a gift. And you’re able to do the same sorts of things from the place of taking. So in instruction and discipline, I take from my kids respect or obedience — I’m demanding from them to make my life more convenient or easier, that sort of thing. And again, the action could be the same in practice, but you’re coming at it from the wrong place, which ends up going to the wrong place.

Sean Homeschooling could be a taking.

Philip Right, exactly right. So even this sort of thing of time with kids — again, qualifications and nuance galore, right? All of them. Just apply qualifications, most likely, if you’re the listener.

Sean I’m sprinkling magic qualification dust on the microphone right now.

Philip That’s right. And yeah, we don’t even need to say qualifications, because people will apply their own qualifications.

But that sort of time with kids, where — am I taking this time from my kids, or am I giving this to them? Is this something that fits into the best vision for them when they are going to have their own kids? The best thing that I could do for them is this time? Or is the best thing that I could do for them something that will limit my direct time with them right now, right? So, what is that positive vision, and how does that translate to what I’m doing with them today? There is that sort of difference, maybe, of giving versus taking.

Sean Yeah, so some more things I want to give my kids.

Philip Right.

Sean Include: I want to give my kids some more opportunities for competition. I want to give my kids more opportunity to be sinned against. I want to give my kids more opportunity to have to go and say, “Please forgive me, I sinned against you.”

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean I want to give my kids more opportunity to hear from not just my voice, or the person on YouTube. As much of an expert as the person on YouTube might be on the subject, they actually can’t love my kid.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So, the teachers at ECS — I can’t think of somebody who wouldn’t die for my kids. Who wouldn’t step in front, if we had a problem and there was a school shooter. The teachers are not going to hide first. They love my kids. They love everybody, not just Higgins kids or Kulishov kids. They love their students.

I want to give my kids the opportunity to hear a teacher also say something stupid, or act in a way that probably isn’t right, and learn how to handle that from their authority.

Philip No, I think all that — you’re saying a lot there.

Sean Yeah.

Philip This should be a two-hour episode. But stepping even back into the peer —

Sean Share it, do it.

Philip — peer community. You know, that’s not just about knowing how to socialize with other kids. There’s the homeschool stereotype of, they’re awkward and they don’t know how to socialize. It’s not about that. I think that is actually really key: knowing how to deal with a situation when you are being sinned against. How should you respond? That requires also a lot of wisdom to grow up into. And that requires a lot of different situations that present themselves.

So something like a co-op, for example, where it provides some level of socialization once a week or whatever the structure is there — how much of those kinds of opportunities would I be able to give to my kids if I was to have a co-op situation? Not very much. And even in that co-op situation, they’re sitting with students with an instructor, or maybe they’re socializing, but they’re not there on a day-to-day basis in the way that, like, siblings would have some kind of issues come up.

Sean Yeah, because usually siblings do have a lot of practice with being sinned against and sinning against.

Philip Yes, for sure. But siblings also, especially the older they get, they are rowing in the same direction and with the same rhythm.

Sean Lord willing.

Philip Lord willing, for sure. But I mean, especially if they’re being homeschooled in that way. There are a lot of things that you don’t realize you actually do agree with with your siblings, that if you were to spend that much time with somebody else, it would be very difficult. You’d have a very hard time with somebody not in that same structure.

Sean Well, and rowing in the same direction, ideally rowing on the same team, also means not really competing and pushing each other to excel in a particular subject or a particular skill. Because if I’m a sixteen-year-old boy who’s got a thirteen-year-old sister, and we’re at the same kitchen table, maybe we actually by that point have some shared class.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean A literature class, or even a math class, math level, something like that. But it’s not going to promote healthy challenge —

Philip Right.

Sean — to, well, are you doing your best? Do you want to be even better than this other person? Not in a way to hurt them, but in a way to develop and mature.

And lots of times the goal around the kitchen table would be a niceness. And we’re not arguing for being mean either. But it’s a lot easier to manage people who are being nice to each other than to actually work at stimulating them to do better.

Philip Right. Well, I mean, we’ve had countless conversations with my boys — so one is in sixth grade, the other one is in second grade, I think. Yeah, sixth and second — about their interactions with other kids and how they should have responded. Maybe they responded in a way that was good and I could reaffirm that. Or it was bad. Or they didn’t know, they had a question. And those situations don’t come up the same way with their own siblings — I mean, I have a whole ton of conversations about the way they treat each other.

Sean Yeah.

Philip For sure. That happens every day, all the time. But “this other kid was freaking out, what should I have done?” “This kid was acting this way toward me —”

Sean Yeah.

Philip “— what should I do in that situation?”

Sean I know you went back to the peer part, but likewise with the teacher.

Philip Right. And so with the teacher as well, I think that there is a point of, the teacher is wrong, and how should I respond to that? And that could be a time for them to learn how to hold their ground, but also could be a time for them to learn to submit to authority even if that authority is wrong.

And that is something that I think is an important thing for my boys, that I would want them to learn how to do. It’s like, hey, I disagree with this. And I’ll even — this has come up a lot — I’ll affirm what they were thinking or saying. Like, yes, this is correct, because you’ve learned this from me. I don’t agree with what this teacher was saying. However, this is what I think you need to do, or how you should respond in this situation. There is a certain kind of authority that that teacher has over that domain, and this is how you are behaving there.

Sean And this is beneficial. This is not a reason to withdraw your kid. This is an opportunity. This is not a fail.

Philip Right.

Sean Not that — obviously there could be a situation where a teacher or even a fellow student does a thing that’s like nuclear level. That has not happened, to my knowledge, at ECS. There are guardrails and standards in place to try to avoid nuclear-option kind of things. But it is a benefit as a parent to me to have my kids put in those positions, to help them through. And there’s more of them available when they’re in that community setting than if it’s just the kitchen table.

Philip Yeah. And sometimes we’ll talk about it and I would tell my kid, hey, this is how you should — or, you could go back to the teacher and ask him these sorts of questions.

Sean Yeah.

Philip This is what this would look like. Give them some kind of pushback that is respectful and coming from a place of that relationship, a student toward a teacher. But how you could challenge that sort of thing as well.

And so I want them to learn how to do that, and also to challenge and still receive an answer, and then be able to swallow their pride and accept that answer with a good attitude. That is something that they have to be able to learn, and that community provides that.

Sean And that’s Christian.

Philip Right.

Sean That’s Christian discipleship.

Philip Right.

Sean That is becoming more like Christ.

Do you have to be at a school in order to develop that maturity as a Christian? No. Is it a great opportunity for parents to take advantage of with their kids, to give them that sort of exposure, while the other advantages of division of loves, and people loving them, and more voices speaking into their mind?

So, I don’t think that youth groups, youth ministries — they have their own challenges. I am not thinking that they’re of the devil either.

Philip Some of them.

Sean But you can actually have things of the devil —

Philip It’s true.

Sean — all by yourself. You don’t have to have a group of idiots all together doing that.

But regularly, we would have youth events, and some parents of some families said things like, “Well, I should be the only voice in my kid’s life.” And that is one way to interpret Deuteronomy 6. That’s one way to look at it. But completely unnecessary.

And I don’t actually — I expect to have the primary responsibility.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean I have the ultimate responsibility on the human level, as a father, for sure. But I want them to listen to my wife, even though I am the one that has the ultimate responsibility. I want them to listen to their grandparents. I want them to listen to their pastors. I want them to listen to other people who love them. So that again is not dereliction, automatically, of my responsibility. That’s me taking advantage of what’s available.

Philip Well, that’s the autonomy and control, where the parent says, I have the autonomy and the control to speak into my kids’ life.

Well, like, I really do want both of my boys — and my girl too, but my boys in particular — to surpass me as much as possible. Like, I want them to fly ahead of me.

Sean To advance.

Philip To advance, right. To take whatever I can give them and carry and advance it that much further.

I know that they will not be able to do that — I will not be able to set them up in the best way to do that — if I am the only one speaking into their life. They have to learn from other people. Both in the sense of competency, so skills; I’m not omnipotent, where I’m able to do all this. But also in terms of perspectives, a way to think at things, a way to look at things, a different way to approach this question or problem. I’m only wired a specific way to do that. I want them to be able to learn from other men who can tackle the same problem differently than I would have, and for them then, as they get older, to bring those solutions to even some of the problems that I have.

“Hey, dad, have you thought about it this way?” “Oh, where did you learn that? I’m not the one who taught you that.” That could be their own wiring, or it could also be them picking that up from other people. I want to give them that.

And so yeah, I can’t hold my own voice to be the only one speaking into their life, if that’s the kind of vision that I have for them.

Sean Yeah, there’s some popular — hmm — perspectives. Are they popular? They’re only popular among certain groups. But there are, you know: the geniuses in history all received the same kind of education, which was a private tutor.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean C. S. Lewis — seems like not quite college level, but he had a tutor, and look at what he did. So therefore the super powerful, they got tutors. Homeschool, but the parents were well-to-do enough that they could bring in this heavy hitter.

And I find, so far — I read those articles and I see people who are talking about that, and largely they are people who have not actually made anything. And I agree that there have been some people who didn’t have access to anything better and they got a great tutor, and that worked out, and they were gifted by God to write some awesome stuff. So that is for sure.

But — and this is like you were saying, different hats as well. So parentally and pastorally, wearing both of those hats.

Philip Right.

Sean And that actually then, for me, has led to also wearing the teacher hat at ECS and the board hat at ECS. So I think that there’s just way more possible for more people, who would be otherwise limited if all they had was that one other voice, or a limited number of voices.

And then even as the kids are getting their own vision for what’s possible, I think that they, generally speaking, are able to see a bigger vision when they are connected to that group of people who are growing.

Even for the sake of Marysville: I am not convinced that if Marysville was filled with awesome homeschooling families, that that would actually make Marysville as great as if Marysville had many Christian schools dominated by those families who were pulling the vision along. The right kind of competition, the right kind of compounding of effort, the right kind of community sandpaper — well, actually, if I want to be persuasive, this has not been persuasive. I can learn from that. Try something else. But you can’t do that if you’re just talking to yourself.

Philip Right.

Sean So in terms of the partnering, the compounding, the expanded vision, and even then the sort of effect that that has in a community — I’m not convinced that homeschooling in and of itself, as good as the qualifications are —

Philip Right.

Sean Qualifications —

Philip Right.

Sean — as good as they are, that that is building the walls the same kind of way.

Philip Right. Yeah, and we’ve talked about the specialization, labor and love. I like the point about the love — not just the labor, not just the skills, but the cares. The level of intensity and rigor, even with that competition, or with certain standards. Like, at home, especially the more kids you have, the more things you have going on, the harder it is to actually hold rigorous standards for your own kids.

Sean Yeah. Do you ever spank the youngest kid as much as you spank the oldest?

Philip Right.

Sean Almost never.

Philip Naomi maybe would be — she’s pretty bad.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But yeah, so to dissect this literature book and understand it to the depths of rigor and intensity that could be possible — am I going to be able to give that to them at home? Or would I be able to better give that to them by sending them to a private school? So that all plays into my positive vision for my kids.

Sean Yeah. Is it totally possible also, as a parent, to send your kid to a private Christian school and then use that as a way to take for yourself —

Philip Right.

Sean — because now you have more free time?

Philip Right.

Sean Obviously that’s also possible.

Philip Exactly right.

Sean It’s totally possible to waste it. It’s one of the reasons why — just because you graduate from a private school, a Christian school, a classical Christian school, it doesn’t actually mean that you have Kuyperian kind of interests and that your loves have grown.

Philip Right.

Sean And probably that’s related to how the parents have been involved or not with their kid going to school. Whether they have just complained about what’s happening or not happening, rather than doing something about it. Parents having a bad attitude about the amount of work that’s being assigned.

Again, is there a place to discuss? When we started ECS, at that point none of the teachers had ever gotten a classical education. So every one of the teachers was also trying to figure out what the classical pedagogy was supposed to look like. We’re trying to learn while helping other people learn, which is its own systemic benefit. But that totally meant that lots of times our kids got ridiculous assignments, because it just seemed, to the teacher, like, well, this is what it says we’re supposed to do this week. I don’t know, but I guess you should read these four hundred pages over the weekend. And I know that you’re only in fifth grade, but you do it anyway, because it’s classical.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So we had all kinds of challenges trying to figure that out, and wearing multiple hats trying to figure it out as well. But just complaining, and then complaining like it’s everybody else’s fault —

Philip Right.

Sean — well, that is the lesson that our kids would have learned as well.

Philip Right.

Sean And so yeah, it is possible to go through the sacrifice of paying the tuition and getting your kids in uniform and to school at the right time every day — it’s possible to make a minimal level of sacrifices and still have it not be beneficial.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So, but homeschooling itself is not the fix to that.

Philip Right.

Sean And a classical school, a Christian school, is not an automatic fix either. It requires being exhausted, educating our kids for the big vision.

Philip Yep. And all of that is inefficient, right? So that’s —

Sean Stinks.

Philip Right. That is another point of concern that I’ve heard, where private school, or any kind of school setting, is inefficient. “My kids are spending too much time at school. Why can’t it just be three, four hours, and that’s it, and then the rest of it I could do what I want with.”

Sean Right.

Philip And so, that level of efficiency that parents are after — well, what’s the trade-off, right? What are you going to trade off in order to gain that efficiency? Why do you want the efficiency? What are you trying to fill in that time with instead? And whatever it is that you’re filling the time with instead, what are you sacrificing, trading off? I do think a lot of these other things that we’ve been talking about are what you would switch off in order to be more efficient.

Sean Yeah.

Philip You know.

Sean Yeah, so at best that’s building family culture. And is building family culture good? Sure. But is that the limit? You want to just have an efficient family culture?

Philip Right.

Sean That is a thing. But for me, and for you as well, that is too small of culture building.

Philip Right. And then we did talk a little bit about the flexibility.

And so, one last point, before we wrap it up. Let’s say somebody is sold. Okay, I think the best thing for me, for my kids, is private education. That lines up with the vision I have for them. But I can’t afford it. So cost is a factor that comes into play. And it is, I think, a reason — maybe not the only reason, but a substantial reason — for why a lot of families choose homeschool over private school.

So what would you tell a family that says, okay, I want all these things that a private school could offer me, but cost is a limiting factor?

Sean Sure.

Philip What should I do?

Sean Yeah, that is reasonable, and it is probably debatable as well.

Philip How dare you.

Sean Yeah. Because it’s definitely true. And there’s no doubt about our current Western Washington economic situation. I think I saw a map that we’ve got to be one of the worst three or five states to live in because of money stuff and costs of things, cost of living. No good. I get that. And it’s not as if everybody’s paycheck has gone up commensurately.

But it sure does seem like a bunch of people still have money for other toys and vacation. I’m not asking anybody to live in a smaller house, necessarily, in order to pay for this kind of education. And at the same time, you will spend your money for what you want most. And I don’t want ease the most, or comfort the most, or vacations the most.

And so, again, wearing the dad hat, household hat — it is worth sacrificing for, trying to figure it out. As a board member, I know that we have a lot of conversations about ECS’s tuition and how to make that the most affordable.

Philip It’s the most expensive school in the area.

Sean Yeah. Well, I don’t actually remember the exact number, but we are somewhere like seven or eight out of the most expensive Christian schools in Snohomish County.

Philip Wait, the seventh or eighth?

Sean Yeah.

Philip Okay. Of how many?

Sean I don’t remember how many total Christian schools there are in Snohomish County. I’m sure we can get that information. I just don’t remember off the top of my head.

So even on the board level, trying to keep it more that way, in addition to trying to make it so that if a family is an awesome family who wants in, who would crawl over glass, so to speak, to get their kids here —

Philip Right.

Sean — well, try to figure out how to make that happen.

Philip Right.

Sean And wearing my elder hat at the church, so pastorally speaking, we have started, at least, a Christian education fund for the sake of trying to help out families who want it but really can’t afford it.

Philip Right.

Sean A couple years ago — I think maybe this is actually only the second enrollment cycle that we’ve used this external company — that is trying to help us with people who are like, no, we can’t afford it. And we don’t want to go through their tax returns individually. So we have outsourced some of that, for this other company to give us recommendations on how much it seems like we should offer in financial support.

Philip Right.

Sean But I don’t think that we have ever told someone no purely because they said they couldn’t pay. If they have wanted it and they’re willing to make sacrifices, we are trying to find out how — either through the school, or through their church, or through our church — we can help them pay for it, or just reduce the cost overall.

Philip Yeah. Has somebody ever said, hey, I’d really want this, I love this, I just can’t afford it?

Sean To my knowledge, nobody has ever said that and then walked away.

Philip Right.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Like, I do think that people make that decision because of priorities.

Sean Sure.

Philip So, what are you willing to sacrifice in order for your kids to be fed? So —

Sean A lot.

Philip Right. Food is a priority for you, right? Shelter, housing, clothes — this is a priority for you. So you’re going to go on either cheaper vacations, or you’re going to buy less toys or less stuff or whatever, in order for you to prioritize something that you think is more important.

So in a similar way, it seems like a lot of the cost conversation comes down to not actually not being able to afford it, but: what is the priority? What am I not willing to give up? If I think that I can get about just as good of an education for my kids if I do it myself, and I could also save thirty grand with my five kids, or whatever that would be —

Sean Yeah.

Philip — then why not, right?

And so, but if it is a priority — that I think, hey, this positive vision, this big vision that I have for my kids, I need them to be able to go here, I’m going to sacrifice my toys, my level of luxury and fun, in order to feed my kids, in order to feed their minds and their souls, to set them up for that future — that’s a different approach, a different question. And so that isn’t a question of not being able to afford it. That is a question of trade-offs and priorities.

Sean Yeah. Like, to my knowledge as well, nobody in our church or school community is not eating. So if we knew about that, we’d try to fix that first. Eating, like you said, is more important than education. But then, when it comes to their souls —

So yeah. Food and clothing, yes. And this is a conversation about education. So obviously I could only feed my kids dino nuggets from Costco every meal, and if that’s all I could afford, that is actually better than nothing.

Philip Right.

Sean That said, I’m looking to try to get them what’s going to help them grow, not just survive and take breath again tomorrow. Educationally, I’m trying to figure out what’s going to help them grow in soul and grow in their loves. And again, I know, sadly, that I cannot do that for my kids at the level that I want them to have it.

Philip Right.

Sean I can’t do it by myself, even just in our household. So hence why it’s worth being exhausted for my own kids, for the sake of this institution.

And I do actually think it is a blessing to our city. It’s definitely a blessing to the TEC community, even whether they send their kids to ECS or not. They don’t have to do that.

Philip Right.

Sean But in terms of trying to put into practice some of the Kuyperian worldview that we talk about at TEC, ECS has been a completely beautiful part of helping us do that — even for areas that we still need to get better at. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth getting better at.

Philip That’s right.

Sean There are many ways in which we have gotten better, and obviously ways we can keep getting better; we’re continuing to work on that. But in terms of what we’re providing for our kids, helping their vision get bigger and better — yeah, I just can’t do that by myself.

Philip Yeah. Education is a tool, it’s an option, it’s like wind in the sail for that vision that parents have for their kids.

And so, you said this earlier as well: whether it’s homeschool or private school, you could have people go through ECS K through twelve, two kids, and churn out way differently — because it’s not ECS that gives them that positive vision, or that sets them up. It does come down more even to what the parents are doing and how they’re setting their kids up for that. You could have kids go through K through twelve in education with their parents grumbling the whole time, and their kids end up hating what they’ve been given as well. Versus parents who have that positive vision and are making the best use of that wind — they’re trying to catch the wind, they’re raising their sail, directing their mast to catch this wind, to utilize and exploit even what ECS or whatever private school you have has to offer, in order to launch their kids for that positive vision.

And so yeah, it boils down much more even to the parents, the way they set up their kids. And so to have that sort of positive vision, I think, is what we’re getting after. We want to have a big vision for our own kids, and we do want our people at TEC to have a big vision for their kids — to not just settle, or be complacent or careless about, oh, my kids will just churn out.

Sean Yeah, I said at our most recent ECS information night that the thing that our kids need most is for the parents to have big and right wants.

Philip Right.

Sean And parents whose biggest want is flexibility — I think I’d want to know more about, maybe there’s a scenario in which that flexibility is actually pretty important. But just on its face, flexibility is not enough. Being able to go on more vacations, that’s not enough. Having family time, more time with my kids — well, by itself, that’s not enough. That’s not what, at least, we’re after.

And so, trying to even — we talked about compounding efforts among students, but even compounding efforts among parents, to encourage each other and stimulate each other to have bigger visions and goals. That’s also the benefit that a co-op maybe helps somewhat with. But definitely we’re trying to — whatever you can get somewhere else, whatever goods you can legitimately get — we are wearing ourselves out trying to make it awesome here.

Philip Right. There you go. So, for that positive vision.

Sean Yeah.

Philip All right, well, I think we’ve made enough qualifications and made enough people defensive.

Sean Good.

Philip All right, we’re out.