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I was asked an interesting question at the AHEA convention this past spring that I was glad to answer, and I thought that it might be a question that others were asking. The question was simple and went something like this; "Why is it that homeschooling has such strong Christian roots?" Now, admittedly not all homeschoolers come from a Christian perspective, and the reasons a family might choose to homeschool can be diverse; but the Christian belief lends itself to the venue of homeschooling in many ways. This is a condensed version of my answer.

First off; 'Why should we educate our children in the first place?' I have commented in the past that the main reason that a child should learn to read is so that they can read the Bible. The Bible is our lifeline to the truth and therefore essential reading if we are to live the Christian life. I have gone so far to say that if an individual is not going to read the Bible it would be better that they should not read at all; but I would also argue that everyone should learn to read so that when the time comes that they should desire to read the Bible, that they should already know how to read.

In any homeschool environment there comes a time when you teach the young ones about weights and measures. In our culture the accepted standards are either the Metric system or the Imperial system. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. In a perfect world, the Metric system with its emphasis on the base 10, which is, of course, the same as our numerical system, works the simplest. All standards of measure relate to each other in one way or another, and once understood, provide simple ways for the varying measures to interrelate. On the other hand, because we did not start with the Metric system, measures of length often still relate to the Imperial system, simply because the land itself is
divided into miles and not kilometers. Building design is still often done in feet and inches. Some smaller projects are done in millimeters, but on big buildings these numbers become astronomically large. On the whole, either system works simply because it is standardized. This has not always been the case.