Revolution Home-School
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Honors graduate opts to return to classical education for four children n
I By Raiko Henderson Henderson, a 2001 Honors graduate with a B.B.A. in Economics, worked as an investment analyst before choosing to stay home with her children. A member of the Honors College Board of Visitors, she and husband John have four children, Sarah, Michael, Samuel, and Rebecca.
40 Honors Magazine mtsu.edu/honors
n the middle of my oldest child’s fifth-grade year, my husband and I concluded that the latest governmental education reform, the Common Core standards, had dumbed down education in our schools. In response, we decided to use a “revolutionary” approach to education, and we began to homeschool our four children. In reality, home schooling is not revolutionary at all. Revolution means “change.” But a revolution is also a “circular motion back to an original starting point.” We are among a growing group of parents in this country who are
“returning” to the “traditional way” of teaching. Until recently, teaching at home was the norm. But the passage of compulsory education laws and progressive education reforms in the 1920s shifting the focus of education from liberal arts to vocational skills changed that. So we turned back the clock and chose a classical education curriculum to teach our children. Classical education teaches about ancient Western civilizations—using the Bible and classic works of the western world—in the pursuit of wisdom and living a virtuous life. Students, like our Founding