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Cullen Neff, 7, is working on his grammar lesson. On the table in front of him is a sheet full of that perfectly perpendicular print that boys and girls favor when learning to write.
It says: “Your heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask for Him. Luke 11:13.”
Not a writing prompt likely to be found in a common school setting. Then again, the honey, cayenne pepper and napkins on the table are also out of place.
It’s 9:40 a.m., and the second-grader is working at his kitchen table in Fort Wayne. His mother, Jennifer Neff, home-schools him, his brother and two sisters.
The number of parents who opt to teach their children at home is rising, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Two years ago, about 1.5 million students were home-schooled, up from 1.1 million seven years ago and 850,000 in 1999. The center found that the most common reason that parents gave for opting out of the traditional classroom setting was religious or moral.
Jim Snider, president of Fort Wayne Area Home Schools, says religious reasons are primarily the ones parents cite in home-schooling, in addition to a desire for high-quality education and displeasure with public schools.
Stephen Cresse and his wife, Sarah, both spent some years being home-schooled, he says, and the experience was good enough that he wanted his children to have it, too.
Cresse, a pastor at Aboite Missionary Church in Fort Wayne, went to a private school through his freshman year of high school before he told his parents he wanted to be home-schooled. He saw things he didn’t like as a freshman, such as promiscuity and drugs, he says. He didn’t want his kids being around that kind of environment.
His children love being home-schooled, he says.
“They love to have the interaction (with each other), the level of education,” Cresse says. “They love the sense of family, the sense of being home. Of course, it’s nice to not have to run and catch a bus that early in the morning.
“In fact, they have several friends in government schools that wish they could home-school. Some of the kids in the neighborhood have had very negative experiences at school, from what they say.”
Part of the reason the Neffs opted for home schooling was scheduling. Mark Neff, Jennifer’s husband, works second shift, and if his children attended a traditional school, he’d never see them, she says.
Plus, she says, Neff thinks the Bible tells parents to teach their children. She quotes Deuteronomy: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.”
Louis Griffith, whose wife teaches their three children in their Fort Wayne home, likes that home schooling gives them the option to teach creationism alongside evolution, which also appealed to Cresse.
Teaching a biblical worldview to his children is important to his family, Cresse says. His wife teaches creationism but also teaches evolution, primarily so his children can understand what is being taught to their peers and friends in public schools.
Griffith, however, speaks more of the morality problem that might be more easily seen in public schools than in home-schooled children. Teaching them at home allows the couple to better instill a sense of respect.
“I just think in our culture today, we’ve lost our sense of authority and who is to have that authority,” he says. “Nowadays, we’re raising a generation that has no idea of the authority structure that’s put over them. Those are some of the moral reasons that just hit you right in the face. There’s a real disrespect, a real self-centeredness to the culture that’s growing up today.”
Griffith says this is not to imply that home schooling is perfect but rather that he is better able to control the environment that will help shape his children.
For the Neffs, morality is not a huge factor.
“I won’t say it didn’t play any (role in the decision),” Mark Neff says, “but it was a minor role. Many moral people send their children to public school.”
