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The End-of-Year Exam

Becky Preble

Texas Home School Coalition Association REVIEW © May 2001

It is the end of the school year again, the time when school children everywhere will be taking their end-of-year exams and teachers and administrators will be deciding who passed and who failed. We home schoolers will be doing the same thing, only with a little different twist. It is the moms who will be questioning whether they passed or failed.

I have been homeschooling for more than ten years now, and each year around April and May the conversations among my friends in my home school support group turn toward self-evaluation. How have we done? Did we accomplish all we hoped to? Did we finish all our textbooks? Did we begin each school day promptly at 7 a.m.? Did we grow our own wheat and make our own bread? (My apologies to my friends who actually do this--you guys have been taking a lot of kidding here lately about your superb organizational skills.) Interestingly enough though, even my bread-making friends assess their end-of-school-year accomplishments and often express their frustration and disappointment that the year did not go exactly as they had hoped.

Expectations can be a brutal taskmaster. We expect to start the school day at 7 a.m., but then somebody wakes up sick, or an elderly parent calls needing our help. The math text that all our friends raved about makes no sense to our children or us. What is worse, our family’s goal to develop the character qualities of patience and kindness somehow got lost among all the stress, due to over-scheduling and over-commitment.

We just do not measure up. We feel like we have no excuse because we attend all the right conferences and read the latest books on how to homeschool. We have countless tips from authors and speakers explaining how they made home schooling work for their families. Each tip adds to our never-ending list of things we must do to be a success. The expectations mount up and become a checklist in our minds by which we are constantly evaluating our effectiveness. The checklist can at times take on an almost spiritual dimension. Suddenly, it is not about our effectiveness in home schooling; it seems that our very souls could be at stake! The accusations running through our minds get personal: “Am I really pleasing the Lord?” “What else can I add to this list of burdens and tasks that every one else says must be performed?” “Oh I know, I can examine myself and identify every character flaw, dredge up every shortcoming, and ultimately convince myself that home schooling must be too high a calling for me.” Time and again I have seen unrealistic expectations wear mothers down and drive families out of home schooling.

Years ago I heard a seminar leader describe her family’s home schooling experience. They seemed to be the very essence of organization. Everything from laundry day to mealtimes was executed with grace and precision. She shared all sorts of creative teaching tips and showed examples of her family’s craft projects. She described family devotional times rich with meaningful traditions. I came away from the seminar inspired but full of guilt. I began to examine my own family and saw how we fell short in every area when compared to the speaker’s family. I blamed it all on my lack of organizational skills. If I were just more organized, I, too, could accomplish all the same things as the seminar leader, and my family would rise up and call me blessed. Instead, when I discussed the speaker’s tips with my husband, he said something like, “Are you crazy?”

He reminded me that neither my daughters nor I care much about doing crafty projects. He saw no value in adding the cutesy devotional ideas to our Bible study time. Furthermore, since most of his clothes must be dry-cleaned, he did not see the need for color-coded laundry baskets to make laundry day more efficient. My husband has served as the voice of reason and balance throughout our home schooling experience. He has also led me to accurately assess my performance and effectiveness in light of our family’s circumstances and uniqueness. He has been my encourager when my mind is filled with accusations of inadequacy.

Sometimes we must stop and ask ourselves, who is our accuser? Where do such thoughts about our constant failures come from? I believe Scripture identifies Satan as the accuser of the brethren. Never underestimate Satan’s ability to confuse us about the difference between accusation and conviction. Thoughts like, “I’m a failure;” “I’ll never be able to do this;” “My children will never be able to succeed in the real world;” “I’ll never be organized enough to homeschool;” “My house should not be in this big a mess;” etc., must be identified for what they are. They are ambiguous accusations. They often stem from overzealous self-examination that is driven by an underlying belief that our performance can make us righteous in the eyes of the Lord.

On the other hand, when the Holy Spirit leads us in self-evaluation, as opposed to accusation, He convicts us of specific sins and calls us to repentance. More importantly, Scripture assures us that God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Once again, our performance will not produce righteousness; neither will our self-reproach or self-flagellation regarding our home schooling inadequacies. Is it not glorious to remember that only God, not our flawless home schooling performance, can cleanse us from unrighteousness?

While it is only natural to evaluate ourselves at the end of the year, we must be careful that our self-examination moves quickly from self to Christ. Instead of dwelling on our insufficiency, we must look to His sufficiency. Let us not compare ourselves to others but to Him. We need to focus on our Lord instead of our failures. As author Hannah Whitall Smith says in her book The God of All Comfort,

We grow like what we look at. Beholding self, we are more and more changed into the image of self. While on the contrary if we spend our time beholding the glory of the Lord, that is, letting our minds dwell upon His goodness and His love, and trying to drink in His spirit, the inevitable result will be that we shall be, slowly perhaps, but surely, changed into the image of the Lord upon whom we are gazing. 

Meet Becky Preble  

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