Salvaging the Good

In this podcast, the host reflects on the idea of "salvaging the good" from the public school system when transitioning to homeschooling. Drawing inspiration from the story of the Israelites in Exodus, who were given gifts as they left Egypt, the host emphasizes the importance of making informed decisions and considering what aspects of the public school system can be beneficial to homeschooling. This includes skills like planning curriculum, setting goals, and monitoring progress. Despite acknowledging the shortcomings of public schools, the focus is on finding value and blessings in the transition to homeschooling. Welcome to the Homeschool Bell Podcast. The title of today's podcast is Salvaging the Good, and I'm talking about salvaging the good from the public school system. I was reading in Exodus, and I noticed the verse that said at the end of all of the drama that happened before the Israelites were told by the Egyptians to please leave, it says that they plundered the Egyptians, that God gave the Israelites favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, and they gave them gold and silver and clothing and asked them to please leave as fast as they possibly could. So this is something that the Israelites could never have imagined happening, that they would not only get to escape, but that they would be given gifts as they were leaving. And I was thinking about what it's like to leave the public school system, because sometimes there's so much drama involved, because it's a very difficult decision, and you want to do what's best for your children, so you just weigh all of these options and pray about it and talk to your spouse about it and talk to your friends, and you observe families who are homeschooling and kind of compare their situation to families who are in public school, and it's just a huge decision. And when you finally realize that yes, we are actually leaving the school, you can take some things with you from the school that are actually beneficial to you and will help you kind of get started in your new life as a homeschooler. And I'm talking about things like planning, knowing how to plan curriculum, knowing how to plan lessons, making long-term goals, and then setting objectives along the way so that you can monitor whether or not you are working at a good pace to accomplish those goals. Those are things that the public schools are very good at. We know the public schools try to be very good at things and sometimes succeed and sometimes don't, and we could go into a long, never-ending kind of analysis of the ways that public schools fail. If they weren't failing, there wouldn't be a homeschool movement. There wouldn't be millions of children pulled out of the public school system and taken home with their parents taking charge of their education. This whole movement would not exist if the public schools were excelling in every way, but they aren't. And I'm trying to focus not on the failures of the public school, but on things that are valuable, things that can be used for good if you take them with you when you leave. The things that the Israelites took with them, the gold, the silver, and the clothing are things that could have been used for good or for evil, and God gave them those things so that they could take them with them and use them for good. So that's kind of what the article on the website, homeschoolbell.com, is talking about. What kinds of things can you salvage? What kinds of things are beneficial and actually blessings? And you can take them with you as you go when you're leaving the public school system.