At ECS we aim to serve parents as they educate and enculturate their kids. No teacher can replace a dad or mom, and we don’t want to! For that matter, it doesn’t work if teachers work against what dad and mom want for their students. We don’t just love parents, we know that it is our responsibility to serve families, not the other way around.
This also means we love parents and families who homeschool their kids. There are MANY great reasons to homeschool, and we are glad to be in a broader Christian community that includes numerous options for raising the next generation to know and praise the Lord.
As a school we often get requests from homeschooling families asking to participate in some of our ECS events, the kinds of activities that aren’t as easy for an individual family to do on their own. Here is some of our decision making reasoning for why most of our school activities are not a la carte.
The bottom line of the ECS mission is that students “will carry and advance Christ-honoring culture.” This is not less than academic work, but it includes much more. Again, more than educating, we are enculturating. This includes what happens before and between classes, not just the books read and papers written. Studying belongs as part of our lives, but so does singing and serving and playing.
Here’s how that applies to some specific school activities:
SPORTS: In the last few years we’ve added athletics to our offering for secondary students (grades 7-12). But, unlike the rules governing public schools, the WIAA prohibits private schools like ECS from allowing homeschoolers to play for a private school unless they meet certain attendance requirements at the school. Even without that official prohibition, we see that team camaraderie and competition closely connects with enculturation.
CHOIR: First, singing is an essential enculturation effort at ECS. We sing all day long, not only in choir class. That also means choir class fits with the tone of the rest of the day, so joining “just” for choir would be out of rhythm, so to speak. Second, our choirs aim to adorn the truth. In other words, effort in choir overlaps with skill in rhetoric, and rhetoric depends on grammar and logic. We desire to keep them all together.
PLAYS: School plays do promote enculturation, and the calendar only allows so many performances (usually one play each year). We typically have too much internal interest, so not even every ECS student will get a role.
DANCES: We do think that school-hosted dances are a different story. While occurring regularly, they are more like one-off events. They seem to be a great opportunity to show hospitality to a broader community. More dancers means more dancing, not less.
Though this list may not be exhaustive, hopefully it explains some of the principles that inform what we do.
Again, we are glad to encourage families that choose to homeschool. In fact, the building that hosts ECS also hosts a home-school co-op a couple Fridays every month while we have school-at-home. And, of course, ECS has a responsibility to serve the parents/families of ECS first, and the principles above are meant to help us do that.