As believers we are exhorted to be good stewards of our time and resources. Your local public library and/or the Christian school library associated with your home school group are excellent ways to be in God’s will when it comes to stewardship. Libraries offer internet access for research, computer learning games, books, magazines, reference materials, DVDs, CDs, tutoring, special monthly activities, and so much more.

In my four years as a Christian school Librarian, I was amazed to see how little the resources we offered were actually used. I would get so excited when acquiring new materials and my elation would diminish when the students did not respond with the same enthusiasm.

So, how can we get our children excited about the library and all the treasures awaiting discovery? Here are some ways to spark their interest:

1. Make the library a regularly planned part of your home school routine. Using the library should be something your home schoolers anticipate as an exciting part of their week. Schedule weekly trips to exchange reading materials, to develop research and study skills, to use the online resources, to provide volunteer services, to work on a unit study or project, and/or to participate in a weekly library calendar item.

2. Know your librarian. According to Creative Homeschooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families, “A home school family’s best friend is a good librarian.” (p.208) The Guide goes on to recommend developing a working relationship with the local librarian so that your children feel comfortable asking questions. Librarians are experts in the field of information. It is a science to organize information in a way that is most understandable and accessible to the user.

3. Plan to give back. Libraries need volunteers for various duties including: shelving books, leading book discussions, straightening, assisting new computer users, and reading to young children. The library is a great place for home school families to serve side-by-side.

4. Periodicals. There are many publications we as home school families will not afford ourselves at home. The library has tons! Plan a monthly library trip to peruse the magazine rack or assign a report based on current events best found in the newspaper. There are a variety of newspapers and journals, daily, weekly, and monthly, that your students can use to develop their research skills.

5. A change of scenery. Home school can get monotonous at times. Children are dynamic creatures with many interests. When the schoolhouse is your living room or your dining room table, boredom can creep in if we are not careful. The library provides another environment both literally and, within books, fictionally. It is a great place to feed their minds and stimulate their education outside of the four walls of your home. In addition, books introduce us to people and places we’ve never known before.

Plan some time at your local library. It’s a guaranteed learning adventure!

Another major theme: You don’t have to teach. They just need to learn. You don’t necessarily have to teach ANYTHING in high school, you only have to make sure your children learn it. I didn’t know the answers to a lot of the math or science. You’d think I would because I’m a nurse, but it’s not true!  I completely lost it with math about a month into Algebra 2. Everyone loses it in high school math – everyone. But, again, it’s not our job to learn the stuff. We just have to make sure our student learns the stuff.

My kids did chemistry and physics completely on their own. They did Algebra 2, pre-calculus and calculus completely on their own. I only gave them the tests, and had to look up the answers. By the time we got to calculus, I didn’t even know what the symbols meant anymore. I only knew that the answer had to look like the answer in the book. I had one mom tell me her high school wasn’t working because she could no longer teach them writing.  She said “they are better writers than me – and I’m a professional.” I just had to point out to her that homeschooling appeared to be working because they WERE succeeding. Once you get into high school, writing is mostly about practice. Edit the papers for spelling and grammar, yes, but it’s mostly important to practice, practice, practice.

I couldn’t keep up with the books either. I have confessed before that I didn’t do “literature analysis” with my kids. I just asked them if they liked the book (to which they usually said “yes” and not much more.) They have grown up and done fabulously with the honors literature courses in college, so I know they weren’t damaged by my weaknesses. I couldn’t keep up with my kids reading either, but you know what? They were reading thousands of books for fun, and I didn’t stress out about reading those books ahead of them. So why did I stress out about reading their school books ahead of them? I don’t know! Consider public school for a moment. Would the teacher pre-read every book? No, just the one or two they used in a year. Would the teacher be able to help with writing more than you? No, likely it would be just grammar and spelling.

What about science? I didn’t help my kids at science at all, but my boys both got straight-As in college science after homeschooling, so I know that it worked. My concern with the comments that “Homeschooling isn’t working” is that people forget the alternative. Homeschooling may be hard (OK, it absolutely IS hard) but it is much more effective than a public or private school. It is the 1 to 1 tutoring, the mastery before moving on, the absolute love for the student that make homeschoolers succeed. None of those things are available at a public or private school. There are lots of resources for homeschoolers. Online courses, tutors, co-ops, video programs, and curricula for every learning style. You may need help, but that doesn’t mean that homeschooling isn’t working OR that putting your child into school is THE one and only answer to problems.

Despite elaborate and varied insurance policies, there is no immunity against disease, old age and death. Neither the elaborate security arrangement of politicians can protect anyone from the ravages of disease old age and death.

The advancement of material knowledge has done next to nothing, in solving these existential problems of life. It helps us to become acclimatized to birth, death, and all sorts of suffering. Material scientists have discovered many facilities for sense enjoyment and destruction, but they have discovered no solution to the problems of old age, disease, and death. They cannot make any machine that will check death, old age, or disease. At best, material science can only create bombs and bullets to accelerate the process of death.

Those who are intelligent, however, are not concerned with the fourfold miseries of material life, but with elevation to the spiritual planets.

The word education takes it roots from the Latin word ‘educare’ which means to bring out. What is to be brought out? The divine qualities inherent in all beings. The Bhagavad-gita, probably the oldest scripture on the planet, tells us that man has a physical, subtle or mental and spiritual presence. The senses are superior to the gross body, the mind superior to the senses, above mind is the intelligence, and even above the intelligence is the soul, the owner the body.

The bible corroborates this fact by saying man has terrestrial and celestial bodies. It is only the spirit soul that survives death.

Real education therefore means self-realization, realization of the spiritual identity of man. Real education begins with an enquiry into the self and its origin. Any education which does not address this pertinent issue, or lead to such realization must be considered avidya, or nescience. Therefore the advancement of learning by a godless civilization is as dangerous as a valuable jewel on the hood of a cobra. A cobra decorated with a valuable jewel is more dangerous than the one not decorated. A decorated cobra may appear attractive, and easily mistaken less the intelligent, but its fangs remain as poisonous and deadly as the undecorated.

In the Vedic scriptures the advancement of education by a godless people is compared to decorations on a dead body. In India, as in many other countries, some people follow the custom of leading a procession with a decorated dead body for the pleasure of the lamenting relatives. In the same way, modern civilization is a patchwork of activities meant to cover the perpetual miseries of material existence.

Out of His unlimited kindness, the Personality of Godhead, sends His bona fide representatives in the form of His sons, servants and messengers such Jesus Christ, Mohammed, the Buddha, etc. to propagate spiritual education, by which the conditioned souls of this world can return to the eternal kingdom of God. Sometimes the Lord comes Himself to do this work, since all living beings are His beloved sons, His parts and parcels. God feels more sorry than ourselves, to see how all the living entities of this world are constantly undergoing great tribulations.

The miseries of this material world serve to indirectly remind us of our incompatibility with matter. Intelligent living entities generally take note of these reminders and engage themselves in the culture of transcendental knowledge. Human life is the best opportunity for the culturing spiritual knowledge, and a human being who does not take advantage of this opportunity is called a naradhama, the lowest of human beings.

The path of avidya, or advancement of material knowledge for sense gratification, is the path of repeated birth and death. As he exists spiritually, the living entity has no birth or death. Birth and death apply to the outward covering of the spirit soul, the body. Death is compared to the taking off and birth to the putting on of outward garments.

Foolish human beings who are grossly absorbed in the culture of avidya, nescience, do not mind this cruel process. Enamored with the beauty of the illusory energy, they undergo the same miseries repeatedly and do not learn any lessons from the laws of nature.

Therefore the culture of vidya, or transcendental knowledge, is essential for the human being. Sense enjoyment in the diseased material condition must be restricted as far as possible. Unrestricted sense enjoyment in this bodily condition is the path of ignorance and death. The living entities are not without spiritual senses; every living being in his original, spiritual form has all the senses, which are now materially manifested, being covered by the material body and mind.

The activities of the material senses are perverted reflections of the activities of the original, spiritual senses. In his diseased condition, the spirit soul engages in material activities under the material covering. Real sense enjoyment is possible only when the disease of materialism is removed. In our pure spiritual form, free from all material contamination, real enjoyment of the senses is possible. A patient must regain his health before he can truly enjoy sense pleasure again.

Thus the aim of human life should not be to enjoy perverted sense enjoyment but to cure the material disease. Aggravation of the material disease is no sign of knowledge, but a sign of avidya, ignorance. For good health, a person should not increase his fever from 105 degrees to 107 degrees but should reduce his temperature to the normal 98.6. That should be the aim of human life. The modern trend of material civilization is to increase the temperature of the feverish material condition, which has reached the point of 107 degrees in the form of atomic energy. Meanwhile, the foolish politicians are crying that at any moment the world may go to hell. That is the result of the advancement of material knowledge and the neglect of the most important part of life, the culture of spiritual knowledge.

Sri Isopanisad herein warns that we must not follow this dangerous path leading to death. On the contrary, we must develop the culture of spiritual knowledge so that we may become completely free from the continuous miseries of birth, disease, old age and death, and return to our eternal home in the spiritual sky, where we can enjoy eternal bliss free from all material encumbrances.