How the Shift to Online School Highlights Biblical Family Structure

It’s that time of year again. Stores are filled with the bright colors of Crayola packaging and spiral notebooks, shelves are filled with more kinds of pencils than you ever knew existed, and backpacks and lunchboxes abound in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors.

Usually, mid-July is when I start my back-to-school preparations, but this year has been different. As July came and passed, I couldn’t really begin to prepare, even mentally. Everything was up in the air as our principal waded through the many details of our state’s school regulations. We were trying to prepare mentally for the fact that probably just about everything would be different this year: For my class, it would mean moving to a bigger room, having the students take time to wash their hands every time we entered the classroom, and getting used to masks or face shields.

Just as I was beginning to get used to the idea of all this change, our governor announced that all education would be required to be online-only until cases of Covid had declined to a certain level. The way our governor’s other orders have worked so far, I suspect that regardless of numbers in our specific area, we’ll be required to be online indefinitely. –But we really have no idea.

 As a teacher, this will mean that literally every part of teaching will be different this year. Between recording lesson videos, answering questions about technology, and rethinking how I do pretty much everything, I know parents will be expecting me to provide the same quality of education for my students as I would if they were on-site. —And so will I.

But despite how uncomfortable I am in front of a camera, and my aversion to phone or video calls that borders on a phobia, despite all the extra work, mentally and physically, I know God will give me grace for whatever this school year requires.

To me, the most challenging thing about an online-only schoolyear is the fact that, no matter how hard I try, the quality of the students’ education will be almost entirely up to their parents. In our small private school, I think it’s safe to say that most of our students have solely working parents. Whether for single parents or parents who both work, many of our families are left struggling to figure out what to do with their children who are banned from in-person school. No matter how engaging my video lessons are, no matter how well I explain the concepts, online education for my first-graders will only be successful if their parents are heavily involved.

Parent involvement is key in any schoolyear, but when schools are forced to be online, the need for their involvement skyrockets.

This has come as a brutal shock to our culture, and has been a quiet crisis of its own during the pandemic. Parents are being forced to choose, at times, between feeding their families and educating their children. It’s not an enviable position for anyone, and the majority of families in our nation are there or have been there in recent months.

There is, however, one category of families who are not struggling to figure out how to juggle work and childcare: the families with a stay-at-home mom. –Now, before you click that little red x to close your browser, know that I am in no way denigrating families who have found themselves in the position where both parents have to work. I am merely pointing out the way God has designed the family to function, and the fact that His way works, even (perhaps especially) during a pandemic.

There are two New Testament passages that deal specifically with the role of women in the home:

Speaking of young widows, I Timothy 5:14 states,

            “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully”

And regarding the things the “aged” women in the church were to teach the younger, Titus 2:4-5 says,

“That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed”

I have read through the Bible at least once each year for around 17 years. (Not counting all the extra study I have done outside of my daily time with God.) In all those years of reading and studying, I have noticed that the stay-at-home mom is the Biblical ideal for families. It’s not popular, and I fully expect to have at least one comment to this post vehemently opposing what the Bible teaches here, but remember, it is how God has designed for families to work.

If America had more stay-at-home moms, the education crisis would be far less widespread, and have far less significant impact on the future of our society. Again, this is not a rant against parents who work; just a reminder of the importance of the stay-at-home mom.

I was blessed to grow up in a home with a stay-at-home mom. My mother not only raised us, she homeschooled my brother and I, after both my parents saw the lack of morality and quality in our local public-school system. I watched Mommy work to keep on top of it all, and never have I appreciated her efforts more than this year, as I watch all the parents around me try to figure out a way to give their children the education they need.

In this as in all else, however unpopular it might be, however our society may sneer, God’s way works.