Lisa,Lisa M wrote:I'm wondering if anyone on the board has struggled with this issue, and what your conclusions were...
In our state, our kids have the opportunity to take community college classes during their Junior and Senior year of high school. So they can graduate High School with an AA degree, paid for by the school district. My daughter's chosen career field will require a medical-technical degree that cannot be obtained through CLEP testing or online courses. This will be a great way to decrease the cost of her education.
Unfortunately, that means she misses all of the great academics and Bible in the last two years of MFW! That's a bit of a bummer for me, and there is no way she can take a full load of college classes plus extra things I'd like her to take. I trust we have prepared her well, and doing CC while at home will be a good transition into the world of public education. It fits our mutual goals of preparing her for skilled work, while remaining debt free, and providing her a Biblical worldview to leave home with. We also expect her to be a life long learner, and not stop growing just because she is no longer taking home school classes:-)
But I really like what MFW has for the last two years! I can't have it all....I'm just curious what others have thought through on this.
I'm not there yet, but I've thought about this some. I'm up for some general chat. I hope you get a lot of different viewpoints.
So far, we've told our son that outside college courses would need to be in subject areas we are comfortable with, such a math. Even the Christian universities that offer Christian history courses and such aren't necessarily going to teach what we want to teach. We have a niece who lost her faith in college, so we are feeling very cautious these days.
So far, we just don't feel our children were or will be ready for full exposure to college before age 18-19. Although when our youngest reaches that age, he will have been homeschooled for many years and fully immersed in our faith and how it relates to the world around him, so who knows?
I did tutor and now work with a gal who went to the University of MN for at least two full years of high school. She even lived in the dorm in 11th, which shocked me, but said she was glad to move back home for 12th. I knew she was academically prepared, as she comes from a very academic-oriented family. And she seems to have weathered it emotionally and retained her character independent of what all the other kids were doing. However, she isn't a Christian (thinks all religions are the same, though some nuggets to think about were offered

I wonder if the Hazells would have good answers in this regard. Some of their kids have been very advanced.
Julie