CBD: Before deciding to homeschool, parents naturally have many concerns and questions, the chief of which is, "Can we do this?" As pioneers in the homeschool movement, how have you advised new or prospective homeschoolers? What are the most important things for parents to remember when they decide to educate their children at home?

RB: First of all, trust yourself. God trusts parents; that's why He gives children to them instead of having them born into schools. Get counsel from several successful home-educating parents and read some good books on the subject. Go into it with your eyes wide open.

Find a local home schooling support group (the Internet will help) and surround yourself with friends who share your convictions. Stay away from the "Job's wife"—the type who thinks that you're crazy and misses no opportunity to tell you how you're going to warp your kids.

Keep it simple! Select a good set of textbooks and use them as you see fit, ignoring the teacher's guide because it's designed for a teacher with a class of 30 kids. Strive to get beyond the texts and into "real" books. For instance, your history text will tell your child a little about the Civil War. But if they read the writings of the times—The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis, for instance—they will learn far more.

CBD: Sometimes new and veteran homeschoolers can become overwhelmed by the responsibilities of both parenting and educating their children. What advice or encouragement can you offer to parents to help them avoid burnout? How can they make learning fun for their children and teaching enjoyable for themselves?

RB: Burnout is usually caused by one of two factors: either 1) the family comes under some unusual situation of extraordinary stress not directly related to education (our family experienced such a season when our 17-year-old son Joshua died of leukemia) or 2) the parents are making the homeschooling process too complicated. A common scenario is the family in which activity is confused with productivity. These parents seem to think that home education happens everywhere but at home. So, they're involved in lessons, activities, sports, field trips—a zillion "extracurriculars" that may not constitute anything worthwhile to a real education. Other parents let the books be the boss, requiring their children to fill in every blank, even though the answer could be given verbally across the kitchen table. Children sense the silliness of this, and grow bored and frustrated.

The way to make learning fun is to make it real. Kids need to practice writing, but a letter to Grandma, the newspaper editor, or the family's congressman is a lot more motivating than repeatedly writing boring sentences with no real context, just for the sake of drill. Biology may be boring in a textbook, but a month-long apprenticeship on a farm will put the subject into a whole new perspective. A real education can't be packaged in a curriculum guide. It is a mixture of reading good books, meeting smart people, experience in important projects with family, church and community, and a significant amount of time, freedom, and solitude to explore one's personal interests, talents, and passions.

A very important—and often neglected—fact of childhood learning is that children need adults much more than they need other children. Kids already know how to be childish, selfish, and irresponsible. That's why age-peer "socialization" is so damaging. If childhood is supposed to be preparation for adulthood, then it doesn't make sense to isolate kids from adults and adult concerns.

CBD: Often it is the mother who is the primary educator in the family, but what about homeschool fathers? What role should Dad play in his children's education?

RB: What can the father do? A lot. It may be that only Mom can be available all morning, five days a week, for "classroom learning," but there is far more to real education than that.

Dad should be involved in selecting curriculum. His responsibility is at least as great as Mom's in deciding what the children should learn at what ages. Because of homeschooling's flexible nature, he can also teach a "class" after work in the evening if, for instance, he has expertise in science or math or language.

Dad can help with field trips, researching sites ahead of time, then taking his family on ""earning expeditions."

Dad can arrange apprenticeships for his kids, opportunities to work for a day or year with bright and responsible adults in a multitude of significant and interesting scenarios. The purpose of apprenticeship is not just to prepare for a career, although that is certainly one great option. Apprenticeship exposes kids to real-world adult responsibilities, concerns, and opportunities. It provides an opportunity to rub shoulders with a tremendous number and variety of people. Apprenticeships can take place in the arenas of business, ministry, public service, and hobbies, just for a sampling. The possibilities are practically endless.

The social circle Dad helps to build in the house is very important. Every community is loaded with people who have valuable knowledge and experiences to share, and a creative father will find such people and introduce his family to them. The benefit goes both ways, especially when the other person is elderly. Many older people are lonely and without life purpose because they have few channels through which to share their experience with younger people. It has been said, "When an old person dies, a library is lost." How true. And how tragic that modern America segregates the young in schools and day care centers, while mothballing the old.

Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography that his father, a poor soap and candle maker who raised 17 children, made it a point to have often at his supper table adults whose experience and knowledge would be beneficial for the Franklin children. Evidently Ben came to value life experience highly. In Poor Richard's Almanac, he wrote, "Learn from the skillful. He that teacheth himself hath a fool for a master."

John Quincy Adams spent much of his youth traveling with his father, who was a diplomat in addition to his term as president. One result was that at age 14 he was appointed secretary to the American envoy to Russia. That's the difference between spending one's time with kids his own age, or growing up around wise and responsible adults.