Homeschooling the hard questions

One of my favorite criticisms of homeschoolers is that we purposely leave our kids in the dark when it comes to the hard questions of life. Critics assume we all homeschool with the misguided idea in mind that we'll forever be able to protect our little darlings from the vagaries of life, the warts and all of the human experience, so to speak.

Wonder what they'd say about the conversation I had today with my eight-year-old daughter who came across the words "communist" and "communism" in her spelling list.

(Holy cow! Words like that in a spelling book published by Christian Liberty Press? You betcha.)

"What are these things?" she asked me in an annoyed tone of voice. "I don't know what they mean so I can't use them in a sentence."

I paused, wondering how to condense Marx and Engels into a bite small enough for a young child to understand. Later on when my kids are older we will actually read the Communist Manifesto and pick it apart to get to the gritty truth beneath the shiny, happy exterior. But for now, communism with all its attendant ills just doesn't have room on my radar.

Nonetheless the question was asked and, as my children's teacher of record, I have an obligation to answer truthfully.

"Communism is when the government forces you to share what you have worked hard to rightly earn with people who haven't worked hard and who don't deserve to have it," I said. "A communist is someone who thinks this is a good idea."

My daughter frowned. "That's like the story of the Little Red Hen," she said. "The hen kept asking her friends to help her do the work to make bread but they all said no. Then when the bread was done they all showed up wanting a piece."

Exactly.

"So why do people think communism is a good idea?" she continued. Good question and one I wasn't sure I could answer.

"I think this happens when people don't get the full story," I said. "They are told it will be good for them and they have no choice but to try it because if they don't their government punishes them. Over time, a lie told often enough becomes the truth and more and more people begin to believe it," I said. "But there are always some who don't and they are usually the ones who are heavily punished."

I then told her briefly the story of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China in 1989 when disillusioned Communists rose up against their government. I also told her that several thousand people were killed. (Official tally is 3,000, FYI.)

I also told her how her grandmother and I once travelled in communist Russia and how although the people were kind to us and we saw many beautiful things we also saw a lot of things that would not have been except for communism.

And then I told her it was time to get back to work on her spelling lesson. "When will we read about communism by those guys you told me about?" she said.

All in good time, I replied.

And I'm a mom of my word.