by Erin Drake
RALEIGH, NC (AgapePress) – Sally Clarkson operates a growing ministry to home-schooling mothers worldwide called Whole Heart Ministries. Clarkson and her husband Clay co-authored Educating the Wholehearted Child. She explains that the wholehearted child understands their relationship to the world based on Biblical principals.
Although her first priority is as a full-time, stay-at-home-schooling mother, Clarkson reaches out to other home-schooling moms, as well as mothers in general through her Wholehearted Mother Conferences and Retreats.
“We talk about what God had in mind when he gave children to parents,” said Clarkson. “In society the focus is on the external influences. God intended for children to look to their parents.”
Clarkson has been involved in ministries and missions for over 20 years, starting with Campus Crusade for Christ in Texas and later ministering in communist Eastern Europe. She and her husband now live in Colorado with their four children, ages 5 to 16.
“I am still waiting for my teenagers to enter that ‘stage’ everyone talks about,” said Clarkson. “I know from home schooling them, their hearts are with me, spending most of their time at home and with their family. Teaching to the wholehearted child means helping them understand their spiritual and moral base, their purpose from God, and using their stewardship to better serve Him.”
Clarkson approaches home schooling as more than a solution to academic problems. She says home schooling is about training for life.
“So many of us set our sights on the areas of intellect which concern standardized tests such as the SAT,” she said. “However, taking the SAT does not mean the child is ready or even able to deal with life.”
Through their missions work, the Clarksons found people did not know how to view the next generation. As a result they developed a strong desire to train parents how to raise their children to live for Christ, and in 1995 Whole Heart Ministries was born out of an old Texas farmhouse.
“We knew more than anyone what we wanted to pass on to our children,” said Clarkson.
Clarkson is dedicated to encouraging and equipping Christian parents to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord.
“Proverbs tells us how we are all created to be pleasing to someone and to be affirmed by someone,” she said. “A child in school six to seven hours a day will find affirmation through their schoolmates, who are not going to have the respect for their heart that is so important.”
“We believe that God looks at the heart, which is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible.”
Parents' Concern Over Education Not Just an American Trait
by Bill Fancher
(AgapePress) – The United States has not cornered the market on concerned parents. Just ask Chris Klicka of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
Home schooling is growing by leaps and bounds in America, and it is also expanding around the globe. Klicka's organization is getting contacts from all over the world as concerned parents seek help.
“The Internet seems to be bringing us all closer together, so they have [easier] access in other countries to find out about home schooling,” Klicka says. “They're saying, 'Hey, this is the answer we're looking for.'”
Klicka says those parents believe home schooling is the answer to their concerns about education of their children.
“They look at their own countries' laws and it's not legal [to home school],” he says. “So they're coming to us and [asking], 'How can we have that freedom here as well?'”
Klicka says his organization is working to expand its influence in other nations where parents are crying out for help. He points to Germany as the main source of international requests about home schooling, but adds that requests from other nations are also on the increase.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
