Missions Textbook 57 Missionary Kid's Schooling

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

Probably one of the biggest decisions for missionaries is schooling for their children. For missionaries living in Third World countries, often the only choices are whether to home school or send the children to a boarding school. Sometimes mission organizations want the wife and mother to contribute more to the mission work, and home schooling becomes impossible. Boarding schools can be very good or very bad, but most fall in between these two extremes. Most boarding schools have wonderful teachers and staff who are committed to caring for the children as if for their own.

Our daughter-in-law and her sisters attended boarding school for all their school years. Their mother wrote each girl every week, interacting with her about the things that interested her – the animals, friends, gardens, and missionary work. Those letters arrived in 6-week packages, to which the girls looked forward. When they returned to the mission for holidays, their mother had organized her schedule so she could spend every waking hour with the girls. When they had to leave again, there were tears, but tears let everyone know they were loved and cherished. There were mothers who found the distance so heart-breaking that they kept their distance even during holidays.

We talked to missionary children who had chosen to attend boarding school in their later years because they knew they could free up their parents for more ministry. In this way, they were contributing to the ministry. We also have known of missionary children – and these are the ones you tend to hear the loudest – who as adults have no time for God, and they blame it on being “shoved off” to a boarding school.

Home schooling is a huge industry now, and it’s fairly easy to do it online. There was a time when correspondence schools relied on a reliable postal system. Now you just need some sort of internet connection. For home schooling, one of the parents needs to be available at least for the first few years until the children learn how to study on their own.

Sending your children to the local public school can be a good option, if the school is of good quality. Missionaries to Europe would seem, on the surface, to have the least trouble making this choice because Europeans are well educated, and therefore their school systems must be working. We chose this option at the beginning because we knew we would be highly involved in the boys’ education at the beginning.

One mistake we made, which we knew nothing about until it was too late, was beginning Erich in first grade, where he had to learn to read in a language he could not speak. Now I make the recommendation to other young couples that they ought to consider two other choices. These choices are based on much research done on how Third Culture Kids learn and pick up languages.

1. Go the mission field while your children are learning to talk. They will pick up your mother tongue as well as the language of the country you live in. It will be a bit confusing to those who are not bilingual, but the kids will sort it out eventually. Then the child can learn to read in a language he speaks. He will also be able to read his mother tongue.

2. Wait until your child has learned how to read in her mother tongue. At that point, she can learn the new language, with the advantage of knowing how to read. This might involve delaying arrival on the mission field, but it will make for an easier transition for your child.

Another issue with the local public schools might be morals. We discovered two huge areas in the Austrian system, which we decided we didn’t want our boys to have to navigate. One had to do with the extreme pressure put on kids to eventually attend university. Those considered not intelligent enough were shifted to a different high school, and are relegated to learning a trade. There was a stigma attached to this, and we just wanted our boys to work hard and do their best. Attached to this was the pedagogical philosophy that if you put a child down, they will work harder so you won’t do it again. Of course, we know that is not true. Children usually live up to our expectations, and if our feedback is always negative, then they will live up to our negative opinion of them.

As with public schools the world over, the morals taught in the classroom were only as good as the character of the person teaching. We made decisions for the boys for the same reasons that parents in North America pull their kids out of the public schools. When we left Graz, we were already planning to move near Vienna so our sons could attend the Vienna Christian School, which had been set up for and by missionaries.

These decisions are hard. There are so many factors: the quality (existence or non-existence) of the national schools, the mission agency’s policies, the mindset and emotional pulls for the parents, and the personality and abilities of the child. One missionary couple in France had three children: One wanted to attend boarding school in England, one wanted to attend the Christian boarding school, Black Forest Academy, and one wanted to go through the entire French system. All three came out loving the Lord and successful in the careers they had worked toward.

In some countries, if you send your child to a government-run school, you take a place away from a national. They only have so many classrooms, teachers and desks available. Sometimes, Christian, international, boarding or other private school is the best option.

Floyd and I, before we were even married, confided to one another that we did not want to send our kids to boarding school. That influenced our decisions as we were choosing where we would serve. We did every other schooling option. Their early years were in the Austrian system, then we home schooled in the States for a year to improve their English. Then they attended Vienna Christian School for three years, and then – because their commute was so long – they both finished high school by correspondence.

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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