My New Goal for Educating my Children

Thanks to the disputable administration of my child's current school, my goals for educating my children have changed. It used to be finding a good school and delegating the responsibility of educating my children to them. Now it's  about finding a school that can help me act on the responsibility that is solely mine.

How can I say that I have been a good parent if the school I choose intentionally excludes the parent as part of the learning process? Is it not the main responsibility of a parent is to raise these youngsters and education especially in terms of academics is only a mere part of acting on that responsibility? And yet, the school is taking over most of their waking hours, bombarding them with facts then they call it education.

I've come to realize that parents' view of what they want their children to be become skewed once they enter the four walls of the school. It now becomes an unending race to achieve a somewhat deceitful goal, to be placed in a rank among honors, to be a valedictorian, to be attain the most number of medals, to win in the most prestigious national competition. What happened to the simple goal of raising your children to become a good person? To raise them in a way most pleasing to God so that when they grow up they may be able to glorify God through the things that they do?

I've heard of stories of parents menacing other people just so their children may achieve that deceitful goal. Others even resulted in physical violence that is simply contradictory to the supposedly ultimate goal. Have we as parents forgotten why we are blessed to have offsprings of our own? Have we forgotten what is important when the  end of our time has come? Do we want our children to value these pretentious things than be ready to face our creator?

I am scared of what I might become if I continue to travel this path. I've been that parent who meticulously goes over every test item to check for corrections. I confess to being frustrated when I force my child to study. I find myself in the faculty room questioning my child's grades. I stepped back and realize the horror that I've become. Is this what I want? Is this what I want for my children?

"I only have one shot at parenting and I want to do it right." I've heard this from someone and it almost brought me to tears. My heart is shouting the very same thing. I have to keep check my goals for parenting. Academic education is just a part of it and should not be the main focus. Now my aim is to educate my children about how to live their lives. A life that is God-centered, God-fearing, God-glorifying. Yes, I still want them to be good in Math, Science,etc but not because I want them to bag the highest honors, but because I want them to maximize whatever talent or gift God has given them.