Certainly parents, not textbooks, are the best teachers. KONOS helps parents talk effectively with their children during activities. Dialogue internalizes truths while strengthening family relationships.

If homeschooling parents merely make and grade their children’s assignments, without dialoguing and discussing with their children, how can true knowledge be imparted? The goal of Christian education is to train the heart as well as the head. It is through the dialogue between mentor and pupil that both head knowledge and heart knowledge are imparted.

Many homeschooling parents today are opting to be mere graders of their children’s school work. Others, farther down the road, consider themselves tutors of their children. But the real goal of homeschooling parents should be to mentor and model to their children. The distinction between a tutor and a mentor is this: a tutor teachers through a casual relationship, instructing the student in head knowledge and occasionally challenging him with questions; a mentor, on the other hand, models rather than teaches through an intimate relationship, rather than a casual relationship, and shares himself as he gives counsel for the head as well as the heart by asking challenging questions.

Too many parents are obsessed with the amount of facts their children can spew forth and how many workbooks they have completed, rather than their ability to think, reason, and discern. Dialogue builds thinking, reasoning, and discernment. Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., in her book, Endangered Minds, claims, "Conversation builds the executive brain." Certainly our children are worthy of executive brains.

What's
New?