Bilingual would be a must for my kids too. Ideally trilingual with another useful global language like Spanish. I think it's going to be an uphill battle in the future for most non english european countries to keep their culture and language intact. They will have to battle against the cultural behemoth that is Hollywood and encroaching Americanization. This might not be a problem for eastern europe for some time but for western europe it's already happening.momopi wrote: IMO it's much easier for children to learn foreign languages than adults. At minimum I'd expect my kids to be bilingual. Given the opportunity I'd either take the kids abroad or send them on study abroad to non-English speaking countries. Assuming that the kid can attend bilingual English-Chinese school (or at least weekend Chinese school) locally, it shouldn't be overly difficult to learn French and Japanese afterwards. ~30% of modern English words are of French origin. The Japanese use Kanji, and ~60% of modern Japanese dictionary words are Kango (*).
(*) For those who are not familiar, Kango is Japanese words that originated from Chinese.
I agree with all your points except for this. I will refuse to let my kids near dogmatic religious scripture, institutions, or belief systems. Religion also has a corrupting influence and is too often a closet to hide in for pederasts, deviants, and charlatans. I don't think the bible is the basis of western morality either. That foundation is much more ancient and goes back to pre-christian roman/greece philosophy which led to the eventual development of the social contract. Ironically, the same people who constructed the whole concept of western critical thought would have been burned at the stake in the 15th-17th centuries for heresy.fschmidt wrote: 5. Bible study is one of the homeschooling subjects we cover. It is incredibly important since the Bible is the basis of Western morality. To be clear, I don't believe in a supernatural god or the mythological stories in the Bible. But the point of the Old Testament is ethics. The Old Testament is the best text on ethics ever written. It also contains many extreme stories so that after reading it, nothing is shocking anymore, so nothing shocking can have much of an impact. And the Bible makes clear that modern culture has an alternative. Of everything on my list, I think Bible study is the most important. It is also my kids' favorite subject.