In I Corinthians 13 in the Bible, the apostle Paul writes about love and explains how a person may know and do wonderful spiritual things, but if he has no love, it all counts for nothing. 

We feel a similar analogy can be made about life skills. We may use the best curriculum, know all of our history names and dates, be able to write grammatically correct papers, and even work calculus problems, but what really counts over the long haul of life are relationships and life skills.

Even secular educators are beginning to talk about the necessity for what they call "emotional intelligence" and their studies are finding that people with the highest standardized test scores are often the least likely to be happy and successful in life. 

In fact, there is mounting evidence that people who have high academic intelligence (who excel in school) often fare poorly at living life. They know how to "crack the system" when it comes to getting good grades in an artificially contrived environment such as school, but they lack the internal resilience to tackle the tough relationships and issues of life.

Our goal, as we have home educated our children, has been to find a balance between relational skills, life skills, and academic skills.

Ellyn and Chris Davis own and operate a homeschool 

business called Elijah Company.  Their catalog is a seminar in

"real life homeschooling" in itself!