Education in America:.
Stephen over at liquidthinking has an incredible rant on education. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.
Thought number 1.
I really want to send my kids to public school for the long haul. I think it's best in terms of following Christ. But I'm seriously rethinking this.
Thought number 2.
A few years ago I read a book named, "Between the dreaming and the coming true" i think it was by Robert Benson. Mike Yaconelli recommended it to me, so I pick it up. The only think I remember about this book is this powerful story.
A man in his 30's is backpacking with his 3 year old son. His son is on his back as they trek in the mountains. Amazing views everywhere. Someone has been taking pictures along the way. And snaps a pick of the 3 year old and his father, (Robert). When the trip is over, Robert gets the pics developed and takes them to to visit his own father in the hospital, who is dying. His father looks throught the vacation pics and then stops at one particular photo. He shows it to his son Robert. It's Robert with his three year old on his back. And the look on his child's face is one of amazing wonder. The mountains have seemingly made his eyes larger, trying to take it all in. Joy fills the picture.
The dying father says to his son something like. "Your job as a father is to, never allow anyone, or anything to take away that look from your child's face. That they would always be wide eyed and full of wonder. Though life is hard and greif is certainly a part of it. Being able to see the world with these kinds of eyes is always possible, but is something most of us, when we grow older have forgotten. Often it is slowly and methodically squeezed out of us. One day at a time.
Thought number 3
my son Zach is 8 and in third grade. He get 15 minutes of recess each day. Fifteen minutes! Are you kidding me?
Thought number 4
this weekend I met a new friend, named nate. Nate made a comment that stuck with me.
He suggested that the education (schooling) of our children prepared them for an industrialized world, meaning factory work.
So. In a factory, you might work the widget sorting station. You stand (over a conveyor belt) in the same place all day long with a lunch break and two 15 minute coffee breaks (more than my 8 year old) and sort the acceptable widget and the defective widgets the company just produced. You job is to find the occassionaly badly made or defective widget and remove it. That is all. There is no need for critical thinking here. There is no need for creativity here.
so you can see the dilemma I'm in.
Stephen over at liquidthinking has an incredible rant on education. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.
Thought number 1.
I really want to send my kids to public school for the long haul. I think it's best in terms of following Christ. But I'm seriously rethinking this.
Thought number 2.
A few years ago I read a book named, "Between the dreaming and the coming true" i think it was by Robert Benson. Mike Yaconelli recommended it to me, so I pick it up. The only think I remember about this book is this powerful story.
A man in his 30's is backpacking with his 3 year old son. His son is on his back as they trek in the mountains. Amazing views everywhere. Someone has been taking pictures along the way. And snaps a pick of the 3 year old and his father, (Robert). When the trip is over, Robert gets the pics developed and takes them to to visit his own father in the hospital, who is dying. His father looks throught the vacation pics and then stops at one particular photo. He shows it to his son Robert. It's Robert with his three year old on his back. And the look on his child's face is one of amazing wonder. The mountains have seemingly made his eyes larger, trying to take it all in. Joy fills the picture.
The dying father says to his son something like. "Your job as a father is to, never allow anyone, or anything to take away that look from your child's face. That they would always be wide eyed and full of wonder. Though life is hard and greif is certainly a part of it. Being able to see the world with these kinds of eyes is always possible, but is something most of us, when we grow older have forgotten. Often it is slowly and methodically squeezed out of us. One day at a time.
Thought number 3
my son Zach is 8 and in third grade. He get 15 minutes of recess each day. Fifteen minutes! Are you kidding me?
Thought number 4
this weekend I met a new friend, named nate. Nate made a comment that stuck with me.
He suggested that the education (schooling) of our children prepared them for an industrialized world, meaning factory work.
So. In a factory, you might work the widget sorting station. You stand (over a conveyor belt) in the same place all day long with a lunch break and two 15 minute coffee breaks (more than my 8 year old) and sort the acceptable widget and the defective widgets the company just produced. You job is to find the occassionaly badly made or defective widget and remove it. That is all. There is no need for critical thinking here. There is no need for creativity here.
so you can see the dilemma I'm in.
posted by mark at
11:53 AM
5 Comments:
I understand the desire to have kids out "in the real world" so to speak in public school, but I honestly think that kids under 13 aren't ready for it. They are still developing. They learn from who they are around. No matter how good the teacher is, the fact is that it isn't the teacher spending most of their time with your kid -- it's other kids. Instead of learning how to be an adult, in fact, no matter how good the teacher, your child is spending most of their time learning more and more to act like a child, not like an adult.
Likewise, people bond with who they spend the most time with, and those are also the people who care most about what they think. If your child spends 6 hours a day with the school, and 3-4 hours a day with you, he's going to care more about what his school friends think than what you think.
Finally, if you want your child's foundation to be in Christ, the best place to establish that is when you are teaching. There are a _very few_ private schools that will do this (though they do exist). Often times, having grown up in the public school myself, I forget how much of the way I view the world is based on my secular schooling -- it isn't a God-focused view of the world, but a secular one.
Here's a quote from Charles Potter, a radical humanist, in the 1930's:
"Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school's meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?"
Think of it -- whenever history is taught, especially religious history, the question being asked is not "what is God doing during this time", but rather "what is man doing during this time, and how does that affect the way he envisions God?" It seems subtle, but at every step God is subordinated to a product of man, rather than the originator of man.
My wife and I decided to homeschool for many of these reasons, and several others. The fact is that kids love to learn. What isn't fun about learning something new? It's only when you separate the subject from reality and imposing arbitrary requirements that it starts to be boring.
Postman and Lowell say a lot about the benefits and problems with free, public education. If your goal in life is to keep a sense of innocence and wonder in your children, then I'm not sure any situation can do that. I was a teacher for 5 years and I can tell you of many experiences that would turn your stomach. Some of those are from homeschooling experiences.
I have also served in youth ministry for a while, and I see a lot of problems with teens that are a direct result of very good, well meaning parents.
I don't have really any answers, but I trust that God moves among us to accomplish His purposes. I have suffered through many experiences that have shaped who I am, and I think that God uses those experiences for His glory. I think sometimes that I am like the man born blind, that Jesus says he was born that way to bring glory to God.
Maybe that's what all of our experiences are.
Paul,
I'm not sure I'd attach innocence and wonder the way you seem to be. My goal in life is not to keep my kids innocent, in the sense of keeping my kids "pure". I'm their father, I know they are part of the problem with the world, but not as much as I am. Though they don't know it yet. I will say keeping kids from looking their innocence is not my goal, but to the extent that I can stretch my influence in their lives, I want wonder to be a part of who they are, innocent or not. I'm not protecting my kids in the classic sense, of keeping them away from bad kids, or bad experiences. As painful as it maybe to say, they will learn a lot about the brokenness of the world in elementary school.
And, Crevo, I'm absolutely don't want to make my children adults until the time has come. childhood, as I see it not about acting like an adult. It's completely about being a child. Children should act like children. they should play more than they work. They should have limited responsibility, and permission to live and learn about the world. If childhood is about forming anything in kids, it's about preparing them for the journey to adulthood, not directly about being an adult. As I say that, kids certainly learn the core issues of character, self and such in the elementary years. But I would never expect a child to behave like an adult.
mark
"But I would never expect a child to behave like an adult."
Perhaps we have different definitions of "behaving like an adult". I view the core issues of character as being the differentiation between a child and an adult.
We should all play more :)
I know my parents ran into the same problem when the public education system around me pretty much crushed any desire I had to learn. I was railing against teachers, arguing over the merit of certain monotonous projects and complaining about the lack of creativity (I like to trace lines in my coloring worksheets, I thought it added a cool look to it. I got graded down for it, for being outside the lines).
Every day it seemed I returned home with a new story of my dissatisfaction. I was seven.
My parents realized that I would soon hate learning and be subject to a stream of problems if I began to share my frustrations with the teachers on a more regular basis.
The other problem was that I was gifted in every subject but math, so the school wanted to put me ahead in those subjects, but unfortunitly it would interfere schedual wise with the math classes at my level so they said I should be tutoured in math at home.
My mom was like "If I can teach him what doesn't come easily to him at home, I might as well be teaching him everything?"
Unfortunitly we couldn't afford private education, so we opted for homeschooling.
I thrived, I started advancing in everything, and was able to take the harder subjects at a slower pace and the easier subjects at an accelerated pace.
I was even asking to add on subjects I was interested in (because with homeschooling I studied at my pace, there wasn't wasted class time, redundant projects because it was focused on where I was at, I didn't have to wait for anyone to catch up or slow down for me), which helped a lot in highschool as I looked through career choices, we would just add it on as another class, so when I was into being an x-ray tech we added on time to reaserch that, then to be a cartoonist we looked into that and then ultimatly youth ministry, we added on time for that.
Also this style of learning didn't crush my wonder as much. If I found something interesting, we'd be able to spend more time on it, adding trips and books and projects on to allow my wonder to fuel my education, rather then run opposed to it, which I think is the strong point of homeschooling.
My parents knew the stigmas of sheltering, so they constantly strived to make sure I knew what was going on and not hide me from the world but instead gave me a safe way to process it. They tried to make sure I had friends outside of the homeschool and Christian circles so that I wouldn't have a limited artifical view of people, it was difficult for them but It hink it worked to some degree.
So I know it's not for everyone, but if you can help that wonder to fuel rather then fight a kids education, and you can find a way to keep from sheltering your kids through the process I think it's worth it.
I understand your concerns of making sure your kids have a healthy, diverse view of people and are able to build relationships with peers with completley different worldviews. It would take extra work for you as a parent to make this happen, but it can still happen by enrolling in clubs, sports, community services and such, or finding homeschoolers that are outside your worldview and forming study groups and co-ops with them.
The only lasting damage that may have been done is I am constantly frustraited with inflexiblity, workoholics and excessive work scheduals in the job world, which I would have been deadedned by and groomed for already if I had gone through the public school machine :) Thankfully in my ministry situation right now it's a healthy place so my frustrations with that have subsided.
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