Christian Education: A Series

Episode VI - The Solution!

There's this show called Love Line. It was radio program that I imagine, more than a decade ago, was intended to offer romantic advice to the young and the hip (well, if they were really hip, they probably wouldn't need the advice) in the L. A. Basin. Nowadays, it's syndicated nationally and fields questions regarding every kind of trouble known to the young and not-so-hip (the topics often still deal with relationships, but there are plenty of drug-, STD-, abuse-, and mental-related issues that are dealt with every evening between 10:oo pm and midnight. I don't listen often, but whenever I want to give a little there-but-by-the-grace-of-God boost to my self-estimation, I'll tune in for about fifteen minutes on the drive home.

And the thing is this: the two hosts, Dr. Drew Pinsky and Adam Carolla, have what I might say is an uncanny ability by which they guess the details of various callers' personal history with the callers' parents. I might say it's uncanny, but I won't. Because, quite simply, the odds that a person making horrible life choices or a person with a distinct inability to function in arenas of common sense - the odds that someone like this would come from a broken household or from an abusive or negligent family - those odds are pretty high. Listening to a show like that for any duration should emphasize quite clearly the need for children to have good parenting if they are to make it into and through adulthood intact as well-adjusted members of society.

A few years back, I would listen to Larry Elder on the radio with some small degree of frequency. He was just about the only talk show host I could listen to without getting a headache. He would speak mostly on topics from a libertarian point of view - which I found rather refreshing at the time, since mostly everyone else I had heard had been either on the far left or the far right. His libertarianism seemed to defy the stereotypes. But that's not important. What is important is that a couple years back, he began speaking less about politics and directing his show more towards a social agenda of calling people to take responsibility for their own actions - and especially directed it toward parents, encouraging them to raise their children in a healthy environment of a loving nuclear family.

It seems like a lot of people are getting the importance of good parenting.

And I'm one of them. And I believe the solution to the concerns people will raise about any educational environment is to be found almost wholly in quality parenting. Whether one homeschools, publicly schools, or privately schools, parenting will likely be either the thing that goes wrong or the reason the child succeeds.

Good parenting is a nice panacea, sure - but what does it mean? While its details will of course vary according to child and circumstance (i.e., there is no Way to parent), the governing principle is, I think, stable. A good parent is one who seeks the well being of the child, purposing to raise him in the nurture and admonition of the faith. A good parent, in so seeking, will walk appropriately the balance between offering the child protection and responsibility. When the child is young, the parent must be strong and must stress obedience - that the child might properly learn and be brought up in the faith. As the child matures, the good parent will gradually offer him greater and greater responsibility for his own decisions in life - that by the time of his full maturation, he might be well-prepared to take responsibility for himself. This involves the gradual relinquishment of demands for obedience. Little by little, the good parent will no longer require obedience, but merely suggest a course of action, offering counsel as wise as they might - allowing the child to fail of his own accord and grow stronger for it. This is, understandably, the most difficult of paths for a good parent to traverse - as no loving parent wants to see his child making mistakes, reaping troubles for his failures - but it is necessary for the welfare of the maturing child.

Woo, tangent.

Anyway, let's first look at the good parent's approach to public-schooling. Admittedly, teachers may present counter-Christian ideals in the course of the daily lessons. The parent's task then comes down to training the child in what is good and true and holy - that he might know falsehood when he sees it. The parent should be integrally involved in the child's life after school at least through the eighth grade. A child thus prepared should have little difficulty negotiating the labyrinth of high school pluralism.

I may use myself as an example here. My parents raised me to know good from evil, to trust in Christ above all. I knew from my parents example and from the witness of the church that not everything my schoolteachers taught was gospel truth. They were something of a tertiary authority. Scripture was primary and then I was to trust my church and my parents. Schoolteachers were to be valued, but not to the same degree. After raising me so unswervingly through my youth, my parents began to allow certain freedoms as I grew. And because of that liberty, I was able to consider other perspectives. I was able to question (respectfully, of course) certain principles to which my parents held and my friends eschewed. And in the end, for the most part, I would always see my parents' point - which worked only to strengthen my own convictions as well.

Therefore, when I came to high school, things like evolution were a shrug-off. World Cultures took on the merely academic feel that it should. I learned not to fear the opinions and beliefs of others but to recognize them as honest, heartfelt, different, to be respected, and wrong. Because of my parents good example, I was able to weather high school, not only intact, but with a stronger faith in the end.

The issue facing homeschooling parents is, in many ways, the other side of the coin. While publicly schooling parents have a propensity for negligence as far as involvement in their children's lives, homeschooling parents, generally, hold the tendency to lord over their children for too long. Too often, they become too involved in their children's lives, never allowing them the freedom to take responsibility for themselves until the last minute (usually either when they go to university or when they marry). While the child can end up well adjusted regardless, I have known many who upon reaching this sudden liberty, become drunk with the air of freedom - and so either fall away from the faith or make a tremendous number of poor decisions in a relatively brief amount of time.

The keys then are related to letting go. Homeschooling parents must learn that having other influences in their children's lives is a good thing. Even (and sometimes, especially) if those influences are not congruent with their own. They've got to realize that allowing their kids contact with a diversity of children is healthy - even contact with so-called bad influences can be healthy as the child matures. Really, in the end, homeschooling parents must realize that their goal should not be the protection of their precious children, but rather, their task is to cultivate their children into well-rounded individuals* who cherish the gospel and love their neighbor with respect and honest (even if he's a pagan).

In any case, this is all just to say that responsible parenting can overcome any of the hurdles, any of the so-called problems inherent with any educational system.

* this means no cloning - something too many parents try to accomplish, whether homeschoolers or public schoolers.

Christian Education: A Series

Episode V - 98.3% of All Statistics Are Made Up

One of the chief difficulties in discussing home-schooling vs. public-schooling is that their are no statistics that are worth, well, really anything at all. And why aren't the stats worth much? Because there are no control groups. To compare the average home-schooled child with the average publicly-schooled child is, as the cliché goes, apples and oranges. While this might initially appear as me trying to wriggle out of the awkward fact that the average standardized test scores of home-schoolers beat the average standardized test scores of public-schoolers. This, however delightful a prospect to my detractors, is not accurate.

Please allow for an explanation.

One of the key factors in properly educating a child is quality parental involvement (read this as preview for Episode VI: Concerns Answered). To get real quality control on the stats, you would need to compare publicly-schooled children with good, involved parents with home-schooling parents. In all honesty, I'm surprised that with the preponderance of broken families and non-existent parenting across the public-school spectrum, with the severe lack of parental interest across much of the public-schooling realm - I'm surprised that the discrepancy between the academics in the two systems isn't far greater.

In short, it is impossible to discover from the statistics whether it home-schooling is what is academically beneficial or whether its just having involved parents that does the trick; without a control group, the stats are only mirages masquerading as tangible fact.

The problem, then, is that this leaves us all being able only to speak from anecdotal evidence. That is, I feel about home-schooling in a certain way because the majority of home-schoolers I know exhibit certain qualities or deficiencies, yet person A, who feels the other way about home-schooling thinks I'm nuts because she doesn't know any home-schoolers who exhibit the particular tendencies and attributes I mentioned, and in fact (!), she's more likely to see those things in public-schoolers. This is one of the several reasons why this can be such a difficult issue - there is no shared sample and all the data is skewed. We're dealing almost exclusively in hypotheticals based on the poor sampling made up from our personal experience.

This is why I think it's important to the discussion that we do not simply dismiss any of the concerns mention in Episodes II and III. The thing of it is: none of the concerns are ironclad. None of them cannot be overcome. None of them are, in the end, worthwhile objections. But they must all be answered, if only for the nonbelievers, for the skeptical. Are you going to home-school your child? How are you going to insure your child's success? Are you going to public-school your child? Well, how are you going to insure his success? We need to get away from stats and stereotyping and start dealing with specifics.

Christian Education: A Series

Episode IV - An Admission

It may be of interest at this point in this monologue to note that the public education system failed me utterly when it came to academics. From sixth grade onward, I learned very, very little. I wouldn't say Nothing, but the academic knowledge I accumulated from that time until graduation was very little. My mother even openly mocked my poor vocabulary - and with good cause.

The typical response to such colossal underachievement generally points to a child's lack of challenge in his educational environment. This was not my problem. True enough, I did consistently test in the 99th percentile in every subject, but it wasn't the lack of a challenge that stalled my education. It wasn't public-schooling per se that caused this failure either, for I suspect that I would have had the same (or at least similar) difficulty learning in a private- or home-schooled environment.

The problem was this: after six year of excelling academically, I decided I'd rather pursue other interests. Mastering algebra, trig, calc? Boring. Reading Dorian Gray, Dickens, and whatever else was on the plate? Sigh. I couldn't be bothered with these things when life confronted me with more important things. Things like: drawing, reading comics, boogie boarding and skim boarding, wandering around, and basically cultivating my imagination.

Since I wasn't planning on going into a field related to math or any of the applied sciences, I had bigger fish to fry. And no, I wasn't going to let anything so wasteful of my time as an education get in my way. So I indulged my creative side to the languishment of academics. Of course I continued learning - but only the things I wanted to learn and I learned them in my own time, my after-school time.

So, after six years of indulging myself in non-academic pursuits, I decided it was time to learn again. After all, I graduated high school being unable to write a coherent essay, being unable to speak in front of an audience (I was fantastically shy, the picture of an introvert). It felt like the time was right to overcome these issues, so I taught myself to write and decided to shed my former introversion.

And here we are. Had I continued to apply myself academically, I might now be a lawyer or rocket scientist, but really, where would the fun be in that? Sure, I would be making money hand-over-fist in comparison to doing web design for a non-profit organization (as I do), but really, what a waste that would have been. Instead, I get to create.

In the end, the only reason I mention this is to give some background - so it can be realized that though I will fight tooth and nail for parents to be allowed to publicly school without the condemnation of their Christian peers, I recognize that academically speaking, the system didn't work for me. Though I still don't think any system would have worked for me - since I have a natural tendency to work poorly within a system (this will be an important factor in Episode VII).

Christian Education: A Series

Episode III - Concerns with Home-Schooling

Rather than deal with the concerns intimate with public-schooling right off the bat, I thoughts I'd juxtapose the concerns commonly raised in regard to home-schooling. These are both several and real (whether they are admitted to being so or not), concerns that home-schooling parents need to be ready to answer or remedy (and there are many who are doing so or at least trying to do so). Here are three: socialization, academic quailty and educational breadth, and elitism.

Socialization:
Though most home-schoolers will scoff at this as a phantom, the socialization issue is a real concern amongst those who are considering home-schooling for their own children. A friend of mine was considering home-schooling his daughter but after observing the home-schooled children in our congregation (their personalities and interaction with others), he decided that he would prefer to opt for private-schooling or some other method.

While a few of of the home-schooling children I have known have grown into well-adjusted members of the community, the majority are still hampered by or struggling against inadequacies that were magnified by their particular education. It's almost certain that many of these kids would have been socially deficient in their maturity regardless of educational style, but it may be (and indeed is presumed by many) that home-schooling magnifies such deficiencies.

Some of these issues are tactlessness, dependancy issues, arrogance in the face of new ideas or people of other persuasions, obnoxiousness, that brand of social incompetance that makes one stick out (in a bad way) in a group, introversion, hyper-activity, and an inordinate love of denim as a clothing option for articles other than jeans. Much of this may be due to over-protective parenting (other other parental issues) and should be easily remedied with a little effort on the part of home-schooling parents, but home-schooling parents who really care a wit about what others think about home-schooling should be willing and ready to demonstrate how they intend to overcome this difficulty - whether actual or merely perceived. Demonstrating how a home education can address issues of socialization may even be more important to your cause than whether it does or not.

The Academic Issue:
This is important simply because academics within home-schooling is all over the map. Some children receive quality educations that should be the envy of any gifted child while others receive educations that are far below those in a good public school. I have known both types and a great number who stand somewhere in between. One family I know that maintains that home-schooling is the only proper means of education also allowed their children to count time playing Age of Empires II toward their history requirement. One girl I had known hadn't ever written an essay before Freshman Comp in college. Another home-schooler was completely unfamiliar with the canon of American and British literature; actually, finding home-schoolers who are familiar with such things is like a scavenger hunt - sure you'll find them, but hardly ever in the most obvious places. At the same time, another was quite well educated and her parents made certain that her education in terms of reading, writing, and history were well-rounded.

So, obviously, home-schooling can meet this concern with a concerted effort by parents, but again, to evangelize the disbeliever properly, the home-schooler must go to pains to show that he understands the concern and recognizes both the potential for deficiency and the existence in that deficiency in many home-schooling environments.

Elitism:
Granted, this is more a concern amongst the parents of home-schoolers than in the home-schoolers themselves - but this particular maladjustment can easily infect the attidtudes of children (especially as they spend so much time in their parents' company). While it is fine to prefer your type of education to that of another, there is a danger in believing oneself better than another for such a choice. An intellectually honest parent will admit that good things come from each of the primary educational choices (and that each is a perfectly acceptable option for godly Christian parents, if approached properly). I've known of congregations to be ravaged by the divisveness of home-schooling parents who actually had the gall to suggest that parents who publicly educated their children were in sin (or at the least, were weaker in their understanding of Scripture). It was a difficult time for the congregation while mothers became snide, haughty, defensive, and otherwise uncharitible over the brouhaha.

Christian Education: A Series

Episode II - Concerns with Public-Schooling

In a move of great controversy, I now post some concerns with the public school system and public schooling as regards to Christian parents and their children. For clarification's sake, I am not against public schooling per se and believe Christian parents can well educate and resposibly care for their children while using the public system. I call these concerns because they are difficulties that - given a little creativity and a touch of nuanced parenting - can be met and answered in a manner that should satisfy critics.

a) Level of Education
This is pretty hit and miss depending on the school, the child's desire to learn, and most important, the parent's involvement. Publicly schooled children range from brilliant to smart-as-day–old-hotdogs. Further, inner city schools face an even greater challenge than those in suburban areas. This should all be pretty familiar as we hear day-in and day-out the woeful state of the American education system.

b) Non-Christian Perspective
Obviously, there is no guarantee that teachers in a publicly funded educational system will believe or teach concordantly with a Christian parent's particular religious perspective. In fact, it is far more likely that Christian parents will disagree with numerous ideological issues that will doubtlessly creep into their children's educations. This concern is shared in private schooling as well, for it is impossible even in a private institution that teachers beliefs will align with parents - of course, the chance is slightly greater in private schools that concordance might be possible.

b2) A common corollary objection comes from those who hold to a specific view of creation - advocated, I believe, by VanTil or Bahnsen or someone - that the correct understanding of any matter can only be reached by those of a redeemed consciousness (i.e., by believers). Therefore, it is common - especially in Reformed circles - to find those who believe we should pass along quadratic equations in the context of a Biblical worldview. For these, no matter how outwardly moral the student body may be, no matter if the teachers are not teaching evolution, sex-ed, ethical tolerance, etc, - still public-schooling must be the wrong choice for Christians because non-Christian teachers can never teach anything right by virtue of the fact that they are unaware/in rebellion to the truth of things (after all, they suprress the truth in unrighteousness).

c) Dearth of Morality in Student Body
In a public system, there will be students of a wide make-up of backgrounds, ethnicities, creeds, and orientations. This is part of the point but also a huge deficit - for there is no reason for non-Christians to hold to Christian morality. Therefore, every non-believing student is a potential "bad influence" on believing children for the non-believing students will advocate whichever non-Christian set of moral principles to which they themselves hold; and Christian children taking up aspects of a different set of moral principles is unacceptable to a Christian parent.

These are probably the primary issues at stake for Christians in their approach to the public school system and I agree that each one of these is a grave and important concern indeed. Well, except b2), which is founded in an errant view of common grace - so I won't really talk about it here (another post though, probably). Before I speak more about these concerns, are there any prevailing concerns that I'm missing?

Links to Previous Articles in Series
• Episode I: The Privilege of Public Schooling

Christian Education: A Series

Episode I - A Privilege of Public Schooling

In recent conversation with a couple of friends about home-schooling and the mentality of many Christians who opt for educating their children in this manner, I came across a number of interesting thoughts. This will be one of them.

First of all, let me clarify that I'm not opposed to home-schooling or private-schooling. I believe there are strengths and weaknesses to each brand of education and so, obviously, there are difficulties involved in private-schooling that aren't present in home- and public-schooling, and difficulties involved in home-schooling that aren't present in private- and public-education. I'm not going to talk about those difficulties. Instead, lets look at something seen as an insurmountable problem by many Christians who take their kids out of the public school system.

Let's be honest, one of the primary reason that Christian parents home-school is that they don't want their children in a place where foul language, illegal substances, and sexuality are commonplace. They also wish to have they children segregated from an institution that promotes sex-education and evolution. And I have to admit that I see where they're coming from on this. I think I would probably have a tendency to be over-protective as a parent too.

That's right. Over-protective. This is not to say that all home- and private-schooling parents are over-protective of their children, but it certainly is a trend.

Still, how can I say that wishing to keep one's child from such influences is over-protection (if really, as I said, I understand the impulse)? Simply because it seems not concordant with Scripture. We who believe are called to be lights in the world - in the world yet not of the world. How can we do this if we hide that light under bushels by segregating ourselves from the world in which we are called to minister?

But... but... these are just children!

Yes, children who are lights in the world as much as you or I. I think the first thing that happens when adults become parents is that they immediately have the memory of their childhood erased by the worries and stresses that naturally come about when one has a new mouth to feed, bottom to clean, and life to care for. I've said this before and I'll say it again (and I'll probably continue saying it until I'm a parent and forget...): children can be much more capable than we give credit for.

For instance...

I remember being in school, knowing for a certainty that I was different than those around me. That I was called to a higher purpose. That I was to be a light, a witness of the life available to any who wanted it. I remember knowing that I was held to a different moral standard and while my friends would cuss and drink and smoke out and have sex with anything that would have them, I, simply would not - because Christ was in me and I in him. And I was aware of this as early as third grade. I knew that evolution was a theory awry. I knew that my friends (a Jew, an atheist, a Jehovah's Witness, a lipstick-Satanist, and a whole bunch of agnostics) would have all kinds of great ideas that were wrong on the face of them because they were born of an outcast ideology. An ideology other than mine.

And why did I know this? Because my parents taught me this through word and deed.

And so, growing up in schools fraught with the depravity of the world, I learned many valuable things. I learned that the difference between myself and those around me was simultaneously not that far and leagues apart. I learned early on to think critically about everything I was taught. I learned how to view the non-believer as the real-live person he is, deserving of all the compassion I can muster. I learned that Christians can indeed thrive in their sojourn through this world not their home. And best of all, I learned, even as a grade-schooler, that God keeps his own and that I need not worry that I would be brought low by the world around me for the gospel is far stronger than the world's binding ties.

In short, I learned to trust God - to believe him and take him at his word that I would in nowise perish.

And so, the question I have for those considering home-schooling their child: have you considered the great opportunity that you will be denying your child? Are you of faith enough to allow God to keep your child despite the fact that they sojourn even as you do? Are you parent enough to teach your child and raise them in the ways of godliness whether they learn their arithmetic at home or abroad? Are you willing to send your sheep amongst wolves, knowing that the true shepherd will protect them - knowing that the only true place for sheep on earth is amongst wolves?