Lots of thoughts going around in my head these days.
Here's a big one.
Education is a huge huge mess in America, and everyone knows that, but instead of doing something about it Christians are turning and running. THAT is why I want to put my kids in Public School instead of homeschooling them. To me homeschooling feels like an easy way out and a cheat, like we're putting duct tape over the leak in our part of the boat and shaking our heads while the rest of it goes down. I want to cast my lot in with the masses and basically commit myself to going down with the ship if that's what is going to happen. Maybe a huge part of the problem with public education is that the people who really care about the situation and have the kind of principles/intelligence/vision we need to fix it are all jumping ship for something they think is better.
Of course the critisizms for this philosophy are that I would be sacrificing my children's wellfare for the sake of a broad ideal that we may never even reach. Is it EVER okay to do that?
I agree with most of you who disagree with me on this issue in that homeschooling is a better education and that public school has a lot of risks and dangers for someone you hope will be a child of God. It's just... do I want my children to have a better education and do I want them to avoid those risks? It sounds crazy, I know.
I'm basically saying, until every kid has the same oprotunity, I'm not going to give my child this advantage in life. If we beleive this, how far do we take it? Public school kids don't get a very good education. Kids from lower-class American families don't have money for college. Kids in Africa don't have food except for what they salvage from trash cans. Just by telling our kids about God we're giving them an advantage they don't deserve any more than anyone else, and it's not fair.
I guess for me this hits close to home because I hate it when people get head-starts in life that I don't. It seems unfair to me that I have to fight battles that for one reason or another someone else will never have to fight. I think we should all face the same demons and we should all move up in life based on how well we fight them. I even hate it when I can do nothing but thank God for advantages that I have in life over the majority of people I see.
I want black-and-white equality, like Ann Ryand talks about in Anthem. Everyone is born in a factory, raised in uniform situations and assigned jobs based on performance. But life isn't fair, or black and white.
And yet it's what I beleive in. Am I any more delusional than those who think they can actually uniformly raise republican Christians by sheilding them from the evil in the world? Am I a hero for fighting for a dying cause like equality, or just a fool? humm...
But I guess ultimately I feel that putting my kids or myself on an equal footing with the least-privilaged people in the world is a much better way to fight for equality then trying to rise to the top of things and then helping people get there too. "I'll help you" is one thing, "I'm here too" is quite another. Everyone hates those who are better than them and most people are too proud to accept that kind of help. To me that's always seemed condesending and rude, like some people just don't get it. Including me, probably, because for the most part I am a spoiled rich white American too. But I don't want to be. And I don't want my kids to be.
save your sympothy
who did you think you were fooling?
everything is dead
now you welcome me
to a town called Hypocrisy
Also, I met this really cool girl at Camp who I think you all would like tremendously, and I'm trying to convince her to get a blog. Her name is Crystal, and if she starts commenting then say hi and be really nice and cool and talk about Lord of the Rings a lot and maybe she'll get a blog too. :-)
Saturday, June 28, 2008
because it's not enough.
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13 comments:
Hi. It's Crystal. I'm posting. I have waaay too much to say about this, but I'll just touch on a few things.
Do you want to reform the school system because you believe institutions are more important than individuals, or because institutions are made up of individuals, so in helping an institution you are helping many individuals? Lewis points out in Perelandra that individuals are eternal and institutions are transient, which is the reverse of how everyone thinks of them. Ultimately, your idea of sacrificing your children's quality of life for the better of the masses may be right (it's intriguing, I haven't decided what I think about it yet), but I would be careful to remember that I'm doing it in order to actually help other individuals, not the impersonal system.
I understand you value equality very highly, but why such an emphasis? In the United States everyone has political equality (that is, the government gives everyone equal privileges, everyone can vote regardless of their race/gender/wealth/religion/etc...), but I think the current idea of equality has been expanding from what the founders of America intended and continues to expand. Some of this expansion is good (allowing women and blacks to vote, for example), but I don't think it is good for it to expand indefinitely, or else we will end up with a communist state. I don't mean to throw labels around, but do you want a communist state? Do you honestly want to grow up in a situation like the one in the book you described?
You value equality. Do you want sameness? If you were given the chance to level the playing field - to take away everyone's background, everyone's race, give everyone the same height and weight and looks, have them grow up in identical situations with identical educations, and give them identical booklists to read, would you do that? Would you sacrifice diversity for sameness (or equality, if you prefer the term)? If not, how far would you go?
I'll grant that there is a distinction between 'external' influences and 'internal' tendencies. I seem to get the vibe that you would like to erase the external ones, counting them as superfluous, in a way, and leave the internal ones, the real self. If so, how much do you believe that those are controlled by genetics? Are all our characteristics based on the physical reality of DNA or do our souls have characteristics that are separate from our DNA? Would you give everyone the same DNA if you could?
I'm sure all this is much further out than you meant, but I'm trying to prise out your real opinion by telling you what it could be mistaken for.
I like this private blog thing. I feel very safe blurting out whatever I think on here.
~Crystal
Crystal!! yay.
That's it exactly, I think that institutions are made up of individuals so in helping an institution I am helping many individuals. That is a VERY good point. Thanks for reminding me.
And no, I do not want a communist country (though I've been accused of it before!) or the fictional world of Ann Ryand. The equality I'm looking for is more ideological than political- I think in America we may have taken equality too far already. But on a personal level, I don't like to give people head starts that arn't available to everyone because it seems unfair. I guess I just want to see my kids work they're way up just like the majority of other kids in America and know that they did it because they were successful and not because they had their hands held the whole way.
Diversity is almost more important to me than equality. I never thought about those as opposites, ever. :-o Another good point!
I think maybe that IS what I want, to erase external differences and keep the internal ones, by which I mean all the differences that come with race, gender, ethinicity, and personality. Thanks for reforming my thesis statement!
I can't tell you how happy I am that you're on blog now. Someone is really willing to take me and my crazy, emotion-driven philosophies seriously!
oh, and you're probably going to need this:
quenta tindomerel = Anna Boyd, the girl I told you reminded me of you, and also Sam's younger sister (the color green on my friends list)
Verya = miss-I-can't-say-my-real-name-on-the-internet ;-) She's a girl Beth went to co-op with a couple years ago and a fellow "ringer." (light blue)
Sarah = Sarah, a girl from Camp Hope (she's a little younger and for some reason can't get access to my blog, but she'll pop up on others now and then) (orange)
Missionary Girl = Lucy (pink)
Lindy = Lindy (purple)
Zak Boyd = Anna and Sam's little brother (alright, he's six foot two :-P) (red)
Eowyn = Beth (violet)
MJ = Michaela, Beth's younger sister (yellow)
And Sam pops up once in a while too, as "Sam."
I think that's everyone!
Hi Crystal!!!! I'll be back later to make a real comment.
P.S. don't you hate it when people say that? ; )
What if the diversity in God's creation includes the external differences?
I didn't exactly mean to set diversity and equality opposite each other, I meant to oppose diversity and sameness. I think equality in America is taking over the meaning of the word sameness, but I think it used to mean respecting people as equally human despite their diversity. So political equality means that in the voting booth a homeless man can meet Bill Gates on an equal ground - they both have one vote.
On not holding your kids' hands all the way - I do think there is a point at which we as future parents will need to let go. At some point we are hurting their development instead of helping it. And I also think that point is much earlier than most parents will want to let go, because the parents, having made a lot of mistakes and seeing (probably accurately) which mistakes their kids are headed for, will want to protect their kids from those mistakes. Alex and Brett Harris point out on the Rebelution that teenagers used to be given a lot more responsibility and freedom than they are given now. But I think everyone who is actually successful has been given the tools to succeed by others - whether parents, teachers, authors of books they've read....very, very few people, perhaps no one, will have the natural talent to succeed without external guidance.
This is what I would like to see, and I think the Harrises have succeeded in doing to some degree - parents taking their kids out of the school system, not to create their own separate bubble apart from the rest of the world, but to train them in order to enter the world again as leaders and influencers of the culture. I'd love to see an influx of adults who were homeschooled and private schooled as kids reentering the government school system in the next couple of decades as teachers(especially at the college and university level), where they have the authority and ability to make changes. And not just within the school system, in other positions of leadership, too. Somewhere somebody made the point that those who are highly literate become the shapers of culture in the following generations, so if we want to bring about change, might it be better to aim for change a little further in the future (not much), when we have the resources to make a bigger impact?
Whew. Another very long comment that I originally intended to be short...
Oh, and thanks for pointing out who's who. I'd figured out the people from camp b/c their email addresses are similar.
Hi Crystal!!! Good to have a new blogger!
Okay, please Em, that was over a long time ago. My real name is Kacy, and I gave up trying to be an identity freak a while ago when people kept calling me by my real name on blog. But Verya works just as well; it's my name in Elvish.
You might also want to know that Anna has about fifty different names you'll learn to keep track of in three or four years.
Anyway, what's your name mean? the first part sounds Elvish. you like LotR - you'll fit in perfectly. how long have you played piano? I've played 6 years and love classical music....well not as much as you but I like it a lot. you should start a blog. tell us more about you!!!
Okay MNM. Now I shall tackle you! *poketicklepoke*
Ok, just kidding.
Personally, I would NEVER put my kids in public school. but like I said, that's totally personal prefference. I shudder to think about how I would've turned out if my parents hadn't homeschooled me, and just today I was actually wondering about some of my friends (non-homeschooled), and what they would be like if they were homeschooled. But I have a great relationship with my parents and love being homeschooled, unlike many people I know.
So with all that said, I'm not gonna try and tell you that you should or shouldn't homeschool your kids. Because I know that it's really not for everyone. But one thing I was thinking about, in your whole discussion of equality and diversity, etc., was my India team. I was thinking how incredibly diverse we all were, and how our DIFFERENT struggles in life had prepared each of us for circumstances that came up. And how when one of us came up against a problem in the ministry stuff, someone else had the skills/experience to help out. So, I'm a huge proponent for diversity. Not saying you can't have diversity and equality, becauase I think originally the US had that worked out really well.
But when it comes to the ideal of having everyone with exactly the same advantages and struggles or lack thereof, you are at the same time depriving everyone of their diversity by making them the same. You might feel while you're going through a struggle that it's unfair that other people haven't done it first, but at the same time, maybe God's preparing you to help someone else out later on.
So I don't want to come out saying "do this" or "don't do that," but if you do want to start your kids out on the same footing as every other normal kid in public school, I would just say - don't pile it all on your kids. What I mean is, what are you going to do, starting right now, to introduce your ideals into your own life? Because if I was your kid, I wouldn't be very happy if you were willing to sacrifice me to make a better future for others, but didn't do anything with yourself. What ways can you change your own life, if you really believe in this, to conform more to it? Broadly speaking, you might be willing to sacrifice advantages of your children, but what are you willing to sacrifice yourself?
I think you've got the right idea of looking beyond your own life span and seeing the big picture, fighting for a fairer future even if it's a dying cause. that's really very noble. Just be careful about how far you go. People aren't all equal, but that isn't always a bad thing either.
The only other thing, and I might have kind of misunderstood...(I do that a lot lol), you said something about giving our kids an advantage just by telling them about Christ. To me, it sounded almost like you thought that a bad thing, like we should even deprive them of that because it would be "unfair" to others. But really, God commands us to tell EVERYONE we know (and those we don't know too) about what Jesus has done. In my mind, if anyone had the courage to do that (I wish I did), it would even the playing field a lot. In the biggest big picture, we ought to be way more concerned about people's eternal future than their circumstances here on earth.
Sorry if I totally confused what you were trying to say, and please correct me if I did. I always seem to see the middle of what I'm trying to say, so I start there and never really end anywhere. Just a few more thoughts for you to turn over.
Love you lots Em, and it's good to have you back!
Hi Kacy/Verya! Yep, the first part of name is Elvish-based. The real form is Liriel, which means song-maiden, but I like it better with an a. Dianne is my middle name. :-) I also answer to about fifty different names! I've been playing piano for ten years (about eight years of lessons), I'm going to major in music next year, and music is pretty much my main obsession in life. I've taken two and a half years of viola and I've been in the Cascade Youth Symphony for two years and there is simply nothing like it. Oh, I've also had two years of organ, but decided it wasn't really for me, even though it's a neat instrument that not many people play. My biggest desire is to be able to compose and also improvise on the piano. I'm blessed to have an awesome piano teacher, Barry Sindlinger, who is teaching me composition and improvisation along with the regular technique and repertoire stuff. He really should call his lessons "piano and..." lessons. Fill in the blank with anything he happens to want to teach me, music-related or not! He's had such a huge impact on my life. Anyway, I didn't mean to go on quite so long about that! My other big interests can be found in my profile, and besides them, I'm interested in pretty much anything under the sun!
Thanks for your comments, Verya! That's very close to what I was kind of leading up to. I've been reading the chapter in Mere Christianity titled "Nice People or New Men", and one of Lewis' main points in that chapter is that we're not going to be judged by our blessings and trials, because those are His gifts, but what we do with those trials. So we homeschooled, rich white Americans are not better than an uneducated person in a third-world country - in fact, we can be much worse once our respective blessings and trials are stripped away and the personalities underneath are revealed!
I know that seems a little off target, but here's how I think it's applicable. If more is expected of those who are given more (like the parable of the talents), than we don't need to worry about giving our kids an 'unfair' advantage, because God will take that into account. Some of the first will be last and some of the last will be first.
Here's another posssible application that I'm still pondering. It seems to me that, assuming homeschooling is a blessing and that you yourself have been given an advantage by being homeschooled, it almost looks like you are abdicating your own blessings by refusing to pass them on to your kids. You've been given an advantage - what are you going to do with it?
I would second Verya's related point that stripping away different situations takes away diversity. I heard somewhere that God shapes each person's burdens to fit their backs. So equality is not necessarily a goal. But on the other hand, that doesn't necessarily mean you should homeschool your kids - maybe being public schooled is the burden designed for your kids' backs! I must remember that in arguing for you to educate your kids in a way different from the majority way in America, I'm arguing to bring it into conformity with our little circle!
I hope this doesn't sound too muddled. I feel like my thoughts aren't flowing as smoothly this morning.
*whew* I don't get much chance to be online these days, I have to jump on when neither of my parents are there and that's really not very often. :-)
This is exciting though, I'm enjoying this discussion lots and lots.
I think that's it, Crystal, we want equality and diversity, but not sameness.
And as I've been thinking about this, I think I'm comming to realize that what you say is true- people are handed the tools to succeed by the people in their lives and maybe how successful we are is based mostly on how willing we are to glean from others. So maybe hand-holding isn't always a bad thing, but I don't beleive in dragging, in shapping people for a certain kind of success weather they like it and appriciate it or not. I think there's a difference there. It does undermine my argument, though.
And as for taking people out of the culture to prepare them to be leaders and influencers in the culture- isn't that a little condesending? How do they really know what they are dealing with when they are helping people face demons they never faced themselves?
Is it impossible to train up leaders and influencers out of our children if they go to public school?
Are the BEST tools that we could give our children necessarily to be found at home?
I've got lots more but I'll come back latter. But I will say that my example about giving kids an advantage by telling them about Christ was supposed to illustrate how I can't carry this idea out to the extreeme!
aaaand I lost computer privilages for a week because of typing that comment.
so see y'all on the other side.
if you really want to know why I hate homeschooling it's because my parents- or just my mom, really- beleives in absolute control and absolute succlusion from the world for the entirety of my life, and I thought she had finally let me go but apparently not. It's been forever since this has happened and I do NOT want to go around on this ride again.
not getting along with parents sucks.
awww Em, that does suck. a lot. be on extra-good behavior, and come back as soon as you possibly can!
I guess I'll leave a nice fat comment for when you do come back.
I think, as odd as it may sound at first, we are both basing how we would handle our kids' education off of personal experience (just sounds odd since we're both homeschooled). But going to something you pointed out, that's the difference between hand-holding and dragging, between giving someone specific training to succeed in a specific something, and giving them the tools to succeed in anything.
For example, I'll use my own life here. I highly doubt I would have followed God's calling to become a missionary if I wasn't homeschooled. I might have heard Him telling me to, but I have a feeling I would be such a different person in a public school (or probably even a private or Christian school) that I wouldn't have obeyed or payed attention. I think having such a great relationship with my parents, and then having them shape my character to some extent, had a direct influence on that. BUT, they didn't tell me, "you're going to be a missionary whether you like it or not." When it comes down to it, being a missionary's parent is hard, and certainly not what they'd choose. So they've held my hand, supported me, given me an environment and training for what I'll do with my life, but they drag me by deciding for me what I would do and how to get there. Does that make sense?
As to those other questions, those are tricky. I think a lot of it depends on what kind of person your kid is. What's their learning style? For example, Edison was flunking school until his mom pulled him out and he became homeschooled, all because of his learning style. But then there's some kids who just have to be around people all the time. So really, I think, you can have amazing, successful leaders in either situation - we see it in our government and all sorts of leadership roles. I wouldn't really say that overall one is better than the other.
However, I think for kids who are in public school, their parents still need a hand in their education. I hate it when parents send kids to school and think they don't have to do anything else. It's our parents who see the strengths and tendencies in us, and can give us other opportunities outside of school to flourish.
I guess what I'm thinking about is that really, people look at public school and homeschooling and just two different ways to educate, like reading, writing and math. But to get the kind of leaders and people we're talking about, there needs to be way more positive influence than just what is gotten in school. I think that's why so many homeschoolers think their way is the best, or best equips the kids to be leaders of the future - because it's kind of a blending and melding of the education and the influence from parents and home. Whereas public school is simply there for education, and the rest has to come from home or nowhere at all. Unfortunately, most parents miss that and don't supply it to their public-schooled kids.
So I would say yes, the best tools we have are found at home. but that doesn't neccessarily mean homeschooling. It just means being a good parent and being active in your kid's life whether they're in school or not - and especially more so if they're going to school and not home all the time. Homeschooling is a big decision that should be made when you have a kid and know your kid, their learning style, their interests and talents, and you feel capable of deciding the best place for them to develop those. For me it was at home. For you, maybe it should've been in school. But don't decide in advance what to do for your kids, because they're not you. They might hate that you put them in public school as much as you dislike being homeschooled.
One more thought: I think, if it's done right, homeschooling ISN'T taking kids out of the culture in order to make them good leaders and re-introduce them later. If anything, it's immersing them even more in their culture, teaching them how to interact with people of all ages, races, genders, and whatever else. Taking them out of a fabricated situation where they're in a classroom full of kids only their own age, all learning the same material for the same test. When people say, "what about when homeschoolers get into the real world?" I wonder, "what happens when public schoolers get there?" If it's done the right way, and the kids are given a chance to be with all sorts of people from different places and walks of life, they should know the culture just as well as, or even better than public schoolers.
This might be slightly biased, but it's how I've seen it after 7 years of what I would call successful homeschooling. I think most of it though, is in the relationship with parents, as much as any kid will like their class better if it has a good teacher. Also, no matter which mode of education is used, there has to be input and guidance from home too.
But not absolute control and seclusion from the whole world. In my opinion, that's pretty much the opposite of what homeschooling was designed to be. If I had that in my home, I would probably hate homeschooling too.
Hey, college is just a few months away! I'll try and call you this week...I'm going to Coeur d'Alene on thursday but my whole family is going to be there (not cool) and I'll be really bored, so I'll bring my cell phone along and try to find a quiet place to call you.
Crystal can I get your e-mail address? If you don't want to put it online, send it through Emily or someone, if that's cool with you. I can wait a week......
okay Crystal, that's why it looked Elvish but almost kinda didn't! I thought about really learning Quenya and/or Sindarin a while back, but I started learning Hindi instead (that's the main language in India), because I'm planning to be a missionary. If I had time, I totally would! I'll be in lessons for a couple more years, until I go off to missions college, and then I'll have to get a really nice but semi-portable keyboard....(oxymoron right?). I love piano but it's not a life pursuit, and I don't have enough natural talent to make it one if I wanted to. I've picked it up quickly, but play things fairly mechanically and don't have much creativity. Like I said, it's fun......just good plain fun. Aside from classical music, I like playing stuff from movie soundtracks mostly. Would you ever compose for movies, or just do pieces for fun?
I want to start teaching beginning piano in the fall or winter, once we've moved and I've settled in at school (I'm doing running start next year). Have you ever taught? Where are you going to school?
When Anna gets back from camp you two can talk forever about music. She's played classical violin forever and is in the Tacoma Youth Symphony Orchestra and loves music even more than me. Don't know if she loves it as much as you though....we'll have to compare notes when she returns. *evil laugh*
Well it's pretty much settled - you fit in just fine! Send me your e-mail address and we can save the chit chat for that. we bloggers...such serious thinkers you know.....can't have all this ridiculous nonsense talking on here (you should've seen the way we talked two years ago. or two months again for that matter, come to think of it....)
*whispers* mnm! we need to assign Crystal a part of speech or punctuation!
*sigh* I'm here, really, and I am reading all this. I just don't feel like actually thinking about this enough to put together an intelligent reply.
And, btw, that comment by MJ was actually by me . . . *sigh*
Someone who isn't falling or fallen off the edge/face of the earth send Verya/Kacy(which do you prefer?) my email address!
Alright, I'm going to stop procrastinating on my math and posting rather hare-brained pointless short comments now.
*nudge* That's you, Beth. ;-)
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