Education part 2

I have a little time right now, so I'll see if I can add to my latest post. To review, I was beginning to compare and contrast public, private and home-school. Here are some of the listed pros and cons for public school that I previously listed, and I will go on from there.

Public school....
Arguments for it include:
1. It's a good financial decision. Going into debt to pay for your child's elementary school doesn't seem like good stewardship (which we are Biblical called to have). Public education is "free" and may give the mom time for a part-time job while the kids are in school to supplement their income without taking time from the kids.
2. The mother and/or father are not good teachers or would be miserable or terribly stressed trying to teach. The kids would get a better education at public school and their parents might be more emotionally stable after having a little break.
3. It's a great opportunity to teach children to apply what they learned in church in witnessing to their unsaved friends. The public schools are huge mission fields and we can send little missionaries there free.

Arguments against it include:
1. World-view matters in every subject. If we want them to truly think like Christians we must educate them as Christians in all areas of life.
2. Negative peer pressure can draw them away and cause them to abandon their faith, or at least get caught up in sin for long periods of time.
3. Standards are dropping, and children will not get a really good education in most public schools.

Private Schools....
Before I list pros and cons of this specific choice, I should perhaps again talk about what I am familiar with. The private school I teach at is a classical, Christ-centered school. I have seen "Christian" schools that are poor examples of Christianity, as well as being equally terrible academically. Such schools are unfortunate. Those are two faults that my school strives to avoid, with what I think is a great deal of success. Again, we will try to consider the "ideal" private Christian school.

Arguments for private schools:
1. Good for training students in a Christian world-view. Ideally the students who graduate would be able to understand all subjects in light of Christ and His word, and would be able to impact their culture better because they understand how Christianity differs from the culture.
2. Higher educational standards combined with more classical techniques can help students achieve excellence.
3. Students are daily encouraged to grow in Christ by teachers as well as other students. The positive peer pressure can have a great impact on their lives.
Arguments against them:
1. Can be very expensive. If parents do not have the resources to pay for it, it can be financially irresponsible.
2. Can produce prideful and arrogant students who know too much and love too little.
3. We as Christians are called to make disciples of the nations, and there is no age limit on that call. By taking Christian children out of a public environment we are arguably denying them the opportunity of contributing to the accomplishment of the Great Commission.

Arguments for and against home school are generally pretty similar to those for and against private schools, so I will only list a couple additional points.
For Home school:
1. Parents are responsible for the training of their children as they are the only ones actually commanded to train their children. They can still train them if they are not home schooled, but they will definitely have more control over the teaching and training of their children by homeschooling them than they would in either private or public schools.
Against Home school:
1. There is not enough social interaction and home schooled children will no be able to properly relate to their peers. It is argued that home school does not properly prepare children for what they will face in "real life."
2. This could take a considerable toll on the time and the energy of the mother. Not all mothers are up to this.
3. The education that the father and mother are able to provide could be inferior to that provided by a school. For example, if parents who struggled in algebra attempt to teach it to their children, well, chances are good the children won't understand it either.

That's what I have for arguments off the top of my head -- the most common and most reasonable ones I have heard. (Feel free to leave comments with any other reasoning you've heard.) I can see the point of many of them, and I can give a response to many. Its the ones that seem to be contradictory and yet both good points that I have the problem with.

As this post is rather long already, I'll post it now and in the next post start going through some of my responses to the aforementioned reasons.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

education

Midnight is drawing nearer here in Kentucky...I think I must still be on Bozeman time. :) Oh well. It's been a while since I posted anything, and I was having some thoughts today that I want to write out, in hopes that I will at least clarify them for myself.

The subject of education is one I've been, well, wrestling with for some time. I personally went to public school all my life, and I now teach at a private school. Most of my cousins and many of my friends were homeschooled (or are homeschooling their children). I don't know that my perspective is therefore unique, but it is rather broad. The thing is, unfortunately the Bible never says anything like, "You must educate your children in a Biblical setting" or "Children should be educated so as to best impact culture" or "In their education, children should seek to witness to their classmates." All of those are probably good things, and may be partly implied by some things in the Bible, but they are never stated out-right, and therefore it is difficult to determine what is best and what is Biblical. And their are certainly a number of opposing views among even orthodox Christians.

Let's start with a few key verses. Every side will, of course, have different ones (or the same ones applied differently), so let me attempt to just give a few that are fairly clear in meaning.

Deut. 4:9
Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren,

Psalm 34:11
Come, you children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

Ephesians 6:4
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

Having searched my concordance, these are just about the only verses that refer to teaching or training children specifically. Of course there would be others that would apply (especially in Proverbs), but these are a good start. And the only thing that they say is that parents are to teach their children about God -- who He is, what He has done, how we should respond, etc. Our government (which we are supposed to obey) says that all children should be educated in "the 3 R's" and such. So we need to educate children about God as well as teaching them to read and write and such. That is about all that I can draw directly from the Bible, along with the fact that responsibility does rest on the parents. From here on it gets more difficult, and more divisive.

Let's consider pro's and con's of our choices, starting with public school, since that's where I started. I should preface these statements by making it clear that I went to fairly good public schools. In elementary school I think that many of my teachers were believers, and my high school is rated fairly high. That is the sort of situation I'm familiar with, and my thoughts might be different if we were discussing a school in the inner city where very little real education happens. Perhaps for this discussion we will assume that all our options are as ideal as they can be. All three can be very bad, so we will assume we get them at their best.

Public school....
Arguments for it include:
1. It's a good financial decision. Going into debt to pay for your child's elementary school doesn't seem like good stewardship (which we are Biblically called to have). Public education is "free" and may give the mom time for a part-time job while the kids are in school to supplement their income without taking time from the kids.
2. The mother and/or father are not good teachers or would be miserable or terribly stressed trying to teach. The kids would get a better education at public school and their parents might be more emotionally stable after having a little break.
3. It's a great opportunity to teach children to apply what they learned in church in witnessing to their unsaved friends. The public schools are huge mission fields and we can send little missionaries there free.

Arguments against it include:
1. World-view matters in every subject. If we want them to truly think like Christians we must educate them as Christians in all areas of life.
2. Negative peer pressure can draw them away and cause them to abandon their faith, or at least get caught up in sin for long periods of time.
3. Standards are dropping, and children will not get a really good education in most public schools.

*******************************************************
It's pretty late and I'm not thinking too clearly, so I'm going to
pause here and hopefully post again on this topic in the near
future. :)
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Merry Christmas!

I am so blessed, to live where I do, to have the family I have, to have the job I have, to be redeemed and have the promise of heaven. God is so good to me!

If anyone who might read this wants to see some pictures of my activities this month, check out this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=78427&l=f7afd&id=537220443

We're leaving for Kentucky tomorrow morning (yay!) and I should be adding a few more pictures in the next week or two.

Merry Christmas!!

Knowledge

I've been reading some of Jane Austin's novels lately, and I happened to start re-reading Northanger Abbey. If you have never happened to read it, you really should pick it up someday. Its quite different from Austin's 'normal' style...rather tongue-in-cheek. Anyway, while reading, I came across this quote:
"Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

My first reaction was to laugh. My second reaction after the first mirth had passed was to ponder this a bit more. How intimidating is intelligence, especially in a woman? My own father, who is quite intelligent, said that in high school he was 'afraid' of the intelligent girls, thinking he'd never have a chance. This quote and my dad's recent comment made me wonder, first about human nature, and then about my own nature.

I must admit that I consider myself rather intelligent. I think that is an area that, for whatever reason, God has gifted me in. In my pride I like to think that I am more intelligent than I really am, and I wonder if I try to appear intelligent. I can't say that I intentionally try to appear really intelligent when I first meet someone, as far as I know, but perhaps after that? My actions will bear watching. There is nothing wrong with being intelligent, and there is nothing wrong with it showing, but there is something wrong if I am purposely showing, especially if it makes other uncomfortable.

Explanation

A couple comments/notes of explanation on the two posted poems.

The first I heard on NPR and found it rather amusing, and a bit convicting. The attitude of the little boy who made the lanyard is very similar to all of us at times -- we have been given so much by various people: friends, parents, grandparents, and of course, God. Yet we easily take these things for granted and believe that some simple act will pay back all that we've been given. "Look God, I've been such a good little girl, praying, reading my Bible, and I even gave my brother the bigger cookie. I know you saved me from death and damnation, and now I think we're pretty even."

The second, while I don't really agree with philosophically, I do like, mostly because it was made into a song that I sang in choir my senior year. That was also the year my family went to Israel, specifically while I was learning that song. I remember sitting by the Sea of Galilee at night, on the east side, with that song stuck in my head, looking over at the lights of Tiberias "along the shore." I may not have been there before, but I do certainly want to go back now!

"Sudden Light" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

Or, an alternate final stanza:

Then, now,—perchance again! . . . .
O round mine eyes your tresses shake!
Shall we not lie as we have lain
Thus for Love's sake,
And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?

"The Lanyard" by Billy Collins

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift--not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Vapor

A couple circumstances recently have impressed on me the fleetingness of life. I just heard today that the father of one of my good friends from high school had recently and unexpectedly passed away. Last spring the father of another childhood friend also went home to Jesus. These men were not much older than my own father. I also realized that my mother's father died when she was about my age. I am so thankful for my father and that I have had him as long as I have. I pray that I will have many more years to enjoy him, and that I would make the most of any time with him (and my mother and the rest of my family and friends) that I am given.

Another circumstance was my Grandmother's getting into a car accident right before Thanksgiving. She is recovering as well as can be expected now, but had a few minor things gone differently, she probably would not still be alive.

Fortunately, I serve a God who controls life and death, who has even conquered death. I have seen times when someone who should have died was miraculously preserved, and I have seen others cut down unexpectedly in some "freak" accident. None of us can live a minute more or less than what God has mapped out for us, which is comforting. Whenever I die, it will be my time. Whenever a friend or family member dies, it will be his or her turn -- and, for the most part, I know I will see him or her again in heaven someday.

For now, seeing that life is fleeting and the end unexpected, Lord help me to live in light of eternity. Keep me from wasting my life, whatever its length. Be glorified in me.


"See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." ~Ephesians 5:15-16

Causes

Today someone made a passing comment about the "cause of Christ" and that phrase caught my attention. For the facebook unenlightened, there is a facebook application that allows to to join different "causes", invite your friends to join, and even give money. Not sure what the point is...maybe to make sure your friends know what sort of good causes you support? At any rate, my thought was that someone should make the cause of Christ one of the causes that can be joined--that is a cause worthy of support.

It often bothers me when people talk about different problems in various place of this world and in all their hopeful solutions they completely leave out the gospel. They support causes to end world hunger or to bring peace to Sudan or to care for orphans in Tanzania, none of which are bad in themselves. But they completely fail to realize that none of those dreams can possibly be realized without the gospel of Christ. Trying to stamp out world hunger without the Christ is like trying heal leprosy with a bandaid. Such a "cure" might possibly heal an open sore on the arm, but when there are sores all over the body and more all the time, that will hardly help. Rather than band-aids you need to deal with the bacteria causing this disease (namely, sin.)

As long as sin is in this world there will be hunger, and war, and pain, and death. The only solution to sin is the atoning blood of Christ. Only in Him, therefore, is the final solution. Only in Him is there really any solution (even relatively small solutions.)

Oh Lord, come soon! And until then find us laboring for the cause of Christ.

The Klein Four - Finite Simple Group

Ran across this video the other day, and since I'm a complete geek, found it rather amusing. :)