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!
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 29, 2007
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. :)
*******************************************************
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. :)
*******************************************************
Monday, November 19, 2007
Culture and education
Apparently I like to start my posts with questions, so here's another one:
Have you ever considered the effect of culture on our lives -- actions and thoughts? For that matter, have you ever thought about the relationship between language and culture? This is a recurring subject in my mind, and most recently I was reminded of it by a visiting missionary. (Specifically, I started wondering if our tendency to pick up sayings and habits of people around us is an innate ability to adjust to the culture in which we find ourselves...but that's not my main subject today.) Since becoming a teacher my mind has also often been occupied with the idea of education. The combination of the two produces the question, "How does culture influence education, and vice versa?"
I personally have been trained in a more "classical" methodology that most contemporary teachers, and have come to believe in its effectiveness, and to understand some of the reasons behind why it works. These ideas, developed through the ages, but mostly in "western" cultures, are very effective in teaching and training the American children of today. And ideally, these educational ideals should transfer with few modifications to other cultures...but do they? Could you use the classical method to teach in rural Africa, China, or the jungles of Papua New Guinea? Perhaps, though you would certainly have to do a lot of ground work first (learning the language, translating texts, etc.) And then you would have to take into account that they have absolutely no idea of all the history we take for granted. They've never heard of the Greeks, or Zeus, or Babylon. How do you even begin preaching the gospel to people who have no idea who the Hebrews were or why there was a promise Messiah? These are just subjects, however, and don't really deal with the methodology.
As I understand it, classical methodology requires a constant questioning, attempting to lead pupils to truth without telling them they can find out for themselves. What if there were a culture where asking questions of this form was considered offensive? I don't know if such a culture exists, but I would not be at all surprised to find something similar. What then? Can the methodology be adjusted? And how, without losing its distinctive features?
America is a culture where individualism is exalted and thinking is linear. How would our education system transfer to a culture where the group is more important than the individual and the thinking is circular? What if you were trying to teach to a culture that knew nothing of abstract ideas? I know so little of cultures outside my own, I can't even begin to think how education would need to be adjusted. Would the "classical method" as we know it still work with some modifications, or would it need to be fundamentally changed?
Maybe someday I'll have answers. For now, these are just questions I ask myself when I am avoiding writing a physics test. :)
Have you ever considered the effect of culture on our lives -- actions and thoughts? For that matter, have you ever thought about the relationship between language and culture? This is a recurring subject in my mind, and most recently I was reminded of it by a visiting missionary. (Specifically, I started wondering if our tendency to pick up sayings and habits of people around us is an innate ability to adjust to the culture in which we find ourselves...but that's not my main subject today.) Since becoming a teacher my mind has also often been occupied with the idea of education. The combination of the two produces the question, "How does culture influence education, and vice versa?"
I personally have been trained in a more "classical" methodology that most contemporary teachers, and have come to believe in its effectiveness, and to understand some of the reasons behind why it works. These ideas, developed through the ages, but mostly in "western" cultures, are very effective in teaching and training the American children of today. And ideally, these educational ideals should transfer with few modifications to other cultures...but do they? Could you use the classical method to teach in rural Africa, China, or the jungles of Papua New Guinea? Perhaps, though you would certainly have to do a lot of ground work first (learning the language, translating texts, etc.) And then you would have to take into account that they have absolutely no idea of all the history we take for granted. They've never heard of the Greeks, or Zeus, or Babylon. How do you even begin preaching the gospel to people who have no idea who the Hebrews were or why there was a promise Messiah? These are just subjects, however, and don't really deal with the methodology.
As I understand it, classical methodology requires a constant questioning, attempting to lead pupils to truth without telling them they can find out for themselves. What if there were a culture where asking questions of this form was considered offensive? I don't know if such a culture exists, but I would not be at all surprised to find something similar. What then? Can the methodology be adjusted? And how, without losing its distinctive features?
America is a culture where individualism is exalted and thinking is linear. How would our education system transfer to a culture where the group is more important than the individual and the thinking is circular? What if you were trying to teach to a culture that knew nothing of abstract ideas? I know so little of cultures outside my own, I can't even begin to think how education would need to be adjusted. Would the "classical method" as we know it still work with some modifications, or would it need to be fundamentally changed?
Maybe someday I'll have answers. For now, these are just questions I ask myself when I am avoiding writing a physics test. :)
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