This is so true!
Animal school
An old story tells of the creation of a school for the animals. In this school, everybody took the same four courses: flying, swimming, climbing, and running. Among the students were a duck, a flying squirrel, a fox, and an elephant. These four were highly motivated, and wanted to get good grades, so they all tried very hard.
The duck did fantastically well in swimming and flying, but he lagged behind his classmates in climbing and running, so focused special attention on those two subjects. However, his feet became so sore from trying to run and his wings were so bedraggled from trying to climb that by the end of the year he not only failed both those subjects, but made C’s in swimming and flying, which had once been his two best subjects.
At the beginning of the school year, the squirrel was first in his class in climbing and running and was second only to the duck at flying. But as the months wore on, he missed so much school from catching pneumonia in his swimming class that he failed everything.
To make matters even worse, because the squirrel constantly squirmed and chattered in class, and had difficulty paying attention, he was diagnosed with a learning disorder. The squirrel eventually was placed in remedial classes and had to be medicated in order to continue with his school work.
The fox was a natural in his running class and scored well in climbing and swimming, but became so frustrated at his inability to get good Grades in flying that he began assaulting his classmates. He even tried to eat the duck. His behavior was so disruptive he was expelled from school. He fell in with a rough crowd and eventually wound up in a center for animal delinquents.
The elephant, meanwhile, developed low self-esteem because he couldn’t do well in any of the subjects. When he sank into clinical depression, his therapist persuaded him to try a different school that focused on subjects such as lifting and carrying. The elephant was disappointed, because careers in lifting and carrying were not as prestigious as careers in flying, swimming, climbing, or running. Even though he always felt inferior, he managed to make a decent living and support his family.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Article by Chris Davis
written by Chris Davis, formerly from Elijah Co.
If you have been a recipient of my eNewsletter or if you have heard me speak at a conference you know that I have a concern about the shift I have seen in the reasons families choose to homeschool. I would like to take this opportunity to bring us back to what I perceive to be the reason God began this movement over 20 years ago.
Our good friend Rob Shearer once told me something which I will paraphrase as follows:
bw children2 About 20 years ago, a group of parents began to feel a deep desire to have their children grow up at home rather than in an institutional setting. Thus began what is now referred to as the Homeschooling Movement. These early “homeschoolers” my friend refers to as Pioneers: parents who knew God wanted them to take total responsibility for raising (including educating) their own children. These Pioneers were determined to have their children home during the day in spite of the difficulties (and sometimes the dangers) this decision created.
During this Pioneer stage, there was another group of parents who heard about the benefits of homeschooling, but who decided to wait to see if the Pioneers would be successful before becoming homeschoolers themselves. These my friend called Settlers. Once the Settlers were convinced of the benefits of homeschooling, they joined in. However, unlike the Pioneers, many Settlers weren’t sure they would homeschool for the long term so they simply copied the public schools’ curricula and sequencing methods just in case it turned out that homeschooling didn’t work for them. And, if it didn’t, their children could be mainstreamed back into “school.”
By the late 1990’s public schools were receiving such negative publicity, and homeschooling such positive publicity, many more parents began to consider homeschooling as a viable alternative. They knew little about homeschooling except that it had to be better than the public school. These families my friend called Refugees: parents who were escaping a negative situation, but with no real understanding of what they were doing or why; nor did many of them want to know. They simply wanted their children to be educated as if the children were “in school” but without the negative context they perceived existed in the public school setting.
As I have described the three kinds of homeschoolers above, you may have noticed a very subtle, yet most important, difference between the Pioneers’ main desire (to have their children grow up at home) and the main desire of the other two groups (to provide a better education, or a less negative context for their children).
The reason I entitled this article, Homeschooling Is Not About Education is because I think we have a tendency to lose sight of or, perhaps, we have never really understood why we were led to homeschool. I draw this conclusion because what I hear as most homeschooling parents’ primary concerns are issues such as, “Will this be the best curriculum for my child?” or “How do I know I’m going to cover it all?”
onlogLet’s take another look at this thing called “Homeschooling.” We all know one or more families whose children would greatly benefit if their children were not in a public school setting. Yet, these families don’t bring their children home. We feel truly blessed to believe in homeschooling and we don’t understand why everyone doesn’t see the obvious benefits. Why do friends and relatives keep sending their children to “school”, anyway? Why do we seem to be among so few who are willing to do this?
I would like to offer my opinion as to why we have become “homeschoolers” and so many others have not: I have a conviction that a historical time is approaching for which a certain “kind” of person will be needed in this nation; indeed, in the world. When this time will come, I don’t know, but my sense is that it will come soon. What I do believe is that God has needed a very specific context within which He can grow up this particular kind of person. And, since a lot of these “persons” are needed, God has asked a lot of us to become homeschoolers. What is this context? It is simply a place where the hearts of the fathers have been turned toward their children and the hearts of the children have been turned toward their fathers. It is a place where children are raised to become proficient at the specific giftings, talents, and callings God has placed within them since their creation.
This is the context which every homeschooling family has the opportunity to create. Yet, what disturbs me is that homes-SCHOOLING has become the primary focus of so many of these families. Homeschooling parents are prioritizing something quite different than what was in the heart of God as expressed in the hearts of those early Pioneers when they brought (or kept) their children home during the day.
For those of you who have “brought the school home,” let me suggest that you rethink what you are really doing with your children. Do you ever consider what kind of person this little boy or girl is to become by the time he or she leaves your home? Have you ever wondered if God Himself, has placed some very specific talents, giftings and callings in this youngster that He expects you to discover and promote during the child’s stay with you? Do such things determine your family’s priorities, weekly schedule or the curricula you purchase?
Or as you look toward the “finish line” of your child’s time at home, do you simply buy a graded curricula and spend your days plowing through it, because you think the highest purpose of your parenting is to see that your child receives the best education you can provide so you can one day say, “My son has a good job.”
If the answers to these questions are something like, “I don’t know”, or, “I don’t want to think about it,” then you may be a “homeschooler”, but I think you’ve missed the point.
Even Pioneers can slowly become Refugees. The very word “homeschooling” can cause us all to forget that what we are doing is not about home-SCHOOLING but about creating that context in which we assist God in raising the little ones in our homes to become His men and women who are truly prepared for what is going to happen in their own generation. To be like King David whom God did not identify as a man “with a good job;” but as a man who “served his generation well.”
If you have been a recipient of my eNewsletter or if you have heard me speak at a conference you know that I have a concern about the shift I have seen in the reasons families choose to homeschool. I would like to take this opportunity to bring us back to what I perceive to be the reason God began this movement over 20 years ago.
Our good friend Rob Shearer once told me something which I will paraphrase as follows:
bw children2 About 20 years ago, a group of parents began to feel a deep desire to have their children grow up at home rather than in an institutional setting. Thus began what is now referred to as the Homeschooling Movement. These early “homeschoolers” my friend refers to as Pioneers: parents who knew God wanted them to take total responsibility for raising (including educating) their own children. These Pioneers were determined to have their children home during the day in spite of the difficulties (and sometimes the dangers) this decision created.
During this Pioneer stage, there was another group of parents who heard about the benefits of homeschooling, but who decided to wait to see if the Pioneers would be successful before becoming homeschoolers themselves. These my friend called Settlers. Once the Settlers were convinced of the benefits of homeschooling, they joined in. However, unlike the Pioneers, many Settlers weren’t sure they would homeschool for the long term so they simply copied the public schools’ curricula and sequencing methods just in case it turned out that homeschooling didn’t work for them. And, if it didn’t, their children could be mainstreamed back into “school.”
By the late 1990’s public schools were receiving such negative publicity, and homeschooling such positive publicity, many more parents began to consider homeschooling as a viable alternative. They knew little about homeschooling except that it had to be better than the public school. These families my friend called Refugees: parents who were escaping a negative situation, but with no real understanding of what they were doing or why; nor did many of them want to know. They simply wanted their children to be educated as if the children were “in school” but without the negative context they perceived existed in the public school setting.
As I have described the three kinds of homeschoolers above, you may have noticed a very subtle, yet most important, difference between the Pioneers’ main desire (to have their children grow up at home) and the main desire of the other two groups (to provide a better education, or a less negative context for their children).
The reason I entitled this article, Homeschooling Is Not About Education is because I think we have a tendency to lose sight of or, perhaps, we have never really understood why we were led to homeschool. I draw this conclusion because what I hear as most homeschooling parents’ primary concerns are issues such as, “Will this be the best curriculum for my child?” or “How do I know I’m going to cover it all?”
onlogLet’s take another look at this thing called “Homeschooling.” We all know one or more families whose children would greatly benefit if their children were not in a public school setting. Yet, these families don’t bring their children home. We feel truly blessed to believe in homeschooling and we don’t understand why everyone doesn’t see the obvious benefits. Why do friends and relatives keep sending their children to “school”, anyway? Why do we seem to be among so few who are willing to do this?
I would like to offer my opinion as to why we have become “homeschoolers” and so many others have not: I have a conviction that a historical time is approaching for which a certain “kind” of person will be needed in this nation; indeed, in the world. When this time will come, I don’t know, but my sense is that it will come soon. What I do believe is that God has needed a very specific context within which He can grow up this particular kind of person. And, since a lot of these “persons” are needed, God has asked a lot of us to become homeschoolers. What is this context? It is simply a place where the hearts of the fathers have been turned toward their children and the hearts of the children have been turned toward their fathers. It is a place where children are raised to become proficient at the specific giftings, talents, and callings God has placed within them since their creation.
This is the context which every homeschooling family has the opportunity to create. Yet, what disturbs me is that homes-SCHOOLING has become the primary focus of so many of these families. Homeschooling parents are prioritizing something quite different than what was in the heart of God as expressed in the hearts of those early Pioneers when they brought (or kept) their children home during the day.
For those of you who have “brought the school home,” let me suggest that you rethink what you are really doing with your children. Do you ever consider what kind of person this little boy or girl is to become by the time he or she leaves your home? Have you ever wondered if God Himself, has placed some very specific talents, giftings and callings in this youngster that He expects you to discover and promote during the child’s stay with you? Do such things determine your family’s priorities, weekly schedule or the curricula you purchase?
Or as you look toward the “finish line” of your child’s time at home, do you simply buy a graded curricula and spend your days plowing through it, because you think the highest purpose of your parenting is to see that your child receives the best education you can provide so you can one day say, “My son has a good job.”
If the answers to these questions are something like, “I don’t know”, or, “I don’t want to think about it,” then you may be a “homeschooler”, but I think you’ve missed the point.
Even Pioneers can slowly become Refugees. The very word “homeschooling” can cause us all to forget that what we are doing is not about home-SCHOOLING but about creating that context in which we assist God in raising the little ones in our homes to become His men and women who are truly prepared for what is going to happen in their own generation. To be like King David whom God did not identify as a man “with a good job;” but as a man who “served his generation well.”
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Mayards!
We went to the library yesterday afternoon and picked up a pile of great books. There's this one book called "bats at the library". I thought we might read about bats as i'd seen them hanging upside down like ripe figs on the trees in the botanic gardens. They looked so cute. We had also read "Stellaluna" that day too.
We were reading through the books when dad rang. Ollie ran to pick up the skype phone and said hello, a-gong at the airport, no, a-gong not at the airport, a-gong in taiwan, and so forth in his monologue. Then dad asked him a few questions and i just saw him nod and say 'yep, yep, yep, i think'. It was so much like a real conversation, except i'm not sure he understood the questions dad was asking him.
Then it was my turn to talk to dad so Oliver picked up this bat book and started flipping through the pages. He runs over to me and points to a page and says excitedly 'Mayards!! Mayards!! Mayards!!' and I say 'oh that's nice' in an offhanded way without in any way understanding what he was saying. He keeps pointing to this picture and keeps saying Mayards! and i say, oh you mean Madeline? or Magnet? He's pretty frustrated at this point so i just take the book and read it from the beginning. It's a story about bats who get into a library at night and start reading books. They imgaine themselves to be characters in books. There's a page where little bats are crossing a road with the policeman blowing his whistle. The illustration from "Make way for ducklings", except with bats. The Mallards are the ducks in that story. I wouldn't have noticed it at all had Oliver not pointed it out to me. When we got to that page, i laughed and said "AH HA!" so you mean the MaLLards!
This was definitely a 'we must homeschool' moment. Such precious moments in your life that you miss out on when you send them off to school. Shared book memories. I love that. We have memories based on books. At the library Ollie heard a mother reading "We're going on a bear hunt" to her boy and he wandered over to listen. Then he took the book when they'd finished with it and wanted me to read it to him. It's so comforting to have books that you remember. He still remembers it from when we read it over and over and over when he was about 18 months old.
We were reading through the books when dad rang. Ollie ran to pick up the skype phone and said hello, a-gong at the airport, no, a-gong not at the airport, a-gong in taiwan, and so forth in his monologue. Then dad asked him a few questions and i just saw him nod and say 'yep, yep, yep, i think'. It was so much like a real conversation, except i'm not sure he understood the questions dad was asking him.
Then it was my turn to talk to dad so Oliver picked up this bat book and started flipping through the pages. He runs over to me and points to a page and says excitedly 'Mayards!! Mayards!! Mayards!!' and I say 'oh that's nice' in an offhanded way without in any way understanding what he was saying. He keeps pointing to this picture and keeps saying Mayards! and i say, oh you mean Madeline? or Magnet? He's pretty frustrated at this point so i just take the book and read it from the beginning. It's a story about bats who get into a library at night and start reading books. They imgaine themselves to be characters in books. There's a page where little bats are crossing a road with the policeman blowing his whistle. The illustration from "Make way for ducklings", except with bats. The Mallards are the ducks in that story. I wouldn't have noticed it at all had Oliver not pointed it out to me. When we got to that page, i laughed and said "AH HA!" so you mean the MaLLards!
This was definitely a 'we must homeschool' moment. Such precious moments in your life that you miss out on when you send them off to school. Shared book memories. I love that. We have memories based on books. At the library Ollie heard a mother reading "We're going on a bear hunt" to her boy and he wandered over to listen. Then he took the book when they'd finished with it and wanted me to read it to him. It's so comforting to have books that you remember. He still remembers it from when we read it over and over and over when he was about 18 months old.
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