Home Education Foundation» Keystone Magazine

A Letter to the Subscribers of Keystone and TEACH Bulletin

Barbara — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:43:35 +0000

Dear Subscribers,

UPDATE ON THE HOME EDUCATION FOUNDATION

In July 2011 we wrote informing you of Craig’s brain tumour and saying that we wouldn’t be doing anything with the Home Education Foundation (“HEF”) for at least the remainder of 2011. Craig died on 30 September 2011 and we are now ready to give you an update on the status and direction of HEF. Thank you very much for your patience.

The Trustees of HEF made the following decisions at an AGM in January 2012:

Keystone

A. This will continue however it will change from being published four times a year to being published when time permits.

B. Subscriptions will be changed from expiring with a certain month to expiring after a certain number of issues. Your address label will change slightly to now indicate how many issues you still have to come.

C. New subscribers will sign up for a particular number of issues.

D. Craig was halfway through the July 2011 issue of Keystone when he died. Barbara will complete this and send it out as time is permitting.

E. After this another family will take over sourcing articles and putting Keystone together.

F. If you are not happy with this for your future Keystones please let Barbara know and she will send you a full refund of your remaining subscriptions.

TEACH Bulletin

A. This will no longer continue in published form.

B. Material which would previously have appeared in TEACH will now be put straight up on the website: http://hef.org.nz/teach/

C. Refunds on TEACH subscriptions will be posted out after we have finished fixing up all the end of year financial reports.

D. Thank you to everyone who said that HEF may keep the remainder of their subscriptions as a donation if we cease publication.

Books

The Home Education Foundation will continue to sell books and has some new books which will be advertised soon.

Trademe (fees added): http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

and

Sella (No added fees): http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

Enquiries from new home educators and those seeking curriculum or general advice

A. Barbara has to guard her time in order to home educate her own young ones, so,

B. These sorts of enquiries will be passed on to local support groups, or,

C. Anybody who would like us to advertise their availability to assist with such enquiries.

Difficult home educating cases

A. Barbara is available to help with difficult cases with the MoE, ERO, CYPs and the Police.

B. She has helped with a number already since Craig’s death and so far all have had a good outcome—even if just that the ERO has agreed to another review in three or six months

C. Craig was very good at this and while Barbara is on a very fast learning curve she has certainly benefited from helping Craig on various cases over so many years.

Thank you for your prayers, support and patience over the past nine months. God has been gracious.

Yours sincerely,

The Trustees

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the Smiths:

http://hef.org.nz/2011/craig-smith-26-january-1951-to-30-september-2011/

Updated 22 May 2012: Life for Those Left Behind (Craig Smith’s Health) page 6 click here

*****

Needing help for your home schooling journey:

http://hef.org.nz/2011/needing-help-for-your-home-schooling-journey-2/

And

Here are a couple of links to get you started home schooling:

http://hef.org.nz/getting-started-2/

and

http://hef.org.nz/exemptions/

This link is motivational:
http://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-what-is-it-all-about/

Review of Informal Learning by Dr Alan Thomas

Barbara — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:49:36 +0000

Informal Learning

Dr Alan Thomas

(Review by Craig Smith)

In their book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of

Disorder, Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman show that

moderately disorganized people and institutions are

frequently “more efficient, more resilient, more creative

and, in general, more effective than highly organized

ones.” And probably more successful too. They

cite a survey that found that the higher the salary, the

messier the person: “Sixty-six percent of Americans

making $35,000 or less are self-described ‘neat freaks,’

whereas only 11 percent of those earning above

$75,000 claim the same.” Abrahamson and Freedman

are at the forefront of what one might call the “anti

anti-clutter movement.” They are encouraging people

to invite confusion into their lives in order to be more

creative and productive both personally and at work. In

an article in Inc. magazine, they advise us to “be inconsistent,

pile up, blur categories, make noise, bounce around, get

distracted.” Sound like any kid you know?

Unschooled kids are a good example of how making a

mess gets things done. And usually, the more they’re

learning, the bigger the mess they create. Places that

stress neatness, order and quiet might make good retreat

spas, but they don’t function well as learning environments.1

When I first heard about unschooling and read up a bit

on its number one promoter, a life-long bachelor and

career school teacher named John Holt (author of

Growing without Schooling), I was put right off by

much of Holt’s radical secular philosophy. However,

I’ve met a few young people who have been home educated

in this manner, and I must say, they were articulate

and creative. Maybe not as disciplined nor as methodical

nor as predictable as most Christians would

like their children to aspire to, nor generally as reverent,

but these are only generalities. And not everyone

defines “unschooling” as did Holt. Our family consider

ourselves “unschoolers” in the academics (but very

hands-on in character training) for we consciously

adopt unschool-like, non-institutional-like ways, even

though we realise the term “Christian unschoolers” is a

contradiction in terms to American homeschoolers.

Nevertheless, a lot of what is written about unschooling

rings true.

Dr Alan Thomas is Visiting Fellow at the University of

London Institute of Education. He was formerly at the

Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia. He is

a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. In 2006,

he wrote an essay on this topic that started out just as

we’d all like to read:

Originally, the research I wanted to do was into

what children actually learn in the classroom. My

gut feeling was that schooling was totally inefficient,

that children spend a lot of time learning very little.

At the back of my mind all the time was the question,

“What is it that is wrong with the way children learn

in school?” An advantage of teaching in a university

was that I had the freedom to research what I

wanted. So I thought, “Well, how do children learn?

Let’s look right back to classical times to see what

philosophers and other educational thinkers had to

say about children’s learning. Across more than two

millennia, what they nearly all said was that the best

way to “teach” children was individually.2

Dr Thomas points out how everyone knows this, including

the schooling establishment: Even in modern

times, educators talking about the best way of teaching

children refer to individualized teaching. The interests

of the individual are paramount. It simply doesn’t

make sense to teach 30 at the same time. You can’t

individualize in the classroom. But the rhetoric of

classroom teaching is that this is exactly what you do.2

Most of us home educators, like Dr Thomas here, have

long recognised that schools say one thing and do

something quite the opposite. On top of that, classroom

teachers often belabour a point unnecessarily, hoping

to teach a nugget of wisdom, when the fact is, the children

already know it. Dr Thomas refers to a book by

Barbara Tizard called Young Children Learning at

Home and in School (1984, Fontana):

The book studied children who were half-time at a

nursery and half-time at home, a standard thing in the

British education system. They wanted to see what

their language was like at home and in school. What

they expected was a big class difference…But what

they found astounded them. Working class or middle

class, the level of language used between children and

parents at home was of a far higher standard than that

used in school. Not only was it of a higher standard,

but also the children themselves were able to follow

their own logical means of enquiry. Whereas in school

the typical example they give is when a child walks up

to a teacher with a piece of paper and says, “Can you

cut it in half for me please?” and the teacher thinks

“Aha! Here’s a teaching opportunity.” So she says,

“Go and get the scissors then.” And the child gets

them. By now the teacher has been distracted by a lot

of things and then says, “Now what am I doing now? I

am cutting it in …, what am I doing to this piece of paper?”

“You’re cutting it,” the child says. “Yes, but

what am I cutting it into, in two pieces, so what am I

cutting it in?” The child says, “You’re cutting it for me

into two pieces.” This goes on for a bit until the teacher

says, “I’m cutting it in half.”2

Sadly, the teacher never picked up on the fact that the

child’s initial question was, “Can you cut it in half for

me please?” NZ’s own Dr Graeme Nuttall of Canterbury

University confirmed during a whole lifetime of

educational research that students already know at least

50% of what teachers teach.3

Dr Thomas was invited to Tasmania to do some research

on home educators there: “Eventually I got a

total of a hundred families taking part in my research. I

found a few who carefully stuck to a school approach,

a majority doing some structured work in the mornings,

leaving the rest of the day free, and a small number

who were completely and utterly informal, doing

what the North Americans call “unschooling,” what is

sometimes known in Britain as “autonomous,” and in

Australia as “natural learning.” I would not for a moment

say one approach is better than another. Perhaps

the best advice, commonly given to new home educators

who are unsure of themselves, is to start with a

structured approach and adapt as you go along.”2

In his research on this idea of “informal” or “natural”

learning, Dr Thomas came up with two influences that

seemed to shift parents toward adopting such an approach:

[F]irst, the gradual realization that school at

home doesn’t work. You don’t need a timetable. These

families had started with, for example, planned lessons

and then learned it was not necessary. You just carry

on from where you were before. Lesson planning, curriculum

planning and timetables just aren’t needed at

all, even if you stay fairly formal. There is no point in

giving exercises because if you can do something, you

can do it. There is no need to prove it over and over

again. There is no need for marking or assessment because

you know exactly what your child is up to. The

beauty of it is the interactive element. Because you always

know where your child is at, you’re not wasting children

are learning anyway outside the formal system,

then there is a move away from formal learning.

Some parents abandoned formal teaching altogether as

a result. This is fascinating because it pointedly challenges

establishment wisdom and educational theory.2

Trying to understand informal learning is difficult.

Learning without knowing you’re learning is very hard

to document. One home schooling mum in Tasmania

illustrated the phenomenon like this:

“I really feel sometimes I want to say, ‘Right, let’s get

that text book out and let’s get on with some proper

learning!’.” But she didn’t and the child continued to

learn. In fact, this child learned everything except what

her mother tried to teach her, which was the multiplication

tables, and this was when she was 10 or 11. But

she did learn her 20 times table before any of the others

because she found out that you could get money from

supermarket trolleys. At the time this was 20 cents, so

when she was only about five or six years old, she

knew her 20 times table. The motivation was there to

learn. By the age of 11 she was on a par with what

children in school had learned.

Then there is informal learning that is goal-directed –

for example a child spurred to find out about Roman

life after seeing a film. There is a world of difference

between this kind of learning and being taught it as

part of a curriculum in school.2

Current research into “informal Learning” shows that

professional people, lawyers and doctors, are constantly

learning and advancing through their everyday

work and by being with colleagues. Dr Thomas referred

to a good example of this in a study with Brazilian

carpenters: [W]ithout ever having been on a course,

[they] have a better understanding of math related to

carpentry than do apprentices who have just finished a

taught course of the same material. These people are

simply learning alongside others who are better at it

than they are, and they gradually pick it up.2

Very young children apparently will learn quite a lot in

a similar way. They are pre-disposed to learn what is

important in their own culture: that is, the Lord has us

wired up at least from birth to pick up clues all around

us and discover those things that others around us

deem as important. These things very young children

will mimic and strive to learn: when they see that

adults value reading and writing, they will pick up pencils

and books and pretend to read and write. It is well

known that many children, by no means all, will actually

teach themselves to read.

Certainly, doing school at home is generally far less

productive than one-to-one interaction over the course

of performing everyday chores and errands and projects.

The basic skills that must be mastered – reading,

writing and arithmetic – may require some intensive

formal tuition, but all other subjects can be taught –

that is, picked up by the student – by reading books

together, doing projects, going on field trips to museums,

science centres or other more relevant areas of the

real world such as the home, the community, the work

any time and it’s highly intensive.

That’s getting informal already by official educational

standards, but it goes further than this because the parents

realized that their children were learning a lot outside

the formal system. Because it was so intensive,

most parents in my study group came to restrict teaching

or structured learning to an hour or two in the

morning. They came to realize that their children were

learning a lot outside this time without being taught.

Phrases like, “I don’t know where he got that from, he

just knows it,” or even, “We do a course in math but

more math seems to happen.”

The second very important influence was from some of

the children themselves. These are children who resist

formal learning. At first this was terrible for the families.

Parents told me that they were prepared to teach a

very interesting lesson, and the children resisted learning

in this way; their eyes would become glazed…they

weren’t interested! Now, there is a significant difference

here between school and home. In school you

don’t have all the children listening all the time, but

you can’t just say, “Well we’ll stop there and do what

you want for an hour.” You have to continue to teach

the lesson regardless of who is listening or not listening.

But at home, the feedback that you get is acute,

and parents find it is pointless to keep teaching in this

way. If you ally this with the observation that these

place and the market place.

“Does not wisdom cry out, And understanding lift up

her voice? She takes her stand on the top of the high

hill, Beside the way, where the paths meet. She cries

out by the gates, at the entry of the city, At the entrance

of the doors,” (Proverbs 8:1-3). We can introduce her

(wisdom) to our children out there in the real world…it

is debatable whether she is hanging around in an artificial

classroom setting.

Notes:

1. From the Editorial by Wendy Priesnitz, Life Learning,

March/April 2007, LifeLearningMagazine.com.

2. Alan Thomas, “What life learning parents can teach the

world about the nature of learning,” www.

lifelearningmagazine.com/0704/MarApr07.pdf. This essay

first appeared in “Learner-Managed Learning and

Home Education: A European Perspective,” Leslie Barson,

ed, (2006 Educational Heretics Press.) For information,

visit www.learning-unlimited.org.

3. “It’s About Bluff,” Keystone, Vol. XIV, No. 73, January

2008, p. 11.

Some extra links:

http://www.infed.org/biblio/home-education.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kakCOKJ9AUE

http://www.howchildrenlearnathome.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1

From Keystone Magazine

July 2008, Vol. XIV No. 75
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added): http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees): http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

Sanctifying Our Sons and Daughters-part 1

Barbara — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:31:44 +0000

Sanctifying Our Sons and Daughters

by Craig Smith

Listen Dads: we know our society today is saturated in

sex and sensuality. It is simply evil. We need a wellthought

strategy to help ourselves and our children survive

with anything like a healthy sexual outlook.

Sex education in schools has become little more than

pornographic how-to sessions. It is totally unacceptable.

Actually, “sex” education in NZ has been supplanted

in the schools by “sexuality” education. It is

equally pornographic but with perversions added.

Rather than being strictly “how-to,” this new stuff

helps children work out what gender they want to be.

On page 22 of the NZ Curriculum (published in November

2007), you will read that sexuality education is

one of “the seven key areas of learning…to be included

in teaching and learning programmes at both primary

and secondary levels” right along side things like

“physical activity, sport studies and outdoor education.”

See that? Exploring one’s sexuality is now considered

by our government educational gurus to be just

another recreational activity. Morality has gone completely

out the window. I Thessalonians 4:3 says that

the will of God for us and our children is our sanctification,

that we abstain from sexual immorality. Apart

from the marvelous efforts of Christians and other

moral people teaching in the government schools, the

NZ Curriculum will guide young people into all kinds

of perverted immorality. Government schools are no

longer suitable places for Christians to leave their children.

That’s why we’re home educating.

Let’s first try to get the Big Picture, a fuller context of

what we’re trying to do. Here in our culture, what you

might call the Western Christian Civilisation, we have

copied the classical Greek way of thinking. That is, we

take a logical, compartmentalised approach to knowledge.

But we need to realise that life is, in fact, an integrated

whole. Conventional schooling follows the logical

approach: we study maths, put it aside, pick up

English grammar, then lay that aside to concentrate on

History. But you never hear anyone point out the connections

and interrelationships among all the academic

disciplines of maths, English, History and all the rest.

Such a wholistic, knowledge-is-integrated approach is

more in line with the Hebrew or Biblical way of thinking:

after all, we do live in a Universe, God and His

word being the unifying factor. We do not live in a

multi-verse of many different truths, many different

realities.

In communicating with our children, therefore, it makes

a lot more sense not to deal with such things as sex in

isolation, as if it could be dealt with quite adequately all

by itself as a standalone, separate subject. We would be

better to consider sex, and all things else, in a much

wider context in our discussions. In addition, we need

to model for our children – as well as instruct them in –

every day morality; modesty in dress and speech;

decency; how men are wired up; how women are wired

up; what constitutes proper social intercourse, politeness

and manners; the purpose and roles of marriage, child-

rearing, etc., etc. These and many other factors of life, all

being interrelated, provide the wider context in which

we can then more properly understand and discuss, as

appropriate, sexual issues with our children. The

instruction starts from day one, not all of a sudden when

they reach the preteen years.

Perhaps we should also first of all lay to rest some of

our most cherished cultural fairy tales. The idea of

“falling in love” is deceitful. We cannot allow ideas

such as “falling in love and then seeing where that will

lead” to take root in our children’s minds. One of the

obvious problems is that our sexualised culture puts no

restrictions on where “falling in love” might lead. This

fairy tale concept of love is seen as one of the highest

forms of good one can pursue in life. You’ve heard the

ridiculous ways in which this idea is lionised: “It is

better to have loved and lost than never to have loved

at all.” “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” To

begin with, these ideas are totally at odds with Biblical

“agape” love, which is a unilateral and disciplined decision

to rest your best actions, attentions and intentions

upon another no matter what, no matter how the

other responds. Those fairy-tale ideas about love are

expressions of purely selfish erotic love and have no

thought for the welfare of the other person.

This “falling in love” idea wreaks havoc with the

hearts and emotions of an ever-widening set of people.

Look again at I Thessalonians 4, at verses 3-6 this

time. It implies very strongly that not only are we parents

to play our part in sanctifying our children, helping

them to abstain from sexual immorality, but that

we should teach them how to take a spouse for themselves

or control their own bodies (depending on your

translation) in holiness and honour. We certainly do

not get this kind of coaching from TV or billboard

advertisements. In addition, it says we are not to chase

after a spouse “in the passion of lust like the heathen

who do not know God.” Wow! Messing around sexually,

presented to our young people from all sides by

the worldly culture around us as nothing more than another

form of physical recreation, is referred to here in

Scripture as a characteristic of those who are heathen.

We and our children’s lives must stand out as clearly

different to that kind of thing. And verse 6 says something

interesting: “that no man transgress and wrong

his brother in this matter.” So how does one wrong a

brother in this matter? Well, apart from the obvious

one of defiling another man’s wife or daughter (or another

woman’s husband or anyone’s child), one can

wrong a brother by flirting with a girl’s emotions,

breaking her heart, damaging her in other ways, then

moving on. She and her future husband are both

wronged by such behaviour. My wife has been counselling

a woman who has fallen in love with a string of

men, producing a total of six children to four of them.

Some of the children have identity problems, wondering

who to attach to, the biological or day-time parents.

The abortion she had was quite traumatic for some of

the children, for the murdered child was their sibling,

and it was traumatic for the family with whom the children

lived. I’ve talked to guys who have sired so many

so-called “love” children over the years, they cannot

help but wonder at times if the pretty young thing

they’re currently chasing isn’t in fact their own daughter…

that they might be close to committing incest.

This is where “falling in love” leads to right here in

New Zealand. It’s a total disaster. We need to thoroughly

repudiate the whole concept.

When young people do come to an age to consider

marriage, the young man and the young woman need

to review carefully how they might fit together culturally,

theologically, doctrinally; how committed they

each are to Scripture; how close they are in their concepts

of family, child bearing, child rearing, education,

roles within the home, finances, incurring debt, insurance

issues, commitment to aging parents, etc., etc.

Plenty of people have “fallen in love” and married…

only to find themselves married to near strangers with

a whole head full of foreign and even ugly ideas about

how things should be.

Draw up a time-line for each of your children with an

80-year life span. Mark off the halfway point, 40, and

the half-way point of that, 20. Point out that by the time

they reach the customary entrance to adulthood, age

20, a full quarter of their allotted years are gone.

Most of that last quarter of their lives, from 60 to death

at around 80, is usually thought of as “retirement”,

though both you and they should be re-thinking that

entirely, for at age 65, unless your health is really failing,

you should be an expert in your field, your calling,

full of wisdom and incredible life experiences, and you

should also be well along the road of sanctification and

growth in godliness, bearing the fruit of the Spirit: love,

joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22). You should

be an incredibly valuable asset to your family, your

church, your community…I’d say there is a very good

argument that only such men qualify as Elders in the

church since only they are actually elder. Oopps, I’ve

digressed again.

Point out on the timeline that your children have a

mere 10 years from around age 11 or so when they are

just starting to think straight, until entering into

adulthood at 20 to get their act together. If they (or you

as parents) mentally “write-off” the years from 13 to 17

as those wild, hormone-raging teenaged years when

you can’t expect much out of them except grunts and

rebellious attitudes, you have grievously undermined

your child’s primetime for setting the stage for the rest

of their lives. But look at the timeline again: straight

away you can see that there are unavoidable seasons:

childhood, young adult, married, career building, family

building, empty nest years, growing old. Until age 20

you and your children simply need to be concentrating

on getting the foundations solidly laid in their lives:

basic education, character training, work ethic and all

forms of home economics. A 20-year-old should be

able to do all the family budgeting, menu planning,

shopping, meal preparation and balance the cheque-

book. These are nothing more than basic survival skills…

and note that I didn’t even mention earning the income

to balance the chequebook…the boys for certain will

have to add that one on later. The early- and mid-20s

seem to be given over these days to gaining requisite

training: a university degree, trade certificate…

establishing some kind of career path qualifications.

If your sons get married at 25, have 5 children by age

38, then the youngest one (your grandchild) will turn

16 when your sons turn 54. The oldest one (of your

grandchildren) by then will be around 27…so in fact,

by then, your child could be a grandparent and you a

great-grandparent. So your child is 54, still has a teen

at home, has a married child and a grandchild, maybe a

couple of children at trade school or university, is at or

nearing the top rung of his career path, and you, the

parent of this powerhouse of a child now aged 54, are

over 75 and may be in declining health. What do you

want to be doing at age 75? Are you planning for it?

Draw up your own timeline of your own life. You may

be stunned to see how, as the work responsibilities

started to increase, so did your family and child rearing

and mortgage and other responsibilities. That period

between roughly 30 and 55 on your timeline should be

bulging with responsibility, while the earlier years look

slim and carefree.

Can you see the huge pile of responsibility your child

will have at this point if he has 5 children, a mortgage

and a career? More importantly, with the help of that

timeline, can your child see it and that it will require

that he be made of stern stuff? Where does your 14-

year-old want to be at age 54, in 40 years? He/she

needs to start planning for that now, planning for it, not

just hoping it will happen. Those few single years from

when our children’s rational minds start coming together,

until they can establish their own households,

are so vital, so crucial to how well they’ll be able to

handle the responsibilities, we simply cannot let them

slip by.

If they have not been regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit

until sometime late in their teens, it is going to be a real

challenge to get them to do all for the glory of God,

including the planning for their career paths, until then.

We don’t assume they are regenerate because they are

born into our Christian family, although clearly the

Scriptures indicate our children are “holy” by their believing

parentage alone (I Corinthians 7:14). But we do

have every reason to hope that they will be regenerated,

and so we train them up in the nurture and admonition

of the Lord, inculcating the one true worldview,

that Jesus Christ is Lord of all (Ephesians 1:21-23, Philippians

2:9-11) and commands all men every where to

repent (Acts 17:30). We do not train them up in the

nurture and admonition of the Lord, with family devotions

every day, Scripture memory several times a

week, involvement and commitment to the Church,

training them to acknowledge the supreme authority of

and to live every area of life according to the Scriptures…

to think that they can then choose to go their

own way. No. Jesus Christ is the Way and the Truth

and the Life. End of story.

We have a lot to do to prepare our children for all of

life, and they have a lot to do to get prepared for life…

and we just don’t have time to mess around. Make

every day count. I’ve seen my oldest three leave home,

and I am embarrassed at how woefully little I did to

prepare them. I had always planned to take my sons

fishing. I’ve got most of the gear. But I never did…in

all those 20 years they were at home, I never did. I

mean, how hard could it have been? I am here to tell

you: 20 years slips by mighty fast.

However, by God’s grace, these three are doing well.

And again by God’s grace, we have two more adopted

sons…I have another shot at it. Pray that I don’t miss

or squander those many daily opportunities this time

around.

From Keystone Magazine

July 2008, Vol. XIV No. 75
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

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post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

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phone: 06 357-4399

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A Home Educator’s Commentary on Finishing (the First Leg of) the Race

Barbara — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 01:38:43 +0000

A Home Educator’s Commentary

on Finishing (the First Leg of)

the Race

By Craig Smith

The Growing Smith Clan of Home Educators. L to R: Jeremiah Smith; Zach & Megan (nee Schneider) Smith

holding Cheyenh Smith; Pete & Genevieve (nee Smith) de Deugd; Alanson Smith; Kaitlyn Smith; Barbara Smith;

Jedediah Smith; Grace Timmins (our foster daughter) being held by Craig Smith; Charmagne Smith.

Click on photo to enlarge image

This is the kind of thing home education leads to!

Friends, it doesn’t get much better than this. All I can

say is, give me more of it!

Our two eldest, Genevieve (born March 1980) and

Zach (born December 1981) have married. Both now

live overseas. Both married into pioneer home educating

families in their respective countries who have a

passion for seeing Christian families strengthened and

the Lord glorified by parents taking the government of

their own children back away from the secular state

and educating the children in the safe and secure haven

of home.

Our dreams have been realised. In spite of all the mistakes

and inconsistencies in our lives, the Lord has

blessed us more than we can express. What are the

blessings you hope and pray and wish for your

chidren? Our two and their spouses each have a:

• Solid walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.

• Exemplary Christian character qualities.

• Great interpersonal relationships with us and with

their siblings.

• Emotional and physical purity before marriage,

which sets them up for emotional and physical

purity throughout marriage.

• Total commitment to marriage until death.

• Desire for as many children as the Lord will bless

them with…8 being a good round number for

starters!!

• Passion for and commitment to home educating

their own children.

• A work ethic that leaves us huffing and puffing in

their dust and marvelling at their exceptionally

high standards of quality and service.

• Academic acumen which may or may not include

academic qualifications.

Zach & Megan live near Peoria in central Illinois and

work for Megan’s parents, Bob & Linda Schneider,

founders and owners of Rainbow Resource Center, a

mail-order book company that grew up catering specifically

for home educators. The Lord convinced Bob

& Linda of home education long before it was much

heard of, and they helped pioneer the movement in

their state. Not only so, but as their business was being

blessed by the Lord with exponential growth, all the

Schneider children became vital assets to its personalised

service and continued success. Christian discipleship,

entrepreneurial apprenticeship, service to others

and academic education were all rolled into one nonstop

home education lifestyle. Exhibitors and speakers

at Christian home education conferences from one side

of the USA to the other would tell different members

of the Smith family who were working at the Rainbow

Exhibits that Megan was their favourite out of all those

outstanding Schneider girls. Zach’s record-breaking

work standards and ever-dependable, never-flagging

character and personality attracted everyone’s attention:

and soon the Schneiders were offering Zach a permanent

job, and he was proposing to their daughter —

after first getting the blessing to proceed from both Bob

Schneider and me! No sooner were they engaged than

a husband and wife from work asked them to be the

guardians of their children (should anything happen to

the parents), for Zach & Megan formed the perfect

couple they’d been looking for as guardians. They’ve

also produced a daughter, pushing Barbara & I into the

grandparent category for the first time!

Pete & Genevieve live near Ballarat, an hour and a bit

outside of Melbourne, where Pete has been working on

the family farm and building up his own saw milling,

timber working and tool making business on debt-free

principles since he was 14. When we visited his home

town and family before he and Genevieve were engaged,

his extended family members, his clients, his

suppliers, his friends and the folks at his church were

pulling Genevieve aside to tell her that this guy was

pure gold! While Megan has one or two university degrees

(including Hippotherapy) and Genevieve has a

Legal Executive qualification and Zach aced the only

university course he ever took, Pete has a trade certificate

in cabinet making and was offered, but turned

down, a lecturer’s position at a local university specialising

in arboriculture. Pete & Genevieve shunned the

cultural norms around them in order to be as holy and

pure as possible for each other.

So what’s the secret? What did Barbara and I do to

bring down the Lord’s blessings in this way?

It is all of God: His unmerited Grace toward us in Jesus

Christ is more than we ever had any right to hope for.

Honestly, we are bunglers. We were from pretty typical

unbelieving families: decent folks with solid middleclass

values. But we were thoroughly defiled and corrupted

by the peers surrounding us at the state schools

we attended and the social environment of work and

play completely away from any kind of parental guidance

or oversight. Plus the TV and Rock & Roll culture

of the radio. The Lord converted us and put us through

an accelerated sanctification programme with The

Navigators…we needed something drastic, for we were

starting from a below-zero position. I think our greatest

asset is that we have no illusions as to what we have

been saved from. Personal experience and the heightened

conscience of the Holy Spirit causes us to hate

and fear sin. Yes, of course we still have weaknesses

and inconsistencies…but we do identify with Paul in

Philippians 3:13-14: “Forgetting what lies behind and

straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward

the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in

Christ Jesus.”

The only consistent thing about us, I believe, is the fact

that the Lord will not allow us to rest on our laurels, to

cruise along smoothly at any higher level of sanctification,

to turn aside and rest for a while…we are driven to

push on, to raise the bar, to explore that virgin territory

described in Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the

Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such

there is no law.” We can go hog-wild in the areas of

love, joy, peace, goodness…boldly go where no man

has gone before…and never fear that we’ll break any

law! We cannot abandon ourselves to anything but

these things without getting into trouble. We find this

compelling and exciting…only because the Lord has

reformed our attitudes and desires by His Holy Spirit.

The Open Brethren used to say, “To get the Lord’s

blessing, put yourself in the way of blessing.” To get

squashed, put yourself in the way of a freight train. To

get a new heart and a new mind, put yourself in the

way of the Lord’s spiritual weapons: listen to preaching,

fellowship with keen believers, read and memorise

and meditate upon and apply the Scriptures, share your

faith with unbelievers, love one another, love your

neighbours, love your enemies. In short, love the Lord

more by obeying Him more (I John 5:2-3).

Specific things I believe the Lord led us to do: I

thought back to those places I’d robbed by shoplifting

and the people I’d robbed by gambling. I visited them

with money or posted cheques with added amounts for

interest and inflation. We fostered dozens of children

and ended up adopting three. We agonised in front of

the children about all these things as well as personal

confrontational issues with workmates and clients…and

the children watched as we drove off to apologise to

someone and come back rejoicing. The children have

seen us lending out our car again and again; and giving

groceries to probable con-artists begging for cash; and

getting total victory over the TV (we now never watch

it); and gaining increasing victory over rock music; and

being 99.9% consistently and vehemently opposed to

any flirtation with sexual sins be it pornography in

public or private, immodesty in dress to where we’ve

even told visitors to go away as there was too much

cleavage showing, and we now avoid swimming at any

public place. We guard our minds so our emotions are

fixed where they should be and not floating around.

We are not prayer warriors. I am conscious of the Lord

all day, but I cannot say I specifically pray to Him all

the time. Perhaps the number one family priority is taking

time over every meal to pray, read the Scriptures,

sing at least two hymns or Psalms and make an effort

to discuss issues of the day or those raised in the reading

and singing. Those discussions around the meal

table and the ones that happen as we read good books

aloud around the fire at night…those times of spiritual

and emotional and intellectual interaction have been

the key to a cohesive family. And we have been un-

apologetically strict in limiting the children’s socialisation

outside the family. In all the areas that count, we

assume we know better than they do…so we give them

no choice: they can choose their socks, but not close

friends; they can choose a shower or a bath, but not

which of His commands to obey.

An Approach to the Teaching of Reading — Part 2

Barbara — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:59:24 +0000

An Approach to the Teaching of Reading — Part 2

by Craig Smith

To review briefly: teaching reading is not like teaching

a subject. Reading is a skill one must master thoroughly,

whereas subjects such as history and geography

and science are academic disciplines or bodies of

knowledge that do not need to be mastered in order to

grow as a Christian and fulfil both the Dominion Mandate

of Genesis 1:28 and the companion Great Commission

of Matthew 28:18-20. Let me just restate that

for clarity: if one does not have the skill to read, he

cannot even read the Scriptures. Such a person generally

will be greatly hampered in his grasp of God’s

Word as well as its availability to him. Having no

knowledge of science or history is tragic, but not

nearly as tragic as not being able to read. One can master

the skill of reading, but one can never master more

than a small area of science or history or geography,

for these bodies of knowledge are just too big and are

growing all the time.

Last time we also said that the prerequisites for teaching

reading are: be a reader yourself and read aloud to

your children. After that we covered teaching the alphabet

and then began a discussion on teaching the letter

sounds.

Because I’m not a purist in this area of letter sounds,

my system is fairly simple. It has made good readers

out of my children, and in fact they shot way ahead of

me as I was teaching them, so I have never actually

finished going through it ever.

Just as we had flash cards to teach the children to recognise

each of the letters and their names, so now we

have a different set of flash cards to teach them the letter

sounds. But before we start working with this new

set, get the children to thoroughly master the recognition

of the vowels and the consonants, in both capital

and lower-case letters, using the old set. The vowels

are: A/a, E/e, I/i, O/o, U/u and sometimes Y/y. The

consonants are all the others. The letter Y/y can be in

either camp.

Each vowel makes more than one sound in English. In

some of the other common languages we are likely to

learn (Maori, Spanish, German, etc.) the vowels only

make one sound or will have some kind of mark on the

vowel to indicate how it is to be pronounced. This is

not like English where you have to work out the pronunciation

of the vowels by their position in the word

in relation to other letters. This is why some say English

is very hard to learn. While most of the consonants

in English have only one sound each, there are some

significant exceptions. And again, the pronunciation

rules of these consonants are based on where they are

in the word and how they relate to other letters in the

word.

To teach the sounds of the letters, start with some of

the most common consonants first: B/b, D/d, F/d, K/k,

L/l, M/m, N/n, P/p, R/r, S/s, T/t. Ooops, maybe most of

you native Kiwis better set that letter R/r off to one

side just now, for you pronounce it differently depending

on where it is in a word or what the word is…not

like Southlanders who more consistently roll their Rs.

Most pronounce the Rs in “Arrow” and “spruce” but

leave them out entirely in “Car” or “Far”.

Anyway, get the children to learn the consonant sound

for each of these few consonants using both the capital

and lower case flash cards.

And now for the vowel sounds flash cards. These are

different than the ones for the names in that we’ll have

some marks above the letters to indicate what sound

we want them to learn. For the long sounds, we’ll put a

straight line above each letter, both caps and lower

case:

Long Vowel Sounds:

A/a = ay (as in say, may, play);

E/e = ee (as in see, me, meal);

I/i = eye (as in sigh, kite, mine);

O/o = oh (as in soap, rainbow, go);

U/u = you (as in uniform, cute, use).

Y/y never actually says its name, but it comes close in

words like myopia, sky, trying.

There’s a reason we call these “Long Vowel Sounds”.

It is because each of these is a diphthong; that is, to say

the sound, we actually start with one sound and glide

over to a different sound. We count the starting sound,

the glide across and the finishing sound all as one

sound. For example, say I/i as in “eye”: notice how

your tongue moves — that is a diphthong.

For the short sounds of the vowels, use the little smile

above each letter:

Short Vowel Sounds:

A/a ~ (as in cat, fan, crab);

A/a ~ as in car or father

E/e ~ (as in bed, step, elephant);

I/i ~ (as in sin, in, grim);

O/o ~ (as in hot, slot, ostrich);

U/u ~ (as in run, under, cuddle);

Y/y ~ (as in silly, simply).

Notice I used one more symbol, a wee dot above, for a

third sound of the letter A/a. Dictionaries will show a

lot more sounds and symbols for the vowels, but as I

say, I’m not a purist, and my objective here is to teach

reading, not Kiwi or Australian or American or South

African accented English pronunciation.

Drill these sounds with your children using this second

set of letter sounds flash cards. Again, full mastery of

the sounds and instantaneous, unthinking response

times are what we’re aiming for here.

Some people will start getting the children to sound out

words at this point, having learned just enough

consonant and vowel sounds to form simple words. Be

careful here: some children simply are not ready to do

this yet. If they are, go for it! But others will not have

the brain development to handle it as yet.

We found that this step, blending the sounds of several

letters together from left to right, was the most difficult

aspect of learning to readfor our children. If they

couldn’t get it, we’d just leave it until they’d aged a

wee bit more and then try it again. This particular

ability seems to be a function of brain development and

physical maturity, something I don’t think you can

hurry along to suit your own convenience. This is

probably why so many children, especially boys, get

labeled as dummies at school: they struggle with

reading for the simple reason that they are being

expected to do something they physically cannot do:

decode and blend the individual sounds of several

letters in order from left to right into words. It is more

of a boy problem because girls develop and mature

faster than boys in this area, yet the prison/school

system insists on herding them according to age.

Parents will also find that some children quickly

memorise many words by sight, especially as you read

to them and they follow along in the text. This is how

the state prisons/schools teach reading: look-say or

whole-word it is sometimes called. This is treating

English as if it were not a phonetic language, which it

most definitely is. Chinese is not a phonetic language,

and one must simply memorise thousands of unique

symbols in order to read a text. Because English is

phonetic, one need only learn around 50 sound/symbol

combinations and can then read virtually any text.

Don’t discourage your children from memorising

words by sight, but keep in mind and definitely let

them know that you will require them to master the

technique of reading letters from left to right, blending

the sounds into words, and then reading the words

from left to right to read sentences and thereby gain the

meaning of the text. It could be that reading problems

such as dyslexia are caused by faulty training: when

children memorise words in a child’s reader, they

memorise it using all sorts of cues: the picture that

goes with it, the familiar flow of the words just before

its turn to come up, its position on the page, the general

shape of the word, the first letter, any bits that stick up

higher than the rest, any bits that hang down lower than

the rest. So their eyes are scanning each word as a

whole — not from left to right — and scanning further

afield to work out what the word is. This is not, not,

NOT how they must learn to read! It is absolutely

essential, in learning to read English phonetically, that

they train their eyes to scan each word systematically

from left to right, blending each letter in a set sequence

from left to right to get the individual words, and then

setting each word in a set sequence from left to right to

understand what the text is saying.

Our children learned this technique and went straight

onto the King James Bible; the archaic language

simply did not present a problem in reading. They were

somewhat unfamiliar with the vocabulary…until we read

more from the KJV and until we read Gulliver’s

Travels and Pilgrim’s Progress in the Old English.

So finish off the rest of the alphabet sounds on flash

cards. We’ve dealt with the vowels. The following

consonants should present no trouble, so they have no

symbol above: B/b, D/d, F/f, H/h, J/j, K/k, L/l, M/m,

N/n, P/p, R/r, S/s, T/t, V/v, W/w, X/x, Z/z as each has

only one sound. OK, the S/s in “this” and “sing” is

different from the S/s in “these” and “is”, but your

children will figure that out. You could indicate the

buzzing S/s with S/s as I do with th below.

Then there are some slighly awkward consonants: the

ones with no symbol above have a sound similar to

their name.

Awkward Consonant Sounds:

C/c ~ (as in centigrade, scene, mice);

?/? ~ (as in cake, crumb, micro);

G/g ~ (as in gem, hinge, hedge);

?/? ~ (as in go, gate, haggle);

Q/q is always followed by U/u and pronounced as in

“queen”;

Y/y ~ (as in yellow or yak).

And add in a few common special blends (sounds like

coffee time, eh?), using underlines to identify them:

Special Blends:

ch ~ (as in church);

ph ~ (F/f sound as in photo, graph);

sh ~ (as in shoe, mash);

th ~ (softly as in with or thistle);

th ~ (buzzing as in these or other);

wh ~ (as in whale or whistle and not like an F/f as in

Whanganui, which isn’t an English word, and

which I suspect was originally pronounced as in

“which” or “whale” since the wh was assigned by

English speaking missionaries, evidently

approximating the beginning sound of

“Whanganui” with the beginning sound of “whale”,

when they first put Te Reo into writing. In the

meantime, English speakers have stopped pushing

extra air through when we pronounce “wh” words).

ing ~ (as in sing, hammering);

ong ~ (as in song, belong);

ind ~ (as in kind, find);

ough ~ (?ff as in tough, enough. This awkward group

of letters also has weird pronunciations such as in

“through” and “though” and “cough.” You just

have to memorise these odd-balls separately).

Have your children thoroughly master all of these on

flash cards. Then by reviewing a few rules to go with

these, which we’ll look at next time, they’re ready to

start reading.

(To be continued.)

Craig was born and grew up in Sanger (near Fresno), California,

came to New Zealand as a 21-year-old in 1973 and

has lived here ever since. He has a BA in Social Policy from

Massey University. He and Barbara have four natural children,

three by adoption and one permanently fostered, aged

from 28 down to two, all being exclusively home educated

from day one. Craig & Barbara established Christian Home

Schoolers of NZ in 1986 which later became the Home

Education Foundation.

From Keystone Magazine

April 2008, Vol. XIV No. 74
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added): http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees): http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100