We Must Rescue Our Children from State Schools

by Craig S. Smith

Over the years, being the convinced home educator that I am, I tend to hear – and remember – some pretty hard-line comments in regards to public schools. I have even been known to author some myself! When driving through town, if we see a bunch of children in a school playground, I invariably say to whoever is in the car, “Oh, look, they’ve let the prisoners out into the exercise yards!” Dr Raymond Moore is fond of saying, “The sooner you institutionalise your children, the sooner they will institutionalise you!” R.J. Rushdoony once said that a Christian father who sends his children into the secular state school system shows himself to be a fool. Another American, David Sant, is even more scathing: “The time has come for Christians to recognise that sending their children to these humanist institutions is sinful and idolatrous. Churches should discipline members who insist on continuing in this sin. Public schooling is spiritual adultery and is every bit as serious as breaking the marriage vow.” Harsh words indeed.

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research, an organisation apparently established by an act of Parliament to provide scholarly and rigorous academic research into educational issues – a task which supposedly had to be funded by statute, the implication being it couldn’t pay its own way – recently released an interim report on how the implementation of this new NCEA qualification has been progressing among the year-11 guinea pi…, I mean, students in 5^th Form. The NZCER themselves, with no help or suggestion from me, titled the report “From Cabbages to Kings”. So now we have distinguished research organisations themselves in effect calling high school students cabbage heads.  So now when I’m driving around town and see what I used to call a prison, I am just as inclined to call it a cabbage patch instead.

This is naughty, I know. Some would say it is worse than that. But please bear with me. I have been publishing Keystone journal since 1995: this is the 42^nd issue so far. TEACH Bulletin has been going since 1997: I’ve cranked out 65 issues to date. There are authoritative research articles reprinted and quoted in virtually every one of these issues, and there are often several in the TEACH Bulletins. These articles are either telling of the superior quality of home teaching / mentoring / tutoring or they are telling of the inefficiencies and dangers of state schools. I have a very fat file of newspaper clippings describing the bad effects of public schooling. I subscribe to the world’s only home schooling research journal. I read TheSchoolDaily.com, New Zealand’s schooling email newsletter, every day without fail. This source alone is enough to put you off state schooling forever as it keeps you abreast of the politics-power-money issues which seem to dominate schools, the vandalism, the horrendous acts of violence and bullying, etc. My phone number is in the Yellow Pages of many (not all) phone books under Home Schooling Advice Network. Through this I am privy to more tales of mistreatment of parents and their children by the many bullies at state schools (inmates, wardens, trustees) than you would want to hear. Any home education support group leader who has been going for a few years will also have a store house of such tales, enough to make your skin crawl. I get a weekly update from the (American) Home School Legal Defense Association. Now that one is just plain scary. And yet home schooling has been legal in all 50 of the United States since 1995. Conservative writers, not necessarily Christian, appear in the TownHall.com to criticise the state school system’s many failings. The most diverse coalition of them all, Alliance for the Separation of School and State, has a newsletter which just makes the system look like a haunt of incompetent idiots and control freaks. Groups that used to work for the good of the state system, are now calling on parents to pull their children, no, to rescue them out of these institutions. ExodusMandate.org is one, and the latest to go public with this message was none other than Dr James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Even kindly Dr Raymond Moore has referred to schools at times as places of institutionalised child abuse.

That is to say, after examining the issue through the resources listed above plus many more, I personally am totally convinced that no matter how you slice it, theologically, pragmatically, philosophically, economically, educationally, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, familially, psychologically or just looking at physical health and safety: compulsory, tax-payer funded, secular school systems are inherently bad news.

I object to compulsory secular schooling because:

1. It starts by legally forbidding the Christian faith into the classroom as if it is either irrelevant or untenable. No proof is offered, no dialogue is entertained, just raw political fiat. This is on the same level as the wisdom in sayings like, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”.

2. The Bible repeatedly tells us that the fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of wisdom. As a Christian my only logical perception of a school system that BEGINS by tossing this concept overboard is that it just crossed into Fantasy Land and burned the bridge behind it.

3. The system is solely concerned with this temporal world and rules the spiritual world and spiritual considerations out of bounds. This is a hopelessly narrow-minded view of the world we live in. It simply declares huge areas of wisdom and knowledge as irrelevant by a unilateral declaration, again with no attempt to establish the truth of the assertion. This is not an intellectually honest academic approach.

4.     The system is solely concerned with this temporal world of the student as it is now: history is largely irrelevant, an environmentalist view of the future is all that is allowed, and considerations of life after death are again ruled out of bounds. This kind of thinking is short-sighted in the extreme.

5.     While most people think the teachers are in loco parentis, “in the place of parents”, the teachers come to see themselves as “in place of the parents”. They inflict moral and intellectual damage on children by their own “teaching” (sex and sexuality education, values clarification, situation ethics, politically-correct revisionist history plus the entire non-subject of “social studies”) and allow children to inflict emotional and physical damage on each other (verbal and physical bullying, especially when out of sight or ear-shot), sometimes joining in themselves. This generalisation is of course unfair to the many excellent and even gifted teachers in the system who see themselves as missionaries or mavericks who refuse to toe the party line and who are valiantly fighting to preserve islands of true intellectual acumen and sanctuaries of real and useful learning. But their ranks are thinning.

6. The system separates children from their parents and from their siblings, doing great damage to family coherence, cohesiveness and unity. What is worse is that it removes children from their parents’ authority and responsibility and puts them under authorities which are often not just foreign in their standards, values and expectations, but actually hostile to the standards, values and expectations of the children’s parents and families. Parents can become so used to this state of affairs that they unconsciously abdicate much of their child-rearing, leaving it for the schools to do.

7. Children are treated as a group, not as individuals. They are processed by the system, more than actively taught by the system. Those whose learning styles and / or capabilities do not match the stream into which they have been placed are doomed to fail within the system and could well be tagged as failures for many years to come.

8. Schools are totally artificial environments, sheltered from the real world of the home, the community, the workplace and the marketplace.

9. Schools cause children to remain children for longer than they need to. They are sheltered from real-life responsibilities by adding homework, extra-curricular activities, sports, summer school and various field trips and camps to the normal classroom regimen, keeping their focus at school and school-related activities and away from family, community and work responsibilities.

10. Age-segregating peer groups, as in putting all 9-year-olds into one class, concentrates the immaturity of 9-year-olds into one place. Mob dynamics, wherein everyone in the group sinks to the lowest common denominator, is easy to take hold in such a peer-group. The group is also socialised by other immature 9-year-olds and the tendency is to become strongly peer-dependent.

11. State secular schooling pushes its own religious values without even trying to hide the fact. The Hon Trevor Mallard, Minister of Education, when launching the UNESCO and Living Values Trust “Values Education” seminars in July 2000, said the following: “Whether we like it or not schools and teachers have a strong influence on the developing values of young people and they have that influence whether they plan to or not.  We have to acknowledge that all people live by a set of values and that there is certainly no such thing as value neutrality in education.  It is not an easy thing to meet the obligation to include attitudes and values as an integral part of the New Zealand curriculum. The implicit values education that comes from the way a teacher behaves, the way they speak to children, the kind of control they operate in their own classroom, what is sometimes referred to as the hidden curriculum, cannot be overestimated.” (Em-phasis added.) The Hon Margaret Austin, at the 125th Jubilee of the Christchurch College of Education, reminded her fellow school teachers that they could not ignore values and stated, “…values were vital and central to everything we taught.”

12. State schools are used as experimental laboratories for educationalists and social engineers. The entire NCEA controversy of late has demonstrated this fairly clearly. “It is of serious concern to me that, despite the far-reaching effects of teaching on society, few educational practices have a sound research basis,” said Christchurch Teachers’ College principal Dr Colin Knight in the Manawatu Evening Standard of 4/12/90. He said changes in what went on in schools were mainly brought about by politically initiated reviews and reports on questionnaires and Gallup polls, by parliamentary debate and political expediency. Former head of the PPTA, Phillip Capper said, “What I would like to see in the political debate about education is a recognition that public education is an exercise in social engineering by definition.” (Dominion Sunday Times, 14/10/90.)

13. Children captive at state schools are subjected to propaganda by various special interest groups. Pro-homosexual groups are given access to classrooms to assure an understanding ear for children who may feel they have emerging homosexual tendencies. Ruling political parties push certain curricula material that presents their favoured world view. Long-time MP David Caygill has said that Governments should mold public opinion, not follow it. He said it was the politician’s responsibility to pursue policies that were in the public interest even when the public disagrees. Officer Frank Mault of the Palmerston North Police was asked why the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme in primary schools was aimed at potential victims of rape, incest, molestation and exhibitionism rather than at potential offenders. He replied with a shrug of the shoulders and the words, “I guess it’s because the children are a captive audience in the classroom each day.”

14. State secular schools are used as political tools by successive Governments. Karl Marx had as one of his 10-points-plan for world conquest by the Communists the establishment of free, compulsory and secular state schools to train up the next generations in the philosophy of the state. Abraham Lincoln, a contemporary of Marx, understood this. He said, “The philosophy of the classroom is the philosophy of the government in the next generation.”

Dear Christian fathers, my brothers. If you are not totally convinced that the best place for your children is at home where you and your wife can rear them with your eyes, ears and hands upon them under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, then please let me encourage you to read the above again. The stakes are way too high for mucking around: we are talking about the lives of our own flesh and blood, our children, for whom we will be called to account on Judgment Day. Have a good read and pray over Psalms 127 & 128, and Psalm 111:10 through Psalm 112:2. Our divine assignment here is nothing less than the re-taking and reforming of the whole world. Now there is a task to which a God-fearing man can give himself unreservedly, really get excited about and sink his teeth into!

To God be the Glory! Amen!

From Keystone Magazine

November 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 6
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

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

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Defining a World View

Part 1

by Craig Smith

As Christians we are under no illusions that we hold different ideas – vastly different – from our nonChristian friends and neighbours. We think differently too, and act differently. Come to think of it, we speak differently and hold different values, standards, goals and aspirations. That is to say, we have a different world view than the nonChristians around us. Maybe that’s why many of us find, as the years tick by, that most of our friends are fellow Christians. Sometimes we hardly know any nonChristians at all, apart from relations, that we could comfortably have over for a meal. Why is this difference so pronounced, and why does it get greater as time goes by?

Christians believe that the Lord God is the one source of pure, undiluted truth. We further believe that He has revealed some of this truth directly to us in the Bible. It was necessary that He do this, for we could not discover pure, undiluted truth for ourselves, since we couldn’t recognize it even if we did find it. Pure and undiluted truth must be revealed by the One who holds it.

So we Christians have at the base of everything we believe the Bible: it is acting as the foundation of our beings, the well-spring of our thoughts and thought-patterns, the motivator and director of our actions. Well, this is the ideal toward which each of us should be moving. The Bible does or is supposed to determine our Christian world view.

What, then, is determining the world views of our unbelieving friends? Most have a world view largely shaped by the West’s current commitment to rationalism, materialism and empiricism. That is, the Western cultures have fallen in love with the knowledge we humans can acquire for ourselves, things we can know for certain because they are material and can be empirically measured and tested. Since spiritual considerations cannot be empirically measured or tested, they are declared out of bounds and are therefore considered by many to be as irrelevant to life as if they were non-existent. (This is the tact taken in the public school classroom. New Zealand law states, “…and the teaching shall be entirely of a secular character.”) Science and scientists now bring us all the truth it is possible to know – or so we are told. By measuring and testing items in the world, our scientists can come to some conclusions about the nature of the world around us. Some things seem so completely beyond doubt that we call them “Laws of Nature” or self evident truths. But this then leads some to say that we humans discovered truth or formulated statements of truth as a result of our study of the world around us. Consequently, when we do not allow for the existence of non-material or spiritual realities because we cannot measure or test them, we humans end up seeing ourselves as the only source of truth.

Which means there are ultimately only two world views: the one that originates from the One who created the world, the mind of God, and He has graciously revealed it to us in the Bible; or the one that originates from the mind of man, including all its many variations, some of which acknowledge a spiritual realm.

For purposes of study and comparison, however, most folks like to see the many human world views laid out and classified in some systematic fashion. Remember, though, that while some of these human world views claim divine inspiration – Islam, Hindu, Mormon, etc. – they remain mere human inventions, imitations of the one true world view from the one true God.

This is why the Christian world view is so different from that of nonChristians. The differences become more pronounced over time because, glory be to God, His Holy Spirit is causing us to grow in Christlikeness. That is, we are becoming sanctified, our lives are reflecting a more consistently Biblical pattern of thought, word and deed. Worldly ways are left behind, one by one, just as it says in Ephesians 4:22-24, and we begin to bear the fruit of the Spirit.

Can you see how essential this is, this maturing and sanctifying process, for us as Christian home educators? We need to be clear about these things ourselves so that we can clearly and objectively teach them to our children. We need to know why we teach that shoplifting is wrong, even when we know that most businesses factor a certain percentage for “shrinkage of stock” into the price of the goods, meaning they expect some of us to shoplift. We need to be able to articulate why sexual intercourse should not be looked upon as a recreational activity no matter how much the TV, the FPA and the secular press are trying to say that it is. Our job is to know why such ideas as “It is more blessed to give than to receive”, “Honour your father and your mother” and “Love your enemy” are not just old-fashioned left-overs from yesteryear, and we must also be able to show how one applies such ideas in practical ways to every day life in the year A.D. 2002. This is in addition to our constant prayers for our children that our Lord God in heaven, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, would save, regenerate and fill them.

The world view(s) originating from the mind of man can be referred to as Humanist world views. One of the best authors on this subject, Dr David Noebel of Summit Ministries in Colorado, USA, (in books such as Understanding the Times, The Battle for Truth, Mind Siege) identifies the three major nonChristian world views of the Western world as: Secular Humanism, Marxism/Leninism and Cosmic Humanism (the New Age movement). We know that one day our Lord will return to clean up and make right the mess these false world views are making of people’s lives today. But at present the outcomes of the battles we currently face do not appear very favourable. For this reason we need to know the ways of our enemies, that we can more effectively counter them, attack them, overthrow them and eventually supplant them. “For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” – II Corinthians 10:3-5 (RSV).

A world view impacts the whole of life, impacts the whole of society and determines its history and development. For example, Hinduism’s fundamental teaching is that the objective world is an illusion and that the social order is determined by one’s spiritual karma earned in previous lives. This has had far-reaching repercussions for India’s culture and politics. Western science, which assumes that the objective universe is both real and orderly, could not have arisen in India, nor could Western principles of democratic liberties or social reform. India did not lack the intelligence or the ability to carry out such changes, but its view of the world had no place for such concepts.¹

What then constitutes a world view? How can one be identified and defined? Some Christian authors divide a world view into three parts, i.e., creation, fall, redemption. Humanist world views are then seen thusly: 1) creation by supernatural means is denied in favour of a naturally occurring process of evolution. 2) The fall of human nature is denied. Instead humanity is viewed as living in a state of normalcy, being born either naturally good or naturally neutral. Evil in the world is explained by scapegoats such as poverty, lack of education or the re-inforcement of negative ideas such as “sin” by unenlightened religious groups (i.e., Christians). 3) Redemption will be accomplished by collective humanity as we progressively eliminate poverty, disease, ignorance and religious superstition (i.e., Christianity). This is a useful way to define nonChristian world views as it highlights their opposition to Christianity and the truth of the Bible.

Others prefer to classify world views by using various theological terms such as theism, pantheism, polytheism, atheism, panentheism, etc., the emphasis being on the fact that every world view is inherently and inescapably religious. That is, even the atheist defines himself in terms of God: that he does not believe in Him. The pantheist believes god is in every bird, rock, tree and blade of grass. The polytheist believes in the existence of many gods; and so forth.

Dr Noebel builds a case for understanding world views as “any ideology, philosophy, theology, movement or religion that provides an overarcing approach to understanding God, the world, and man’s relations to God and the world. Specifically, a world view should contain a particular perspective regarding each of the following ten disciplines: Theology, Philosophy, Ethics, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Law, Politics, Economics and History.”²

How about this for a home educator’s curriculum? I would suggest that each of us deals with each of these ten areas in a fairly vital way virtually every day of our lives. Yet how many of us are consciously aware of what we believe in any one of these areas? Could we explain what the Bible teaches in any of these areas? Did you know that the Bible not only speaks to these areas but is in fact the defining document for what the Western world has historically believed to be true in each of these areas?  (To be continued in Part 2.)

Here is a sampling of some excellent websites dedicated to imparting a Biblical world view. Many have both printed and / or electronic newsletters which make excellent curriculum resources and study materials.

www.summit.org—Summit Ministries, David Noebel

www.chalcedon.edu—Excellent (my favourite — Ed.)

www.answersingenesis.org—Creation Science

www.icr.org—Institute for Creation Research

www.sixdaycreation.com

www.worldview.org—Worldview Academy

www.walkthruthebible.com—Walk Through The Bible Ministries

www.creationontheweb.com–Creation Ministries

www.genesisministries.com—Genesis Ministries

www.nehemiahinstitute.com—take the PEERS test online to see which world view you currently hold!

www.ChristianCulture.com/ — Institute for Cultural Leadership

www.visionforumministries.org–Doug Phillips

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/webpages54/ap/—Gregg Bahnsen, Applied Presuppositionalism

www.credenda.org/ — Credenda Agenda magazine, Doug Wilson

www.familyreformation.com/ — 700 links!

www.patriarchspath.org/ — Family Reformation

www.artsreformation.com/ — Reformation of Arts & Music

www.scccs.org/ — Gregg Bahnsen’s Seminary

www.vantil.info–Cornelius van Til

www.gty.org/~phil/creeds.htm — Historic Creeds

www.anselmstudyhouse.com

Here are some nonChristian world view websites.  As the saying goes, “Better to face the devil you know than the devil you don’t know!”  And believe me, the devil is out there; it’s amazing how people can take some of this stuff seriously:

www.secularhumanism.com

www.atheists.org

www.newageinfo.com

www.usmlo.org—Marxist-Leninism is alive and well, and still dangerous.

www.natcenscied.org/ — Evolutionism.

www.humanist.net

www.humanist.org.nz

www.infidels.org

Notes:

1. Four Worldviews and the Battle of Ideas, 1997, Gene Edward Veith, Jr., http://www.capitalresearch.org/publications/cc/1997/9710.htm

2. Understanding the Times, 1991, David A. Noebel, Summit Press: Manitou Springs, Colorado.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
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

fax: 06 357-4389

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It Takes a Whole Village

The School Daily e-newsletter (www.theschooldaily.com) of 27 September 2002 featured an article by its own editor wherein he said his own teaching philosophy was based on the African Proverb: It takes a whole village to educate a child. Keystone’s editor replied with the following:

Forgive me, but I must counter this with the following quote by the Wisconsin Independent School Board Association:

Only the village idiot

would consider letting the entire village in

on the task of raising his children.

I ’m fairly sure I don’t want my children adopting the lifestyles, values and attitudes of the typical African village our media and missionaries portray to us: the poverty, the disease, the men folk sitting around drinking or chewing, the women doing all the physical labour, the rampant sexual immorality, the deadly AIDS plague running out of control, the superstitions of the animist religions, the greed and envy and corruption of the witch doctors, the female circumcision, the slavery still practised by the blacks and the Arabs as it was 200 years ago, the prostitution, the slash and burn agriculture, and the killing of rare animals to feed the tourist and aphrodisiac trade.

And the NZ village: it contains a growing number of men who refuse to marry the women they live with or have anything to do with the children they sire; it has women who refuse to spank children who do wrong, claiming it is too violent, yet who will slaughter their own children, who have done nothing, while still in the womb; sexual immorality and perversions of all sorts are freely available on the internet to people of any age, on video for slightly more effort, in massage parlours, and through the personal columns while the health classes in some schools train younger and younger children in the fine art of condom use; children openly skip classes in order to help with the cannabis harvest and show up at school stoned; teachers appear to be unable to curtail the rampant bullying and women’s refuges are full to bursting.

Please allow me to suggest another old proverb, spoken 2,000 years ago by a swarthy Jewish fellow, as an alternative to this defective African one: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself.” I reckon we’d all get a lot more mileage out of it.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
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

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Read for Yourself

As the parents of a home educating family, perhaps the best thing you can do for your children’s academic advancement is to read for yourself, for your own enrichment. Always be adding to your store of wisdom and knowledge: study history, the Scriptures, your children’s learning styles and current events.

Don’t be too concerned about where you start. As C. S. Lewis said of English literature, any part of it eventually leads to the rest anyway. Jump in wherever you fancy and keep going as long as the interest level continues to motivate you. Read a wide variety of things: histories, novels, poetry (read it aloud!), essays, plays, biographies, short stories, theology, philosophy, science, etc. Be careful not to kill your love of learning by dragging yourself through stuff you hate. There is a skill in finding the line between self-discipline in studying what you know is valuable, even though you don’t enjoy it, and unprofitable self-torture.

Even so, you must read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. It is fantastic! Check out his list of the world’s greatest books that everybody should read. Another beauty, written by a Christian, is James W. Sire’s How to Read Slowly, for it focuses on how to read different kinds of books and how to determine their underlying world view.

A noble objective is to learn to feed yourself rather than be spoonfed pre-digested, pre-interpreted, watered-down, modern-language condensed versions of the old classics. Find a copy of C. S. Lewis’s book God in the Dock: Essays in Theology and Ethics and read the essay in it called “On the Reading of Old Books”. This is a wonderful essay about the value of old books, the original books, as opposed to modern ones “about” the old ones.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order 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

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Informal Learning

Alan Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northern Territory, Darwin, is formulating something he calls “the Child’s Theory of Learning” as a result of what he has observed over the years. It contrasts sharply with the way children are expected to learn in school.

He observes the typical classroom: busy beavers industriously engaged in one activity after another, producing all kinds of colourful and creative items to hang around the room. He observes home educators who practise a much more informal method of learning: nothing much seems to happen: they go for walks, read a lot, work on their own projects now and again, take music lessons on Thursdays, help out a neighbour down the road. Yes, there was a lot of discussion about all kinds of things during a typical day, with mum acting more like a mentor than a lecturer or assignment-setter and marker.

Thomas says that what struck him the most was incidental conversation. “Whether we were out walking, sitting around the kitchen table, engaged in some other activity such as drawing, making something, or working on a project, eating or just out in the car, there seemed to be an incredible amount of incidental talk.”

Isn’t it interesting how this parallels our Lord’s instructions to us in Deuteronomy 6:6-7 – “And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Thomas was struck by the reality that children in school rarely get the opportunity to have such lengthy informal conversations with adults. And yet for the first five years of life – before school – this is precisely how children learn: by constant banter with mum and dad all day. They learn huge amounts of general knowledge, numerical concepts, literacy skills as well as how to speak maybe several languages – and this is routinely done by virtually all parents with no particular thought to what they’re doing.

Yet this highly effective Child’s Theory of Learning must be abandoned once they start school. Professors Barbara Tizard and Martin Hughes at London University compared the quality of learning of three to four year olds in pre-school, which the children attended in the mornings, with unintentional learning at home in the afternoons. The researchers were struck by the high quality of language and learning at home, irrespective of the parents’ level of education:

At home, children discussed topics like work, the family, birth, growing up and death — about things they had done together in the past, and plans for the future; they puzzled over such diverse topics as the shapes of roofs and chairs, the nature of Father Christmas, and whether the Queen wears curlers in bed. But at pre-school, the richness, the depth and variety which characterised the home conversations were sadly missing.  So too was the sense of intellectual struggle, and of the real attempts to communicate being made on both sides. The questioning, puzzling child we were so taken with at home was gone. Conversations with adults were mainly restricted to answering questions rather than asking them, or taking part in minimal exchanges about the whereabouts of other children and play material.

Could children go on learning in this fashion for years on end….and not do the “school” thing? Roland Meighan of the University of Nottingham School of Education notes that “Families starting out on home-based education who at first adopted formal methods of learning found themselves drawn more and more into less formal learning. Families who started out with informal learning at the outset found themselves drawn into even more informal learning.” He points out that this informal or incidental learning closely resembles the kind of learning so efficiently engaged in by pre-school infants at home. Then Meighan makes the astounding statement: “The sequencing of learning material, the bedrock of learning in school, was seen increasingly as unnecessary and unhelpful.” It seems that at home students can learn very well just by living.

For many home educators, and certainly for many of the more popular packaged curriculum used by home educators, the immovable assumption is the need for a well-planned scope and sequence through which to move the students.  (See Figure 1).

Figure 1:

Conventional Scope & Sequence in Schools

Barbara Smith of the Home Education Foundation, Palmerston North, New Zealand, recently encapsulated the observation of Thomas, Meighan, Tizard and Hughes when she said: “Children develop their own scope & sequence: it is generally composed of two three-letter words: how and why.”

Indeed. And children use this method of learning with tremendous results, exceeding in amount learned during the first five years all that they’ll learn in the next 20. Why does it have to stop at age five or six when the child is expected to start school and suddenly be expected to learn at a pace, at a place, during a time and concentrating on subjects chosen by someone else totally unfamiliar with the child’s developmental progress to date, his or her family background, culture, interests, abilities, values, beliefs, learning style and inclinations?

Asking “Why?” and “How?”, children will fill in a knowledge grid (see figure 2) which is wider in scope than any used by schools. They will not follow any particular sequence, for life experiences and interesting connections and curiosity do not follow any predictable pattern. Even so the grid will continue to be filled in with each successive question, discussion and conversation, many times to a far greater depth (and certainly with an important emphasis on its relevance to the individual student) than happens in school. And because the child is asking the questions, he will doubtlessly remember much more of the material in that part of the grid than he would of the comparable part in a conventional school-style scope and sequence grid that was covered when the child was absent from school or daydreaming, unwell, distracted, upset or unmotivated.

No wonder Roland Meighan asked in regard to informal home-based education not “Does it work?” but “Why does it work so well?”

Figure 2:

A Possible Child’s “How?” & “Why?” Scope & Sequence