Category Archives: Articles written by Craig

Christian Home Schoolers of NZ (CHomeS) World View Conference Report

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Christian Home Schoolers of NZ (CHomeS)

World View Conference Report

The World View Conference of 7-12 April in Auckland, staged by Christian Home Schoolers of New Zealand, seems to have been more than just successful….for some it was earth-shaking, revolutionary, conscious-raising stuff! Barbara and I have staged a few national conferences in our day, but never one where every day people came up to us to say how they’ve never before been so thoroughly challenged, how these days rate among the best days of their lives, how we need to make it two weeks long, how it really should be required for every Christian in the country, etc., etc. Clearly the Lord was doing something in people’s hearts and minds…..we have a tiger by the tail.

It was such a privilege to rub shoulders with high-profile folks such as the guest speakers from Summit Ministries in the USA, Dr David Noebel and Chuck Edwards. The deputy leader of the Christian Heritage Party, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, was there most of the time, and CHP leader Graham Capill gave one of the addresses. Frank Grover an ex MP attended, as did Bernie Ogilvie of Masters Institute, and many of the students plus local church ministers. The South Island was represented by people from Christchurch, Timaru and even Queenstown!

There were moments of very sobering shocks. As we explored the thinking of Marxists, Secular Humanists and New Agers, we were stunned to be shown statistics revealing that children of evangelical Christians in the public schools as well as in most Christian schools are rapidly losing every last shred of Biblical thinking in many areas such as economics, politics, psychology, law, sociology and even theology! Many of us realised that we too held nonChristian beliefs in these areas without realising it. Contributing factors to this sad situation are that many Christians believe in a gospel that only has relevance for the life hereafter and that most Christians don’t appear to study the Scriptures much.

We also watched like stunned mullets as highly-qualified and articulate non-believers attempted to justify on the grounds of compassion the slaughter on demand of 16,000 unborn babies in New Zealand every year. Dr Zoe During, a medical doctor, and Dr Bill Cooke of Auckland University were debating “Should abortion be legal?” with Christians Chuck Edwards and Matt Flannigan, a PhD candidate in Philosophy. Though the nonChristians agreed that they could not know when an unborn baby became a person, they were happy to draw an arbitrary line at so many weeks from conception and appeared unconcerned should it be found that they got it wrong: if there is no God out there to Whom they must ultimately give account, why should they be concerned?

Most of us were pretty fired up to find ways we could bring the word of God to bear more consistently in our own lives so that we would think Christianly rather than secularly on issues with which we have to deal on a daily basis. Some of us went home with a renewed vision and desire to engage the enemy in the public arena: letters to the editor, email discussion groups, talkback radio, etc.

Some comments directly from conferees were:

“A total transformation in my understanding of most subjects discussed. Excellent information and analysis.  The Worldview concept was transforming – and this at my age of 62years.”

“I think this has been a life-changing conference, opening my eyes to the real situation in our World today, and giving me a strategy to help me and other families in my Church, arise, equip ourselves for the battle for the mind and take the Hope of Christ back into our nation.”

“I have been greatly inspired by the conference.  I just sense God is so much behind this.  The presence of God was there each day.  I am so excited and would love to have more of it.  Our children need it. The teenagers need it – Christians in New Zealand need it.”

Masters Institute in Auckland appears poised to stage two-week world view conferences for youth on the model of those run by Summit Ministries. And the Christian Home Schoolers of NZ committee, Rodger & Christine Whetton, Mark & Carol Munroe and Craig & Barbara Smith are already wondering about another world views conference for families. Stay tuned!

From Keystone Magazine
May 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 3
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

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Smorgasbord Theology

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Smorgasbord Theology

Posted in Theologically Speaking

When we started home education, we wanted to teach the various subjects from Biblical presuppositions and perspectives rather than from the state humanistic party line used in the public schools (the “Secular Clause”, Section 77). For example, Maths became a study of God’s orderly and rational character: the mathematical systems are not human inventions, but are human discoveries of a part of God’s revelation. He is proven to be the sovereign of all when it is found that maths can be used perfectly to describe every aspect of the creation, from the micro world to the macro world of interstellar space. That is why we describe the cosmos as a “universe” rather than a “multiverse”….there is a demonstrable unity throughout all the known cosmos, a unity that is predictable down to centimetres and seconds, as in a satellite rendezvous with distant planets and moon landings. Now if maths is only a human invention, used to impose order on the chaos around us, there is no logical reason for this invention to so perfectly apply and predict events on other planets.

(Dr Remo J.Ruffini, physicist at Princeton University, reacted to the successful landing of men on the moon thusly: “How a mathematical structure can correspond to nature is a mystery. One way out is just to say that the language in which nature speaks is the language of mathematics. This begs the question. Often we are both shocked and surprised by the correspondence between mathematics and nature, especially when the experiment confirms that our mathematical model describes nature perfectly.” Dr Ruffini openly admitted that the mystery could be solved by positing the Biblical God. But to him this explanation was unacceptable.)

Anyway, to know what Biblical presuppositions even are, we have to know the Bible fairly well. But then we found that different Bible study helps would approach the Bible differently….that is, they had different presuppositions about the Bible!! Aaarrrrgggghhh! We had already been frustrated by that kind of thing: I grew up in a Methodist church and went back to one for a few years after being converted. We attended several Baptist and Presbyterian churches. We were among the Open Brethren for 14 years. We are now with the Reformed Churches of NZ. These various churches approach the Scriptures in very different ways, I can assure you.

One day I heard someone say that most Christians had a “smorgasbord” theology, a bit of this, a bit of that, but nothing comprehensive, complete and cohesive. It immediately struck me how that perfectly described my own theology at the time, and certainly that of most Christians I knew. I began a search for whatever was the counterpart to “smorgasbord” theology and discovered “systematic” theology. In this view one does not toss out all the old teachings and doctrines of the past simply because they are old. Instead, one takes the view that surely the Church of God here on earth, the Body of Christ, has learned something over these last two thousand years. Surely there are some basic things that we Christians don’t have to re-invent with each new generation of believers.

This view led various Reformers in history to write out statements or “confessions” of what constitutes a proper doctrine or Biblical understanding of God, of man, of the Fall, of Sin, of the Trinity, of Christ, His humanity, His divinity, salvation, justification, sanctification, church government, church discipline, proper worship, etc, etc. That is, they produced “creeds” and “statements of faith” which are fairly comprehensive, fairly complete and fairly cohesive. One church we were with for a while refused to have written creeds, saying they were merely the words of men (which is true: creeds are not inspired as are the Scriptures). These good people would say things like, “No creed but Christ”, and yet the congregation would be torn apart when some members would display gifts of the spirit or wander off into immorality or simply ask for an explanation as to why we baptise this way and not that way…..the leaders just didn’t know the answers nor apparently where to start looking!

Actually, it seems to me many churches these days shy away from that kind of thing a bit, that is, accepting a written creed or statement of faith: something containing a logically presented, categorised and systematic breakdown of what the Scripture teaches on any particular subject. The fear includes the idea that such statements might cause divisions, or one aspect or another might be offensive to someone who might then leave. I have to laugh at this! It is the same as saying, “Doctrine divides, but love unites.” That in itself is a statement of doctrine! Doctrine is inescapable: we all believe something and should be able to “confess” what it is, that is, write it down in a clear, concise fashion.

As parents we must avoid presenting to our children a muddied, unclear or confusing picture of Who God is or what He requires of us as we take our children through the Bible. We need to study hard so that we will not be ashamed of our Bible knowledge and understanding before our children, and so that we may not be ashamed before God but instead rightly handle the Word of truth (II Timothy 2:15).

There is a lot of good material out there to help you come to grips with a consistent overview of what the Bible teaches. There are several Statements or Confessions of Faith by the Baptists, and buying one that has a commentary with it is very helpful. I think that the Anglicans, Presbyterians and Reformed all subscribe to one degree or another to documents such as the Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism. These lay out in very orderly and logical fashion the basic teachings of Scripture on the various items listed above. Again, getting a copy that has a good commentary with it is a great way to come to grips with these doctrines. There are also books on systematic theology from various theological perspectives. One I found exceptional for its clarity and brevity is “A Summary of Christian Doctrine” by Louis Berkhof (Banner of Truth, ISBN 085151 0558).

Brother Andrew (God’s Smuggler) of Open Doors was quoted in the Challenge Weekly of 3 April 2001, “Our big need as Christians, and evangelicals in particular, is that we don’t even know how to verbalise our faith in God when the Muslims challenge us with questions about who our God is. This is appalling. This is such an extreme poverty. Praise God for the Heidelberg Catechism! How many people know about this Confession of Faith today? In my view it is the most eloquent expression of the faith that we have had throughout the centuries.” These confessions and statements of faith help us to see how the whole of the Bible hangs together, they help us to see the wider implications of the Scripture to the whole of life, to every area of our lives. These are not to replace the Bible, but only to help us more accurately understand the incredible breadth and depth of the Scripture’s application to every area of our private, social and national lives. They are excellent spiritual reference books.

Smorgasbord Theology: it just seems that the Scripture should not be viewed in that way, especially when the Lord Jesus Himself says, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that procedes out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4 see also Psalm 119:160). Anyway, I found that to have more than a smorgasbord theology meant doing a lot of work in reading and researching and comparing the various theological views around. Which one is the most accurate? Which seems most faithful to the whole of Scripture? These are difficult questions, but we must realise that we all, that is, each one of us, does have a theological point of view. It is inescapable. It can simply be one we picked up from tapes and sermons and our own Bible reading (a smorgasbord theology), or it can be one we have diligently sought out from all those on offer out there, conscientiously studied and now held as a personal view, one we can articulate to others, one we are ready to defend: and one we are explaining to our children, so that they will not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but will know precisely what they believe and why they believe it. Such is our duty to our children: to train them up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4, RSV); to teach them God’s commandments diligently all day every day (Deuteronomy 6:6-7); to impart to them a systematic rather than a smorgasbord theology. For the Lord and His Word are not composed of many unrelated bits chosen by us, but are like His tunic gambled for at the Cross: a precious whole, without seam, woven from top to bottom. (John 19:23-24).

From Keystone Magazine
May 2001 , Vol. VII No. 3
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

Hold Your Family Together

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Hold Your Family Together

Posted in The Faith of Us Fathers

The Industrial Revolution took dad away from the home where he traditionally worked with the entire family on the family business. Community Schools and then State funded Compulsory Schooling took the children away from home for longer and longer periods of time each day and for more and more weeks each year. Social pressure, increased mobility and erratic economic opportunities separated the nuclear family from the extended family, especially the grandparents. State subsidised Early Childhood Educational institutions supported by aggressive promotional campaigns drew the little ones out of the home. At last it was Feminism and the pressures of the economy that took even mum away from her home. I was a door to door salesman, wholly dependent on commission sales for an income, for 13 years until 1995. I can tell you honestly that I didn’t bother to start knocking on doors until 3:30pm each day, for prior to that time there simply was no one at home. Our cities have many streets lined with lovely houses — but all of them empty for much of the day.

It is rare to find a family unit where each member draws strength and purpose from being part of that larger entity (the family) perceived by each member to be of more worth than him or her self. The politically correct propaganda of egalitarianism has transformed the definition of “family” in some quarters to a mere ad hoc collection of individuals — such as flatmates even, with no legal or blood ties at all — wherein each demands his or her own rights and autonomy.

Christian families composed of Mum and Dad (who are legally and happily married) and their natural and/or adopted and/or fostered children are becoming increasingly uncommon. Then to find such an entity living in the same town as both sets of grandparents and any other relatives, all of whom are on more than just speaking terms, where the grandparents would never dream of sporting the bumper sticker that reads, “We’re spending our grandchildren’s inheritance”, is most unusual indeed. And should a Christian family actually find itself in such an advantageous position, what is most likely to be its lifestyle? The children are at school and after school activities, and Mum and Dad are run ragged each week with various church and community commitments on top of their regular jobs. Even on Sunday the children are often off to creche, children’s church or Sunday school, or sitting with their friends in the back pews and then off to join the youth outreach. Hands up those who remember seeing an entire family sitting all together for an entire worship service?

Such separation is demonstrably unhealthy for the family unit. Many of us have difficulty seeing exactly why this is so, for we have very little idea of the forceful powerhouse an integrated family unit could be, since few of us have ever seen one in action. I’ve only seen wee glimpses….but enough to whet my desire to see more.

If our family experience is anything to go by, there is a direct relationship between time spent with the family as a whole and family harmony and happiness. My mother is 77 years old. She has lived and travelled extensively on every continent except Antarctica. Yet those 14 months she spent on the road, being recently widowed, with every thing that meant anything to her — us five children and those possessions we could carry in the VW Combi — were the happiest and most carefree of her whole life. We five siblings developed from a pack of squabbling brats who fought each other at every opportunity into a well-organised team who could find directions, secure lodgings and buy groceries in four different languages and tote our own considerable volume of belongings (while holding the 2-year-old’s hand) from vehicle to hotel room in one trip!

Our 9-year-old is a particularly good barometer of family unity. When we are too busy to spend a good amount of focussed time with him, he acts up. Oh, he is great at absorbing the “I’m too busy right now” line without causing a problem, for he understands the pressure of deadlines. But he also knows a fob-off when he gets one, and he then becomes a right royal pain. It is usually then we notice that those daily rituals of all being present at meals, not answering the phone during the devotions, washing dishes together, reading aloud together, having some daily formal and/or informal instruction time, etc., have been either totally abandoned or compromised beyond recognition. Re-establishing them also re-establishes sanity and harmony and security and happiness.

One ritual we established a few years ago was to have devotions after every meal, not just once a day, and to include the singing of Psalms & hymns. This has at times, when I have been sharp enough and with it enough to capitalise on the opportunity, allowed for our family as a unit to discuss eternal truths, debate current events, face and weep over personal shortcomings, evaluate Biblical ways of dealing with conflicts, etc.

Another ritual we took up with great gusto was for me to read to the children in the evenings. Let me tell you, it is very exciting to see a 20 year old daughter and an 18 year old son getting out sewing or model kits in eager preparation for an extended time of listening to their “old man’s” voice. It puts the battle over the “tyranny of the urgent” (“I’ve really got too many deadlines facing me to spend an evening reading”), and over the conflict between “the one and the many” (“I was looking forward to spending some time alone, not entertaining a crowd”) into perspective…..especially now that those two older ones are gone overseas. What happened to all those plans I had of things I was going to do with them but never had time for?

Make time for your children, dads. Cultivate an attitude as in Longfellow’s poem below. Plan in the time, guard it jealously, so that, as it says in Psalm 127:5, you will not be put to shame when you speak with your enemies in the gate, for your children will all be standing shoulder to shoulder there with you.

From Keystone Magazine
May 2001 , Vol. VII No. 3
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

Trip of a Lifetime

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Barbara & I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, with all six of our children, to do some ambassadorial work for Home Educators (HEs), visit family and friends and do some serious sight-seeing in Japan, Canada, Mexico and the USA over the Christimas / New Year period of 2001/2002. When a close relative gifted us some money at Christmas 2000, we began planning a trip which ended up covering over 9,000 land miles, including 13 states in the USA.

Part of the planning was communicating with HEs over there by email. The Japanese HE I located was American Brian Covert in Osaka who had married a Japanese and writes for English language publications there. Amazingly he was also for a time the editor of the paper in my little home town of Sanger, California! Osaka was too far from our stopover point of Narita / Tokyo, which actually set us free for something more exciting.

A native Japanese Christian (of which there aren’t many) and lecturer at a Tokyo University, Dr Takeyuki Ozawa, did a sabbatical year at Massey University here in Palmerston North and began attending our church. There he and wife Kayoko and children Naho & Mino met so many other HEs that he declared his intention to institute daily devotions and coming home from work early so as to get time with the family…..and yes, they’ll look into HE as well. When we arrived at Narita airport, Take and family taught us a lot about Japanese culture and even more about generous and gracious hospitality. We were escorted all over town to see the sights, guided through the subway system, given a running commentary on the Buddhist and Shinto ceremonies we watched, taught the proper way to slurp noodles and soup and introduced to raw foods such as squid and horse meat (both very nice, I must add)! A highlight was going to church with the Ozawa family and talking with one or two other young families about HE which so far is a very small movement in Japan. They’ll be receiving some copies of New Zealand’s own Christian HE journal Keystone thanks to NZers’ gifts to the Home Education Foundation.

We helped to host veteran HEs and convention speakers Bill & Diana Waring and family all over NZ back in 1999/2000 and had the pleasure of taking Diana’s mum, Joyce Bell, around for part of that tour. When Mrs Bell heard we were coming over, she immediately offered her 27-foot Rockwood motor home for us to use while in the USA! Wow! Talk about blessings being poured out from heaven! She also picked us up from Vancouver airport and housed and fed all eight of us at her home on Lake Stevens (just north of Seattle, Washington), where we saw rare American bald eagles flying around. We travelled many miles and shared not a few adventures with Mrs Bell, and we all became very fond of her….she is pretty special to us.

It took us two days to drive from Lake Stevens to Great Falls, Montana, where we had a big reunion with the Warings in the middle of a two-day HE conference! Barbara and our eldest (Genevieve, 21) and #3 (Alanson, 17) spent all of the next day fellowshipping with HEs there while Mrs Bell and I took our other children (Zach 19, Charmagne 14, Jeremiah 9 & Jedediah 3) to the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center (famous early American explorers) and to the Charlie Russell Museum (outstanding artistic recorder of Old West images). Staff and secuity guards in both places heard all about HE and NZ for two reasons: Our son Jedediah Smith wears the name of another early American explorer, a Bible-toting Christian, well known in this area. And Jeremiah would strike up a long-winded conversation with anyone, especially those wearing badges and utility belts with pistols! He finally talked one policeman into slapping the handcuffs on him!

We also met a Lakota Sioux Indian Chief, Paul J. Never-Miss-A-Shot, pastor at the Lighthouse Church, who demonstrated to my satisfaction why he has his name: he spoke on cultural issues at the Lewis & Clark Center, liberally interspersing Christian testimony throughout! He’ll also be receiving some copies of Keystone for his people.

Another full day’s drive got us to the Waring home in Spearfish, South Dakota. NZ HEs Jesika and Catriona Shand from the Marlborough Sounds arrived in time for us all to hand-feed a herd of buffalo and for a typical American HE landmark: Michael Waring’s Graduation from Home School (that is, finishing the state’s compulsory attendance years), at which I was honoured as official guest speaker from overseas!

After driving through the night dodging dozens of live deer on the highway, we got to visit with Dr David Noebel, author of Understanding the Times and President of Summit Ministries near Colorado Springs. He gave us a couple of his other books and is looking forward to speaking to NZ HEs at the World Views Conference in Auckland next month (7-12 April).

When we were way out in the desert near the Mexican border, on the old Pony Express route, out there where Billy the Kid used to hang out, the Rockwood ground to a halt. The catalytic converter (smog control device) just burned out. Never did figure out why. Anyway, we were stranded there in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for the next five days. The phone book listed one church similar to ours, and the Lord used that phone call to channel much blessing and instruction our way.

Kim & Carol Watne picked us up and took us to University Presbyterian Church where we were welcomed by folks non-stop before and after the service. Pastor John Pickett not only fed our parched souls with strong, authoritative preaching, he also made sure we joined several new members at his home for lunch. People gave us keys to their cars, and we had keys to two private homes pressed into our hands so we could shower, do washing and use the computer while they were at work! The Watne’s were especially generous to us in this regard and also instructed us in their simple yet effective evangelistic methods: prayer, face-to-face contact and service.

University Presbyterian Church is also pro-home education! They too will be seeing some Keystones. In fact, Pastor John and others are investigating ways to make Christian secondary and university level education and qualifications a reality for anyone in the church. We spent a couple of days with HEs Eric & Laurel Tessier and family eating Mexican food and checking out second hand book shops!

An overnight drive got us to California in time for our first ever Thanksgiving holiday with my Mom and all of my sisters and their families, 22 of us in all: first time many of the cousins had ever seen their NZ rellies. As Christian HEs we tended to swamp them, as Christian HEs tend to do we noticed — we had six children while their families exactly reflected the national average of 2.3 each.

Near Bakersfield, California, we met up with Jonathan Lindvall of Bold Christian Living, a well-known Christian HE in the USA who thinks and lives well outside the box as he seeks to understand and consistently apply Biblical principles of family living. We joined two other HE families visiting his home that evening and talked state and national HE issues until late. Jonathan loaded us up with taped messages of his, and they’ll be reminded of NZ HEs regularly via Keystone.

Then we splurged and took ourselves to Knott’s Berry Farm Amusement Park. Gunfights, stunt shows, stage plays, wildlife demos (Jeremiah got to hold a large live Boa constrictor), shopping and horrifying roller coasters kept us going for nine hours solid. While in the LA area we were invited by the CHEA executive (Christian Home Educators’ Assn. of Calif.) to stop by the office.  We spent a few hours with one of the founders, Susan Beattie, and the Executive head, Phillip Trout. We now receive the CHEA magazine and they receive Keystone. While there are many parallels, the political and organisational development of HE in California is very different to that in NZ. Our National HE organisations and most support groups still hold together HEs from all philosophical lines, while it is common for USA groups to have statements of faith. And the perceived commercial / financial / legal pressures on HE organisations and individual HEs from curriculum and legal interests there is something NZ has not yet experienced.

At one point we took a two-day drive up north into the California gold rush area to meet some special HEs we’d encountered on the internet. Andy & Kendra Fletcher of Modesto encouraged us with their Christian fellowship and vision of celebrating “Reformation Day” on 31 October (the day Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenburg in 1517) rather than Halloween. Eric & Lisa Kjeldgaard of Angels Camp had a heart for fostering and adoption as well as a vision for home education. They introduced us to Mark Rushdoony of the Chalcedon Institute in Vallecito, the crowd I’d have to point to as the one whose publications got me thinking about HE in the first place. Had an hour with him and bought a stack of Chalcedon’s books.

North into Oregon where we spent an evening in Portland with the Welch family: Pat & Sue plus Heather, Holly and Brian: pioneer HEs and editors of The Teaching Home magazine for Christian HEs! Production of TTH has taken over several rooms of their house….just like us! We just had a blast together. Over dessert at 9pm we got onto used books. They mentioned that the largest second hand bookshop west of the Mississippi was right there in Portland….and that it was open until 11pm!!! Spoons clattered against bowls as we raced out the door together. We spent so much money in the next 90 minutes, the Welches were still worrying in emails to us a month later that we would be angry at them for taking us there! No way folks….we loved it!

Stan & Pyng Dokupil are HEs on the south end of Seattle, Washington, who I met a couple years ago. Somehow they had rounded up eight sleeping bags for us to take in the Rockwood all over the western USA, and now they loaned us their van to drive into the Canadian Rockies — in winter — so we could have Christmas with my sister Stacey and family (as the Rockwood had to stay behind). We had such a great time as we fellowshipped with them and several Christian families Saturday night and then attended their Chinese church, which fortunately for us had their monthly English language sermon that Sunday with an interpreter translating into Mandarin. We hope to see the Dokupils out here for a visit soon. They’ll also be keeping up with HE in NZ via Keystone.

Although I’d been in contact with several Christian HEs in British Columbia, Canada, before going there, we never met up with any of them. Why? Because we spent most of our time on the slopes of Apex ski resort on some of the best packed powder snow Barbara and I had ever skied on…the air was dry, sunny and still and measured minus 15° C. That was my first time on skis in 20 years, but the skills — and the thrills — all came back to me like it was yesterday!

Just before Christmas we arrived at Mrs Bell’s at the same time as Bill & Diana, Isaac, Michael & Melody Waring, all the way out from South Dakota! We had such a great time, these are such good friends, it took ages to say goodbye. As we actually started up the van to leave, the Warings broke into the action song of “Kia taha, kia toa”. Enough to make a Kiwi homesick, even though it was sung with American accents!

We are more convinced than ever that the legal, political, social and economic environments for HE in NZ have to be among the best in the world. We would also say that the political and social factors within the HE movement itself here in NZ are also to be treasured. There no longer appear to be any major divisions into camps, and HEs across the religious / philosophical spectrum as well as across the curriculum spectrum appear to be communicating a lot more freely, are working together quite happily and are respectful of each other’s differences. Kiwi HEs seem far less concerned about staying abreast of the state schooling system than many in the States or about gaining its (now rather questionable) qualificaitons. This and the very low level of competition here among resource suppliers for the dollars HEs are willing to spend keep the stress levels in NZ quite low in comparison. Long may the Lord allow these positive qualities to continue.

(Craig & Barbara Smith are founders of Christian Home Schoolers of NZ [CHomeS], founders and trustees of the Home Education Foundation and editors of Keystone and TEACH Bulletin.)

From Keystone Magazine
March 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 2
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

History

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History

Posted in Teaching Tips

One can bring order to the mass of knowledge a student must learn by studying history in chronological order and relating other fields of study to this core material. History is well suited for this role, because history is simply the account of everything humanity has done, thought, invented and dreamed about since the beginning of time. There are two ways to study history: 1) chronologically and 2) interest-directed. And of course these two can be combined.

To study history chronologically is to start in ancient times and work your way through to modern times. One idea is to divide history into four divisions:

Ancients BC 5000 to 400 AD

Medieval/Early Renaissance 400-1600 AD

Late Renaissance/Early Modern 1600-1850 AD

Modern Times 1850-Present Day

Consider spending one year on each division. If you begin to do this in first grade, the student will study all of history three times: in elementary school; in greater depth in middle school; and, finally, by using original sources in the high school years.

Interest-directed study is when people investigate areas of personal interest. This latter approach is probably more in tune with one of the goals of home education, to instill a love of learning into our children so they will be life-long learners on their own. A strict chronological study could well interfere with this process, but not necessarily, especially if the parent’s enthusiasm and interest in the subject is high.

For example, you have planned to spend a couple of months studying the ancient Greeks, then another few months studying Rome. Your boys, however, spend all of their spare time playing cowboys and Indians, while your girls are fascinated by the dresses of medieval princesses. Ancient history looks pretty boring to these children. So grab the teachable moment! Change your plans and investigate the American West of the 1800s, whose political system no longer included Royalty, connecting it with what was happening in NZ at that time, who still retained Royalty, and trace that Royal line back to medieval times, looking at their mode of dress and how different it was from the simple designs of ancient Greece and Rome, whose climates were much warmer. Plotting this all on a timeline adds a new visual dimension. (Many children will take to noting information or cut/draw-and-pasting illustrations on their own timelines as they come accross items of interest.) There: you’ve combined discipline, structure and schedule with sensitivity to the children’s interests and studied a lot more than history while you were at it!

From Keystone Magazine
January 2001 , Vol. VII No. 1
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz