You Reap What You Sow

The Rev. Edmund Opiz said, “There is something wrong with our system of education because there is something wrong with our theory of education.” Because the NZ state education system, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1877, was based on a faulty theory of education, it is by definition a faulty system of education and is now producing a faulty product. This is known as reaping what you sow. It does take time for what is sown to germinate and grow to maturity when its fruit will be clearly recognized. The problems within the NZ education scene today have their roots way back in that Education Act of over 120 years ago.

For example, Section 77 of the Act, referring to primary schools, says, “the teaching shall be entirely of a secular character.” It has been said that originally the word “secular” meant “non-sectarian”, the understanding being that the education would be Christian nonetheless. (I have been unable to find this definition in any dictionary from any time period, so would suggest this represents a coup for the unbelievers of the time.) But having endeavoured to sow this neutral sort of idea toward Christian doctrine into the Act, the term “secular” has grown and matured to mean something very different. “In the absence of any ruling by the courts,” writes then Minister of Education David Lange on 23 February 1988, (and later confirmed by Minister of Education Lockwood Smith in a letter dated 15 April 1993) “the department has in practice taken the term secular) to mean ‘without any form of religious instruction or observance’.” Religion can be mentioned or referred to but religious instruction or observance is out. That certainly does not describe a Christian approach to education. It is an approach which sees Christianity as a separate and optional field of study. Maths, English, History and Science can all be totally understood and mastered without any element of Biblical Christian instruction or observance. In other words, the human mind can comprehend these things without God’s help. This is the humanist approach.

The Humanist Approach

It is, in fact, exactly the same approach recommended to Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. She was presented with a sort of neutral approach toward God’s command regarding the fruit of the forbidden tree. She fell for it. Take what God said, sure, but don’t limit yourself to that. The serpent gave some interesting alternative ideas about the fruit, and Eve even added some of her own. (First mistake.) Instead of remaining totally submissive to God’s unerring, infallible Words on the subject, she placed those Holy Words alongside these new alternatives from both the serpent and herself. She treated them all the same. (Second mistake.) She judged their merits according to her own mind. (Third mistake.) And her own human mind made its own choice. (Fourth mistake.) This is the humanist approach. Note the process. Collect as many facts, opinions and ideas as you can, regard them as all having equal value, weigh them up and make your choice. Note also the consequences. Absolute disaster for the entire human race.

This is precisely the approach taken today in the state classroom, with one important difference. The child is still presented with a large amount of information and encouraged to make his own choice. But because of the secular clause in the Education Act, Christian concepts of absolutes, right and wrong, accountability to God, life after death are not included in the information presented. The original serpent himself didn’t have it so easy. He would definitely approve.

The humanist teaches that maths is a human invention, whereas Christians know it is God’s invention and man has discovered it. The difference is that as a human invention, it is tentative and can be changed and modified to suit. Absolutes are not necessary. Two plus two does not have to equal four when we modify the system. The problem humanists run up against, however, is that this “human invention” of maths matches all of nature so perfectly and is even consistently applicable in outer space and on other planets. If it is simply a human device, there is no logical explanation for this. Why, it is almost as if everything had a common origin and were tied together in some kind of harmonius unity. Morris Kline, a prolific modern writer about mathematics, says, “It behooves us…to learn why…mathematics has proved to be so incredibly effective…Mathematics is man-made… (Yet) some explanation of this marvelous power is called for.” Richard Courant, formerly head of the mathematics department at what used to be the world’s center for mathematics, the University of Gottingen, remarked, “That mathematics, an emanation of the human mind, should serve so effectively for the description and understanding of the physical world is a challenging fact that has rightly attracted the concern of philosophers.” Albert Einstein summarised the problem thus: “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”

In English the humanist will by and large dispense with spelling and grammar as long as one is able to communicate. Accuracy is not a desirable goal, as it tends to reflect the idea of absolutes, an attribute of God which humanists would rather avoid. His method of dealing with absolutes is to shoot himself in the foot by making the absolute declaration, “There are no absolutes.”

The humanist approach to history is to assume the meaninglessness of the whole line of events, viewing them as chance unrelated happenings. In fact, history has been dumped in favour of the “value-free” approach to human events known as “social studies”. Because one society and its values are just as good as any other, we will have a look at the lot and get ideas of different life values which we may decide to adopt for our own lives.

The humanist approach does have a morality. It is like a smorgasbord. You pick and choose your own values and standards, you chop and change them according to your situation at the time. And so in sex education and AIDS education and Keeping Ourselves Safe Programmes, children are given “all” the “facts” about contraceptives, discuss “safe sex”, are told where to get free advice and supplies, how to obtain an abortion and where to find friendly, non-judgmental people to counsel you in this area, what constitutes a sexual approach, incest, exhibitionism, molestation and rape. “Facts” such as “incest, rape and sex outside of marriage are wrong” are not presented because they reflect Christian absolutes, and our education system is legally required to be “entirely of a secular character”. They will say that certain things are “inappropriate”, but that finally the child has to decide for himself. The humanist approach is to give the child all the “facts” (as they see the “facts”) and then encourage the chld to make his own “responsible” decisions. But Christians know that until the child has had developed and trained and disciplined into him a moral framework with which to judge the facts, he is unable to make responsible decisions, because he is unable to process all the facts according to any consistent or logical frame of reference. He can only arrange the facts as he would food from a smorgasbord, heaping on some that appeal and leaving others on the side. That’s why so many young peoples’ lives today resemble a dog’s breakfast.

The Christian Approach

The Christian approach is described and contrasted to the humanist approach throughout Scripture. Proverbs 3:5 is a very succinct summary: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” See also Isaiah 1:18-20, Psalm 1, Colossians 2:8, 3:1-3, I John 2:15- 17, Romans 8:1-11, 12:1-2, Galatians 5:16-26, Ephesians 4:17- 24, John 3:16-21. God’s words and man’s words are intrinsically different. One is the Creator speaking. The other is the thing created speaking. “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'” (Isaiah 55:8-9.)

Educationalists have warned us about trying to balance the two. Speaking of the U.S. Government’s policy of taking a neutral rather than a Christian approach to education, A.A. Hodge wrote the following back in 1887: “It is obvious that the infinite evils resulting from the proposed perversion of the great education agency of the country cannot be corrected by the supplementary agencies of the Christian home, the Sabbath school or the church. This follows not only because the activities of the public schools are universal and that of all the other agencies are partial, but chiefly because the Sabbath school and the church cannot teach history or science, and therefore cannot rectify the anti-Christian history and science taught by the public schools. And if they could, a Christian history and a Christian science on the one hand cannot coalesce with and counteract an atheistic history and science on the other. Poison and its antidote together never constitute nutritious food. And it is simply madness to attempt the universal distribution of poison on the ground that other parties are endeavouring to furnish a partial distribution of an imperfect antidote.”

Note how Mr Hodge assumed a neutral approach was of necessity an anti-Christian approach. This is so. There are, after all, only two approaches.

The Christian approach is very unfashionable. It is intolerant of that which is wrong. It is one-eyed, narrow minded, biased toward the Scriptures, simple concerning evil and wise in what is good. It is black and white. It is divisive since it recognises and looks for right vs. wrong, saved vs. lost, good vs. bad, moral vs. immoral.

Critics say the Christian is out of touch with reality and that Christian education shelters children from the real world. Well, not long ago I was reading some Creation Science literature and discovered that my old childhood friend the Brontosaurus is worse than just extinct….he never even existed in the first place. Brontosaurus is nothing more than the result of over-zealous paleontologists and museum exhibit staff slapping together bones before determining for sure that they all represented the same creature. But any educator who does not view the child from the Christian perspective is just like those over-zealous paleontologists in that they compose, and teach to, a philosophical definition of a child which doesn’t exist.

They say that the child is an animal, a product of blind, chance, meaningless evolution and survival of the fittest. Although we may see a lot of this survival of the fittest philosophy in action on the state school playground, the Christian approach acknowledges that the child was created by God for a particular purpose.

The humanist believes the child is born neutral, a blank tape, or perhaps even basically good. All the evil is learned from society, especially from those who hold intolerant, black and white, judgemental views and superstitions….code phrases meant to refer to Christians. Christians know that the child is not neutral but is a born sinner in need of discipline, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness since it does not come naturally.

So although it was a shock to discover that Brontosaurus is a type of dinosaur that never even existed, it is even more shocking to discover that so many NZ classroom teachers are tailoring their teaching methods, class objectives and subject content to a type of child that likewise doesn’t even exist! The net result is surely to be that our children will graduate as a herd of functional Brontosauri, believing that they are “children” the like of which exist only in the theories of evolution-believing secular humanists. How can such children ever hope to cope in the real world when they are so sheltered from reality in the classroom? Exactly who is sheltering whom?

Conclusion

What is the difference between humanist and Christian education? “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,'” (Psalm 14:1), while the humanist educator, as in Mr Lange’s definition of “secular”, effectively says it out loud! “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments” (Psalm 111:10). Yet with God legislated out of the state classroom, the students who sit in that classroom haven’t got a chance to grow in true wisdom. What is the concerned parent to do? He cannot hope to debrief his children and undo the damage done after each day in the state school. He must now have his turn to make a responsible decision. Either shell out for a private Christian school, or really do his whole family a favour and teach them at home. Home education is growing rapidly in NZ, among Christians and non-Christians alike. As Christian parents begin to reap the fruits of humanist education in the lives of their own precious children, they realise that Christian education doesn’t cost….it pays!

At all costs, parents must demand the right for themselves to determine what kind of education their own children shall have. Otherwise, just as Professor J. Gresham Machen warned back in 1926, “If liberty is not maintained with regard to education, there is no use trying to maintain it in any other sphere. If you give the bureaucrats the children you might just as well give them eveything else.” “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21).

From Keystone Magazine
November 1998 , Vol. IV No.III
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. — Romans 3.9

In the first two chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul very clearly demonstrates how the whole of mankind is under the influence of sin. The Gentile world, he says, has been reduced to worshipping the creature rather than the Creator by idol worship. Not only this, but that residual knowledge of the true God, built into every human being by God, has actually been suppressed by man in his native state. This knowledge is never enough to save a man or woman, because salvation is found in no one else, and there is no other name in the world given among men than the name of Jesus by which we must be saved (Acts 4.12).

But what about the people of God? Are they still sinful by nature? Paul argues that they are, in Romans 2. It is not enough just to have the law of God he argues, you have to keep it as well, and in that the people of God also fall short. This is our own experience too – the good we want to do, we are not able to do.

It is not difficult to believe the Scriptures when they tell us of the inherent sinfulness of man, because it is something we can see all around us. Yet challenges to this teaching have been made and still continue. One says that human nature is basically good, and that it is just a matter of a decent upbringing, proper education and a good start in life to make people into honest and upright citizens. This idea is very popular, and has been in some shape or form a dominant idea in Western culture for about 200 years. Two world wars, decades of genocide and dispersion of whole peoples has done little to shake the faith in the goodness of human nature.

Another is the false doctrine of perfectionism. This tells people that Christians can become perfect in this life, or if that is too hard to swallow, then at least very good. Good enough, in fact, to be unaware of having sinned for long lengths of time. Now it is undoubtedly true that Christians can and should grow in holiness, but even the regenerate, converted people of God retain enough of the old nature in this life to give the lie to the doctrine of perfection. Only the grace of God is strong enough to overcome human sinfulness.

When we are asked for the umpteenth time about how our children are socialised, do we snap or return with a really sarcastic reply? Do we not remember that we too are ignorant of other facets of life and that our ignorance is a source of frustration to others? When relations critisize your home education efforts for being (what they perceive to be) disorganised and disjointed, do we get angry and defensive, or go smug on them and look down our noses? This is sin.

Some of us will remember quite well how daft we used to think home education was. But we recognise now our faulty attitude was due to ignorance and misconceptions and not having had anyone explain and demonstrate both the practical and Scriptural commendations. Let each of us be the one to gently and lovingly lift the veil from the minds of those around us who still view home education as some fringe movement.

Do we let our children’s childishness get us angry and frustrated? What do we expect from them? Is it more than they are physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually able to cope with? They are little sinners with a whole bundle of foolishness bound up in their hearts which must be removed (Proverbs 22:15). Modelling sinful behaviour (impatience, yelling, name-calling) back at them is not going to help.

Sure we have to tend to the toddler and the washing and the lunch preparation, so why can’t those kids just do their assignments like we told them? Well, maybe our homes can get as distracting and as noisy as a classroom making it next to impossible for them to concentrate. Maybe we, at times, lose sight of the most valuable opportunity that home education affords: to spend vast amounts of time interacting with our children, rather than expecting them to spend vast amounts of time interacting with work books and bits of paper.

While they are doing assignments, what are we doing? Housework? Changing the baby’s nappies? Gardening? Maybe it would be more profitable for our students (and our total educational programme) for them to be helping us do those things. Do they really NEED to be doing that bookwork? Then maybe we could do it WITH them, enriching the task and enhancing the learning with our own life’s store of wisdom and experience. Maybe the washing and gardening can wait until later as part of P.E. or Home Economics or Horticulture? Maybe we can have a late lunch.

We no longer have a show home. It is part of the price we pay for our home education curriculum materials. One of the more expensive resources is not only costly, but is hard to find, and we use lots of it for our programme every day. It is called time. Time spent with our children means time NOT spent with the other (perishable) things that clutter up our lives. We are sinners when we value our things more than we value our children.

This is not to say we are not to value things…..the seventh Commandment assumes the propriety and necessity of personal private property. The Lord’s parables commend good stewardship of physical property. But there is such a thing as getting our priorities out of order and then getting impatient and frustrated with the children (a top priority) when their requirements interfere with our attention to our property (a low priority).

Yes, we know we are frail, imperfect creatures. In fact, we do at times feel deserving of pity. We do receive, and desperately need, the Lord’s pity (Psalm 103:13), for if He were to deal with us as our sins deserve, we would be lost (Psalm 130:3). Do we then extend such pity, or even as much as empathy and understanding, to the unbelievers with whom we have to deal? Are they not even MORE worthy of pity? If we are frail and imperfect, we who are indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit, who have a knowledge of the Scriptures, who are upheld in prayer by other saints, how about those whose very lives are suspended above the fiery furnace by the thinnest of threads and every moment in danger of plunging forever into its abyss should the Lord remove for an instant His mercifully sustaining hand?

Well did our Lord bid us to pray for our enemies, for they need it more than we! When we feel put down by callous neighbours, slighted by disapproving relations or intimidated by Review Officers….it should remind us of our most privileged position in Christ, and stir us to send up fervent prayers for their salvation.

May He Who has called us from the dominion of darkness into His marvellous light guide us into conduct so becoming to the Gospel, that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven.

 A home schooling situation to watch out for is teaching someone else’s children. You may foster a stranger’s child long-term; you may look after a relative’s child long-term; you may adopt a child; you may home school another home schooler’s child(ren) on a casual or regular basis in certain subjects. As commendable as these actions are, they will cause definite drawbacks to your home school that must be soberly considered before making this kind of arrangement an everyday lifestyle. 

One of the major advantages of home schooling one’s own children is the tutoring aspect, the one-to-one time with each child. This is immediately compromised and possibly sacrificed altogether when teaching foster children at home. Why is this? There is so much you have to learn about this foster student, how he thinks, his learning style, his attention span, his current understanding of every topic under study, his emotional and mental and intellectual maturity levels and abilities, his learning gaps, etc., etc. These are things you often know or have observed and internalised in your own children without, it would seem, any special effort to do so. (Incidentally, it is this aspect of parenting, the depth of understanding of one’s own children, which makes parents so well qualified to teach their own children in the first place.) In addition, foster children often have their own set of problems arising from the reasons leading to their need to be fostered.

You now have to spend extra time with him trying to figure all these things out. And it takes time for him to learn how to fit into your scheme of things, which may prove impossible to do in the end because of his personal makeup and the totally new set of group dynamics now at work within your family.

However, homeschooling a foster child is an unparalleled opportunity to influence, love, nurture, train and discipline another life for the sake of the Gospel and the Glory of our God and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This writer was home schooling his four children when our family became co-guardians and custodians of an 8-year-old boy. This boy, whom we shall call Sam, had been to public schools until we got him. His attention span was 30-45 seconds. My children had attention spans of 60-90 minutes. We would often sit and draw or play with leggo, while I read science or history or geography to the group, stopping frequently to discuss words & concepts and to ask questions or follow tangents. Sam found this intolerable at first.

When he first arrived I gave Sam a page of simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems as he told me he was doing all of these at school. He finished this assignment in record time. Upon examination it was found that all the answers were wrong. I pointed this out and he was unable, it seemed, to grasp what I was saying. In fact, he just became frustrated and declared, “I don’t understand,” as he withdrew into a foul mood, arms crossed, head down, brows knitted tighly together. It turned out that he was accustomed to filling in the blanks, but had no idea that sometimes the red marks alongside the returned assignment meant the answer was wrong. He had no understanding of place values, no idea of how to add and carry or subtract and borrow. To add 24 + 35 he would add 2 + 4 + 3 + 5 and wonder what was wrong with his answer of 14. Even after working with him for 8 months, it was simply too taxing on his concentration and logic to arrange maths skills in a logical sequence to figure how much change he should get after buying several items. He had a twisted self-image, occasionally saying he was no good. His mental, intellectual and emotional levels were more like my 5-year-old, yet he was older by a few months than my own 8-year-old son. When an officer from the Education Review Office in Wanganui came to review our home education, she was surprised to learn that Sam was 8, as she had decided he was 6 or less after observing all of the children for 30 minutes or so at close quarters. We therefore assigned him a place between our 5- and 8-year-olds in the family pecking order. He never accepted that and began to devise ways to victimise our 8-year-old, whose place in the pecking order Sam was determined to usurp.

To effectively teach him anything at all required my full attention. I was reduced to giving assignments to my other children and hoping they could cope on their own. They resented this straight away as it was both robbing them of tutoring time and interrupting the normally quick flow of their own learning curves. Although we had always thought that our home school was pretty relaxed and casual, we discovered that to this product of the state schools, it was quite intense, unbearably so in fact. To accomodate this new addition, our whole home education process had to be both radically modified and slowed down. Now I know for sure what an impossible job school teachers face.

We considered sending Sam to school while continuing to home school our own. We decided that was unacceptable. It would make Sam seem to be a second class citizen in our family, make us look like we were not that convinced about home schooling, and then most of all it would just import straight into our home some of the problems of the state schools, problems we were determined our children would not have to endure.

Sam lives elsewhere now. I loved the challenge he presented and the progress we made. I believe we helped him form a Biblical self image to replace the hopeless one he had. We were with him when he prayed to the Lord for forgiveness and salvation. He made so many very big changes to his behaviour, that we find it amazing as we look back over the time. His attitudes were much more difficult to change; in particular, we were unable to shift his attitude of resentment to his place in the pecking order. Our own children’s attitude hardened toward him as he victimised one in particular, and as his simply being there so completely changed our family’s group dynamics. We continued to foster children, preschoolers for short-terms, and have since adopted two full siblings through the contacts made while fostering. Being adopted, these two could not be any more a real part of our family, although they are without question wired up differently than our natural offspring. But I would never try to homeschool again any foster child older than my youngest.

Taking on the job of home schooling a foster child is one thing, but how about home schooling the child of a friend or neighbour? Some of the possible problems are the same. In addition it may well cause your own home school to become more like the classroom you wanted your child to avoid in the first place. Larger numbers, less time for personal tutoring, children with different backgrounds pose all sorts of problems for an otherwise homogeneous and more-or-less harmonious family who understand each other and know how to work together. If these new children have been to public schools, then there will be all those negative aspects which have to be weeded out, which may or may not be entirely possible.

A few years ago, just after Sam had left us, I attended the Christian Home Educators of California’s annual conference at the Disneyland Hotel in Los Angeles. There were 4,000 conferees (parents only!), and each elective hour had 15 different workshops plus six more that were demonstration workshops of commercial resource people. I attended one workshop about home schooling other people’s children, but all they covered was taking in friends or neighbours for pay. They had ALL the typical problems…..chewing gum stuck under their dining table, kids carving their initials into their dining room chairs, lesson plans and marking every night….just like a school classroom! One woman there asked about home educating foster children. Nobody knew anything. So up went my hand, and suddenly all chairs were turned around and we had another workshop in progress. The other workshop attendees wanted to come to grips with really influencing a child who needed foster care, not with how to run a classroom. There is a place for serving others by tutoring their children, and I reckon we will need to see a lot more of it as the state system continues to fall apart. Just be aware of what any such service for others does to the prospects of your own children’s educational potential.

For about a year, for only one morning a week, I tutored mine plus two like-minded, like-standard children of close Christian friends. These sessions were a real pleasure. Being all close and alike in background and expectations made the teaching a real joy and a nice variation for all concerned. But I couldn’t see us doing that any more than one morning a week, otherwise my own programme with my own children would have been compromised. If I were paid for teaching others, that would be a whole different story, as then I would be a de facto professional rather than a volunteer amateur. But even then I would still have to determine whether my objectives in home schooling my children were being served or severed by home schooling these others.

My advice would be to know for certain what your own personal objectives are for home schooling your own children. You must ask whether taking on another home schooler, either a foster child or the child of a friend, will help or hinder the fulfilment of those objectives. Be tough, be convinced of your calling before God, and be unafraid to say “No” to even the tear-jerking requests from both foster agencies or close friends.

From Keystone Magazine
July 1998 , Vol. IV No.II
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz