Category Archives: Keystone Magazine

Teaching Other Peoples’ Children

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Teaching Other Peoples’ Children: Part 1

Posted in Over a Cuppa

Ian & Wendy Wilson and their only son Samuel, 9, (Names have been changed to protect privacy) home school in the Auckland area. Ian is a tradesman and Wendy is a trained teacher. She saw what could be done with children when you had time for individual attention in a country school where she had only 12 children and taught those same 12 for four years. Then she taught in a city school class room with 35 children. She saw the bright children stunted in their potential. She saw the average and slower children wilt for lack of individual attention because you can only do so much and sometimes even less when there is a disruptive child or two in the class. It was at this point that Wendy decided she would never want to put her own child into such a system.

So when she began home schooling Samuel, they were the only ones doing so in their part of town. Then Freddie, two years younger than Samuel, was brought around. Could Wendy help him out? He had been at school a whole year and he still could not even form the letters of the alphabet, and now his behaviour was deteriorating. OK, she agreed, but for only four mornings a week.

Later on another parent came along, whose marriage had broken up. She brought Conner who was exceptionally bright, and the same age as Freddie. During his second year at school Conner seemed only to be going backwards, and his behaviour was getting really bad. Wendy directed them elsewhere. But they came back, with tears in their eyes, please teach my son! Righty-o, we’ll give it a try.

It was on a Sunday night, three weeks before the Christmas holidays when their guard was down, when another set of parents, the husband being a workmate of Ian’s, rang up about their 13-year-old daughter! She was becoming unruly and rebellious. And she wasn’t learning anything. Both parents worked full time. Surely a girl of this age would not want to be in the same class as three tearaway boys half her age? Nevertheless, Kathy joined the Wilson home school for the three weeks to the end of the year.

Fortunately Samuel was able to work fairly independently. Freddie required independent attention. Conner went from being incompetent in most subjects to being a full year ahead in maths after only 6 months. The challenge was to keep enough work in front of him, he chewed through it at such a pace. Kathy had developed the habit of just stumbling along when she didn’t understand anything and would never ask for help. It turned out that she was well behind Samuel. Conner soon passed her. She was probably only behind Freddie in reading except that he was more aware of when he needed help. After eight years in school, she was six years behind! She had epilepsy which meant she wasn’t with it some times, but would tune in later on. Even so, after two weeks in the Wilson’s home school she herself declared she had learned more in those eight days than during a whole year at school. Her parents couldn’t believe the 180 degree turn-around in her attitude since she was now even cooking meals at home for when her parents returned from work. And she liked the home school situation, even though she was being taught, for the most part, the same things as the boys. At this stage the parents asked if Kathy could join the Wilson home school again next year. “OK, we’ll see what we can do.”

It was only meant to be four mornings a week. Wendy made it clear that the children’s education was ultimately the parents’ responsibility, not hers. She also explained her philosophy that education is life and that she was only helping out in the formal academic area. However, Wendy was taking Samuel to Music sessions and to the library on Mondays, Art on Tuesdays and Gymnastics on Thursdays, so the others came along as well. Wendy and Samuel really tried to keep Wednesday afternoons and Fridays just for themselves.

The competition, especially from Conner, was pushing the others along. They would all sit for the same reading/ discussion sessions in Bible, history, science or whatever and then turn around to their desks for individual work. But Conner turned out to be a hyperactive smart alec. He would taunt and tease the others because they weren’t as smart as he. Now if  Samuel cut up, Wendy could deal with him fairly smartly and effectively, being her own son. However, with other peoples’ children you have to take a different tack, especially when these other people do not share the same faith or value system as was the case here. Wendy finally mentioned it to Conner’s mum. . .in fact, she put the ball into her court . It appeared that Samuel had been complaining that if he behaved like Conner did, he’d get the strap. Conner’s mum subsequently announced, without explanation, that she had come for Conner’s books. She thanked Wendy for all she had done and then left. They haven’t been back.

Wendy does charge a daily rate, but it is less than the rate she has to pay the housekeeper to come in to do the chores she cannot get around to herself. Being a trained teacher has not been an advantage as far as she can tell. She does not want to change her home into a school, although they did have to build the desks, get a white board and make sure they started at the same time each morning. She of course doesn’t have the same amount of time to give exclusively to Samuel. He liked it when she did, especially because he could get his Mum to read to him, rather than him reading. He could get her to help him compose sentences rather than him working them out on his own. He has been forced to become more independent in his studies, which up to a point has been good for him.

Discipline is a bit of a problem, since all the children come from such different backgrounds, none of which match the Wilson’s. But they reckon they are sowing the seeds of faith in their visitors since their attitude toward “religion” is not the negative one it used to be.

All in all Wendy says there are definite positives and definite negatives to home schooling other peoples’ children. The issue which looms largest in her mind is to do the best she can for all the children. Anyone else thinking about teaching other peoples’ children at home should weigh up the pros and cons as they see them for their own situation.

Says Wendy, “Believing that discretion is the better part of valour, I don’t say ‘Yes’ initially, but, ‘We’ll give it a try for a few weeks.’ The fact that Samuel is an only child made us more open to the idea, and there have been definite advantages for him. However, the more children I take on needing a great deal of individual attention, the less effectively I do what I originally set out to do–educate my own child. At what stage does he become disadvantaged? It would be very comfortable to be brought well adjusted, capable children from good Christian homes, but that’s not how it is. So it becomes a question of how much service we can be of to others while still fulfilling our primary aim and responsibility.

“If we feel there is room for one or two more, should we only consider taking children from families who share our world view, or do we give others the opportunity to hear the gospel and fit in? We ourselves feel there is a place for the latter provided that such children are prepared to conform. Who can tell what God may do for our visitors? Our prayer as we begin our studies each day is that God would bless each of us in our learning so that we would live lives that honour and glorify Him. “

From Keystone Magazine
May 1995 , Vol. 1 No. 2
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

Home Schooling and the Millennium

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Home Schooling and the Millennium

Posted in Theologically Speaking

What we believe about the future, about the meaning of the word, “millennium”, will affect how we organise and direct our home schooling time and how we perceive what we are trying to accomplish.

The term “millennium” comes from one place in the Scriptures, Revelation 20:2-7. Among evangelical or born again Christians, it is probably safe to say that the most popular belief is that there will be a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ which He will institute upon His physical return to earth. He needs to return because the Gospel message will ultimately face defeat, save only a few and the world will continue its downward spiral without supernatural intervention. This view is known as Premillennialism, because Jesus comes before (or pre) His millennial reign.

There are actually two other views of the millennium. Amillennialism does not go along with the idea of a future literal 1,000-year reign of Christ on the throne. These “a-mils” (or no-1,000) see the 1,000 as a symbolic figure meaning a long time, that Christ reigns and has reigned and will always reign. His reign has become progressively stronger since the resurrection, but will only reach its zenith once Christ returns to judge the world and create the new heavens and the new earth.

Postmillennialists may believe that we are in the millennium now, again an indefinite long period of time which can be said to have begun in power with the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit at Pentecost, or that the Gospel rnessage will ultimately usher in a 1,000 year period of peace and prosperity, after which (post) Christ will return.

Premillennialists are eagerly awaiting the Lord’s return which most of the popularists tell us could happen at any moment, maybe this afternoon. Therefore we must be focusing our attention on evangelising the unreached millions and not get too involved in the more mundane chores and responsibilities of everyday life. With this time constraint, some Christian groups have been tempted to take short cuts with the Gospel and do all they can to attract people in while downplaying the sin bit which tends to put people off. We’ve all seen those churches which seem to be into the entertainment business these days. It comes fsom this desire to get people in at all costs, because the time is short. With the year 2,000 right around the corner, it is almost irresistable not to lean heavily toward the idea that a week of 1,000’s, from 4,000 BC when many believe God created the world, to AD 2,000 (6,000 years) is to be capped by the final Sabbath 1,000 years, or the Millennium of Christ’ s reign on earth.

But if this is the case, many of us will be right in the middle of our home schooling years when the year 2,000 arrives, with our children still living in our homes. So why are we slogging our guts out to give them the best academic, social, spiritual and character training we can if they will hardly ever get to use any of it if at all? We should get them saved and then pack up and get ourselves off to the mission field to save a few more souls from the coming fire.

Both the Amillennialist and the Postmillennialist see a lot of work to be done to bring the Gospel to bear on this sin-cursed world, not only to bring sinners into the Kingdom, but also to bring every thought and authority and power captive to obey tbe Lordship of Christ on the earth now before His physical return. They are not under the same time constraint as are most Premills. They see more to a life of service to Christ than just evangelism.

Now I would love to go into a deep comparison of Biblical passages and theological histories concerning the millennia1 views. I would love to show how our sinful natures exploit each of the views to our own selfish ends, bringing disrepute to Christ’s Name . Maybe another time. But let us look at how this affects our home schooling. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, let us look at our home schooling and see what is revealed about what we really truly believe regarding the millennium.

Most of us believe there is quite a future before us. We are training our children up to be men and women of God, who know the Scriptures and are not afraid to wield the sword of the Spirit, when faced with the enemy’s lies. In fact, we get quite excited when we think about the careers they are likely to have, the pioneering Christian work they are likely to do in so many areas of endeavour since they have been reared with a more consistent Biblical worldview than we have ourselves, the spouses they are likely to marry, the even more Godly and Christlike grandchildren they are likely to rear for us since their home schooling programme will be so much more advanced than ours. We are training them up to not just cope with this evil world, but to take a hold of it with both hands and with God’s help to change it round the way it should be, to turn the world upside down as did the early apostles. Isn’t this what the early church fathers did? The Reformers? The Puritans? The many revivalists of the 1700’s and 1800’s?

Hasn’t revival been our prayer for NZ and the world for many seasons now? Don’t we in fact see home schooling and Christian schools as a foundational step in this direction ? Don’t we envision our children being able to articulate the Faith and demonstrating to a crooked and perverse generation how the Word of God has the only right principles for individual, family, church, community, and civil behaviour? Maybe the home schooling movement is the revival we have been praying for.

We are actually people of victory, not defeat, are we not? We filled in the Certificate of Exemption form confident that we would win the Exemption. We took on home schooling confident that we could overcome all the hurdles and do a really good job. We stick at home schooling confident that it will provide spiritual and academic and social and character building benefits far superior to those represented by a School Certificate or Bursury. We write to MP’s confident that we will not allow them to intimidate us nor force unwanted restrictions upon us. We are willing, for the sake of our children’s futures, to do things we never would have dreamed ourselves doing a few years ago. We forget what lies behind and we strain forward to what lies ahead. In short, we too are concerned about serving God in more ways than just evangelism.

Brothers and Sisters, people of God: I get the sneaking suspicion that if an outsider were to study our lifestyles and then to categorize our views on the millennium according to what has been observed, none of us would qualify as Premillennialists!! Well, as for me, if the Lord comes this afternoon, I want to be found doing His will. If He doesn’t come for another 700 years, I want to do all I can to ensure my descendants then are found doing His will and living in a world that reflects His standards more than does the present one.

From Keystone Magazine
May 1995 , Vol. 1 No. 2
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

KEYSTONE Vol.I No.II May/June 1995

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To read the Keystone magazine click this link:

keystone-vol-1-no-2-may-june-1995websiteready.pdf

Contents:
(Regular Columns)
Editorial
Home Schoolers Did It (Features on Horne Schooled Kiwis) Dr. L. Cockayne
Subscription Information
Puzzle
Over a Cuppa Teaching Other Peoples’ Children
Tough Questions People Throw Your Way
Q.  No. 1: Should We Police/Review Ourselves?
Q.  No. 2: Should We Accept the Supervisory Allowance?

Theologically Speaking Definitions & History of Theological and Ecclesiatical Terms and their Relevance to Home Schoolers) The Millennium
Statist & Professional Trends (Christian Cornmmt on Current Issues)
Excerpt from Select Committee Report on Children at Risk
A Review of the Committee’s Recommendations
Action Station
CHomeS Roundup
Home Schooling T-shirts
Discounted Books
Trading Post

Fundamentalism

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Fundamentalism

Posted in Theologically Speaking

Here is a word that has taken a beating over the years, so much so that serious Christians are not sure they want to be tagged with this label. It began as a conservative theological movement among American Protestants early this century in opposition to “modernism” and other schools of thought, such as evolutionism, higher Biblical criticism and studies in comparative religions.The original idea was to protect the essential doctrines (the fundamentals) of the Christian faith from the eroding effects of modern thought. Such doctrines include the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and deity of Christ, His substitutionary atonement, the Second Coming, and the authority and inerrancy of the Bible. The Fundamentals , a series of 12 small books published from 1910 to 1915, and financed by Lyman Stewart, a wealthy oilman of Southern California, were sent to some three million theological students and Christian workers. In 1920 Curtis Lee Laws and associates within the Northern (USA) Baptist Convention called themselves “The Fundamentalist Fellowship” partly in response to the rnessage of the books, and partly because they, as moderates, also felt the modernists were surrendering the “fundamentals” of the Gospel, namely, the sinful nature of man, his inability to be saved apart from God’s grace, etc.

A more militant conservative voice was raised in 1923 with the formation of the Baptist Bible Union. They broadened their cause to fight against evolutionary teaching.

Among Presbyterians, the conservative position was championed by J. Gresham Machen of Princeton Theological Seminary. But the mainstream Presbyterian Church tried him for rebellion against superiors, and thus evolved the Orthodox Presbyterian and Bible Presbyterian denominations. At this time fundamentalism was known as a conservative theological movement made up of militants, moderates such as Laws and scholarly types such as Machen. Unfortunately, due to the tactics of certain leaders, the fundamentalist image eventually became stereotyped as closeminded, belligerent and separatistic.

In the 1950’s a growing number of conservatives moved to dump the fundamentalist label for “new evangelical”. Their hope was to preserve and defend the Biblical Gospel while maintaining intellectual respectability, social concern and a cooperative spirit. This movement, evangelicalism, has been largely successful and is considered the heir of the spirit and purpose of the original fundamentalists.

Today the media enjoy branding anyone who sticks to their convictions and refuses to indulge in the modern politically correct art of compromise as a “right-wing, militant, free market, fundamentalist, ignorant, religious bigot”. So although our Christian roots may go deep into fundamentalism and our religious convictions closely parallel those of the original fundamentalists, we may choose to shun that label because of the way some unwise Christians, the media and the secular population at large have hijacked the term and twisted its original meaning. Since fundamentalism has also been attached to muslim and other religious terrorists, most of us are quite happy to be known as evangelicals.

As always, we need to be constantly endeavouring to conform ourselves and our children to the expectations of God’s Word (which never changes) rather than to the expectations of men or of some man-made label (which does change). The term”fundamentalist” today tends to evoke a picture of someone ready to smash opposition and unilaterally set up his idea of the way things should be in order to save what is left of our society and culture. This is the same as a revolutionary. We will want our children to clearly know and understand that salvation is not by the revolution of men, but by the regeneration of God’s Holy Spirit. Just like the leaders of the Reformation, we must be reformers rather than revolutionaries. We should reform ourselves first and then our families and then others as we have opportunity until we all conform to Christ.

Sadly, for all its history, the term “fundamentalist” today seems to convey more of the idea of a revolutionary than that of a reformer.

From Keystone Magazine
March 1995 , Vol. 1 No. 1
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

“Home schooling” or “Home education”?

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“Home schooling” or “Home education”?

Posted in Over a Cuppa

The term “home schooling” will virtually always conjure up an image of children at the kitchen table or at desks awkwardly arranged around the living room with Mum-turned-teacher standing in front lecturing from a book or trying to illustrate something on a jury-rigged white board-on-easel arrangement. In other words, a home school is just conventional schooling taking place in the home. This is how we started out nine years ago. At their desks with assignments before them and me prowling behind them, my children’s attention span would hover around the 12 minute mark. One day it was more like a 4 to 5 minute attention span, and I got so frustrated with it all, that I just flopped on the sofa, told the kids to come sit on my knee and I’d read some history to them. An hour and a half later I was running out of breath and suffering a parched tongue when it dawned on me that the once fidgety brats were quiet and attentive angels. When I would stop reading they would call for more. I wondered….

For several months we were driving up and down the country with our business, dragging the entire family along every time. At 3am barrelling down the Desert Road, the children couldn’t sleep, so asked for a story. I began to tell about the drive I had done through another desert years ago in Afghanistan and from there talked about the Russian invasion and from there into an outline of Communist political history all perfectly designed to cause 9 and 10 year olds to drop off pretty quickly. But after a good hour of that, when I paused for breath, they chorused as one for me not to stop just as it was getting interesting , but to tell them more.

Many little events like these caused me to come to the conclusion that “home schooling” is the wrong word. We should be talking about “home education” since we are educating our children in everything we do, 24 hours a day, not just schooling them for a set period five days a week.

The old saying that much more is “caught” than is actually “taught” is so true as your children are able to observe you for so many hours and in so many situations.

But there is something special about a parent speaking with his or her children. They’ve known that voice since before they were born. It is a voice so intimately connected with comfort and security and all things good, they just naturally love to hear it. This is a special bond that we parents as educators should exploit to the max: Read the children’s text books with them.. ..go over their assignments with them a little more than you need to….do the work with them whenever you can so that you are doing it together rather than you making them do it on their own….make the learning situation less formal by lying on the sofa or sitting outside or being a bit unorthodox. One whole year our main teaching method was for all of us to sit around the table and I would read and explain the subject matter to three different age groups (7, 10 & 11) with a fourth listening in while they drew and painted and played with toys. The subject we spent longest on was atomic structure and basic chemistry. To this day we all remember that period as the most enjoyable.. . .and they can all still remember the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

Having said that, my four have also always enjoyed having their own desk and private space and set times and set assigmnents. … as long as they clearly understood what was expected and could see that they could manage it. There is a certain amount of basic skills that must be imparted, and the practice that goes with it needs set times: things like learning to read, handwriting and composition skills and basic maths computations. But for the rest you can capitalise on those “teachable moments” when they ask a question about something out of the blue, or you are so excited about a subject they are quite happy to listen to you go on and on way over time, or you are watching the cat have her kittens, or there is a particularly brilliant sunset, or one of them asks you to show how the ironing is done. One of the great advantages of home education is being flexible to exploit–or even to engineer–those “teachable moments”.

From Keystone Magazine
March 1995 , Vol. 1 No. 1
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz