Tag Archives: parents

Surely you home educators cannot expect the rest of us to accept that love for your child and an impressive library is a valid substitute for a teaching degree?

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Surely you home educators cannot expect the rest of us to accept that love for your child and an impressive library is a valid substitute for a teaching degree?

Posted in Tough Questions

Ok, ok, I can already hear all you veteran home educators out there choking and gagging at this one. But let’s break it down and examine it.

The stated issue is that trained and certified teachers are obviously superior teachers to untrained parents. The assumptions behind this are many: that certified teachers are far more knowlegable than parents about what constitutes education; that the money and resources behind certified teachers in registered schools is clearly superior to what all but the more financially endowed parents can provide; that the entire school environment, from dedicated Ministry personnel and curriculum developers to textbook providers to overworked school administrators and board of trustee members to the enthusiastic teachers at the coalface and the brilliant variety of peers within the typical classroom, that all these things combine to provide a palpably well-rounded and comprehensive educational experience the like of which an isolated mum at home with only some out-dated School Certificate passes could never hope to match.

These assumptions, however, are all false for they are based on the false foundational idea that politically conceived, taxpayer-funded, secular and compulsorily-attended mass schooling is equivalent to even a basic education. Leaving aside completely the argument as to whether Christians should allow their children to attend secular schooling institutions, let us examine the simple logistical advantages of one mum teaching a small number of her own beloved children at home compared to the conventional classroom situation.

Most of us are aware of cases where teacher certification has not meant the same as teacher competency. In addition, there is the almost unrecognised fact that classroom logistics can make even the best teacher’s efforts an exercise in futility: over-crowded classrooms, lack of discipline, unsupportive administration, inability to give needed individual attention, time restraints which force them to move on to new material before the previous material is comprehended. Teacher certification does not ensure a quality education. In fact, many students who do not catch on at school must go home and get their parents to help out. There are already many parents out there who do the real teaching at night after school while the certified teacher gets the credit.

Home education is a tutoring or mentoring situation. One mum can give her full attention to one or two or three children at a time for whatever period of time is practical and comfortable for them all. Or she can focus on just one child for a piece of time and move to the next and then to the other. Overall she will have far, far more significant one-to-one time than what occurs in the typical classroom where the teacher can expect no more than ONE MINUTE of significant one-to-one time per pupil per day. Because of this the home school mum can cover a vastly increased measure of subject matter in the same length of time even though she may be dealing with a range of ages, possibly including a toddler and a newborn. She can assess more exactly whether each child has grasped the concepts or mastered the skills for she is observing the child for most of the waking day, is far more concerned for the child’s welfare and future prospects and is intimately in tune with the child, being her own flesh and blood, than even the most highly trained and skilled professional teacher could ever possibly be. The enthusiasm, commitment, love, vision, intimate knowledge, and one-to-one tutoring situation of the home school mum, combined with the God-given heart-desire of the child for its mother, ensures that the average home education teacher/parent is starting with vast logistical and relational advantages the classroom teacher can only dream about.

So what does a true and useful education consist of? For the school teacher it is in a politically determined mix of subjects pitched a certain way for a classroom full of children from all sorts of backgrounds and filtered through legal and other socio-political parametres with the aim of producing an outcome in students’ lives which matches a stated objective in a Ministerial document. If the powers that be decide a change is necessary, it will be a good seven years before the drafts are formulated, trialled, assessed, redrafted, approved, adopted and actually introduced and implemented. By then of course the initial problem has mutated beyond recognition and the target children have passed through the system and a new set are being served a special mix designed for a situation and a time which no longer exist.

For the home educating mum it consists of those basic skills plus general and specific knowledge she knows are required to get on in the world: she and her husband and extended family talk about what it’s like out there to be a worker, an employer, a homemaker, a spouse, a parent. They know the character qualities employers want, that they have always wanted throughout history, and that neither School Certificate exams nor university degrees impart those qualities. Christian parents in particular are individually crafting unique children to serve the God of the Universe according to the syllabus He has provided in the Scriptures. They are not that impressed with the state’s attempts through the schools to improve children, the country’s most valuable resource (right up there next to chilled lamb and green-lipped mussels), or with the socialists’ attempt to inculcate the simplistic non-judgmental vision of tolerating every perversion under the sun, somehow making our global village a better place in which to live.

The home educating mum knows that rooms, desks and books are dead things. It is imparting life from her heart to her child that makes an education. The most important lessons in her life she did not learn in the classroom but in the school of hard knocks. This is what she imparts. The children are not left interminably to interact with books or CD ROMs, but are encouraged to interact with mum and dad and other siblings and people in the real world of the home, the marketplace, the workplace and the community. They don’t only do word problems from a text book, but do real-life problems like working out the week’s menu from the available budget.

In short, marriage, parenthood and homemaking are probably the best teaching credentials one could have.

From Keystone Magazine
March 2000 , Vol. VI No. 2
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

“Speed” for Kids

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“Speed” for Kids

Posted in Statist and Professional Trends

To demonstrate the kind of hold the school system has on parents and children, here is disturbing bit from the Sunday Star-Times of 31 March 1996. A top psychiatrist is calling for a national investigation into the amount of a drug known as “speed” being given to hyperactive children to quieten them down. John Werry, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Auckland University, said …. it was worrying that every time an overseas expert visited NZ to talk about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) there was an upsurge in cases.

We get a whole bunch of parents knocking on our door and saying their kids have ADD and need Ritalin,” he said….”The most reason for parents coming along is because the school has complained, the child is unable to sit still on a mat and things like that,” he said.

Normal active fun-loving kids wanting to be mentally and sensory stimulated so that they can learn about their world and move toward fulfilling their God-given task of having dominion over the earth have to sit through brain-dead, non-sexist, non-confrontational, non-competitive, value-free, politically-correct activities of total irrelevance. No wonder they start climbing the walls. So experts suggest they drug the kids to keep ’em in line. We have also had parents come to us to find out about home schooling after the teachers have suggested to the parents they may want to keep their troublesome children out of school permanently. We cannot thank the Lord sufficiently for leading us to rescue our children OUT of such chaos. Please continue to pray for our brothers and sisters who are still blinded to all this and who continue to send their children to these state institutions.

School Gate Chaos

An article in Education Today of August 1996, promoting the Kidsafe Week 96 of September 7-13 as New Zealand’s first national safety week devoted to child safety, had its focus on child accidents. In NZ each year 20 child pedestrians die and a further 350 are hospitalized. “Pedestrian injuries are the biggest killer of our primary school aged children — responsible for more child deaths than all infectious diseases combined. Since many pedestrian injuries occur in and around school — often while children are being dropped off or picked up, a key focus this year is school gate chaos.” I couldn’t have coined a better phrase myself: it really sums up the whole institution, if you ask me.

But that isn’t all. “Parents delivering and collecting their children are posing an increasing problem for schools.” There you go again. ..those pesky parents getting in the way of their children’s education, this time by posing increasing safety problems for school. It seems parents involved in state schooling just can’t win. Why do they bother? They should all home school.

One of my favourite dreams is watching all the state schools close down for lack of customers!! This lack of customers would not be due to a nil birth rate, but instead to a free market in education which would allow private and home schools to flourish unhindered, their standards of excellence impossible to resist. Now that I’ve said it, you know, I don’t think the state would ever allow such a situation to occur, since they would have to protect the investment in all those taxpayer-funded schools and tax-payer-funded teaching jobs and especially all those taxpayer-funded Ministry of Education positions. To protect its own existence and their own jobs the state education bureaucrats will have to clamp down on the growth of home schooling somewhere along the line. Just watch how they use these annual reports, the supervisory allowance and the recently amended teacher registration bill over the next year or two.

From Keystone Magazine
November 1996 , Vol. II No. 6
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

God Wants PARENTS to Educate Their Own Children

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God Wants PARENTS to Educate Their Own Children

Posted in In line with Scripture

“Hear 0 Israel : The LORD our God, the LORD is one! YOU shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command YOU today shall be in your heart; you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” –Deuteronomy 6:4-7

The teacher must have the Word of God in his heart. As a matter of fact, the teacher qualifications in the Bible, and those to which we Christian Home Schoolers should automatically subscribe, are far tougher than any College of Education has ever dared to propose. The teacher must first have the Lord as his God. Do the teachers at the public schools who teach your child have the Lord as their God?

Second , the teacher must love the Lord his God with everything he’s got. Do even the Christian teachers at the public schools who teach your children love Him like that? Are they even legally allowed to acknowledge or demonstrate such love for God within the state classroom? Do you love the Lord your God like that? Well, really none of us does. That is why we must continually confess our sins and receive again His assurance of forgiveness. But we should all be working toward loving Him more consistently and completely and with everything we’ve got.

Next this Scripture says that the teacher is to teach the children God’s Word diligently at all times and in every situation. This eliminates the classroom as a proper teaching environment. Teaching is to be done in the context of everyday life. Only parents can do that. They can work as a team, and the children can see the proper way for a man and his wife to behave toward one another, demonstrate affection toward one another, support one another in the running of the house, the earning of the income, the education and training and discipline of the children. It is a 24-hour-a-day process and it takes place in the reality of the home, the community and the marketplace as they go about their day-to-day routines together. It is an education in the real world and will obviously prepare children for the real world. And those silly home schooling critics say WE are the ones sheltering children from the real world!!

It is the responsibility, then, of parents to educate their own children. To delegate the teaching task to another is not forbiden. But neither is it commended. The problem with delegation of this particular task is that it removes from the parents some of their responsibility. As this responsibility passes to another, the school teacher for example, some of the parents’ authority over their children automatically passes over as well. This is a fact of life. If you carry ALL responsibility in an area, you also carry ALL authority in that area. If you share the responsibility, you also share the authority.

The children in a school are now expected to obey not only Mum and Dad but also every teacher at school, even those who hold views and values at variance with the parents. Parents also take pot-luck with whatever peer group socialisation agenda that happens to operate within the classroom and on the playground of that particular school.

To put it in terms of stark reality, sending five and six year olds away from home for six hours a day may cause them:

a) to feel rejected by their parents;

b) to look to the peer group (class mates) for security and acceptance;

c) to become confused as to who is the role model he should be following;

d) to divide their loyalties among competing authorities;

e) to develop self-defensive coping strategies based on the “survival of the fittest” philosophy that may operate on the playgroud;

f) to develop a split personality, adopting one set of behavioural parametres at home and a different set at school;

g) to develop tension and stress-related illnesses and hyperactivity because of the constant noise levels, interruptions, confusions, and competitions within the classroom.

These problems are virtually unknown within the home schooling situation. Mum and Dad are constantly on hand to demonstrate their love and assure the child of their commitment to him. They can train the siblings to likewise love and support other members of the family. The one set of role models, the one authority is constantly before them reinforcing their own standards and values. The environment of the Christian home is at the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum from the evolutionist “survival of the fittest” idea. Behavioural standards of the home, the home school and the church all reinforce rather than contradict one another. (“The LORD is One…”) And the tensions and logistics problems of a classroom of 25-30 mixed ability children from just as many backgrounds just do not exist in the home.

In may ways, home schooling will help us all bring our lives more in line with Scripture.

From Keystone Magazine
July 1995 , Vol. 1 No. 3
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

Imparting Wisdom

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Posted in In line with Scripture

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His

commandments. His praise endures forever.”-.-Psalm 111:lO

If the impartation of wisdom must begin with the fear of God, and this first step is specifically excluded from all the state primary classrooms throughout the country, then please pause and consider: What exactly are the teachers in these classrooms imparting to our children? In Psalm 14:1 the Bible tells us that it is the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. State schools are not as subtle as the fool. They legally forbid God to be taken seriously in the classroom.

In the Christian home school parents can acknowledge Christ as the Creator, Sustainer, Sovereign and Lord over every area of life, thought, endeavour and study that He in fact is. No apologies, no need to ask permission of the headmaster or board to mention the “J” word, no unnatural embarrassment, no compromising. You have the sure confidence that you and your children are on the true road to wisdom, no doubt about it.

As this verse says, understanding comes from obedience to God’s Word. At best, even in Christian schools, this can only be dealt with in an academic way, while sitting at desks or in a group context as the class does something together. The Christian home schooler is out there where the rubber meets the road, in the home, in the marketplace, in the community, and is being watched closely by Mum and Dad. Parents can force obedience. They can demonstrate obedience in real-life situations. They and the children can experience the blessings of obedience together. Parents can set up situations to test the child’s promptness and attitude toward obedience. Parents are right there in all situations to point out to the child opportunities to obey, encourage them to do as they should, and then to drive the lesson home.

If you want your children to leave a permanent mark, if you would like to do that yourself, this verse has the answer: “His praise endures forever. “Do something which will bring praise to God. Matthew 5:16 helps us to flesh this out a bit: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Home schooling families do not have to waste time trying to debrief or detoxify their children after each day in the temples of secular humanism. Instead they can devote their energies exploring together how to let their light shine before others and doing good works and learning how to bring glory to God in everything that they do. “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (I Cor 10:31)

At some point many Christians would say that the above Scriptures are talking about spiritual instruction, not at all meaning technical instruction such as reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. Unfortunately for these folks the Scriptures do not allow for this interpretation. You simply cannot duck under Colossians 2:3, “Christ, in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Now, I looked up that word “all” in the original Greek. Do you know what it means? It means “all”. That includes maths, science, philosophy, genetics, geology, astronomy, nuclear physics, and anything else you want to name as well as plain old reading, writing and arithmetic.

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