From institutions of learning to daycare

Four hundred eighth graders in Dallas returned to school over their summer break this week to retake the math portion of the TAKS test. Apparently the state was concerned because too many of the students received a “commended” score.

This is another example of a world where up is down and down is up.

Too many students do well on a test, and the administration automatically assumes cheating was somehow involved. Only this time, they didn’t implicate the students in the cheating. Well, who else? Did the teachers stay behind and secretly change answers on the answer sheets? Most of America’s school children are being taught in a system that assumes failure. What does that say about the quality of education?  (The teachers themselves are, on the whole, outstanding.  The system in which they are forced to work…with all the emphasis on standardized, multiple choice tests rather than well-thought-out arguments in the later years or memorization work in the early years…requires that they are just as trapped as their students.)

I recently attended an outstanding parent practicum of Classical Conversations. The next one in Texas will be held in July in San Antonio. I strongly urge all parents, whether they are homeschoolers or not, to attend one of these free 3-day practicums. The information you learn will change the way you think about education in America. It will cause you to question your own learning and might lead you to conclude, as I did, that most of the political and economic problems in this country today are directly the result of the inadequate education our current leaders received in schools.

I consider myself one of those who was inadequately educated. Like Leigh Burton, the founder of Classical Conversations, states in her book, An Echo in Celebration, I have a college degree. I graduated with a 4.0 average. Yet I can only speak one language. I couldn’t tell you the names of the constellations or even the names of the countries in South America. When it comes to political upheaval in other parts of the world, I am hard-pressed to find them on a map. I find it extremely difficult to debate anyone on any topic without breaking out in a cold sweat. Sometimes I even suffer panic attacks when a good debater challenges me on my statements because I get so flustered. I always assumed it was because I just wasn’t a debater. Come to find out, it means I am undereducated. Debate skills come naturally to a few, but rhetorical skills can actually be taught to everyone. They weren’t taught to me. I had 28 separate teachers throughout high school that taught me different subjects — yet I did not achieve a rhetorical understanding of any of them, nor do I remember much of what I supposedly learned. I was not taught how to train my brain.

Neither were our leaders. We are now faced with an entire generation of leaders in our governments and our businesses whose members were not taught to think on their feet. They were not taught the tools of learning. Is it any wonder, then, that they do such incredibly dumb things such as these?

• Pass a stimulus bill authorizing over $700 Billion in taxpayer funds…without reading it first.
• Give bail-out money to automobile companies…only to find out after the fact that the money wasn’t enough, forcing GM to declare bankruptcy. Why did the government have to do anything anyway? Lots of companies go bankrupt and restructure and reopen leaner and more efficient!
• Impose term-limits on our President but not on our Senators or Congressmen.
• Fail to fix the Social Security system
• Continue to add more and more legalese to the income tax laws which now stack so high that they reach 20ft in the air…rather than scrapping the whole thing and starting fresh
• Focus all the “health care crisis” debate on government intervention…when there are many alternatives on the table that would eliminate fraud and waste and save taxpayers money

I could go on and on here. I’m not just criticizing the current administration. I could bring up examples from the Bush years and the Clinton years, the Reagan years and the Carter ones…all the way back to the 1950s.

As a nation, we have no common sense anymore because common sense is extinct. It is not being taught in public schools, and public schools are now where most of our kids spend about 1,440 hours each year. Education is now viewed as an entitlement rather than a privilege. Parents rely on our schools to baby-sit their kids. That is an ugly truth.

When Ft. Worth schools temporarily shut down in an effort to contain the swine flu, parents got mad. Why? Not because their children missed a week or so of learning, but because they had to find daycare.

Hiding isn’t just for wimps

Today I had one of those “Huh?” moments while reading  about the events leading up to the crowning of Israel’s first king, Saul.  God’s people grumbled and complained and kept begging for a king, so God finally said, “Okay.”  It reminds me of the times that my dad gave in and let me have my way.  If I had a fit, his answer was always no.  But I quickly learned that if I gracefully accepted his initial “No,” he usually relented later and would agree to let me do whatever it was that I had asked.  To this day, I can see him stand in my doorway, arms crossed and head tilted to the side as he sighed deeply and said,

You can do (whatever)…against my better judgment.”

So even though God knows that a king is NOT what is best for Israel, he’s giving in and letting them have one.  He chose a man who stood head and shoulders above the rest.  Saul was merely going about his business, looking high and low for his father’s lost donkeys, when Samuel the prophet befriended him and honored him at a huge feast.  Can  you imagine the bewilderment Saul must have felt upon hearing these words:

Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on Saul’s head and kissed him, saying, “Has not the LORD anointed you leader over his inheritance? (from 1 Samuel 10)

Samuel then went on to tell Saul a few prophesies.  First, he said that Saul would meet two men near Rachel’s tomb who would tell him that his father’s donkeys had been found.  (Remember…we’re going from found donkeys to ruler of Israel, literally overnight!)  Then Samuel told him that as he went on his way, he’d meet up with three men.  One would be carrying three young goats, one would be carrying three loaves of bread, and another would carry a flask of wine.  Samuel told him to accept the bread they would offer him.  Finally, Samuel predicted that Saul would come upon prophets and that he himself would become a changed person and would begin prophesying. He instructed Saul to go ahead of him to Gilgal and to do whatever the Lord led him to do.

So Saul went on his way, and, I’m sure to his utter amazement, everything happened the way Samuel said it would happen.  When he met with the prophets, the Bible says:

As Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed Saul’s heart, and all these signs were fulfilled that day.  When they arrived at Gibeah, a procession of prophets met him; the Spirit of God came upon him in power, and he joined in their prophesying.

Saul saw his uncle shortly after this, but he did not say anything about what had happened.  Maybe his mind was whirling.  Maybe God stilled his lips so that he would not say.  When Samuel arrived, he assembled the Israelites by tribes and clans in order to select a king (against God’s better judgment).   The tribe of  Benjamin was selected…and then the clan of Matri.

What happened next is when I hit the Huh? factor in this story.

Finally Saul son of Kish was chosen. But when they looked for him, he was not to be found. So they inquired further of the LORD, “Has the man come here yet?”
And the LORD said, “Yes, he has hidden himself among the baggage.”

Huh?

Saul, the chosen one, the one who had already been anointed, who had already had the Spirit of God come upon him, who had already prophesied, the  one who stood head and shoulders above everyone else, went into hiding!  He was afraid!

There are times that I despise myself when my fears strangle me.  How is it that one such as me, one who has been saved by grace and is a daughter of the king, could still be shackled with panic and fear?  I never realized until today that Saul was just like me in that regard.  There have been times that I have wanted to crawl into bed and hide under the covers because I was afraid.  I have always felt so weak and…damaged…because of my phobic tendencies.  But this passage gives me hope!  Everyone faces fears and hides away for a time.  Even kings.  Even moms.

I recently became the  director of a local Classical Conversations group.  CC is a homeschooling model and method and functions like a co-op, only with more academics and a focus on the classical model of education (about which I’ll be writing much more later when I have had time to assimilate!)  I attended a three-day seminar and training last week and found myself feeling a little like Saul.

What on earth have I taken on?  Is the Lord SURE I am the one for this position?  Me?  The one who is phobic and anxiety-prone?  The one who knew absolutely nothing about classical education until about six months ago and is now totally passionate about it?  I had a mini-panic attack at the end of the second day that woke me up from sleep.

But now I am reminded of Saul, and of David, and of all those Biblical examples of flawed people working out their faith in real ways.  Sometimes they ran away before they got it right.  Sometimes they hid.  Now I don’t feel so bad about covering up with a blanket and hiding in a book for half the night.  Saul’s anxiety must have been sky high, to go from donkey-searcher-outer to king!  Kinda makes my anxiety about going from homeschool mom to CC director pale in comparison…and I’m realizing that it’s not necessarily wimpy to hide for a little while.  God knows where I am, and, like he did with Saul, he’ll direct others to drag me out when it’s time for me to do the tasks he’s set before me.

Itching Ears Want To Hear

Texas state Representative Joe Deshotel wants to use taxpayer money to pay kids who make good grades in school.  Not every kid, of course.  Just the ones attending low-performing schools.  He proposed to use stimulus money to shell out $50 per kid per A for the “core” subjects — English, math, science and social studies.  Students who make Bs would get $35 per grade and those who make Cs would get a mere $20.  (see story here).  Hmm.  Maybe I should go back to high school!  What ever happened to earning an education?

It’s just another case of the ABCs and greenbacks flying out the window.  Our intrepid leaders continue to believe that throwing more money at the dragon will somehow magically induce kids to perform well in school.

What they are forgetting is that a person’s success has more to do with internal motivations than external ones.  Why do I personally strive to do my best in everything I set my hand to?  Granted, I have “Type-A” personality characteristics, but the motivation goes deeper than that.  It goes back to what I am learning on my faith journey, and it is what I am struggling to teach my ten year old from Colossians 3:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism.

Also in education news today is another mark of a disturbing trend among school districts to effectively nullify the importance of homework — and honesty.  Plano ISD is considering two separate rules that would prohibit a teacher from assigning a grade of “zero” to middle school students who do not complete their homework.  Homework will be accepted at any time in the school year, and homework grades will no longer be applied to final grades on report cards.  A second rule applies to students who are caught cheating.  Currently, students who cheat are automatically given a “zero” for the assignment.  The new rules require teachers to give these cheating kids another chance.

And how, exactly, is this “real-life?”  How is this godly?  In the words of Jesus from Luke 16:

Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.

we find that children who are essentially rewarded for being dishonest with “just a little cheating” will learn to become dishonest with the things that matter.  I wonder if the biggest Ponzi-scheme cheater Bernard Madoff had teachers who let him off the hook when he cheated in class?  Now he does get a second chance…if he lives another 150 years.

All this woeful education news makes me happy that I homeschool — but for how long will I be allowed that freedom?  A state judge in North Carolina is in the process of ruling that a woman’s homeschooled children must be put in public school.  Why?  It seems her husband, who initiated a divorce with marital unfaithfulness, wants his children to learn science from a worldly point of view.  His wife, who has been successfully homeschooling (her kids are 2 years ahead of their peers) for four years uses the Bible as her ultimate teacher’s guide.  The judge stated in an oral ruling that the kids must be placed in public schools in order to satisfy the father’s desire for them to learn evolution rather than creation science.  As Spunky Homeschool reported yesterday, why not let the father teach his kids science and let his ex-wife continue to homeschool them?  Haven’t they been through enough upheaval through the misery of a divorce without forcing them into classrooms where they will be bored stiff (assuming the public schools will do what they usually do and stick them in classes with their same-age-group rather than on their ability levels)?

Another article in today’s paper makes me feel that I’m living in Nazi Germany rather than Texas.  Several school districts in my area have begun aggressively filing truancy charges against parents and students when students have what they deem are too many absences.  Some parents whose children have special health needs have kept them home at times — and the district decided to file charges against them for doing so.  (see story here).  The moral of this story for me is to avoid public schools like the plague.  Parents who send their kids to state schools are freely giving away their rights to direct their own children’s education, and, in some cases, their health management.  The bottom line is: if  you don’t want the state to tell you how to raise your kids, school them at home or in a private school.  We are becoming more Orwellian every day.

Be alert for the enemy in these days.  He’s on the prowl, slowing turning what is biblically right into secular wrong, and what is biblically wrong into secular right.  As we learn in 2 Timothy 4:

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

Today’s itching ears want to hear that morality is a matter of opinion.  The fact that state legislators are resorting to bribery to keep kids on the right track is a big clue that as a society, we are utterly lost.  We need the Savior more than ever.

ABCs flying out the window

Now, granted. I am not a lawyer. I am not a senator and am especially not the president of a country.

However, I am an American educator. I even have the credentials to prove it. Yup. I’ve been to the grand old university and learned lots of useless facts and figures. The very best training I received was on-the-job. I read everything there was in print about managing classroom behavior and educational theory…but I didn’t have a clue how to hold the interest and attention of a rowdy group of six year olds. The teacher books didn’t tell me what to do when a six year old boy gets angry at another student and throws his hard plastic pencil box across the room, narrowly missing the head of another. They didn’t tell me how to handle a kiddo who routinely threw huge tantrums, kicking and screaming anybody and everybody who came near. (Here’s a hint: evacuate the classroom and try to remove his shoes without getting kicked.) The “book” also didn’t say anything at all about kids who ask to go to the bathroom and then sneak outside to let the air out of their teacher’s car tires.

President Obama came out swinging yesterday at American education. We’re lagging behind other country’s children in education. I’ve been reading David Barton’s Four Centuries of American Education.  (from which much of the material in this blog is gleamed) It’s clear to me that our President is right that we are falling behind. What he didn’t mention is that we are lagging behind our OWN achievement. Take a look at this mental math question for elementary students which was published in a math textbook dated 1877:

On a farm, there are 60 animals — horses, cows, and sheep; for each horse there are 3 cows, and for each cow there are 2 sheep; how many animals of each kind?

Could you figure that out today, even as an adult, without using pencil and paper? How about this one from an 8th grade exit exam in Kansas (must be passed to enter high school):

What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?

I couldn’t answer either of those questions without looking them up…despite the fact that I graduated from college! Perhaps America textbook publishers ought to go back to their earliest editions if they want to improve the minds of our children.

President Obama — who is not an educator — believes the the way we improve education is to make school days and the school year longer.

“We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day. That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy.”

Hm. I wonder if he’d still think that if he spent a week substituting in a kindergarten classroom?

Over a hundred years ago, kids who misbehaved in school went to the woodshed with the teacher. Or they were kicked out and not invited to come back. Public education was a privilege…not a right. Kids who didn’t obey weren’t allowed to continue, or they were made to sit in the corner with a “dunce” hat. Imagine the outrage of the ACLU if a teacher dared ostracize and ridicule a student in that manner today. And the biggest difference between education then and now is really simple: God.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
Proverbs 1:7

That proverb and other verses from scripture were routinely featured prominently through PUBLIC school textbooks. McGuffey Readers had selections from the Bible as well as lessons with titles such as “The Character of Jesus Christ,” “Solomon’s Wise Choice,” and “The Goodness of God.” In 1844, Daniel Webster argued before the US Supreme Court that religious instruction in public schools is essential. He argued:

When little children were brought into the presence of the Son of God, His disciples proposed to send them away, but Jesus said, “Suffer little children to come unto Me! (Matthew 19:14) Unto Me…and that injunction is of perpetual obligation; it addresses itself today with the same earnestness and the same authority which attended its first utterance to the Christian world. It is in force everywhere and at all times; it extends to the ends of the earth, it will reach to the end of time always and everywhere sounding in the ears of men with an authority which nothing can supersede. “Suffer little children to come unto Me.”

WOW! Can you imagine someone arguing that before today’s Supreme Court? How did the court rule in Vidal vs. Girard’s Executors? I’m flabbergasted to be living in the same country as the one which in 1844 released this unanimous decision about religion in public education:

Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine revelation in the [school] — its general precepts expounded…and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?….Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?”

As recently as the 1950s, our Supreme Court ruled again in favor of allowing religion in state schools, saying, in Zorach vs. Clauson,

When the State encourages religious instruction, or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions….To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe…We find no such Constitutional requirement.”

Yet in 1962 the tide began to turn distinctly anti-religious. This same court that a hundred years ago noted that the Bible teaches the “purest principles of morality” now ruled that:

• Voluntary prayer is forbidden
• Scripture can’t be used
• Religious electives are illegal
• Took the Bible out of school libraries
• Remove the Ten Commandments from schools
• Schools must cover religious artwork
• Exclude religious content from student papers
• …and on and on.

To a Bible-believer who knows that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge — literally — it comes as no surprise that standardized test scores and morality has slunk lower and lower each year since 1962 — the very year the court began excluding God from the classroom.

Unless and until students are taught to respect authority, they will keep doing anything and everything to get out of work. Schools replaced the Bible’s teachings with “Codes of Conduct” and “Creeds” which change from year to year depending on which rules parents complain about the most. The Bible, however, does not change. Its teachings stay the same…it teaches us that when we respect (another word for fear) the Lord, we gain knowledge as our reward. Kids who aren’t exposed to God’s word can’t possibly respect Him or anyone else in a godly way.

Want to know why I homeschool? One of the biggest reasons is because I do not want my child exposed to the disrespectful behavior of most public school kids in America today.

Nearly three weeks ago, my daughter broke her arm. We rode in an ambulance. During the ride, she engaged the EMT in conversation and told a few jokes. I could tell she was nervous because she was so chatty. When we arrived at Children’s Hospital, the EMT asked me,

Do you homeschool?”

I told him that we did and asked him how he knew.

She doesn’t have the same public-school glazed-over look,”

he replied. After thanking him for the safe transport, I treasured up those words. Here is a professional who interacts with children on a daily basis who is able to deduce simply by my daughter’s behavior that she is schooled at home.

Does that mean that those kids who must attend public schools are doomed to a less-than-excellent education?

Not necessarily. I believe the answer lies NOT in extending the school day or the school year. The answer is in finding creative ways to achieve effective discipline in the classroom, in the hallways, in the lunchroom, on the playground, in the office…not just students, either! Parents, too, need to be ready to back up the teacher when she reports that junior is being disruptive in class instead of engaging in the blame game. Most teachers are not “out to get” your child — we love kids and want to see them achieve their fullest potential…but the classroom setting requires certain standards before learning can take place.

A teacher who is constantly redirecting off-task and disruptive behavior has fewer and fewer hours and minutes to actually, um, teach. If Junior knows that he will be held accountable at home for his behavior in the classroom, then he will be more likely to behave. Parents who are believers need to really emphasize to their kids that they are under their teachers’ authority. If your kids attend school, start insisting on better discipline. Observe a class and see how the children interact with each other and with their teachers. If you see something that is disrespectful, make a note of it and then take it up with the teacher later (out of earshot of the kids, of course).

Insanity from Miriam Webster includes this definition:

extreme folly or unreasonableness; something utterly foolish or unreasonable

It would be, in my educator’s opinion, utterly foolish — yes, insane — to send kids to school for longer hours and a longer school year with the intent to improve education. That would just give our kids more time to learn bad behaviors from each other! Until teachers and schools get a handle on the discipline issue, learning will keep on flying out the window.

Do You “Believe In” Evolution?

I was taught in Texas public schools about the THEORY of evolution. The teaching of it included some alternate viewpoints from scientists (not religious viewpoints) that pointed out its weaknesses. For example, there is that annoying absence in the fossil record documenting the supposed evolution of one species to another. Oh, and also the fact that Darwin himself, in his introduction to Origin of Species, concluded this:

“I am well aware that there is scarcely a single point discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced (proven, or explained), often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result could be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts on both sides of each question, and this cannot possibly be done here.

The point is I remember I was taught that this is what scientists currently believe could be the way life began, but since no one alive today was there, and since the fossil record is so incomplete, there is not a definite answer on the origins of life. Evolution is one theory.  Another theory is what some scientists are calling “Intelligent Design.”  They didn’t use that word way back in the stone ages when I was in public schools.  My teachers taught evolution as a theory just as they taught Einstein’s theory of relativity as a theory.

The insidious enemy seeks to destroy truth in the name of humanism, cloaked as “real science.” The Texas State Board of Education will receive a recommendation from “top” scientists on state science standards. Textbooks in Texas are printed based on those standards. The new recommendations REMOVE language which would have required students to analyze the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. Students and teachers would not be able to fully state and balance the facts on the different viewpoints of evolution…as Charles Darwin himself states is only fair. The elite scientists who know everything want to block our kids from learning about the real weaknesses of scientific theories.

My beef with that is — if they are so confident about the origin of life as presented by Darwin, what are they afraid of?  Are they afraid that students will learn that:

• The more we learn about DNA and RNA and genes, the more we learn of their specialization and complexity.  This makes it extremely unlikely that the billions of protein combinations were made by chance, which opens the door to some other mechanism at  work.
• The Cambrian explosion produced a multitude of different species in a very short period of time, contrary to Darwin’s theory that the organisms slowly evolved through the process of natural selection.
• The fossil record is incomplete.  This makes it very difficult to extrapolate what species looked like over time and over vast geographic areas.  The fossils that have been recovered do not show any species transforming into different ones.
• Read more in-depth articles about weaknesses in evolutionary theory here and here.

The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram’s article reports,

But with the “weaknesses” requirement removed and a new definition for science, the new plan makes it clear that supernatural explanations like creationism and intelligent design have no place in public classrooms, said Dan Quinn with the Texas Freedom Network, an Austin-based nonprofit group that opposes religious influence on public education.

Why do these groups that oppose “religious influence on public education” automatically assume that any criticism of evolution is a vote for creationism?

A recent Google search brought up scores of people who cry foul at anyone who dares to poke holes in evolutionary theory.  Yet this is (supposedly) a free country with free thinkers. We want to encourage our students to challenge and question and think critically, don’t we? Of course…as long as their conclusions add up to Darwin’s. You know, it wasn’t too long ago that people were banished from the scientific establishment for saying that adding lead to gasoline would be harmful. And then look what happened. It wasn’t too long ago that the government ordered that the last of the DoDo birds be killed and stuffed — because people were killing them off, and they wanted to “save” them. It wasn’t too long ago that sailors thought the earth was flat and that ship-eating monsters prowled the open seas waiting and watching for human flesh.

This blog is titled Do You “Believe In” Evolution because everyone “believes in” something.  If I bought into the Darwinistic principles hook, line and sinker, I’d be buying into things that I don’t clearly understand.  I’d have to have “faith” in the fact that scientists will eventually discover what’s behind the Cambrian explosion and make it fit into Darwin’s natural selection somehow.

In our house, we have faith in the Living God.  The point I try to teach my daughter is that we do not have all the answers…because we are not God. We did not create the heavens and the earth. The study of science is a means for us to discover and wonder at the extreme complexity and beauty of creation. While we may try to create life ourselves in the lab, we do not have the breath of the Living God.

There is a public hearing in Austin about the proposed science standards on January 21st. I will not attend. Instead, my daughter and I will be discovering principles of magnetism. You see, she has challenged the ideas of magnetism and wants to discover if there is a way to harness the natural magnetism of the earth…

If your kids go to public school, you might want to keep a close eye on what the State Board of Education decides to do with these recommendations. Any school board that prohibits students from questioning and testing scientific theories is more interested in indoctrinating than in educating.

If you homeschool, count your blessings, and be glad that you get to teach science without worrying about state-issued standards.

Glory to the King

My daughter is a ham.  She loves performing, especially for God.  We dance and sing at the beginning of each of our homeschool days, and it helps us put our minds in the right place — on the Lord.  (This is especially important before math!  Not for her, but for me!)

A couple of weeks ago she went to the first choir rehearsal for a kids performance at church.  During the rehearsal, she asked our worship pastor if she could do a piano solo.  At this point in time, she did not have her Christmas music “nailed” yet.  But she was bold and knew she could get it!  He told her to bring her music to the next rehearsal and he’d let her try out.

She worked her tail off getting that music just right, and then she played it flawlessly for him.  The end result is that she played her song for nearly 1000 people (total, during two worship services).  I am so proud of her — and of the Lord  — not just for giving her talent but for giving her boldness in asking!  What I forgot to mention is that first she asked me if she could ask the worship pastor for a piano solo.  My first response was NO.  I didn’t want her to be disappointed, and I knew she didn’t have the song down yet.  But a little whisper inside me — the Holy Spirit — told me to let go and watch her spread her wings.

Watch her fly!

I will leave you with the words to this beautiful Christmas hymn…Hark the Herald Angels Sing!

Hark the herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Glory indeed!

Surviving Head Colds and Mixed Up Words, Socks, and Temples

We’ve hit the middle of our third homeschooling year, and I’ve discovered a pattern about myself….

Around December I start feeling overwhelmed and begin questioning the wisdom of ME teaching anyone anything of value, especially when I can’t find my car keys, the remote, the wrapping paper, the dog or my shoes. It was in December when I was trying to help my daughter complete a science experiment with circuits. The flashlight bulb just would not light up no matter what I tried. And then my then-eight-year-old sweetly informed me that I had forgotten to connect the wires to the lightbulb in the middle. Duh! Of course it wouldn’t work!

So December is my “can’t help it” month. My family and everyone who knows me can just expect that I WILL get words mixed up. I WILL drive all the way to the UPS Store with four nicely wrapped packages only to realize that I left the addresses at home. I WILL burn something in the kitchen at least once. Because of the aforementioned burning, I WILL order pizza for dinner even if my daughter had it for lunch at co-op. I WILL forget an orthodontic appointment and I WILL forget to take the dog in for her shots.

But that’s okay. I will persevere. I will press on towards the goal, and our family will survive. God gives us so much grace when we keep falling down flat on our faces! It helps to find some humor:

And it helps to know that people have been feeling overwhelmed ever since Adam and Eve stepped out of the garden and into sin. The key is to turn the focus away from those failures except as tools to learn how to do better and fodder for much-needed and appreciated Divine grace. And it helps to write words on my heart about what my goal really is, like these from Philippians 3:

But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

I don’t know about you, but there are times when my head is heavy with a bad cold (like now!) and exhaustion seeps through every pore that the thought of ever achieving that heavenly prize seems unattainable. Oh but it is attainable one day. And the Lord gives me just exactly what I need to survive this day. Just enough energy to get a pot of soup going that I (hopefully and prayerfully) won’t burn. Just enough gumption to fold one load of clothes.

I may feel like my head is nothing more than a ginormous nose, but I am more than just this body with the stuffed up nose.

And so are you. You are made of more than just your body.

Speaking of bodies, I have a funny story. This morning my daughter rushed around the house trying to find shoes and socks before our homeschool co-op. I looked at her feet and discovered that she was wearing this:

So as we rushed around gathering materials we needed to bring with us, we had this conversation:

ME: Your socks don’t match.

DD: I know.

ME: Go upstairs and change your socks.

DD: (as she stomps up the stairs) Why do I have to change them? No one will see them because they’ll be inside my shoes! Anyway, nobody looks at feet. Except maybe moms.

ME: Because your socks need to match. If we dress neatly, we’ll feel neat. God gave us our bodies and He tells us in the Bible that our bodies are our temples. It’s important that you take care of the body He gave you.

DD: (as she pulls on a different pair of MATCHING socks) Architects make asymmetrical temples, mom!

ME: But God made us symmetrical…two eyes, two matching ears, etc….

DD: Mom, most people aren’t symmetrical. Their eyes aren’t exactly the same size and shape and neither are their ears or their hands. Your heart and your lungs are on the opposite sides of your body and your fingerprints aren’t symmetrical….

…and so goes a typical mother-daughter homeschool conversation in our house! My daughter’s obedient actions are often accompanied by very intelligent arguments for why she should be allowed to take a different course of action!

Next time I’ll probably just let her wear them. Often the “must-dos” that we impose on our kids aren’t really as important as we think, are they?

The God who made us with one eye slightly larger than the other probably gets a kick out of our choice of miss-matched footwear!

Up on my Soap Box Again

Here’s a curiosity: in my circle of homeschoolers, there are more former classroom teachers than there are not.   One of my homeschool friends is married to a Christian middle school principal. Why is it that some many of us in the teaching profession have chosen to stay home and be teachers to our own children?  The partial answer to that question can be found on the front page of today’s Dallas Morning News.

The Dallas ISD has sent down from on high the new grading rules for the next school year.  In a nutshell, these rules proclaim that:

• Students who fail a test are given retests until they pass it
• Teachers are not allowed to penalize a student for turning in assignments late
• If low homework grades pull down a student’s average, teachers are required to throw the low grades out
• Teachers are not allowed to “give” a grade lower than a 50
• Teachers are not allowed to give a student a zero for work that is not turned in; instead, they are required to contact the parents

I would laugh if this wasn’t so serious.  The real world is right around the corner for these kids.  My child is getting ready to launch into her first double-digit year, and it seems as if the time is moving so swiftly I can’t catch my breath.

When I shared this news article with my daughter, she started laughing and said,

I wouldn’t want to hire any of those kids to build my house when I grow up!

And isn’t that the truth?

Future DISD Student Turned Builder:
Oh, so what if we miscalculated on our first try and your wall caved in.  We’ll just prop it back up.  Don’t worry about the 2×4s scattered all over your floor.  We’ll hammer in any exposed nails so you can walk around safely at night.  And that  AC works 50% of the time for you.  Yea, it’s August but this is Dallas and it’s always hot around here this time of year.  And I forgot to tell you that the water line to your house is riddled with rust and holes and we mis-measured your windows so you’ll have to put up plastic instead.  But you still owe us 100% of our fee, because we did try.  We showed up.

That story goes into my Hall of Fame notebook of Why I Homeschool.  We serve the Lord in our household, and we follow the very wise instructions found inside the Bible:

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  Col 3:17

Servants, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord.  Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ.^[e] But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites. Col 3:23-25

In today’s world, any of us who has a job is, in essence, a servant.  When I was teaching in a classroom, I was a servant of my students, setting aside my needs for theirs.  I was a servant to my principal and to the school board.  Even if you are Donald Trump and own your own company or companies, you are, in essence, bound to something — whether it be to the company itself or to customer service.  The key verses here tell us something essential that students today — as the article linked above makes clear — are not learning in any way, shape or form.

Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you.

This is a lesson my dog has not learned, either.  He knows it’s against the rules to jump up on the kitchen counter to grab whatever food is up there, but he does it anyway…as soon as my back is turned.  If I’m watching him, he won’t do it.  But as soon as I leave the room or turn my back, he’s off like a shot.  Bye-bye fresh baked loaf of bread!  Now, my dog is a dog.  I can’t sit down with him and teach him these verses, but I can teach them to my daughter.  In fact, I can make these verses the central part of everything we do.

And that brings me to my next point.  The English language does not adequately capture the meaning in these verses:

Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.

The Greek words used here are ek psuche, and they mean a great deal more than the bland “willingly” or “heartily” found in most English translations.  From Blue Letter Bible, I learn that they mean to let all our work come out of our very breath of life, our vital force, the part in us that is our essence, our life, our soul.  This means we are to throw ourselves into whatever work is before us–whether it is washing dishes or sweeping floors or changing a tire or programming software or teaching children or learning multiplication facts–we are to go all out, full speed ahead.

Why?

Because, as this verse goes on to say, we are to do it as though we are doing our work for the Lord rather than for men.

The children of the Dallas Independent School district aren’t even being held accountable to people anymore, much less to God.  These children will be our future.  I wish I could scoop them all up and homeschool them myself.  Instead, I will be in prayer for them and for their teachers who have to, once again, figure out how to teach kids how to learn with even more restrictions on their methods.