I like to do a little update once in a while for my own records and thinking purposes–which I also am told often helps other people think things out, too.
As a family we’ve had some widely varied experiences in the realm of academics. It’s no secret I’ve been frustrated and elated–super highs and lows–with the homeschool versus public schooling life.
Some people don’t ever think twice about how and why they’ve chosen one path or the other. It’s as natural to them as a duck to water. In public school I’ve met people who’ve never heard of homeschool or had it come near their radar. In the homeschool world I know people who think public is the path to H-E-double hockey sticks.
I think about the two options all the time, the way the thoughts of a pregnant woman are single minded for nine months straight about her baby to be born.
There is a Venn diagram in my brain and I sort the good and bad into categories. In the middle is a “good kid” scenario. I also have a best-case, model-child checklist running. I don’t believe I overthink the parenting gig necessarily–I just strive for the apex and am ever-aware of my parenting peers. The homeschool crowd has made me self-conscious. The public school folk make me feel weirdly overzealous. I don’t have a target on my back, but I do feel pressure to turn out outstanding kids, for integrity and posterity. I wince when my kids are rude. I’m prideful when they excel. My posture is the shrugged shoulders emoji–not sincere enough to homeschool (she must not care enough) and inexplicable to public schoolers who’ve never raised questions (why the heck does she care so much?).
Here is a small example:
I tense up in this world where we show up to a basketball tournament and nearly every parent has already handed their elementary child a cell phone to play video games so as not to cause a disturbance.
Is this a public school phenomenon? Maybe–but surely it isn’t limited to public school. This is just where my homeschooling bias would like to place blame, a sign of the failures of “those people”.
After being back on the public school scene, I am chagrined to come face-to-face with educators who don’t blink at wasting hours of learning time watching movies or playing on devices, all under the banner of “asynchronous” or “differentiated” learning.
I only ever let my kids have screen/device time as a reward. Usually their time is limited to a half hour. I frequently warn them of the dangers of being addicted to devices, and yet this is one huge channel administered by public educators, courtesy of a federal subsidy, intent on attaining a 1-1 student-to-device ratio.
On the other hand, I feel the need to defend this approach to non-public-schoolers, because my love for teachers and administration is deep and abiding, behavioral problems exist, and public educators are overloaded with the expectation that they will be the sole academic investor in a kid’s life. In short, they are stressed grownups doing more than their fair share of kid-raising, and they are reamed for every shortcoming, every flaw. Public school, if it is failing, is doing so because parents failed first.
If I weren’t on the middle school sports scene, if my kids were instead invested in 4H projects and running the family business, if I were homeschooling–would I be avoiding this disaster? Would my kids have superman self-control to keep their eyes on their books instead of wandering over the shoulder of their classmate next to them who is on their second hour of playing ninja-something?
This is the question that plagues me because I’ve avoided it altogether when I stayed at home. It is an upside down problem compared to our prior year homeschooling, where any situation seemed better than huddling in our house, waiting for a greenlight to be able to talk to people in person again. By re-entering a life where we have to deal with actual people, we actually have to deal with people.
I can almost hear the scornful comments, because I’ve heard them before. They project disaster, downfall. Public schools get lumped with all sorts of political evils and conspiracy. All it takes one good family to stay hunkered in their house are the words critical race theory.
And I get so tired of it. I get tired of me feeling like it’s something I ought to fret over. We are not a people of fear, but a people of love, power, and a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7).
In the car this morning we were listening to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where he tells the church they should get rid of the yeast of “malice and wickedness” and instead be leavened with “sincerity and truth.” He exhorts them to not eat or even associate with people in their midst (the church) who are doing unspeakable things. Then he says something unusual:
“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people–not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is (immoral).
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”
1 Cor.5:9-13
“In that case, you would have to leave this world.”
How ironic of Paul to solve the cell phone addiction-at-the-basketball-tournament problem for me the morning after. We can’t stand around fretting and huddled, pointing judgy fingers at people on the outside, hoping aimlessly for evil to go away.
When Jesus prayed for us before He went to the cross, He said,
“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”
John 17:15-18
What a relief–I’m right where I need to be, even in the age of smart phones. I’ve been put right here, right now, for a specific purpose. And under His protection and sanctification, I can be in this world yet not live like the world is in me.
Last month I decided maybe the best way to encourage and affect improvement in public school might be by becoming a teacher myself. Instead of talking so much about what is wrong, I should put love, power, and sound mind to the test.
I’ve been studying to take the exams. I am being made aware of best practices, what is most ethical, most effective, most appropriate. It’s been a great thing to study, because I’m made aware of the specific rules regarding education, and I’m becoming a person who can hold others accountable. It helps me sort out professionalism, laziness, standards and behaviors–a new Venn diagram in my mind. When a circumstance falls into the overlapping circles of “Jesus-follower” and “public school”–it’s within my wheelhouse and I can approach it accordingly.
I’ve developed my teacher voice now, the one where, at a basketball game, I tell the gaming kid to either put away the phone and watch the game or go away. It isn’t based on my feelings, social insecurity or judgment, but best practices. I can feel my skin getting thicker. I know what is right–and I can speak firmly and with love. (Joe likes to whisper-sing Jo Dee Messina in my ear in these situations to remind me “my give a damn’s busted”–he really has a way of embodying sincerity and truth, lol.)
Kids are just kids. They aren’t yet the sum of who they’re becoming. There will be a million forward steps and a million backward steps before they become a mature adult. Love is patient–Lord, help me be patient.
I have told my older kids they can always get out of public school if the need arises. They don’t have to learn in a group of kids who don’t want to be there, or if things are unbearable. Lord, help me have a discerning mind and good judgment.
Thank goodness, we’ve met people who are the real deal at school–real believers who really love Jesus. It’s worth a lot of trouble to get to run into them. We’re learning and we’re looking forward to the summer. Lord, help me be confident as I walk the path you’ve put in front of me.
Life at a vile boarding school is…a good preparation for the Christian life, that it teaches one to live by hope. Even, in a sense, by faith; for at the beginning of each term, home and holidays are so far off that it is as hard to realize them as it is to realize heaven.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
Many of us are patterning our lives after the Christian community, and the Christian community is going downhill. The standard of Christian experience is not the Christian community; it’s Jesus Christ. If you have to break with the accepted practices of the Christian community in order to conform yourself to Him, do it.
Howard G. Hendricks, Heaven Help the Home
