Socialization and Boundaries

Have I mentioned how much I learn by observing my children?

We live too close to our kids' schools for them to ride the bus yet too far for them to walk alone, which makes for a lot of driving! But I have to admit, I cherish the minutes we get to share each afternoon as they tell me the things about their day that were the most significant to them. Often, they surprise me with what makes the top of their list.

I hear a lot of names: the friend they spent recess with, the friend they sat with at lunch, the friend who made them laugh in class, the friend they shared an inside joke with, the friend who got hurt, the friend who doesn't celebrate Christmas, the "best" friend, the friend who surprised them with a little gift.

When I was young, I lived for company. I was constantly begging my mom to invite other families to dinner. We socialized as families, only rarely as peer groups. So if I met a nice girl at church, the only way to get to know her better was to invite her parents and siblings to coordinate schedules in order to spend an evening at our house. What if her dad didn't get along with my dad? (In the end, all our friends came from other homeschooling families with stay-at-home moms who wore denim jumpers and breastfed their babies.) As I got older, I realized that guests meant extra housecleaning and extra work in the kitchen. It was still fun, but it was also a lot of work. By then, there were ten...eleven...twelve...thirteen of us. Our social invitations were limited to potlucks and graduation "open houses"!

When I married and moved to a new city where I knew no one but my in-laws, I was again desperate for company. I was always trying to gather people around my table: contacts from church, neighbors, extended family, old acquaintances with connections to Bill Gothard's cult. My husband, raised without siblings, could never quite understand my craving for social interaction, for sharing meals with other humans. It took years for me to realize that I was happier with a few quality friendships, even long-distance ones, than with frequent interactions with people I wasn't really compatible with.

With my kids in school forming so many new relationships, I braced myself for requests for guests, for playdates, for birthday parties, for outings with friends. When no one brought them up, I started asking. Maybe the kids had been too timid to ask. Were there any friends from school they would like to invite over sometime? To play with on a Saturday? To share their birthday cake?

No, it turns out, my kids just have better boundaries than I do. Each of them has plenty of friends at school. They enjoy their peers, look forward to seeing them, get along well with them, play at the activities that are available to them at school. But then my children come home and they enjoy each other, they play the games our family enjoys; they spend time playing alone, or reading, or watching their favorite shows. Sometimes they visit with friends in our neighborhood--friends they don't see at school. They rebuild connections here, then go out the next day and start again!

My siblings and I traveled as a pack when we went to a playground. "Public" spaces didn't mean "shared" so much as "available for temporary claims". We would keep our eyes on a piece of equipment, wait till all the other kids left it vacant, then swarm around our new territory. If another kid or two tried to engage with us, we would usually ignore them until they left, or until we tired and moved on to something else. When my family went
to the beach, we would pack up and head back to the car when other swimmers arrived.

My kids, especially the youngest, are much more comfortable in public spaces. They will engage with other children, play together, combine forces, join conversations. At the pool, the playground, or the gym, they are usually willing to accept other children as playmates. B--- will readily describe such a temporary attachment as "my new friend". Should a child not prove trustworthy, my children will distance themselves, recognizing instinctively that respect can be both earned and lost.

I applaud public education for helping my children learn boundaries. They are already more differentiated than I was at twice their age! They know where others end and they begin. They are neither isolated nor lonely. They are surrounded by opportunities to learn what matters to them: Shared values? Common interests? Compatible personalities? Similar or diverse customs? They get practical experience in cultivating relationships--what builds them and what damages them. They are learning which friends, or teachers, can be relied on, and which ones simply drain other people's energy.

Our entire family benefits from the social support that students provide to each other. At the beginning of this school year, our older two would build up a lot of anxiety and stress each day. It took a lot of my energy to coach them and reassure them. But as the year goes on, they are building stronger bonds with their classmates. They endure the same pressures, but they don't feel alone. By the time they get home these days, the kids have worked through most of their stresses. They have already laughed with a friend about the grumpy substitute or shared a complaint about being treated unfairly at recess. I bring them back to the house and they are ready to move on to happier things.

I can't help wondering how my life would be different if I had not been such a lonely child. What if church services and Vacation Bible School had not been my only contacts with peers? What if I had been surrounded with boys and girls my own age whose life experience was different from my own?

I learn so much from watching my children be human.

Bill Gothard on Education

My parents began homeschooling me in third grade, and enrolled in Gothard's Advanced Training Institute, a curriculum exclusively for alumni of his Advanced Seminar, before I started seventh grade. Our family was part of ATI until I reached my mid-twenties.

The following statements are the main points from a session of Bill Gothard's Advanced Seminar. They can be found on pages 88-91 of the accompanying workbook and on his website. Looking back, these "principles" explain so much of my educational experience.

Advanced Seminar Session 16: Successful Education

(Bill Gothard)

• The ultimate goal of education is not to produce a degree, but to produce many godly generations. 

• God charges parents and grandparents, not teachers, with the responsibility to train their sons and daughters.

• God established the home, not the school, as the primary learning center; the school and church must be recognized as extensions of it.

• The most destructive force in school is peer dependence, and parents must constantly work to protect their children from it.

• God wants the priorities of every family to be built around daily engrafting of Scripture, rather than accumulating man's knowledge.

• The ability of sons and daughters to stand alone is the result not of rules, but of principles that assure a superior way of life.

• When knowledge is learned before godly character, it produces pride and arrogance.

• Parents who teach sons and daughters at home must be accountable to a local church (Christian school and the government).

• Sons and daughters thrive with appropriate responsibility, and it is God's goal that they be mature in their youth.

• God gave boys and girls differing aptitudes; when children are taught together, boys are programmed for failure.

• When schools group children by ages, older examples are cut off and rebels usually rise to leadership.

• When the Bible is separated from courses, the contents come under the control of human reasoning.

• True socializing takes place not in the arbitrary groupings of school, but in the real world of children-to-adult relationships.

• Valuable learning time is lost in school; two hours of home teaching is equivalent to six hours of school teaching.

• The key to effective education is not just a trained teacher and a professional curriculum, but a concerned parent and a motivated child.

• God has set a limitation on learning; thus, academic freedom is no justification for studying the details of evil.

As an ATI student, I attended numerous conferences that became pep rallies for volunteerism with the Institute or urged us to study our favorite topics from the safety of our homes. (I even spent eighteen months enrolled in IBLP's unaccredited correspondence law school!)

Inge Cannon was one familiar conference speaker. Cannon holds a master's degree in education and helped Gothard develop the ATI curriculum in the early 1980's. She later directed the National Center for Home Education, a division of HSLDA.

At an opening session of the 1990 ATI training conference held at the University of Tennesee in Knoxville, Inge Cannon warned us against the dangerous "High Places" of education. As she talked, I took careful and enthusiastic notes. I was just fourteen, and excited about this chance to sit with the adults.

In the Bible, God repeatedly told the ancient Israelites to tear down the idolatrous "high places". Cannon thus defined a high place as:

"any goal or objective so commonly accepted that it is validated and esteemed as good, even though it violates the will and word of God".

According to Cannon, the following "high places" are educational myths for home-educating parents to avoid.

The High Places of Education

(Inge Cannon--June 23, 1990)

• Comparison--i.e., SAT tests and bell-shaped curves, parents should not base their curriculum on these; also pluralism that pressures those with strong beliefs to "give in to those who believe nothing"

• Grading--earning a teacher's certificate, for example, merely means one has passed the right courses, not that one is "qualified to produce results"

• Completion--filling in all the blanks or answering all the questions or taking the final exam does not mean the educational task is complete; the object is to "know" the material, not merely to "cover" it

• Equivalency--"believing that a curriculum is proper and right when it matches the academic sequence and requirements of traditional, formal education"

• Tangibility--"believing only what I can see or touch is real, thereby de-emphasizing those elements that require faith or minister to the spirit of my child"

• Self-expression--"believing that the arts are too personal to be governed by absolute standards"; the arts can never be amoral

• Methodology--"believing there is only one right way to teach a lesson"

• Socialization--"Children don't learn anything good from one another!"

• Exposure--exposing children to all kinds of knowledge is unnecessary for a well-rounded education; children should be ignorant of evil, they shouldn't understand dirty jokes, they shouldn't study false religions; "There are some things God doesn't want us to know."

• Statistical Verification--believing [the Bible] "needs to be verified  by scientific measurements before choosing to obey its instructions"

During my time in ATI, I was just one of thousands of young people who were told that we didn't need college credits, that college would corrupt our minds with "vain philosophies" and threaten our faith, that there are some things "God doesn't want us to know", and that employers would come looking for us because of our diligence, obedience, and virtue. So, many of us dutifully eschewed degrees in favor of home-based study.

Gothard, incidentally, later changed his mind and now even touts the Ph.D. degree Lousiana Baptist University conferred on him in 2004, much to the chagrin of those of us for whom the new dispensation came too late. Hundreds of former ATI students live today with the socioeconomic consequences of what we were taught, even as we struggle to catch up to our college-educated peers.

In Praise of Pluralism

"Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything about one another. Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence. In the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly."      --Diana Eck

When my daughter came home with a worksheet summarizing "The Five Pillars of Islam" a couple of years ago, I must admit my eyes widened and my eyebrows went up a little.

For decades I'd been warned by the likes of Phyllis Schlafly and Bill Gothard that "government schools" were bastions of secular humanism. That they were hostile to religious faith. That Christians were persecuted in the American education system. 

So I was truly startled to encounter a picture of Jesus hanging in the corridor when I first toured our local elementary school. Still more amazed to find Little Pilgrim's Progress in a classroom library. By the time my kids came home with papers advertising the after-school Bible club, I was figuring out that I'd been misled about public education in America!

At our kids' school, several teachers wear crosses. Fourth-graders attend the play "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever". The third grade holiday concert last year included Hanukkah songs. A patriotic concert included "God Bless America" and the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The Boy Scouts recruit during school hours. 

The student body is as diverse as they come. When my kids talk about their friends, I have no idea how to spell the names. English is not every student's first language, their families come from all over the world, and many kinds of costumes appear on picture days when the usual dress code is set aside. The school menu notes which meals are vegetarian, and which contain pork. When I pick up my kids at the end of the day, I see other moms wearing head scarves, bindi, traditional harem pants, nursing scrubs, office skirts, skinny jeans, shorts, yoga pants, and baby slings. It's awesome, one of the things I love about public education.

Clay Bust of Martin Luther

And in this multidimensional environment, our kids are being educated. In history and science and math and social studies and music and so much more. One day at the end of a unit on Medieval Europe and the Reformation, my daughter brought home this piece of artwork (which bears a striking resemblance to one of her German-American ancestors). 

While surprised to encounter Brother Martin again--right in my kitchen!--I was also impressed. I might be tempted to avoid Luther for the rest of my life because of the messy theological and family issues he represents to me, but we can't afford that kind of selective memory. Fact is, he impacted history significantly--world history, German history, American history, my history. 

Avoiding things that make us uncomfortable only shortchanges our children. And our discomfort will be no excuse if they grow up ignorant of the world we brought them into.

Similarly, after my initial surprise at finding the "Five Pillars of Islam" on my kitchen table, I felt grateful. Grateful that the school's curriculum allows my kids to learn about topics that I might let slide, just because they intimidate me. As a homeschooling mom, alas, I didn't have anyone looking over my shoulder or pushing me to cover any topic I didn't want to. Fortunately, my kids' education is no longer dependent on my comfort zone! 

Then this week my kids brought home the following letter from their principal:

      "... Religion is an important component of the history of civilizations. Your students at Minneha cover the five major religions of the world – Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam – as part of their Core Knowledge magnet curriculum. Students study civilizations throughout time, throughout the world, and cover religion with a focus on history and geography in the development of civilizations. 

     "Over the last several days, questions have emerged about a bulletin board in our 4th grade hallway that represents the 5 Pillars of Islam. This display represented one aspect of religion in a historical context. Other aspects of religion in a historic and geographic context will be taught in 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th grades this fall. The purpose of this study is not to explore matters of theology, but to understand the place of religion and religious ideas in history."                                    (excerpt)

Now, I was disappointed to learn that the poster (representing some teacher's effort) had been temporarily removed because it made an adult uncomfortable. I was nonplussed by the fact that ours is the only Core Knowledge school in the district. (Do any other children get to learn about the major religions?) But I was exceedingly grateful to whatever luck allows my children to benefit from this particular curriculum. I plunked down in front of my laptop after dinner and sent off an email to our principal:

"Just wanted to say I am very pleased with Minneha’s approach to the subject of religion. We are not theists, and some of the hall displays do make me uncomfortable, but when I see multiple religions being presented in an even-handed way, I feel much better.

"As an inescapable force in our society, religion must be a part of any complete social studies or history program. And I am pleased to say that when my son was being bullied about religion by his classmates, Minneha teachers were swift to deal with the issue and use it as an opportunity to teach about respect for others and religious tolerance.

"Cultural diversity is probably what we most appreciate about Minneha. Our kids will live in a globalized society. It is invaluable for them to be able to relate to friends who hold different beliefs and traditions."

The flap over the poster has sparked both controversy and conversation. Ultimately, I like to hope it will deepen into a demand for pluralism in the community, helping us come together for common goals--like the education of our children--with understanding and concern for others' well-being. Goodness knows the future of humanity depends on our ability to understand each other and deal with our differences like grownups.

Diana Eck, director of Harvard's Pluralism Project, says pluralism is:

• The energetic engagement with diversity--not diversity alone
• The active seeking of understanding across lines of difference--not mere tolerance
• The encounter of commitments--not their dismissal
• Based on dialogue--not on agreement but on give and take, criticism and self-criticism

Clearly, this is a dialogue we still need to have. 

Library Shelf: Keeping Them Out of the Hands of Satan

I love to cook. I also like to learn from watching other people cook. I enjoy comparing different ingredients, different tools, and different techniques and sampling the various results.

Education is much like cooking.

True educators, like professional chefs, use their knowledge of available resources and their technical expertise to design a plan and effect desirable results over time. It is possible for a dedicated amateur to follow the same steps at home and achieve an equally delicious product. It is also possible for an unskilled cook to easily serve meals with much less time and effort. Frequently, however, a reduced investment of time, expense or effort coincides with a reduction in quality.

Like macaroni and cheese, or tiramisu, all education is not created equal. And I'm not even talking about the religious components or motivation.

In this 1988 book, sociologist Susan Rose compares the educational experience provided by two very different church-run private schools. She notes differences in curriculum, teacher experience and training, tests and grading, parental involvement, and organizational structure. And like a truck stop diner versus a five-star restaurant, the two systems turn out very different results.

I was fascinated by Rose's account because I was homeschooled from 1984 to 1993. (After that I continued unaccredited college-level studies from home for a few more years.) Through the 1980's, many of my friends attended private church schools which had significant resemblances to the schools in Rose's study. The children she observed were my distant peers.

One school Rose describes is highly authoritarian in structure. It is run by a trucker (the principal) with no training in education, and one or two assistants. Curriculum is purchased as a package from a single source (Accelerated Christian Education). Individual students absorb information from booklets at their own pace. They do their work in separated cubicles in a single room, only receiving instruction when they request help. Study consists primarily of reading and memorizing. There is a narrow dress code. The school is tightly bonded to the church. Students come primarily from "blue collar" families, many with two working parents. Parents do not expect their children to go on to college. Students are not encouraged to set goals that reach beyond the local community and church. The girls, in particular, are not motivated toward professional careers. In the end, a graduate from this "school" is mentally prepared for a job at the local factory and not much more.

In the other school, parents are involved to a much higher degree and have stronger relationships with the teachers. The grades are divided into separate classrooms. Creativity, personal expression, and leadership are encouraged. Relationships, and conflict resolution, are valued both inside and outside the classroom. The church gave birth to the school and while the two entities overlap at points, they have distinct foci. Teachers are involved in curriculum development and lesson planning so education is more individualized. Children come from mostly middle class families; parents represent a variety of professions and not all the mothers work outside the home. Students are encouraged to pursue higher education and choose future professions that put their individual gifts to use for personal fulfillment and the good of the community.

Reading Susan Rose's observations helped me to understand my own. Ever since kindergarten when I observed my public school classmates learning the alphabet (I could already read), I have been a student of education. I watched my mom and her friends figuring out how to teach their kids math and grammar and spelling and science. I went along to curriculum review "parties"; I sat in the classroom of a Mennonite one-room schoolhouse and in classrooms of a big non-denominational Christian day school. I knew who published their various textbooks and where they kept their art supplies. I grew up hearing about the controversies over requirements that teachers be certified and over the rights of parents to educate their children at home. I have read Amish teachers' magazines and shopped at homeschool curricula fairs.

My own study experiences have included: parents, library books, computers and e-books, correspondence school, week-long workshops, a music "camp" at an ATI training center, private classes, state university, and community college. I have studied with teachers who had authored the textbooks, and with teachers who had never encountered the material before. And I have taught/tutored children in numerous settings--small groups, individuals, online, classrooms public and private, at home, overseas, age-segregated and age-diverse, my own siblings, my own progeny, smart kids, kids that needed help.

ATI, which my parents joined in 1987, was first touted as a homeschool curriculum, though families quickly learned they needed to supplement the Wisdom Booklets with other educational materials. IBLP staff actually used curriculum from A.C.E. (School of Tomorrow) to "homeschool" juvenile delinquents sent to their Indianapolis campus by the Indiana court system. When I first began learning at home, my parents used similar materials from Christian Light Education for science and social studies. Reading horror stories of students who were subjected to A.C.E. for years on end, either at home or in private "schools", I feel lucky to have had the academic experience I did.

The difference between taking in data and spitting it back out on the appropriate blanks and actually: learning the bounds of science, engaging with concepts, asking questions, hunting for answers, working with a group, interacting with characters, and creating original works expressing personal understanding... is simply immense.

Today, I am convinced that education is a serious science. It is also an art and some individuals are uniquely gifted teachers. But gifted or not, we should be insisting on quality educators. Investment in the training and welfare of our teachers is an investment in our children's future prospects, after all.

There can be no excuse for mis-education or educational neglect. (Especially in the name of Christ, but that's another post!) Children cannot take responsibility for their own education any more than they can be held responsible for their own diets. They don't know how to evaluate the credibility of a text any more than they know the long-term health effects of french fries. Our children depend on us to teach them what is important, and to equip them with all the tools they will need for life.