Real Life Education

I have been rethinking how to approach our children's education. This rethinking is occurring in a much broader consideration of my philosophy of education. One of the main questions that must be answered is this: How do we learn? I have come to some conclusions based on my own experience with education. I was in school for about thirty years straight! I have also taught a variety of children, high school students, college students, and adults for almost twenty years now. My conclusion is that people learn and retain information and skills best when they are directly related to real life situations. Unfortunately, most education in our nation (both secular and religious) is attempted in a classroom/textbook setting. There is certainly a place for classrooms and textbooks. But this is only sometimes necessary and is only a fraction of the learning process.

Here is one small example. When Bethany learns math, she is required to do exercise after exercise of particular types of problems in order to learn how to solve them. I suppose there is some value in this. But when I give her the  job of keeping track of the finances related to caring for our chickens, our egg consumption, and our egg sales, she has a totally different motivation to do math. When she is allowed to prepare a dish for the family, she is doing math as well. In these situations math isn't just for practice, it is a means to an end that has real results.

I am going to seek more and more to integrate education with real life. I hope this will minimize "school" time, increase motivation, learning, and retention, and increase real contributions to our family life.

"Public Education Is Going Down"

I am working with a young man who turned 18 in December. You know what he got for his birthday? A B.A. degree from an accredited college. His parents paid for tuition: under $15,000. The college awarded him his degree for work performed. He did the whole thing at home.

Is this a better way to go to college? You bet it is.

Are more parents going to figure this out? I hope to persuade them.

Is boola-boola at a distant campus worth $100,000 or more, plus five years instead of four? Not to wise parents and students.

Is earning a college degree at 18 better than earning a high school diploma? That family thought so.

What do you think?

This is the beginning of Gary North's prophetic article "Public Education Is Going Down." Fascinating.

Augustine's Confessions

We are reading Augustine's Confessions in the Medieval History class I am teaching high school homeschoolers. According to the Omnibus II textbook, Aurelius Augustine (354-430) was “one of the greatest minds of the ancient and medieval worlds (in a way he ends one world and begins the other ).” In the Middle Ages, “other than the Bible, the two [books] that were probably most read and influential were Augustine’s City of God and Confessions.” “Confessions is the story of Augustine’s journey from his rough and rowdy youth to his conversion.” I was immediately gripped by the quality of writing and depth of understanding in Confessions. It is a worthy read. I will be sharing a number of quotes as I read it.

Manly Missionary Monks

This Fall I will be teaching Medieval History (and Theology) in the Blue Ridge Teaching Cooperative in our local homeschool association. It will be based on the textbook Omnibus II: Church Fathers through the Reformation. We will be reading and discussing the following primary sources: Eusebius, The Church History Augustine, St., Confessions Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People Geoffrey, The History of the Kings of Britain Luther, Martin. The Bondage of the Will

Today I have been reading about the monk Bede, who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

"A common misconception about early medieval monasteries is that they were places where monks went to escape from civilization. But the opposite is true: monks boldly went into untamed places and carved out fresh civilization by establishing monasteries. In doing so they carried literacy to place where people could not read, food to where people were underfed, medicine to the sick, and most importantly, they carried the Christian gospel to people who had not heard of Jesus” (Omnibus II, 90-91).

I also found it interesting that Bede was the first to mark time with reference to the birth of Christ. In Latin he wrote, “ante vero incarnationis dominicae tempus” (“the time before the Lord's true incarnation”). This was translated into English and popularized as “Before Christ” and abbreviated B.C. Bede also used and popularized an earlier time marker, the Latin phrase anno Domini, “the year of our Lord,” abbreviated A.D. (Omnibus II, 95; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Christ).

The Peleg Chronicles

My favorite book find at the NCHE Conference this year was The Peleg Chronciles. It is a series of fiction books for young readers. There are two books so far and I loved reading both of them. The first book is called The Foundlings. Here is a summary from matthewchristianharding.com, the author's website: Foundlings, book one of The Peleg Chronicles is Historical Fiction that takes place in the time period of Peleg, soon after the tower of Babel dispersion. In its pages we meet dragons, giants, false priests, the death hunt, an under-city of the Dwarven Brotherhood, and many memorable characters.

The story begins with Lord McDougal and his faithful shield-bearer, Fergus Leatherhead, departing their lands with giants at their backs, while before them lie in wait denizens of the bog-land and forest.

Ever ready to protect and serve others, they gather in tow an assortment of displaced adventurers and find themselves embroiled in a mysterious search for the foundlings: orphaned Thiery with his companion Horatio the white wolf, and Suzie who has been deceitfully retained by the thieves Elvodug and Flemup.

Others also seek the foundlings, and their purposes are most sinister - Dragon Priests who practice cozen sacrifices, and their leader Count Rosencross who is torn by his God given conscience and his pursuit of personal glory.

Onward toward the city of Hradcanny they travel, meeting with treachery, beast attacks, camaraderie and psalms of praise with an eye toward the gospel. Though their battles are at times fierce and the outcomes uncertain, the author maintains the integrity of these noble characters, who through weakness are made strong by Him in whom they trust.

Foundlings weaves together the Biblical principles of chivalry, truth, courage, duty, faith and love within the framework of Genesis, and a bold adherence to its historicity. It's an exciting page turner that leaves you wanting more, but more importantly it leaves the reader with Godly heroes to think on and emulate, and a young earth creationist view of history that conforms to the Word of God.

Top Ten Highlights of the 2010 NCHE Conference

I wrote the following article for the Greenhouse Report, the newsletter for the North Carolinians for Home Education.

Six years ago, my wife Dana and I wandered around the Convention Center in wide-eyed amazement. It was our first NCHE Conference ever and we had never seen so many homeschooling people, philosophies, books, and curriculum. That first year was life changing for us and helped us set the course for our home education journey. Since then, we have made the annual conference a priority and we are encouraged and challenged every year. This year was no exception. So I would like to share the top ten highlights of the 2010 NCHE for Dana and me.

10. Our hotel room card opened the door and there was no one staying in our hotel room. Two years ago we tried to save money and stayed in a crummy hotel. After returning to the front desk for the third time, the room card finally opened the door . . . but there were people in there! Recommendation #1: Don’t come for just the book fair or one day of sessions. Make it a priority, take off work, and come for the whole conference as a couple. Recommendation #2: Save up some money and stay in a nice hotel.

9. Buying our curriculum. Every year, the first thing we do is head to the My Father’s World booth and buy all our curriculum for next year. We love this curriculum, love saving money on shipping, and are glad to get the main, big purchase out of the way.

8. BrewNerds Coffee. Its hard to justify spending so much time in the insanely long line at Starbucks, but I usually do. Not this year. Instead, I found Brewnerds Coffee one block away on Fourth Street. It is easily as good (probably better) than Starbucks and the line was short. I also learned it owned from strong believers.

7. Meeting old friends. There are some people I don’t ever see except at the conference. What a blessing to give hugs and talk face to face instead of over e-mail!

6. Meeting new friends. This is difficult not to do. It is very encouraging to meet and be sharpened by so many other like-minded people.

5. Finding new books. The two book purchases I am especially happy with: What a Daughter Needs from Her Dad: How a Man Prepares His Daughter for Life by Michael Farris, and the first two books of The Peleg Chronicles by Matthew Christian Harding, Foundlings and Paladins (this series is supposed to be for the kids, but I sure am enjoying them!).

4. Helping wide-eyed first timers. We met a couple that was there for the first time. It was easy to remember what that was like and so we felt a little sorry for them! It was a joy to help them sort through the overwhelming mass of information and select a curriculum.

3. Being reminded of how important it is to spend quantity and quality time with my kids. Even though our family spends most our time together, there are two traps we must watch out for: 1) Spending a lot of busy time with your family without realizing they need also need more focused relationship time, and 2) Not taking the time to spend one on one time with your kids.

2. Renewing a godly generational vision. I especially enjoyed hearing Kevin Swanson speak on the importance of such a generational vision. The heart of home education is that parents are taking responsibility for diligently teaching their children to love God so that they can teach their own children. “That you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son” (Deut 6:2)

1. Spending time with my wife. We take all the kids (except the youngest) to Grandma’s house and drop them off. The time that Dana and I have together at the conference is always rich. We spend a lot of time talking, especially on our regular Friday night date to Macaroni Grill. We are inspired by what we hear and share what God is doing in our hearts. We talk about our family and discuss ways to grow and improve.

All in all, we are grateful to be a part of NCHE and the opportunity to participate in a conference like this. See ya’ll next year!

Movable Chicken Coop

We finished building our movable chicken coop yesterday. It is made out of PVC pipe, a little re-bar, some wood reinforcement, chicken-wire, and a tarp. It houses up to around 25 chickens and is light weight so that it can be moved each day. So in addition to their feed, they get fresh grass and bugs all the time. A friend of mine designed the coop and sent me instructions on how to build it. The kids did a great job helping me build it. Our little chickens moved into it yesterday and seem to be happy. So far, so good.

A Godly Generational Vision

I have uploaded the teaching from Sunday: A Godly Generational Vision. This message was primarily inspired from our visit to the North Carolinians for Home Education Conference we attended last week. I was especially encouraged by Kevin Swanson of Generations with Vision. I had been memorizing and meditating on Deuteronomy 6 preceding the conference. This passage two basic principles related to a generational vision:

• The vision is for God’s people to live in loving, faithful obedience to him (vv. 4-5).
• Parents are responsible for teaching their children to live in loving, faithful obedience to God (vv. 7-9, 20-25).

As usual, you can listen to this message in the Teaching Audio player in the right sidebar. From the Player you can also download it or subscribe to messages from Highland Christian Fellowship as a podcast.