by Ken Connor
The poison peddled by the euthanasia movement here in the United States continues to take its toll. Assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon in 1997, and pro-death advocates are now pushing hard to make it legal in the State of Washington. Initiative 1000 would allow any competent adult suffering from a terminal illness to make a written request for medication that the patient may self-administer to end his or her life.
The average reader would interpret Initiative 1000 as helping terminal patients commit suicide, plain and simple. But the euthanasia movement has tried to mask that plain truth with soothing euphemisms. Rather than acknowledging that the initiative promotes assisted suicide, the text states the "request" will allow the patient to end their life "in a humane and dignified manner." Then, in a classic example of double speak, the text goes on to state, "Actions taken in accordance with this chapter do not, for any purpose, constitute suicide, assisted suicide, mercy killing, or homicide, under the law. State reports shall not refer to practice under this chapter as 'suicide' or 'assisted suicide.'" Funny, these "actions" sound just like the dictionary definition of suicide: "the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind."
If passed this November, Initiative 1000 will transform the legal landscape of the State of Washington. The change would parallel Oregon's decade-long acceptance of assisted suicide, a practice that has given rise to a myriad of problems. According to a fact sheet from National Right to Life, Oregon "conducts no independent reviews of assisted suicide deaths." Further, physicians who prescribe lethal drugs "only file required reports about 80.2% of the time." Incredibly, in "76.1% of these cases, physicians said that they had not perceived their act as the ending of life."
Not surprisingly, stories of abuse abound.
In 1998, an Oregonian psychologist decided that 85-year-old Kate Cheney was "cognitively impaired" because she suffered from dementia and, therefore, was not qualified to pursue assisted suicide. Her family then found another psychologist who authorized the suicide. That psychologist did so despite noting the undue influence of Cheney''s family on the decision and that Cheney was so mentally impaired she did not even realize she had cancer.
In 2007, two nurses in Oregon gave Wendy Melcher a lethal overdose. Though this was illegal (Oregon only allows physicians to prescribe lethal drugs), one of the nurses said she provided the overdose "because she believed [Melcher] to be in uncontrollable pain." However, the nurse had never noted such pain prior to the day she administered the overdose.
Recently, 64-year-old Barbara Wagner was suffering from cancer, but the Oregon Heath Plan would not cover a $4000 drug that could have helped her. Instead it offered her comfort care, including assisted suicide through drugs that would cost the state far less money than those requested by Ms.Wagner. As the only state that "both allows assisted suicide and tries to ration health care," the state's motivations in this case are highly suspect.
The truth is that the euthanasia movement's ultimate goal is death on demand for everyone. "A dignified death for the terminally ill" is just the first step towards this goal. Philip Nitschke, a well known pro-euthanasia leader and President of the Voluntary Euthanasia Research Foundation in Australia, said in a 2001 interview, "My personal position is that if we believe that there is a right to life, then we must accept that people have a right to dispose of that life whenever they want." Nitschke's view is typical of pro-death advocates. Their belief in a right to commit suicide is based on a hyper-individualism that sees every person as completely autonomous. They ignore any duties a person has to society or to their family as well as the wider social impact of such low regard for human life.
Wesley J. Smith points out in a National Review article, "[Nitschke] has not limited his 'death counseling' to the terminally ill. A case in point involved Nancy Crick who made headlines when she announced on Australian television that she would commit assisted suicide because she had terminal cancer. When her autopsy showed she was cancer free, however, Nitschke admitted that he and Crick had known all along that she wasn't dying. Nevertheless, he deemed that medical fact 'irrelevant' because she wanted to die."
Acceptance of euthanasia in select cases leads inevitably to an ever-expanding circle of those considered "killable." In 30 years of unpunished (and eventually legalized) assisted suicide in the Netherlands, the circle of accepted killings has been broadened to include the depressed, the disabled, and infants born with birth defects. Once a society accepts the right to commit suicide to prevent suffering, the right to kill to prevent suffering follows.
The euthanasia movement's callous disregard for life needs to be unmasked. Behind euphemisms like "death with dignity" and "end of life choices" lies an insidious assault on the sanctity of human life. Euthanasia advocates view "choice" as the ultimate virtue and "freedom of choice" as the ultimate freedom. Stripped of its gloss, however, their position is that unless one has the freedom to kill himself, he isn't really free. That's a perverse view of freedom and a sad view of life.
http://townhall.com/columnists/KenConnor/2008/08/31/deadly_intentions?comments=true#comments
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Travelin' Fever
You know when the sunlight starts to turn "autumn-y" and the first cool front feels so good you have to stop and thank God you're alive? That's when it seems my wanderlust is most irresistible. A drive to anywhere. And the song in my head is "Here comes the sun, here comes the sun. And I say it's alright..."
(special thanks to the Beatles, to my parents who taught me that "playing hooky" once in a while is a good thing, and to God for the promise of soon relief from Texas summer heat)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tips from Mom
Things You Can't Afford NOT to Do:
1. Find good slow-cooker recipes. The time it takes to find them and try them will come back to you a thousand times over. Throw it in the pot in the morning, and dinner-time will feel like you're on vacation!
2. Purge the excess. Excess breeds chaos. If you don't use it regularly or if it doesn't fit, set it free. Donate it to charity or make a few bucks off of it at a resale shop. The extra space you'll have will make your home (even the closets) a place of peace -- a place you actually want to be.
3. Manage your household; don't let it manage you. It usually takes LESS time than you think to tidy up, unload the dishwasher, purge the closets, etc. If you let it go, the work will pile up so high you won't know where to start. And starting IS the hardest part. Imagine you have company coming over in 15 minutes -- and then zoom through as much housework as you can. (Chances are, if you get up a good momentum, you'll want to keep going!)
4. Have the kids clean and de-clutter with you. Impress upon your children the feeling of satisfaction that comes with having a clean, orderly space and with giving to those less fortunate. If you do this, they will learn to be good stewards, to be organized, to be charitable, to value "things" less than people, and to keep a loose grip on the material "stuff" of life. After all, you can't take it with you.
5. Plan your meals for the week and grocery shop accordingly. It will save you time wondering what to make each evening and running out to the store for one more ingredient, AND it will save you money in keeping you from the "need" to order in or pick up restaurant food.
6. (On a more serious note...) Plan for eternity. Today could be your last. Don't make the tragic mistake of thinking it can be dealt with later because "later" may never come.
1. Find good slow-cooker recipes. The time it takes to find them and try them will come back to you a thousand times over. Throw it in the pot in the morning, and dinner-time will feel like you're on vacation!
2. Purge the excess. Excess breeds chaos. If you don't use it regularly or if it doesn't fit, set it free. Donate it to charity or make a few bucks off of it at a resale shop. The extra space you'll have will make your home (even the closets) a place of peace -- a place you actually want to be.
3. Manage your household; don't let it manage you. It usually takes LESS time than you think to tidy up, unload the dishwasher, purge the closets, etc. If you let it go, the work will pile up so high you won't know where to start. And starting IS the hardest part. Imagine you have company coming over in 15 minutes -- and then zoom through as much housework as you can. (Chances are, if you get up a good momentum, you'll want to keep going!)
4. Have the kids clean and de-clutter with you. Impress upon your children the feeling of satisfaction that comes with having a clean, orderly space and with giving to those less fortunate. If you do this, they will learn to be good stewards, to be organized, to be charitable, to value "things" less than people, and to keep a loose grip on the material "stuff" of life. After all, you can't take it with you.
5. Plan your meals for the week and grocery shop accordingly. It will save you time wondering what to make each evening and running out to the store for one more ingredient, AND it will save you money in keeping you from the "need" to order in or pick up restaurant food.
6. (On a more serious note...) Plan for eternity. Today could be your last. Don't make the tragic mistake of thinking it can be dealt with later because "later" may never come.
(Acts 16:25-31) But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, "Do yourself no harm, for we are all here."Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
So they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household."
Socialization: Homeschooling vs. Schools
By Michael F. Haverluck
CBNNews.com
May 2, 2007
CBNNews.com - It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
Many homeschoolers share this sentiment when it comes to public schools, believing that the moral relativism, violence, peer pressure, drugs and promiscuity found inside their gates provide an inadequate setting to properly socialize their children.
Yet 92 percent of superintendents believe that home learners are emotionally unstable, deprived of proper social development and too judgmental of the world around them, according to a California study by researcher Dr. Brian Ray . What makes homeschool socialization such a hot topic?
With approximately 4 million children currently being homeschooled in the U.S., along with a 15- to 20-percent yearly growth rate, many professional educators and school boards are concerned that this exodus will keep funds from entering the public education system.
Many teachers also believe that successful home instruction by uncredentialed parents undermines their expertise and jeopardizes their jobs.
Questions about inadequate socialization are often brought up as a means to disqualify homeschooling as a viable alternative form of education, but are the arguments valid?
A look at the research on this socialization debate shines further light on the issue.
There's no place like home
Why is there such a dichotomy in the socialization experienced between homeschoolers and conventional students? It all has to do with the learning environment.
The National Home Education Research Institute disclosed that the 36 to 54 hours that students spend in school-related weekly activities make peers and adults outside of the home the primary influences in children's lives - not the parents.
Realizing the harm that this constant exposure can produce, especially if it's not countered by involved parenting, most homeschoolers are well aware of their children's need for close one-to-one contact throughout the education process. Jesus understood the importance of continual intimate contact with His students, as He ate, slept and fellowshipped with His disciples 24 hours a day. It is unlikely that Jesus would have entrusted their training to strangers.
So how do these different settings affect children? Dr. Thomas Smedley believes that homeschoolers have superior socialization skills, and his research supports this claim. He conducted a study in which he administered the Vineyard Adaptive Behavior Scales test to identify mature and well-adapted behaviors in children. Home learners ranked in the 84th percentile, compared to publicly schooled students, who were drastically lower in the 23rd.
Welcome to the real world
Many school socialization advocates argue that homeschooling precludes children from experiencing real life.
Instead of being locked behind school gates in what some would consider an artificial setting characterized by bells, forced silence and age-segregation, homeschoolers frequently extend their everyday classroom to fire departments, hospitals, museums, repair shops, city halls, national parks, churches and colleges, where real community interaction and contacts are made.
Dismantling the stereotype that home learners spend their days isolated from society at kitchen tables with workbooks in hand, NHERI reports that they actually participate in approximately five different social activities outside the home on a regular basis.
Furthermore, researcher Dr. Linda Montgomery found that 78 percent of high school home learners were employed with paying jobs, while a majority engaged in volunteering and community service.
Research presented at the National Christian Home Educators Leadership Conference divulged that homeschool graduates far exceeded their public and private school counterparts in college by ranking the highest in 42 of 63 indicators of collegiate success. They were also ranked as being superior in four out of five achievement categories, including socialization, as they were assessed as being the most charismatic and influential.
Biblical or worldly socialization?
When most home educators and school administrators speak of successful socialization, are they referring to the same thing?
Education researcher Dr. Michael Mitchell found that being popular, aggressively competitive, materialistically driven and self-confident are traits promoted in conventional schools.
His study shows that these campus ideals are discouraged by Christian home educators in favor of building their children's character and dismantling selfish ambitions. Integrity, responsibility, respect for others, trust in God, biblical soundness and an amiable disposition topped the ideal social qualities they desired their youth to embody.
Many Christians who homeschool believe that the greatest socialization their children can have is to be trained to emulate Jesus, who is a servant of man. Home educators examined by Mitchell strive to dismantle any selfish ambitions and self-aggrandizement seen in their children, as opposed to cultivating them.
Getting ahead of one's peers is not consistent with Jesus' urging in Matthew 20:25b-28, which calls for Christians to seek a lowly and servile role to those around them. However, this does not mean that Christians are called to underachieve, as Colossians 3:23 exhorts readers to push for peak performance in every endeavor, but for the glory of God rather than for selfish ambition.
Pride is also promoted in the public schools. It is often repackaged as self-esteem in programs such as "Here's Looking at You, 2000," in which education researcher Dr. Amy Binder reports that students are instructed to believe that they are "the most important person in the world."
Many Christian home educators assert that the kind of pride being taught in the schools is discouraged throughout Scripture by Jesus and Paul, who preach against lifting oneself up or putting oneself first in favor of assuming a lowly position among others, as seen in Luke 14:10-11 and Romans 12:3.
They often contend that traditional students are driven to achieve high marks in order to attain lucrative and prestigious jobs that can lead to lives of self-indulgence, while the Bible calls man not to be overcome by material concerns.
Even though God enjoys prospering His children, He also warns us in 1 Timothy 6:10 that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
Negative socialization
The mass socialization conducted within schools has brought about a proliferation of delinquent behavior within this nation's youth, reports education researcher, Dr. Michael Slavinski. He notes that student bodies are increasingly riddled with violence, drugs, promiscuity, emotional disorders, crime, contempt for authority, desperate behavior, illiteracy and peer dependency - just to name a few.
Today, parents are not as surprised to see reports of fifth-graders having sex in class; hear about school shootings; find drugs or condoms in backpacks; receive phone calls from the police and principals; or witness defiant, apathetic and unrecognizable tones in their children's voices.
"Live and let learn," say many parents. Most home educators are fine with this, as long as their children's learning comes from mature, seasoned and embracing adults who have the children's best interests at heart - above political or economic agendas. They believe that such training shouldn't come from peers either, which amounts to the blind leading the blind.
When the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist was administered by education researcher Dr. Larry Shyers to identify 97 problematic behaviors in two groups of children, traditionally schooled students exuded eight times as many antisocial traits than their homeschooled counterparts. This lies in direct contrast to claims by public school advocates that exposure to campus life leads to proper socialization.
Light of the world
Many Christian parents are concerned that homeschooling would not allow their children to fulfill the great commission of sharing the gospel with non-believers. They often site Matthew 5:14-16 about being the light of the world.
Some Christian homeschool parents argue that even though young believers are to reach out to the lost, they are not called to immerse themselves daily in a hostile setting that constantly works to influence them in the ways of the world. They recognize that those with strong Christian upbringings are still vulnerable to the ungodly climate of the schools.
In Proverbs 4:11-15, King Solomon realized the vulnerability of his son, proclaiming his responsibility to train him in godly teachings and keep him from stumbling over the vices of this world.
Just as parents know that children are not prepared for war, many Christians believe that youth are not equipped to fend for themselves in the spiritual warfare taking place within schools.
A nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group shows that 80 percent of Christian families send their children to public schools where their faith is attacked. Based on the study's findings, it appears that their kids are the ones being "evangelized" by the religion of secular humanism. More than half of their Christian teens believe Jesus actually sinned and only nine percent hold to moral absolutes, while 83 percent of children from committed Christian families attending public schools adopt a Marxist-Socialist worldview, reports the group.
For more statistics on Christians in education, click on The Barna Group.
Consistent with these figures, Christian producer and occult expert Caryl Matrisciana reports that 75 percent of public-schooled American youth brought up in Christian households disown their Christian faith by the first year of college. NHERI finds that this is only true for less than four percent of homeschooled youth.
Most home educators would not trade the blessings that homeschooling brings their families and society for the world.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, The Barna Group, NHERI, Dr. Michael Slavinski, Dr. Brian Ray, Dr. Thomas C. Smedley, Dr. Larry E. Shyers, Dr. Michael Mitchell, Dr. Linda Montgomery, Dr. Rhonda A. Galloway, Dr. Amy Binder
CBNNews.com
May 2, 2007
CBNNews.com - It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
Many homeschoolers share this sentiment when it comes to public schools, believing that the moral relativism, violence, peer pressure, drugs and promiscuity found inside their gates provide an inadequate setting to properly socialize their children.
Yet 92 percent of superintendents believe that home learners are emotionally unstable, deprived of proper social development and too judgmental of the world around them, according to a California study by researcher Dr. Brian Ray . What makes homeschool socialization such a hot topic?
With approximately 4 million children currently being homeschooled in the U.S., along with a 15- to 20-percent yearly growth rate, many professional educators and school boards are concerned that this exodus will keep funds from entering the public education system.
Many teachers also believe that successful home instruction by uncredentialed parents undermines their expertise and jeopardizes their jobs.
Questions about inadequate socialization are often brought up as a means to disqualify homeschooling as a viable alternative form of education, but are the arguments valid?
A look at the research on this socialization debate shines further light on the issue.
There's no place like home
Why is there such a dichotomy in the socialization experienced between homeschoolers and conventional students? It all has to do with the learning environment.
The National Home Education Research Institute disclosed that the 36 to 54 hours that students spend in school-related weekly activities make peers and adults outside of the home the primary influences in children's lives - not the parents.
Realizing the harm that this constant exposure can produce, especially if it's not countered by involved parenting, most homeschoolers are well aware of their children's need for close one-to-one contact throughout the education process. Jesus understood the importance of continual intimate contact with His students, as He ate, slept and fellowshipped with His disciples 24 hours a day. It is unlikely that Jesus would have entrusted their training to strangers.
So how do these different settings affect children? Dr. Thomas Smedley believes that homeschoolers have superior socialization skills, and his research supports this claim. He conducted a study in which he administered the Vineyard Adaptive Behavior Scales test to identify mature and well-adapted behaviors in children. Home learners ranked in the 84th percentile, compared to publicly schooled students, who were drastically lower in the 23rd.
Welcome to the real world
Many school socialization advocates argue that homeschooling precludes children from experiencing real life.
Instead of being locked behind school gates in what some would consider an artificial setting characterized by bells, forced silence and age-segregation, homeschoolers frequently extend their everyday classroom to fire departments, hospitals, museums, repair shops, city halls, national parks, churches and colleges, where real community interaction and contacts are made.
Dismantling the stereotype that home learners spend their days isolated from society at kitchen tables with workbooks in hand, NHERI reports that they actually participate in approximately five different social activities outside the home on a regular basis.
Furthermore, researcher Dr. Linda Montgomery found that 78 percent of high school home learners were employed with paying jobs, while a majority engaged in volunteering and community service.
Research presented at the National Christian Home Educators Leadership Conference divulged that homeschool graduates far exceeded their public and private school counterparts in college by ranking the highest in 42 of 63 indicators of collegiate success. They were also ranked as being superior in four out of five achievement categories, including socialization, as they were assessed as being the most charismatic and influential.
Biblical or worldly socialization?
When most home educators and school administrators speak of successful socialization, are they referring to the same thing?
Education researcher Dr. Michael Mitchell found that being popular, aggressively competitive, materialistically driven and self-confident are traits promoted in conventional schools.
His study shows that these campus ideals are discouraged by Christian home educators in favor of building their children's character and dismantling selfish ambitions. Integrity, responsibility, respect for others, trust in God, biblical soundness and an amiable disposition topped the ideal social qualities they desired their youth to embody.
Many Christians who homeschool believe that the greatest socialization their children can have is to be trained to emulate Jesus, who is a servant of man. Home educators examined by Mitchell strive to dismantle any selfish ambitions and self-aggrandizement seen in their children, as opposed to cultivating them.
Getting ahead of one's peers is not consistent with Jesus' urging in Matthew 20:25b-28, which calls for Christians to seek a lowly and servile role to those around them. However, this does not mean that Christians are called to underachieve, as Colossians 3:23 exhorts readers to push for peak performance in every endeavor, but for the glory of God rather than for selfish ambition.
Pride is also promoted in the public schools. It is often repackaged as self-esteem in programs such as "Here's Looking at You, 2000," in which education researcher Dr. Amy Binder reports that students are instructed to believe that they are "the most important person in the world."
Many Christian home educators assert that the kind of pride being taught in the schools is discouraged throughout Scripture by Jesus and Paul, who preach against lifting oneself up or putting oneself first in favor of assuming a lowly position among others, as seen in Luke 14:10-11 and Romans 12:3.
They often contend that traditional students are driven to achieve high marks in order to attain lucrative and prestigious jobs that can lead to lives of self-indulgence, while the Bible calls man not to be overcome by material concerns.
Even though God enjoys prospering His children, He also warns us in 1 Timothy 6:10 that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
Negative socialization
The mass socialization conducted within schools has brought about a proliferation of delinquent behavior within this nation's youth, reports education researcher, Dr. Michael Slavinski. He notes that student bodies are increasingly riddled with violence, drugs, promiscuity, emotional disorders, crime, contempt for authority, desperate behavior, illiteracy and peer dependency - just to name a few.
Today, parents are not as surprised to see reports of fifth-graders having sex in class; hear about school shootings; find drugs or condoms in backpacks; receive phone calls from the police and principals; or witness defiant, apathetic and unrecognizable tones in their children's voices.
"Live and let learn," say many parents. Most home educators are fine with this, as long as their children's learning comes from mature, seasoned and embracing adults who have the children's best interests at heart - above political or economic agendas. They believe that such training shouldn't come from peers either, which amounts to the blind leading the blind.
When the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist was administered by education researcher Dr. Larry Shyers to identify 97 problematic behaviors in two groups of children, traditionally schooled students exuded eight times as many antisocial traits than their homeschooled counterparts. This lies in direct contrast to claims by public school advocates that exposure to campus life leads to proper socialization.
Light of the world
Many Christian parents are concerned that homeschooling would not allow their children to fulfill the great commission of sharing the gospel with non-believers. They often site Matthew 5:14-16 about being the light of the world.
Some Christian homeschool parents argue that even though young believers are to reach out to the lost, they are not called to immerse themselves daily in a hostile setting that constantly works to influence them in the ways of the world. They recognize that those with strong Christian upbringings are still vulnerable to the ungodly climate of the schools.
In Proverbs 4:11-15, King Solomon realized the vulnerability of his son, proclaiming his responsibility to train him in godly teachings and keep him from stumbling over the vices of this world.
Just as parents know that children are not prepared for war, many Christians believe that youth are not equipped to fend for themselves in the spiritual warfare taking place within schools.
A nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group shows that 80 percent of Christian families send their children to public schools where their faith is attacked. Based on the study's findings, it appears that their kids are the ones being "evangelized" by the religion of secular humanism. More than half of their Christian teens believe Jesus actually sinned and only nine percent hold to moral absolutes, while 83 percent of children from committed Christian families attending public schools adopt a Marxist-Socialist worldview, reports the group.
For more statistics on Christians in education, click on The Barna Group.
Consistent with these figures, Christian producer and occult expert Caryl Matrisciana reports that 75 percent of public-schooled American youth brought up in Christian households disown their Christian faith by the first year of college. NHERI finds that this is only true for less than four percent of homeschooled youth.
Most home educators would not trade the blessings that homeschooling brings their families and society for the world.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, The Barna Group, NHERI, Dr. Michael Slavinski, Dr. Brian Ray, Dr. Thomas C. Smedley, Dr. Larry E. Shyers, Dr. Michael Mitchell, Dr. Linda Montgomery, Dr. Rhonda A. Galloway, Dr. Amy Binder
Moral Code for School Children
From Collier’s, The National Weekly © 1925
If I Want To Be a Happy, Useful Citizen I Must Have:
Courage and Hope
I must be brave—This means I must be brave enough and strong enough to control what I think, and what I say and what I do, and I must always be hopeful because hope is power for improvement.
Wisdom
I must act wisely—In school, at home, playing, working, reading or talking, I must learn how to choose the good, and how to avoid the bad.
Industry and Good Habits
I must make my character strong—My character is what I am, if not in the eyes of others, then in the eyes of my own conscience. Good thoughts in my mind will keep out bad thoughts. When I am busy doing good I shall have no time to do evil. I can build my character by training myself in good habits.
Knowledge and Usefulness
I must make my mind strong—The better I know myself, my fellows and the world about me, the happier and more useful I shall be. I must always welcome useful knowledge in school, at home, everywhere.
Truth and Honesty
I must be truthful and honest—I must know what is true in order to do what is right. I must tell the truth without fear. I must be honest in all my dealings and in all my thoughts. Unless I am honest I cannot have self-respect.
Healthfulness and Cleanliness
I must make my body strong—My eyes, my teeth, my heart, my whole body must be healthful so that my mind can work properly. I must keep physically and morally clean.
Helpfulness and Unselfishness
I must use my strength to help others who need help—If I am strong I can help others, I can be kind, I can forgive those who hurt me and I can help and protect the weak, the suffering, the young and the old, and dumb animals.
Charity
I must love—I must love God, who created not only this earth but also all men of all races, nations and creeds, who are my brothers. I must love my parents, my home, my neighbors, my country and be loyal to all these.
Humility and Reverence
I must know that there are always more things to learn—What I may know is small compared to what can be known. I must respect all who have more wisdom than I, and have reverence for all that is good. And I must know how and whom to obey.
Faith and Responsibility
I must do all these things because I am accountable to God and humanity for how I live and how I can help my fellows, and for the extent to which my fellows may trust and depend on me.
If I Want To Be a Happy, Useful Citizen I Must Have:
Courage and Hope
I must be brave—This means I must be brave enough and strong enough to control what I think, and what I say and what I do, and I must always be hopeful because hope is power for improvement.
Wisdom
I must act wisely—In school, at home, playing, working, reading or talking, I must learn how to choose the good, and how to avoid the bad.
Industry and Good Habits
I must make my character strong—My character is what I am, if not in the eyes of others, then in the eyes of my own conscience. Good thoughts in my mind will keep out bad thoughts. When I am busy doing good I shall have no time to do evil. I can build my character by training myself in good habits.
Knowledge and Usefulness
I must make my mind strong—The better I know myself, my fellows and the world about me, the happier and more useful I shall be. I must always welcome useful knowledge in school, at home, everywhere.
Truth and Honesty
I must be truthful and honest—I must know what is true in order to do what is right. I must tell the truth without fear. I must be honest in all my dealings and in all my thoughts. Unless I am honest I cannot have self-respect.
Healthfulness and Cleanliness
I must make my body strong—My eyes, my teeth, my heart, my whole body must be healthful so that my mind can work properly. I must keep physically and morally clean.
Helpfulness and Unselfishness
I must use my strength to help others who need help—If I am strong I can help others, I can be kind, I can forgive those who hurt me and I can help and protect the weak, the suffering, the young and the old, and dumb animals.
Charity
I must love—I must love God, who created not only this earth but also all men of all races, nations and creeds, who are my brothers. I must love my parents, my home, my neighbors, my country and be loyal to all these.
Humility and Reverence
I must know that there are always more things to learn—What I may know is small compared to what can be known. I must respect all who have more wisdom than I, and have reverence for all that is good. And I must know how and whom to obey.
Faith and Responsibility
I must do all these things because I am accountable to God and humanity for how I live and how I can help my fellows, and for the extent to which my fellows may trust and depend on me.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Think On These Things
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)
The Evidence is So Positive
An Article by Brian D. Ray, PhD...
Many people ask, “Are you hiding something?” after hearing a researcher present the research findings to date about homeschooling. Whether an advocate of home-based education or a negative critic, the questioner finds the plethora of positive information a little difficult to accept. It is now about 25 years into the modern homeschool movement in the United States—what does the research tell us?
Standard thought in many nations for about 100 years has been that only professionally trained and state-certified persons can effectively teach children to read, write, and cipher. Almost all teachers in state-run institutional schools are trained in teaching institutions and certified by the state, while a small minority of homeschool parents are such. The question arises, therefore, “Can and does homeschooling work academically?” Numerous studies by dozens of researchers have been completed during the past 25 years that examine the academic achievement of the home educated (see reviews, e.g., Ray, 2000b; 2005). Examples of these studies range from a multi-year study in Washington State to three nationwide studies across the United States to two nationwide studies in Canada by various researchers. In study after study, the homeschooled have scored, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the US and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile.
Read Dr. Ray's entire article at http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/cms_content?page=1812612&sp=102656&event=1016TOS1806673102656
Many people ask, “Are you hiding something?” after hearing a researcher present the research findings to date about homeschooling. Whether an advocate of home-based education or a negative critic, the questioner finds the plethora of positive information a little difficult to accept. It is now about 25 years into the modern homeschool movement in the United States—what does the research tell us?
Standard thought in many nations for about 100 years has been that only professionally trained and state-certified persons can effectively teach children to read, write, and cipher. Almost all teachers in state-run institutional schools are trained in teaching institutions and certified by the state, while a small minority of homeschool parents are such. The question arises, therefore, “Can and does homeschooling work academically?” Numerous studies by dozens of researchers have been completed during the past 25 years that examine the academic achievement of the home educated (see reviews, e.g., Ray, 2000b; 2005). Examples of these studies range from a multi-year study in Washington State to three nationwide studies across the United States to two nationwide studies in Canada by various researchers. In study after study, the homeschooled have scored, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the US and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile.
Read Dr. Ray's entire article at http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/cms_content?page=1812612&sp=102656&event=1016TOS1806673102656
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Musings on God -- part 2
In the last post by the same title, I attempted to give a reconciliation between the truths of God's perfect love and His perfect omnipotence as it relates to human pain (alongside a much better explanation by C. S. Lewis). This understanding is merely a jumping off point for coping with life's suffering and is wholly inadequate if divorced from God's own Word.
Pain -- physical, emotional, spiritual -- has purpose in God's economy. (How that in itself testifies to God's goodness that He should reappropriate the suffering a sinful race brings on itself for our own benefit!)
And although pain entered the world willfully by Adam's sin bringing death, God has seen fit to express His mercy by not allowing our suffering to be purely punitive in nature, redeeming even our very deserved suffering for His glory and our good.
As far as I can understand it, pain (beyond its genesis in Adam) has three causes. In each case, God illustrates His Godly character to us.
First, and most obviously, we suffer as a result of the natural consequences of our sin. God has designed us to function best within certain boundaries, and that for our own safety. Just as no one truly loves his child whom he also allows to run freely into traffic, God prescribes limits to what His creatures can and should do physically and spiritually. When we second-guess His wisdom and insinuate ourselves into the place of His authority, we inevitably get hurt. This is true of the child who rebels against his father's rule and runs into the street, relishing his supposed freedom before disaster strikes, and it is true of all of us who test the limits by tiptoeing (and sometimes flinging ourselves headlong) over God's boundaries.
We are created to glorify God, but in our sinfulness are bent on glorifying ourselves. Herein we find most of our suffering -- as creatures foolishly pretending we can govern ourselves better than the Creator, substituting our rules in place of His.
The natural expression of this truth is all around us. God instructs us toward purity before and fidelity within marriage. Outside these loving parameters we find deep emotional fears, rampant disease, broken homes, poverty, and anchorless, insecure children who, more often than not, are described as "troubled". The same is true of those who have embraced homosexuality against God's warnings, ignoring its devastating physical and emotional consequences, the details of which I do not even want to describe here.
The point is not that God rains down these consequences purely to punish wayward humankind, but to allow the sting that would drive us back into safety, under the umbrella of blessing He promises to the obedient. Even as a child is conditioned to avoid a hot stove once he has burned his hand, God allows the pain from our sin to condition us to avoid what is destructive (even though we, like children, often don't appreciate our Father's wisdom until we've been burned).
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; for whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights." (Proverbs 3:11, 12)
"Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11)
The second type of suffering is that which results from doing what is right, which may seem contradictory to my earlier comment that God blesses obedience. But Scripture is clear on both points: that the righteous will suffer for doing good and that God promises good to those who are obedient to Him. One might also wonder what motivation there is for doing good if only to suffer for it. This is where I will pick up next time.
(There is, of course, a kind of pain that we learn to appreciate because it strengthens us -- sore muscles that become strengthened through exercise, hard work that rewards an honest living, an immune system strengthened by illness, etc. -- but it could be argued that this is true of all three kinds of pain discussed here. But that discussion will be included in the next post.)
Pain -- physical, emotional, spiritual -- has purpose in God's economy. (How that in itself testifies to God's goodness that He should reappropriate the suffering a sinful race brings on itself for our own benefit!)
And although pain entered the world willfully by Adam's sin bringing death, God has seen fit to express His mercy by not allowing our suffering to be purely punitive in nature, redeeming even our very deserved suffering for His glory and our good.
As far as I can understand it, pain (beyond its genesis in Adam) has three causes. In each case, God illustrates His Godly character to us.
First, and most obviously, we suffer as a result of the natural consequences of our sin. God has designed us to function best within certain boundaries, and that for our own safety. Just as no one truly loves his child whom he also allows to run freely into traffic, God prescribes limits to what His creatures can and should do physically and spiritually. When we second-guess His wisdom and insinuate ourselves into the place of His authority, we inevitably get hurt. This is true of the child who rebels against his father's rule and runs into the street, relishing his supposed freedom before disaster strikes, and it is true of all of us who test the limits by tiptoeing (and sometimes flinging ourselves headlong) over God's boundaries.
We are created to glorify God, but in our sinfulness are bent on glorifying ourselves. Herein we find most of our suffering -- as creatures foolishly pretending we can govern ourselves better than the Creator, substituting our rules in place of His.
The natural expression of this truth is all around us. God instructs us toward purity before and fidelity within marriage. Outside these loving parameters we find deep emotional fears, rampant disease, broken homes, poverty, and anchorless, insecure children who, more often than not, are described as "troubled". The same is true of those who have embraced homosexuality against God's warnings, ignoring its devastating physical and emotional consequences, the details of which I do not even want to describe here.
The point is not that God rains down these consequences purely to punish wayward humankind, but to allow the sting that would drive us back into safety, under the umbrella of blessing He promises to the obedient. Even as a child is conditioned to avoid a hot stove once he has burned his hand, God allows the pain from our sin to condition us to avoid what is destructive (even though we, like children, often don't appreciate our Father's wisdom until we've been burned).
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; for whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights." (Proverbs 3:11, 12)
"Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11)
The second type of suffering is that which results from doing what is right, which may seem contradictory to my earlier comment that God blesses obedience. But Scripture is clear on both points: that the righteous will suffer for doing good and that God promises good to those who are obedient to Him. One might also wonder what motivation there is for doing good if only to suffer for it. This is where I will pick up next time.
(There is, of course, a kind of pain that we learn to appreciate because it strengthens us -- sore muscles that become strengthened through exercise, hard work that rewards an honest living, an immune system strengthened by illness, etc. -- but it could be argued that this is true of all three kinds of pain discussed here. But that discussion will be included in the next post.)
Monday, July 7, 2008
High Self-Esteem, Low Test Scores
Excerpt from Burt Prelutsky's article "High Self-Esteem, Low Test Scores":
There are new studies and new polls that strongly suggest that we are breeding increasingly stupid kids here in America. Like our tasteless tomatoes, they merely look good and healthy.
But of course there is more than one way to test intelligence. So, while only 43% of our 17-year-olds know that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900, as opposed to, say, 1750-1800 or after 1950, they are very good at text-messaging. They also probably know the names of Britney Spears’ kids, which is more than Ms. Spears does at any given moment, but they have no idea why December 7, 1941, was a day of infamy. They also don’t know what “infamy” means.
What makes the situation even more pathetic is that these kids, for the most part, have a terrifically high opinion of themselves. To be fair, nothing much has ever been asked of them, let alone demanded, and yet they are constantly being told how special they are. Hardly any of them are expected to do chores, and as teachers have been ordered by craven school boards to pass along any student who’s breathing, D’s are frowned upon and F’s are verboten. As a result, 18-year-olds, who can barely count up to 18 without taking off their shoes, automatically get their high school diplomas.
Read the entire article at http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2008/07/07/high_self-esteem,_low_test_scores.
There are new studies and new polls that strongly suggest that we are breeding increasingly stupid kids here in America. Like our tasteless tomatoes, they merely look good and healthy.
But of course there is more than one way to test intelligence. So, while only 43% of our 17-year-olds know that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900, as opposed to, say, 1750-1800 or after 1950, they are very good at text-messaging. They also probably know the names of Britney Spears’ kids, which is more than Ms. Spears does at any given moment, but they have no idea why December 7, 1941, was a day of infamy. They also don’t know what “infamy” means.
What makes the situation even more pathetic is that these kids, for the most part, have a terrifically high opinion of themselves. To be fair, nothing much has ever been asked of them, let alone demanded, and yet they are constantly being told how special they are. Hardly any of them are expected to do chores, and as teachers have been ordered by craven school boards to pass along any student who’s breathing, D’s are frowned upon and F’s are verboten. As a result, 18-year-olds, who can barely count up to 18 without taking off their shoes, automatically get their high school diplomas.
Read the entire article at http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2008/07/07/high_self-esteem,_low_test_scores.
Straight Talk from Bill Gates
Found this gem online. Not sure if Bill Gates actually said all this, but whoever did -- they were right.
Some things Bill Gates thinks kids (and adults) should know.
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were . So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Some things Bill Gates thinks kids (and adults) should know.
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were . So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Stumped by a 2-year-old
Heimer: Mommy, do peas like to run?
Mommy: ?????
Mommy: ?????
(Any philosophers out there who can help me out?)
Where do homeschooled kids end up?
Not sure what becomes of most homeschoolers; but, here are 4 that did alright...
Click here for their stories:
http://learninfreedom.org/Founders_free.html
More famous homeschoolers and homeschooling parents:
http://www.knowledgehouse.info/famous.html
Click here for their stories:
http://learninfreedom.org/Founders_free.html
More famous homeschoolers and homeschooling parents:
http://www.knowledgehouse.info/famous.html
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Are Parents Really Necessary? A Guide to Preschool Education
Read the entire article at http://www.crosswalk.com/homeschool/11575357/page1/.
Socialization: A Great Reason Not to Go to School
Copyright © 2006 Karl M. Bunday, all rights reserved.
Excerpts (with emphasis added):
"...self-esteem is a concept that was born in the school system, and it is best for parents not to overemphasize the self-esteem of their children. Professor Martin E.P. Seligman, in his helpful book The Optimistic Child, discusses how self-esteem has been more and more emphasized in schools during precisely the same years that the youth suicide rate has increased in the United States. Seligman suggests "optimism," a concept he defines in The Optimistic Child, is a better thing for parents to develop than self-esteem. I have read, and am still trying to confirm in other sources, that Seligman is himself a homeschooling parent. Whether or not he is a homeschooler, I know that he is a highly respected psychologist, as I have read many books and articles that cite his research, and have confirmed that Professor Seligman was recently the president of the American Psychological Association. A different perspective on self-esteem is offered by Jay E. Adams, the author of many of my favorite books. Adams, in his refreshingly accurate review of Biblical concepts, The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-Love, Self-Image, points out that persons who honestly follow Biblical teachings don't seek to build self-esteem, but to build love for others that denies self and loves God first.
"And Shyers, from the secular perspective of his research, looked at how homeschooled children treat other children. Shyers found no significant difference between his two groups in scores on the Children's Assertive Behavior Scale. But direct observation by trained observers, using a "blind" procedure, found that home-schooled children had significantly fewer problem behaviors, as measured by the Child Observation Checklist's Direct Observation Form, than traditionally schooled children when playing in mixed groups of children from both kinds of schooling backgrounds. This observational study was reported in some detail in the 1992 Associated Press article. Shyers concluded that the hypothesis that contact with adults, rather than contact with other children, is most important in developing social skills in children is supported by these data.
"The same year that Shyers completed his doctoral degree thesis research on homeschooling socialization, Thomas Smedley completed master's degree research at Radford University in Virginia, with a similar experimental design. Smedley compared twenty home-schooled children to thirteen public school children, matching the children as best he could by relevant demographic characteristics. His study used the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, which evaluate communication skills, socialization, and daily living skills. Smedley found that the home-schooled children were more mature according to the scoring rubrics of the Vineland scales, scoring in the 84th percentile, while the public school children scored in the 27th percentile. Thus the Shyers finding supports a nearly simultaneous finding by a different researcher, who used a different social science evaluation procedure on a different sample population. Such a replicated finding is unusual in social science."
For the entire article, go to http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html.
Excerpts (with emphasis added):
"...self-esteem is a concept that was born in the school system, and it is best for parents not to overemphasize the self-esteem of their children. Professor Martin E.P. Seligman, in his helpful book The Optimistic Child, discusses how self-esteem has been more and more emphasized in schools during precisely the same years that the youth suicide rate has increased in the United States. Seligman suggests "optimism," a concept he defines in The Optimistic Child, is a better thing for parents to develop than self-esteem. I have read, and am still trying to confirm in other sources, that Seligman is himself a homeschooling parent. Whether or not he is a homeschooler, I know that he is a highly respected psychologist, as I have read many books and articles that cite his research, and have confirmed that Professor Seligman was recently the president of the American Psychological Association. A different perspective on self-esteem is offered by Jay E. Adams, the author of many of my favorite books. Adams, in his refreshingly accurate review of Biblical concepts, The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-Love, Self-Image, points out that persons who honestly follow Biblical teachings don't seek to build self-esteem, but to build love for others that denies self and loves God first.
"And Shyers, from the secular perspective of his research, looked at how homeschooled children treat other children. Shyers found no significant difference between his two groups in scores on the Children's Assertive Behavior Scale. But direct observation by trained observers, using a "blind" procedure, found that home-schooled children had significantly fewer problem behaviors, as measured by the Child Observation Checklist's Direct Observation Form, than traditionally schooled children when playing in mixed groups of children from both kinds of schooling backgrounds. This observational study was reported in some detail in the 1992 Associated Press article. Shyers concluded that the hypothesis that contact with adults, rather than contact with other children, is most important in developing social skills in children is supported by these data.
"The same year that Shyers completed his doctoral degree thesis research on homeschooling socialization, Thomas Smedley completed master's degree research at Radford University in Virginia, with a similar experimental design. Smedley compared twenty home-schooled children to thirteen public school children, matching the children as best he could by relevant demographic characteristics. His study used the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, which evaluate communication skills, socialization, and daily living skills. Smedley found that the home-schooled children were more mature according to the scoring rubrics of the Vineland scales, scoring in the 84th percentile, while the public school children scored in the 27th percentile. Thus the Shyers finding supports a nearly simultaneous finding by a different researcher, who used a different social science evaluation procedure on a different sample population. Such a replicated finding is unusual in social science."
For the entire article, go to http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html.
Home-schoolers threaten our cultural comfort
From the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, June 8, 2008:
You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.
It's a big family by today’s standards - "just like stair steps," as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom through the store as she fills her no-frills shopping list.
There's no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully about her task. You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and some place the figure as high as $9 billion. When you consider that these families pay taxes to support public schools, but demand nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.
Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm, and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are many and varied. Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism, coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their children’s safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a theistic world view largely permeates the movement.
Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.
Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?
Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the home schooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.
Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.
Just as the jealous Chaldeans schemed to bring the wrath of the king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state’s bureaucrats on these “trouble makers.” Their implicit rejection of America’s most venerated idol, Materialism, (a.k.a. “Individualism”) spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.
Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. "A family just can't make it on one income." (Our parents did.) "It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays." (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers. We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a zero-turn Cub Cadet, and a fund to finance a brand-name college education. And most significantly, we claim “our right” to pursue a career for our own "self-fulfillment."
Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens our 401k’s. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to fuel the Suburban. Now the kid is raising hell again, demanding the latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work … and there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow. Wouldn’t you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug face?
Is it any wonder we hate her so?
Sonny Scott a community columnist, lives on Sparta Road in Chickasaw County and his e-mail address is sonnyscott@yahoo.com.
You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.
It's a big family by today’s standards - "just like stair steps," as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom through the store as she fills her no-frills shopping list.
There's no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully about her task. You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and some place the figure as high as $9 billion. When you consider that these families pay taxes to support public schools, but demand nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.
Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm, and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are many and varied. Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism, coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their children’s safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a theistic world view largely permeates the movement.
Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.
Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?
Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the home schooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.
Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.
Just as the jealous Chaldeans schemed to bring the wrath of the king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state’s bureaucrats on these “trouble makers.” Their implicit rejection of America’s most venerated idol, Materialism, (a.k.a. “Individualism”) spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.
Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. "A family just can't make it on one income." (Our parents did.) "It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays." (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers. We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a zero-turn Cub Cadet, and a fund to finance a brand-name college education. And most significantly, we claim “our right” to pursue a career for our own "self-fulfillment."
Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens our 401k’s. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to fuel the Suburban. Now the kid is raising hell again, demanding the latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work … and there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow. Wouldn’t you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug face?
Is it any wonder we hate her so?
Sonny Scott a community columnist, lives on Sparta Road in Chickasaw County and his e-mail address is sonnyscott@yahoo.com.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Musings on God
Whether it is a product of our culture or our basic humanness, we are absolutely convinced that pain is bad. Under every circumstance, and at all times, physical and emotional pain is to be avoided. And if it becomes unavoidable, we conclude the only rational thing to do is to try to eliminate the cause, if it can be eliminated, and/or medicate ourselves into a more desirable condition.
This is manifest on every imaginable level of human life. Popular talk show hosts and other "experts" insist that it is "healthy" to end burdensome relationships in favor of maintaining only those friends and relations who give as much as they take. Marriages in which even one partner feels unsatisfied or unfulfilled are encouraged toward divorce, regardless of the impact it will certainly have on the family.
There are therapies and pills for every kind and degree of depression, no matter how clear or vague its cause. From every direction in unison voice, the culture presumes that the normative human emotional state is and should be a happy one, and that anything less is somehow symptomatic of the dysfunctional and mentally ill.
Does heartburn threaten to limit your dietary choices and quality of sleep? There's a pill to fix that. Are you worried that delivering a baby will be too painful? Let's schedule an epidural. Are Junior's feelings hurt when his soccer team loses? Sign him up for the league that doesn't keep score. If being a poor speller makes you feel lacking, there is actually a camp of people pushing to throw out conventional English spelling rules for a purely phonetic, spell-it-the-way-you-think-it-sounds method, on your behalf to spare your self-image. (I swear I am not making this up.)
Everything is engineered to promote the notion that people should not have to endure any kind of pain, and that doing so is unhealthy. And for the more academic among us, the existence of pain at all gives proof that God must not exist at all. Their philosophy rationalizes that if God were both omnipotent and loving, He would use His power to protect His creatures from suffering.
I do not mean to say that every effort at pain relief is of no value. Medication served me well as I recovered from childbirth and the early pains of nursing my babies. And I will be forever grateful for the one who made sure I felt no pain during a tooth extraction. But, when my heart has been broken by someone I love or by my own dismal failures, I didn't wonder at the acute pain I felt as though it were an anomaly. Wouldn't it be the mark of the mentally ill to smile painlessly through what any other normal human would call heartache? Who decided that feeling sad isn't normal anyway, especially when experiencing what any sane person would find regrettable?
So, by my estimation, not only is the feeling of pain is a normal part of being human (since it is safe to assume we have all experienced it), it has purpose in God's economy. After all, one must reconcile God's love and His power toward that final conclusion that if God allows it, He must in His love purpose it for the good of His creatures.
Just like toothaches indicate a problem and move us to action, God allows suffering on every other level to bring about His good purposes, whether it is to pain our consciences to our own faults or to incite the soul-ache longing for the way things ought to be when they are not. Sometimes it teaches us to simply pull our hand from the flame out of self-preservation, backing away from the more obviously self-destructive behaviors. Sometimes it is to melt away the self-sufficiency and pride that ignores one's need for God in favor of the brokenness that reveals how desperately dependent upon God we really are. Sometimes it is to demonstrate to the world just exactly what faith in God's provision looks like and to mold us more fully into the better creatures He intended for us to be... but always, in every way and in every time, with purpose and for His glory.
And what of love? If by God's love we hope to be the beneficiaries of a lifelong supernatural supply of painless contentment, then we must also hope to already be just as He intended, warts and all, in no need of His loving reconstruction toward holiness. For God to love us perfectly, in the only way a perfect God can love, He must want for us to be more like Himself, which puts us necessarily in the way of divine scrutiny and remodeling. Artists who take pride in their work take great pain and effort at perfecting their pieces. Truly loving parents are not satisfied in allowing their babies to continue acting like babies as they grow. As my mom says (quoting her grandmother, I think) -- God loves us, but He loves us too much to let us stay the way we are.
To better and further explain this reconciliation between God's love and human suffering, I defer to one whose mind and pen were far more adept at expressing these thoughts than mine. Consider the following from The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis:
"By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.' Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds... I conclude that my conception of love needs correction."
"...We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the 'intolerable compliment.' Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life -- the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child -- he will take endless trouble -- and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less."
"Another type is the love of a man for a beast -- a relation constantly used in Scripture to symbolise the relation between God and men; 'we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.' This is in some ways a better analogy than the preceding, because the inferior party is sentient and yet unmistakably inferior: but it is less good in so far as man has not made the beast and does not fully understand it. Its great merit lies in the fact that the association of (say) man and dog is primarily for the man's sake: he takes the dog primarily that he may love it, not that it may love him, and that it may serve him, not that he may serve it. Yet at the same time, the dog's interests are not sacrificed to the man's. The one end (that he may love it) cannot be fully attained unless it also, in its fashion, loves him, nor can it serve him unless he, in a different fashion, serves it. Now just because the dog is by human standards one of the 'best' of irrational creatures, and a proper object for a man to love... man interferes with the dog and makes it more lovable than it was in mere nature. In its state of nature it has a smell, and habits, which frustrate man's love: he washes it, house-trains it, teaches it not to steal, and is so enabled to love it completely. To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were a theologian, to cast grave doubts on teh 'goodness' of man: but the full-grown and full-trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-lived than the wild dog, and admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties, interests, and comforts entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no such doubts. It will be noted that the man (I am speaking throughout of the good man) takes all these pains to the dog, only because it is an animal high in the scale -- because it is so nearly lovable that it is worth his while to make it fully lovable. He does not house-train the earwig or give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses -- that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for mroe Love, but for less."
"A nobler analogy, sanctioned by the constant tenor of Our Lord's teaching, is that between God's love for man and a father's love for a son... A father half apologetic for having brought his son into the world, afraid to restrain him lest he should create inhibitions or even to instruct him lest he should interfere with his independence of mind, is a most misleading symbol of the Divine Fatherhood... Love between father and son, in this symbol, means essentially authoritative love on the one side, and obedient love on the other. The father uses his authority to make the son into the sort of human being he, rightly, and in his superior wisdom, wants him to be. Even in our own days, though a man might say, he could mean nothing by saying, 'I love my son but don't care how great a blackguard he is provided that he has a good time.' "
"Finally we come to an analogy full of danger, and of much more limited application, which happens, nevertheless, to be the most useful for our special purpose at the moment -- I mean, the analogy between God's love for man and a man's love for a woman... The Church is the Lord's bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or wrinkle is endurable. For the truth which this analogy serves to emphasise is that Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere 'kindness' which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal... he is pleased with little, but demands all."
"...You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes."
"The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love,' and look on things as if man were the cenre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.' We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased.' To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities -- no more than the beggar maid could wish that King Cophetua should be content with her rags and dirt, or a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, vernimous, polluting creature of the wild pack. What we would here and now call our 'happiness' is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy."
This is manifest on every imaginable level of human life. Popular talk show hosts and other "experts" insist that it is "healthy" to end burdensome relationships in favor of maintaining only those friends and relations who give as much as they take. Marriages in which even one partner feels unsatisfied or unfulfilled are encouraged toward divorce, regardless of the impact it will certainly have on the family.
There are therapies and pills for every kind and degree of depression, no matter how clear or vague its cause. From every direction in unison voice, the culture presumes that the normative human emotional state is and should be a happy one, and that anything less is somehow symptomatic of the dysfunctional and mentally ill.
Does heartburn threaten to limit your dietary choices and quality of sleep? There's a pill to fix that. Are you worried that delivering a baby will be too painful? Let's schedule an epidural. Are Junior's feelings hurt when his soccer team loses? Sign him up for the league that doesn't keep score. If being a poor speller makes you feel lacking, there is actually a camp of people pushing to throw out conventional English spelling rules for a purely phonetic, spell-it-the-way-you-think-it-sounds method, on your behalf to spare your self-image. (I swear I am not making this up.)
Everything is engineered to promote the notion that people should not have to endure any kind of pain, and that doing so is unhealthy. And for the more academic among us, the existence of pain at all gives proof that God must not exist at all. Their philosophy rationalizes that if God were both omnipotent and loving, He would use His power to protect His creatures from suffering.
I do not mean to say that every effort at pain relief is of no value. Medication served me well as I recovered from childbirth and the early pains of nursing my babies. And I will be forever grateful for the one who made sure I felt no pain during a tooth extraction. But, when my heart has been broken by someone I love or by my own dismal failures, I didn't wonder at the acute pain I felt as though it were an anomaly. Wouldn't it be the mark of the mentally ill to smile painlessly through what any other normal human would call heartache? Who decided that feeling sad isn't normal anyway, especially when experiencing what any sane person would find regrettable?
So, by my estimation, not only is the feeling of pain is a normal part of being human (since it is safe to assume we have all experienced it), it has purpose in God's economy. After all, one must reconcile God's love and His power toward that final conclusion that if God allows it, He must in His love purpose it for the good of His creatures.
Just like toothaches indicate a problem and move us to action, God allows suffering on every other level to bring about His good purposes, whether it is to pain our consciences to our own faults or to incite the soul-ache longing for the way things ought to be when they are not. Sometimes it teaches us to simply pull our hand from the flame out of self-preservation, backing away from the more obviously self-destructive behaviors. Sometimes it is to melt away the self-sufficiency and pride that ignores one's need for God in favor of the brokenness that reveals how desperately dependent upon God we really are. Sometimes it is to demonstrate to the world just exactly what faith in God's provision looks like and to mold us more fully into the better creatures He intended for us to be... but always, in every way and in every time, with purpose and for His glory.
And what of love? If by God's love we hope to be the beneficiaries of a lifelong supernatural supply of painless contentment, then we must also hope to already be just as He intended, warts and all, in no need of His loving reconstruction toward holiness. For God to love us perfectly, in the only way a perfect God can love, He must want for us to be more like Himself, which puts us necessarily in the way of divine scrutiny and remodeling. Artists who take pride in their work take great pain and effort at perfecting their pieces. Truly loving parents are not satisfied in allowing their babies to continue acting like babies as they grow. As my mom says (quoting her grandmother, I think) -- God loves us, but He loves us too much to let us stay the way we are.
To better and further explain this reconciliation between God's love and human suffering, I defer to one whose mind and pen were far more adept at expressing these thoughts than mine. Consider the following from The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis:
"By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.' Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds... I conclude that my conception of love needs correction."
"...We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the 'intolerable compliment.' Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life -- the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child -- he will take endless trouble -- and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less."
"Another type is the love of a man for a beast -- a relation constantly used in Scripture to symbolise the relation between God and men; 'we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.' This is in some ways a better analogy than the preceding, because the inferior party is sentient and yet unmistakably inferior: but it is less good in so far as man has not made the beast and does not fully understand it. Its great merit lies in the fact that the association of (say) man and dog is primarily for the man's sake: he takes the dog primarily that he may love it, not that it may love him, and that it may serve him, not that he may serve it. Yet at the same time, the dog's interests are not sacrificed to the man's. The one end (that he may love it) cannot be fully attained unless it also, in its fashion, loves him, nor can it serve him unless he, in a different fashion, serves it. Now just because the dog is by human standards one of the 'best' of irrational creatures, and a proper object for a man to love... man interferes with the dog and makes it more lovable than it was in mere nature. In its state of nature it has a smell, and habits, which frustrate man's love: he washes it, house-trains it, teaches it not to steal, and is so enabled to love it completely. To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were a theologian, to cast grave doubts on teh 'goodness' of man: but the full-grown and full-trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-lived than the wild dog, and admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties, interests, and comforts entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no such doubts. It will be noted that the man (I am speaking throughout of the good man) takes all these pains to the dog, only because it is an animal high in the scale -- because it is so nearly lovable that it is worth his while to make it fully lovable. He does not house-train the earwig or give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses -- that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for mroe Love, but for less."
"A nobler analogy, sanctioned by the constant tenor of Our Lord's teaching, is that between God's love for man and a father's love for a son... A father half apologetic for having brought his son into the world, afraid to restrain him lest he should create inhibitions or even to instruct him lest he should interfere with his independence of mind, is a most misleading symbol of the Divine Fatherhood... Love between father and son, in this symbol, means essentially authoritative love on the one side, and obedient love on the other. The father uses his authority to make the son into the sort of human being he, rightly, and in his superior wisdom, wants him to be. Even in our own days, though a man might say, he could mean nothing by saying, 'I love my son but don't care how great a blackguard he is provided that he has a good time.' "
"Finally we come to an analogy full of danger, and of much more limited application, which happens, nevertheless, to be the most useful for our special purpose at the moment -- I mean, the analogy between God's love for man and a man's love for a woman... The Church is the Lord's bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or wrinkle is endurable. For the truth which this analogy serves to emphasise is that Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere 'kindness' which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal... he is pleased with little, but demands all."
"...You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes."
"The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love,' and look on things as if man were the cenre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.' We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased.' To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities -- no more than the beggar maid could wish that King Cophetua should be content with her rags and dirt, or a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, vernimous, polluting creature of the wild pack. What we would here and now call our 'happiness' is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy."
Monday, June 23, 2008
And They Grew...
The youngest two jungle bugs are officially walking... er, and running. Nothing can stop them now!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Lost in the Translation
Kids say the darndest things. Here are just a few things that got lost in the translation:
ear loaf -- ear lobe
glossias -- gracias
super girl to arrest you -- super girl to the rescue
ear loaf -- ear lobe
glossias -- gracias
super girl to arrest you -- super girl to the rescue
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