Elementary education is a race between the biological development of a child’s mind and the learning of skills and information required for the optimum use of that mind. Facts and information are important, but even more important are skills that must be developed early in life for optimum mental development. Some such skills, such as mathematics and writing, are also an integral part of the factual information. Other skills are a part of the organization of the school itself and consist of a collection of mental habits and attitudes. Setting out in home-education is a daunting task. There are so many questions, especially when it comes to deciding on a curriculum. Or maybe you are well down the road, but your children are approaching the dreaded exams time. Your choice of curriculum will depend largely on the age of your child/ren. Secondly, it will depend on your educational philosophy. Now, you may not have thought much about a 'philosophy' but I can assure you that you have one even if you don't think you have. It may be based on your own education, or you may know already that you want your children to have a better education than you had yourself. If you have taken them out of mainstream school then there will be a reason why you have done so - you want to do better for your child yourself. An educational philosphy Have you ever thought about what you are aiming for in your children when they finish their 'education'. Who should educate - what does the Bible say? What is education concerned with? How is education best achieved? These are all necessary questions that need to be thought about before you embark on what will probably be your most important career - educating your children. Here is not the place to do an in-depth Bible study of what God has to say about the education of our children, but suffice to say, we should not be unequally yoked with the world when it comes to intimate things - and after marriage, our children are our next major concern and their souls should be of great intimate concern to us. To help you, I think it would be good to understand the modern educational scene. What determines how and what is taught in schools today and what goes into the text books of non-Christian school books, and sadly into the I/GCSE/A level curriculums as well. Then you will be in a better position to evaluate what you use in your home-school and to work out a course of study for your child/ren. The History Behind Modern Education The type of education that you and I received at school is very different to that of 100 or even 150 years earlier. Education today is vastly different to the one we received even. Changes happen all the time, and not all change is bad. Pictures of many tiny children crammed into Victorian classrooms, taught by officious looking teachers, make us thankful for our bright, modern classrooms and freer methods, brought to us as a result of the research into how children learn in previous eras. However, underlying any form of education is a belief as to what and how you would like pupil/s to learn. So here I attempt to very briefly explain the underlying beliefs of the modern education system. The subjects may all seem the same throughout the ages: Maths, English, History and Geography and languages and so on, but the educational pedagogy has rapidly changed, especially since the first half of the 20th Century. What has changed? It is particularly the idea of child-centered learning introduced by the likes of Sigmund Freud (1856-1923), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 -1778) and John Dewey (1859 - 1952). Freud's theories about the unconscious shattered parental confidence. Parents were led to believe that the way they handled their children could cripple their personalities for life. John Dewey laid the foundations for the 'child-centered-learning' theories that have been responsible for destroying both American and UK education. He based a lot of his thinking on the work of Jacques Rousseau, who believed that children are innately good and had to be protected from adult influence which could only corrupt them. Dewey carried this thought on and building on Freud's work pushed forward the shift of power from adults to children. Teachers became more and more 'facilitators' rather than teachers - the idea being that children simply needed guiding to learn rather than teaching. 'Keep the child happy' became the mantra, never minding if what the child wanted was good for him/her or not. This guiding rather than teaching can sound good, and there are times when it can be helpful, but used as it has been, it has led to the shift from parents and teachers handing down values and instruction, to concentrating more on their mental health. Hence schools nowadays are not so much educational establishments, but social ones. Subjects are no longer academic subjects imparting knowledge and truth, but rather centered around the personal lives of the students. This paved the way for new subjects such as Personal and social Health Education (PSHE), sex education and Citizenship education, but it has also impacted how all subjects are taught and what is taught. It changed subjects like history and geography from being factual subjects to 'social' subjects: opinions rather than facts are now taught in history - in fact, facts are no longer 'facts', but opinions, and truth went out of the window with the facts. Students are now asked for their opinions on history and how they think people in those days 'felt'. Geography became more interested in tracking social issues - birth control and the effects of flooding, and imparting political values and social skills rather than studying the earth. * Of course, the advent of Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) evolutionary theories added fuel to this raging fire as well, changing the sciences and religious instruction completely. Art has become a vehicle for expressing oneself - rather than a medium for portraying the beauty of God's world - anything now goes and is called 'art'. Music has also been affected: the skill of composers in days gone by to compose music that is in harmony with creation (yes, creation has harmony!) has been replaced by back-beats and dissonance, with its culture of promiscuity, drugs and rebellion. Do what you please, as you please, is the message of modern music - including soft rock. And sadly this is no longer something the 'world' does, as soft rock and rock are in our churches too. Many Christians are ignorant of 'why' and the message rock music carries. The message of bad music will always override the message of the words, however good. Of course, this is a simplified overview of education over the last 100+ years, but if you have followed me so far, you will hopefully begin to see the general thrust of modern education. Different Governments come and go and each tweaks the curriculum (again and again), but we still have a foundational mindset that children must lead the way - unhampered by adult 'interference'. Self is at the core. Imparting information from teacher to child has gone, which means that truth has gone. The child has become the centre of his/her own learning - as if a young child has sufficient maturity and knowledge to decide what is good for him/her to know. Much modern learning is based around 'problem-solving' and 'investigation', which, although having their place should never form the back-bone of a curriculum as they do. Academic rigour has been sacrificed for rights without responsibilities and the imparting of a politically correct agenda. What is very sad, is that most of us under the age of 70 are so used to these ideas - after all - it is how we have been taught - that we don't see anything wrong with them. " It (education) now has to deliver society's expectations and fulfil society's needs rather than concern itself with training the mind and equipping children with tools of language and the necessary framework which will allow them to develop freedom of thought and an intellectual dimension" Irena Tyck Child-centered learning in practice Things did get very bad in the 90's when some schools were taking the idea of child-centred learning to extreme with children aged 5 to 7 being taught nothing, but being simply put in a room with up to 60 other children all day with sand and water etc.. and as they came in each morning, they were asked 'What would you like to do today?' The tragedy of this 'experiment' was classes of 7 year olds unable to read and calculate. Sadly the Headteacher of at least one school could only think that this madness was 'progression' in education. In other schools it wasn't so bad, but teachers (myself included) were trained to simply give children books to read, and wait (a long time in some cases) for the child to learn to read - we were not allowed to 'impose' a method on our children. Some clever ones did find a way - as is always the case, but far too many were left illiterate. Many of these children are now in their 30's and may simply presume they are not very clever, rather than realising they were simply not taught. Thankfully, things are a little better now, and teachers are given a proven method by which to teach children to read - namely phonics - but far too many teachers still believe that imposing a method on children (as they see phonics) is wrong and so their teaching is undermined. We are also suffering the end result of this idea now with maths currciulums that frown on rote learning of facts, rather wasting the child's time by expecting young children to 're-invent the wheel' as it were by spending hours finding different methods to compute. It's a bit like expecting children to bake a cake without giving them a recipe. 'Here's the equipment - now bake a cake'. It sounds stupid, but this is what is underpinning methods of teaching in maths currently taught in schools. This is why so many parents can't understand the way their children are being taught maths. Basically - they are not being taught!! There is a place for experimentation and problem-solving, but children should first be taught a method that works, so that they are equipped with an efficient method of calculating/spelling/reading. More able ones will be able to think of alternative methods, but all will be able then to access the basic curriculum. Things are beginning to look a little better as society is beginning to realise that damage has been caused, but despite the reforms in the GCSE curriculum, I have to say that they are at surface level only at the moment. Child-centred learning is still deeply entrenched in the hearts of teachers and training institutions. Implications for a Christian home-school By now, I hope that alarm bells are ringing in your head! Children leading themselves? No facts? No truth? Teachers not able to instruct children to what is right/good? What is the outcome?
"but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” Proverbs 29:15
We must ask what we desire for our own children - mediocrity or something better than the general offering called 'education' that pervades our generation? How does the Lord require us to teach our children? The Chrisitan Home-school Curriculum Where does that leave Christian parents wanting a home-school curriculum? Can we just run with the same text books and take out evolution and other bits we dont like and add in a bit of Bible study? I would suggest from the above that the answer has to be a total rethinking of how and what we teach our children. As we are starting from a different basis, that children are not born innately perfect, then what we build should be completely different and God-honouring. So we start with a correct foundation: Romans 3 verse 23 says: 'For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God' We also know that children need instruction and that it is a parent's job to instruct their child: 'Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Proverbs 22:6 We know that the best way for children to learn is that parents impart knowledge (truth) to their children. Obviously the primary way we will do this is by teaching our children what God's Word says. We will want to have family Bible times where we study God's Word together and pray and sing. We will also endeavour to teach our children to read as soon as we can, so that they can start the habit of reading God's Word daily for themselves. This will help them (and us) understand who God is and how He wants us to live. It will help us all as a family to avoid making a God in our own image - an easy thing to do if we do not know what the Bible actually says. Then we will want the books we use to teach our children to be based on truth and facts. We will want:
I/GCSEs I would suggest that we need to be especially careful when we start to consider exams for our children. The current exam curriculum is based on the above outlined philosophy and is very narrow and anti-God/truth. I know some parents are lost as to how to educate their teens and are glad to have the direction of an I/GCSE curriculum. However there is plenty of help available. Our next blog post will look at the best curriculums available in the UK - and many of them teach into the teen years to a far higher and better standard than the i/gcse curriculum currently does. See also our post on alternative options to I/GCSE. Why should we have taught our children to a higher standard all these years, for them to just sit the same poor exams at the end - or for that to be the sum total of their education? A call to action Christian parents, we need to wake up: we need to be alert to what is happening. We must seek a different path - a radically different path - not just the same as the world's with the word 'Christian' added on! I pray that this post will be helpful in enabling you to choose a curriculum that will bring honour and glory to our dear Saviour as we seek to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4) For the Lord giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. Proverbs 2:6
1 Comment
Jamie OConnor
29/5/2019 09:19:38 am
Excellent article. All these points need careful thought before and during home educating.
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Welcome!After studying for an Early Years Specialism degree (B.Ed. Hons), and teaching in mainstream education, I home-educated my own children, after my husband and I were persuaded of the need to take responsibility for bringing up our children 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' (Ephesians 6:4) We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
This costs the purchaser nothing extra. In this way I can continue to provide free resources. Thank you for your support. Looking for a read-aloud?
Here's one I heartlily reccomend for ages 10 +. Search
All
The First book from Christina Eastwood - the first in a triology - only £5.99 (ages 8 to 13).
Now available in PRINT!
See here Now available in PRINT
See here Now available in PRINT
See here |