Lots of thoughts going around in my head these days.
Here's a big one.
Education is a huge huge mess in America, and everyone knows that, but instead of doing something about it Christians are turning and running. THAT is why I want to put my kids in Public School instead of homeschooling them. To me homeschooling feels like an easy way out and a cheat, like we're putting duct tape over the leak in our part of the boat and shaking our heads while the rest of it goes down. I want to cast my lot in with the masses and basically commit myself to going down with the ship if that's what is going to happen. Maybe a huge part of the problem with public education is that the people who really care about the situation and have the kind of principles/intelligence/vision we need to fix it are all jumping ship for something they think is better.
Of course the critisizms for this philosophy are that I would be sacrificing my children's wellfare for the sake of a broad ideal that we may never even reach. Is it EVER okay to do that?
I agree with most of you who disagree with me on this issue in that homeschooling is a better education and that public school has a lot of risks and dangers for someone you hope will be a child of God. It's just... do I want my children to have a better education and do I want them to avoid those risks? It sounds crazy, I know.
I'm basically saying, until every kid has the same oprotunity, I'm not going to give my child this advantage in life. If we beleive this, how far do we take it? Public school kids don't get a very good education. Kids from lower-class American families don't have money for college. Kids in Africa don't have food except for what they salvage from trash cans. Just by telling our kids about God we're giving them an advantage they don't deserve any more than anyone else, and it's not fair.
I guess for me this hits close to home because I hate it when people get head-starts in life that I don't. It seems unfair to me that I have to fight battles that for one reason or another someone else will never have to fight. I think we should all face the same demons and we should all move up in life based on how well we fight them. I even hate it when I can do nothing but thank God for advantages that I have in life over the majority of people I see.
I want black-and-white equality, like Ann Ryand talks about in Anthem. Everyone is born in a factory, raised in uniform situations and assigned jobs based on performance. But life isn't fair, or black and white.
And yet it's what I beleive in. Am I any more delusional than those who think they can actually uniformly raise republican Christians by sheilding them from the evil in the world? Am I a hero for fighting for a dying cause like equality, or just a fool? humm...
But I guess ultimately I feel that putting my kids or myself on an equal footing with the least-privilaged people in the world is a much better way to fight for equality then trying to rise to the top of things and then helping people get there too. "I'll help you" is one thing, "I'm here too" is quite another. Everyone hates those who are better than them and most people are too proud to accept that kind of help. To me that's always seemed condesending and rude, like some people just don't get it. Including me, probably, because for the most part I am a spoiled rich white American too. But I don't want to be. And I don't want my kids to be.
save your sympothy
who did you think you were fooling?
everything is dead
now you welcome me
to a town called Hypocrisy
Also, I met this really cool girl at Camp who I think you all would like tremendously, and I'm trying to convince her to get a blog. Her name is Crystal, and if she starts commenting then say hi and be really nice and cool and talk about Lord of the Rings a lot and maybe she'll get a blog too. :-)
oh, and you're probably going to need this:
ReplyDeletequenta tindomerel = Anna Boyd, the girl I told you reminded me of you, and also Sam's younger sister (the color green on my friends list)
Verya = miss-I-can't-say-my-real-name-on-the-internet ;-) She's a girl Beth went to co-op with a couple years ago and a fellow "ringer." (light blue)
Sarah = Sarah, a girl from Camp Hope (she's a little younger and for some reason can't get access to my blog, but she'll pop up on others now and then) (orange)
Missionary Girl = Lucy (pink)
Lindy = Lindy (purple)
Zak Boyd = Anna and Sam's little brother (alright, he's six foot two :-P) (red)
Eowyn = Beth (violet)
MJ = Michaela, Beth's younger sister (yellow)
And Sam pops up once in a while too, as "Sam."
I think that's everyone!
What if the diversity in God's creation includes the external differences?
ReplyDeleteI didn't exactly mean to set diversity and equality opposite each other, I meant to oppose diversity and sameness. I think equality in America is taking over the meaning of the word sameness, but I think it used to mean respecting people as equally human despite their diversity. So political equality means that in the voting booth a homeless man can meet Bill Gates on an equal ground - they both have one vote.
On not holding your kids' hands all the way - I do think there is a point at which we as future parents will need to let go. At some point we are hurting their development instead of helping it. And I also think that point is much earlier than most parents will want to let go, because the parents, having made a lot of mistakes and seeing (probably accurately) which mistakes their kids are headed for, will want to protect their kids from those mistakes. Alex and Brett Harris point out on the Rebelution that teenagers used to be given a lot more responsibility and freedom than they are given now. But I think everyone who is actually successful has been given the tools to succeed by others - whether parents, teachers, authors of books they've read....very, very few people, perhaps no one, will have the natural talent to succeed without external guidance.
This is what I would like to see, and I think the Harrises have succeeded in doing to some degree - parents taking their kids out of the school system, not to create their own separate bubble apart from the rest of the world, but to train them in order to enter the world again as leaders and influencers of the culture. I'd love to see an influx of adults who were homeschooled and private schooled as kids reentering the government school system in the next couple of decades as teachers(especially at the college and university level), where they have the authority and ability to make changes. And not just within the school system, in other positions of leadership, too. Somewhere somebody made the point that those who are highly literate become the shapers of culture in the following generations, so if we want to bring about change, might it be better to aim for change a little further in the future (not much), when we have the resources to make a bigger impact?
Whew. Another very long comment that I originally intended to be short...
Oh, and thanks for pointing out who's who. I'd figured out the people from camp b/c their email addresses are similar.
okay Crystal, that's why it looked Elvish but almost kinda didn't! I thought about really learning Quenya and/or Sindarin a while back, but I started learning Hindi instead (that's the main language in India), because I'm planning to be a missionary. If I had time, I totally would! I'll be in lessons for a couple more years, until I go off to missions college, and then I'll have to get a really nice but semi-portable keyboard....(oxymoron right?). I love piano but it's not a life pursuit, and I don't have enough natural talent to make it one if I wanted to. I've picked it up quickly, but play things fairly mechanically and don't have much creativity. Like I said, it's fun......just good plain fun. Aside from classical music, I like playing stuff from movie soundtracks mostly. Would you ever compose for movies, or just do pieces for fun?
ReplyDeleteI want to start teaching beginning piano in the fall or winter, once we've moved and I've settled in at school (I'm doing running start next year). Have you ever taught? Where are you going to school?
When Anna gets back from camp you two can talk forever about music. She's played classical violin forever and is in the Tacoma Youth Symphony Orchestra and loves music even more than me. Don't know if she loves it as much as you though....we'll have to compare notes when she returns. *evil laugh*
Well it's pretty much settled - you fit in just fine! Send me your e-mail address and we can save the chit chat for that. we bloggers...such serious thinkers you know.....can't have all this ridiculous nonsense talking on here (you should've seen the way we talked two years ago. or two months again for that matter, come to think of it....)
*whispers* mnm! we need to assign Crystal a part of speech or punctuation!