Reflections of a home educating mum

Looking back it seems such a long time ago since I home-educated my own children, and yet it is only 6 years, but such a lot has happened in that time. My eldest is now married and nursing at a psychiatric hospital in Australia, my middle child is also married and works in a bike shop as a mechanic, and the youngest is at university studying automotive design. All quite different paths and such varied routes to get there, all the more amazing since the oldest and the youngest were diagnosed with dyslexia or a dyslexic type condition whilst at university.

So do I regret home-educating my children? Would they have got better help at school? I don’t think so, I think the one to one tuition from me and others who helped me on the way have been invaluable. As a mum I knew my children well and I could help them move forward, encouraging them in their strengths and challenging them, or supporting them in their weaknesses. One of the most valuable lessons I think they all learnt through the home-education experience was how to think outside the box. Has it been easy? No! But it has been worthwhile, of that I am confident.

Jo Storie
NorthStarUK NetNanny

More on the great myth!

A few weeks ago I wrote about the lack of neutrality within the UK education system that omits God at every point within the curriculum. Neutrality in the great questions of life, it seems to me, is impossible. What we believe about the big questions of life inevitably shapes what we think, how we behave, and what we attach most importance to in life.

Education is essentially about preparing young people to take their place in the world; since we cannot teach them everything, what we do teach these young people inevitably requires that we select certain things as being important enough to be placed within the curriculum and other things that we deem less important. Every education system in the history of humankind has done this. It is out belief system that helps us determine what is most important from what is less important.

The biggest difference between contemporary western education and almost every other educational system in the past is the lack of honestly of our contemporary systems in claiming to be religiously neutral. Previous education systems acknowledged that this was actually a nonsense – it is simply not possible to devise an educational system apart from a belief system. Next week I hope to spend a little time exploring what belief systems underpin western education.

The myth of neutrality in educational curriculum

There has been much discussion of late about the UK government’s plans to introduce a sort of English Baccalaureate with particular concern being raised by many Christians over the exclusion of Religious Education from the list of EB subjects. Now let me say, immediately that I am a supporter of Premier Radio’s REACT campaign to encourage the government to think again on this matter and add RE as one of the options in the list of humanities subjects within the new Baccalaureate. However, I am profoundly troubled by the naïvety and lack of understanding displayed by so many Christians in this debate. For so many, the assumption seems to be that if we get RE added to the options in the English Baccalaureate, then our children will be alright – that our county and voluntary schools will be good places to send children.

Now, a book could be written de-bunking that perspective, but there is one thing that I do want to raise this week. There is a big lie that has been embraced by Christians in the area of education over the last 150 years; namely that secular schools are essentially neutral places when it comes to instructing children about the big questions of life. For so many Christians, who actively support this REACT campaign, the view is that it is OK to leave God out of every other area of our schools – history, geography, science, English and so on, as long as he gets a mention in RE. Indeed , their view would be that this is only just in a multi-faith society. This single act, however, consigns God to the periphery, indicating to children that he is either non-existent or so unimportant that he hardly gets a mention in the important things of life. My problem with this is very simple – this is not neutrality towards the great questions of life, this is practical atheism, this is suggesting to children that the sensible way to approach life is to leave god out; further it teaches children that those people who do take matters of faith seriously are marginal and that faith is nothing more than a personal choice having little or no bearing upon the public world where we all live. As the west becomes increasingly post-Christian in its perspectives Christians really do need to look closely at these issues afresh – the world has moved on and so too have our schools.

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero

Last week I mentioned that I would return to the phrase ‘carpe diem; and spend a little more time reflecting upon it. The phrase is actually part of a longer phrase – ‘Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero’, which actually means ‘Seize the Day, putting as little trust as possible in the future.’ Now Horace was an Epicurean, a follower of a Greek chap called Epicurus who believed that everything that exists is made up of atoms and that gods, if they exist at all take no part in the lives of people. For Horace, therefore, present pleasure was all that existed because the future was uncertain and could be a cause of fear; the Epicureans were big on trying to enter a state of mind which removed all fear. It was these same Epicureans that Paul bumped into in Athens. (Acts 17:16-34) When speaking in Athens, Paul went straight to the heart of the difference between Christianity and Epicureanism when he said, God ‘… is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.’

Our modern age is not very different from that of 2,000 years ago. Whilst there are very few ‘signed-up card-carrying’ Epicureans around today, many people live their lives embracing Epicurean beliefs about life – there is only the here and now, and if God is there at all, he is unknowable and disinterested.

The biggest question that we each have to face is how we respond to Paul’s statement – God ‘… is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.’ Do we embrace the teachings of Epicurus and say that atoms are all that exists – ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ or do we accept what Paul told the Athenians and then attempt to understand what this means for us in our lives. It is possible, after all, to ‘seize the day’ and waste a life.