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.

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.

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.

The reason I am sharing this with you is twofold; firstly, Ruth was a giant of faith who lived a life extending God’s Kingdom into education, and in particular home education; she saw this as a fundamental part of her calling to be a Christian. She helped a huge number of Christians, particularly those in the early days of their home education adventure, when they often felt most vulnerable. The second reason I raise this is to return to my Latin phrases of Week 23. You may recall that I wrote of two phrases but only mentioned one – tempus fugit. The second phrase is ‘carpe diem’, which is most often translated as ‘seize the day’. The Roman poet Horace first used the phrase and I intend to return to look at this next week. However, for today I simply want to use it in the context of Ruth’s life. Ruth, as much as anybody I know, ‘seized the day’; she was determined to ‘redeem the time’ and use her life to extend the Lord’s Kingdom primary not through teaching but by example and living a life that was saturated in grace – seizing the day does not always mean being always vigorous and busy – sometimes it can simply mean being who God calls you to be and demonstrating His grace to a needy world.

Charlotte Mason was a great advocate of outdoor living – “Never be within doors when you can rightly be without,” she wrote. Even in winter she advocated spending hours outside every day – she saw this as the natural place to raise children.  This was not based upon some romantic Wordsworthian view of nature but a recognition that Creation is a great place to learn.  Whether we are called to live in Blighty or in more exotic climes the reality is that most children have a natural curiosity about things outdoors; this provides lots of learning experiences. In addition, being out of doors naturally slows down the pace of life and provides parents and children with all sorts of opportunities to talk, discuss and develop quite deep understanding in ways that are difficult to achieve in a ‘schooly’ setting indoors.

Can I urge you, this week, to prioritise the non-bookish times, to try to make formal learning fit in around the other things in life and perhaps, even in the ‘bleak mid-winter’ in the Uk find time to go outdoors!

Though progressive education with its open plan classrooms and mixed age classes is often ridiculed nowadays, at its best there was much that was wonderfully innovative and creative about it – I can still recall my first teaching practice in an open plan upper junior classroom in Cowbridge in Mid Glamorgan. These were pre-National Curriculum days and children had fun while teachers had freedom to create lessons that were stimulating and focus on the interests of children.

I do not wish to appear nostalgic and there were many failures and disasters in classrooms where teachers simply did not have the vitality, creativity or sheer teaching skills to work in this way with 30 or more children.

Nevertheless we as home educators can learn much from the progressive approach to education. The rigidity of modern western schooling, that has replaced it,  is most certainly not the model that we should aspire to mimic in our homes! And the fact that most of us are only working with two or three children actually means that we have the time to spend being innovative. The challenge for all of us is to be brave enough to be different. Maybe you can add one of John Holt’s books to your Christmas present list and allow Holt to stimulate your thinking!

In recent years, many Christians have become involved in establishing Christian schools, that to all intents and purposes institutionally resemble ordinary schools – children are expected to attend for five days a week, they are segregated according to age, classes are managed by a single adult who makes virtually all of the learning decisions for that group of children. For those of us committed to looking for a Biblical educational model, this seems like a mimicking of the way that everybody else does it! What excites me about the Rochdale project is that these folks have started with a blank piece of paper and asked the most radical question of all – in educational terms; “if we were starting afresh, what would a Biblical educational organisation aimed at educating children and young people look like?”

Now, I do not think that the answer that the folks in Rochdale have come up with is the only one possible; the Lord who has provided us with such a richly varied creation would not permit that. However, I do believe that conventional schools with their rigidity and lack of parental involvement would not be the first choice model. The challenge for all of us involved in Christian education is to explore what a Biblical model of education would look like and be bold enough to move forward into something very different even when that ‘something’ appears quite scary!  If you want to know more about Gateway Christian Education please feel free to visit their web site by clicking here.

By the way – if you want to know what the first good idea to come out of Rochdale was, click here!

Whilst it is true that one cannot diagnose a general malaise on the basis of a single case, my years of teaching in face to face schools have convinced me  that there is one thing in particular that schools do very badly; they struggle to empower children to take ownership of their own learning. Fundamentally, school structures remove real power from children and young people to such an extent that large numbers of children come to see school learning as something that is done to them or for them but not necessarily (in an empowering sense) by them.  With this mindset, teachers are there – so the student thinks – to ensure that they get through exams, and work is submitted because the teacher wants it. Learning is not a process owned by the student ultimately leading to maturity and self-awareness.

Fundamental to the way that NorthStarUK works is a firm commitment to establish structures and patterns that provide children with opportunities to take ownership of their own learning – what subjects one studies, when in the week each lesson’s work is undertaken, even when to take holidays; these are all aspects of NSUK life that enable a student (with enormous support from parents) to learn skills that will enable them to move into further study with maturity and understanding.

Within a family setting, these radical approaches to learning can relatively easily be assimilated. The challenge for those of us working within a school context is to find ways to increasingly empower students so that they too, acquire these skills.

At first sight these are strange verses and their meaning may not be particularly apparent. However, more than thirty years ago I had a friend at university to whom these verses were especially precious. In her previous year, she had suffered from something akin to a nervous breakdown. This had forced her to drop out of her course; in fact she was only in my year because she was retaking her first year. During her recovery, she told me, she had struggled as a Christian both with why she had fallen ill and the thought that she was letting the Lord down by not living a vibrant Christian life. A wise Christian therapist had pointed her to these verses and shown her that at the heart of the Christian faith is a God who has boundless compassion for those who are most week and vulnerable.

I was reminded of my friend as I listened to the ‘preach’. Two thoughts struck me – often home educators (especially mum’s) feel very inadequate for the task; those overseas often feel even more vulnerable. We have a God who is especially concerned with the ‘bruised read’ with the ‘smouldering wick’, about to be snuffed out! My second thought was that as home educators we often live exceedingly busy lives. We need to ensure that we have time to help the ‘bruised reed’ or the ‘smouldering wick’ – those people who need our support and care. My university friend of many years ago did not actually need me to say anything to her, but she did need somebody to listen.  If we are too busy to find time to care as a result of our ‘bookish learning’ then it would seem to me that the answer is simple – spend less time on the book work!

In this week’s article, he writes about the UK government’s latest proposal to make it compulsory that all dog owners must have third party insurance so that they (the owners that is and not the dogs!) are able to pay damages when their little pouch attacks somebody. As a long time dog owner I think that the plan is barmy but of course what the government is trying to do is respond to dog attacks and the growing use of large and vicious dogs as status symbols and protection by young men in disadvantaged areas of our cities.

Clarkson also mentions home education in his article, pointing out that it is madness to try to legislate on the back of extreme cases of wickedness such as the death of Khyra Ishaq, whose mother removed her from school claiming she was home educating her. The government’s response to this was the Badman Report and proposed new legislation making it possible for local authority staff to interview children without their parents being present – because abused children are unlikely to say anything whilst the abuser is present!

Clarkson closes his article in a typically direct and crude manner but what he says is that this world is not perfect – bad things happen to very decent ordinary people; and it is nonsense to generate legislation that affects and controls ordinary people’s lives in order to try to stop all of the bad things happening.

What Clarkson is saying, of course, is very much in keeping with the worldview presented in the Bible – we live in an imperfect and fallen world where things are not as they should be, that all human beings behave stupidly and wrongly at times and sometimes that can seriously hurt others. Christians, however, would argue that the answer cannot be found in the hands of government, legislation will never change human nature. Only the gospel can affect people deep within their beings and give us all what Jesus called ‘new birth’. This is God’s ‘good news’ for a world where bad things happen.