Pensees: Quote of the Week

What???? Am I missing something? This quote really bothered me. (In the interests of “full disclosure,” I am a homeschooling mother.)

What definition of “loving” is being used here? It certainly cannot be the “agape” love of the New Testament Scriptures. The love which God commands is anything but indulgent; it is a self-sacrificial love that is motivated by what is best for the object of one’s love. Indeed, Hebrews clarifies that it is the loving parent who disciplines and trains his children, mindful of long-term spiritual fruitfulness. The indulgent parent, then, is one who has taken his eyes off the long-term goal given to him by God and is being disobedient to God’s commandments.

Believing parents do not need, “the standards of discipline and study that are imposed by someone less indulgent than loving parents” to guide their child training. We need—and have—the commandments and promises of Almighty God as contained in the pages of Holy Scripture. It is through obedience to God’s commandments that godly parents can engage in, “train[ing] up a child in the way he should go,” thereby reaping fruit for eternity.

Lyn,

I am always happy to see you post on my site because you articulate your position so well. In this case, once again you are very articulate and completely right. Nonetheless, I don’t think that there is a necessary clash of ideas between my selected quote and your persuasion. Clarification, however, is obviously required.

I have been homeschooled all my life. When my mother (a woman with two education degrees) began to teach me, homeschooling was hardly even heard of. As a homeschooled child turned adult, I have few regrets. The dire predictions of the day were that my mother’s children would be unsuccessful in college academically and socially. Of the five children in my family I did the poorest academically (although I graduated), but that was because I thrived socially! I was class president and student body president and bored academically. My other siblings have thrived both socially and academically, earning high marks. My point is simply that I am a firm believer in the notion that parents are to be in control of their childrens’ education and that they have every potential to succeed.

That said, I am in agreement with Fleming’s statement because I see sloppy “education” more often than not among homeschoolers today. In context, Fleming is calling for a rigorous learning, one that can not often (and probably shouldn’t be) imposed by parents. This is not to say that the parents are not in control. This is to say that to become the best one can be at something (anything) it will require a tutor who is more in love with his subject than he is with the student. This has always been the case. Thus, even my gifted mother with education degrees enrolled me in correspondence school when I entered the highschool years. For her other children she used Abeka video correspondence. The outside accountability and instruction in subjects that were not her forte by “experts” who would not be tempted to let things slide assured her that she was giving her children a decent education.

I guess this is the point: parents are not accomplished at everything. I know, for example, that I do not have the discipline to teach my daughter upper-level math when the time arrives because of two issues that too easily transform into indulgence: 1/I don’t really grasp math myself and 2/since I don’t really grasp it I will be much more inclined to let her off the hook when she complains to me about not being able to get it. A math tutor, selected by this loving and disciplined father, will rigorously impose his discipline on my daughter because he knows his subject well and he has actually experienced the result of straining the brain in patient labor over mathematical concepts. He can positively stress my daughter’s mind in ways that I never could because I am stressed by the mere recitation of the multiplication tables.

I plan to write several articles on homeschooling in the future, but my point here is simply that it is not incongruent with homeschooling to get outside help for the educating of our children, particularly if we desire a good education.

Pastor Bixby,

Thank you for the context and clarification you have given your quote. You have stated much more articulately than I could some of the blessings and challenges of homeschooling. I agree with what you have written, and will look forward to reading and learning from your coming articles!

I hope that your concern over “sloppy education” will be contagious to other Christian parents who read your blog. I am convinced that part of the battle is communicating a life-long love of learning.

Thank you for your kindness.

Lyn