Sexual abuse of children by persons in trusted positions of authority

I heard an NPR report yesterday about the ongoing scandal of Catholic priests' sexual exploitation of children and the Church's stalwart protection of those priests . . . and failure to protect the children.

A devastating story. As the story ended, I thought, "Supposing these power players in the Church actually believe anything they teach about the spiritual realm, how can they imagine this kind of behavior wouldn't wreak spiritual havoc in the lives of these children's--not to mention the children's parents'--eternal souls?"

Strange "coincidence" (???): I also received a gentle question about my modification of a story I reported on a month ago . . . about sexual abuse in public schools.

I had modified a blog post by Matt Walsh with the following annotations:

[T]here was a 2004 study titled Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature, commissioned by the Department of Education. It received no attention from anyone, but the findings were terrifying: nearly 10 percent of all public schooled students had been raped, abused, or sexually harassed by teachers someone at school. Over two percent by teachers. [NOTE: . . . I . . . replaced the link in [Walsh's] article [with a link] to the actual study by Charol Shakeshaft. If you go to the original study, see pp. 16ff (PDF pages 24ff) and pay particular attention to the paragraph that straddles pp. 17 and 18 (25 and 26). There you will read, "This analysis (Shakeshaft, 2003) indicates that 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report contact and/or noncontact educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted." Many reports--like Walsh's--have run with that number alone. They have not gone on to note (what appears three sentences later, in the same paragraph) that "Of students who experienced any kind of sexual misconduct in schools, 21 percent were targets of educators, while the remaining 79 percent were targets of other students" (emphases added; JAH). Multiply 9.6% by 21 percent and you wind up with 2.016%. So--adding in one more caveat made by Shakeshaft (p. 17 (25)), that her "findings can be generalized to all public school students in 8th to 11th grades at a 95 percent confidence level with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points"--we can conclude that approximately 2 percent of all students may, indeed, be sexually abused or harassed by adult educators at school using "civil and criminal definitions of sexual abuse and harassment." --I find that figure more believable. But every bit as much disturbing!--JAH]

TEN TWO PERCENT.

That makes the sex scandal in public schools many, many, many times more prevalent than the abuse epidemic in the Catholic Church. . . .

My correspondent, Melinda, wrote,

John, I think you made a mistake. . . . [T]he quote you give says 9.6% report EDUCATOR sexual misconduct. The second quote says that of those who experienced any kind of sexual misconduct, 21% were the targets of educators. I would read those 2 statistics as 9.6% experienced educator misconduct, and far, far more experienced sexual misconduct from other sources. If I'm right, there would be just under 10% who experienced educator sexual misconduct, and that number is only 1/5 of the total number who experienced sexual misconduct. . . . The total number of students in grades 8-11 who experienced some type of sexual misconduct by somebody would be closer to 50%!

Well, I re-looked at the underlying document. I recalled that Melinda's interpretation had been my own at first. But, then, the suggestion that almost 50 percent of all students are sexually abused seemed completely unbelievable. And when you read Shakeshaft's article, she goes to great lengths describing the abuse by all manner of people (and, most especially, students) in the public schools.

On the other hand, Shakeshaft consistently refers to educator abuse. And I would never classify students as educators!

Still, I was uncomfortable. Because when Shakeshaft puts "students" in a list of possible abusers, she never includes "educators" as a separate class of potential abusers; instead, she always refers to "teachers," "school employees," "coaches" and so forth. The word "educators" always comes up separately. Then again, how else might one refer to teachers, coaches, administrators, and so forth in one word? Educator seems appropriate.

I kept digging. Finally, I came across another document that Shakeshaft referenced--a document that she herself wrote.

After reading this second document, I have come to the conclusion that Melinda is correct. I was wrong. Matt Walsh was right. Which--sadly--means Walsh's (and others') comments about the comparison between the Catholic Church's scandal and sexual abuse in the public schools totally appropriate.

In this new document I read, Dr. Shakeshaft writes (see the last page of the linked PDF):

[W]hen alleged abuse is reported [in the public schools], the majority of complaints are ignored or disbelieved. Other students note this lack of response and reason that it is futile to try to stop a teacher from harassing since the school has not done anything about it in the past.

Until recently, teacher unions have been active in keeping fingerprinting legislation or statutes that prohibit educator sexual abuse from being passed. And, as in the case of fingerprinting, current teachers are exempt from the regulations.

Even when students allege abuse and the district responds, few students, families or school districts report this sexual abuse to the police or other law enforcement officials. As a result, most cases are not logged into the criminal justice system. Instead, abusers are dealt with using internal channels. In one of my early studies of 225 cases of educator sexual abuse in New York, none of the abusers were reported to authorities, and only 1 percent lost the license to teach.

In the aforementioned study, all of the accused had admitted to physical sexual abuse of a student, but only 35 percent suffered a negative consequence of these actions: 15 percent were terminated or, if not tenured, were not rehired; and 20 percent received a formal reprimand or suspension. Another 25 percent received no consequence or were spoken with informally. Nearly 39 percent chose to leave the district, most with retirement packages or positive recommendations intact.

Of the 54 percent who were terminated or retired, superintendents reported that 16 percent were teaching in other schools and that they did not know what had happened to the other 84 percent. A recent report on sexual abuse in New York City indicates that 60 percent of employees who were accused of sexual abuse were transferred to desk jobs at offices inside schools, and 40 percent of these teachers were repeat offenders.

The Church (rightly) is being hung out to dry for the offenses of its priests. These preachers of virtue, one would hope, would be virtuous themselves.

But even acknowledging that the public schools long ago disavowed any responsibility to teach morals or ethics, where is the outrage against the schools for their unseemly cover-ups?

Why is there so little public knowledge of the dangers in the public schools? (Note the comment by one person on the NPR site: "Public schools have never engaged in widespread abuse of children and subsequent cover-up." --Really?!?

Homeschooling anti-social?

Hot button issues like Senator Cafaro's proposed legislation in Ohio often brings out passionate commentary. And, sadly, too often, over-the-top, mean-spirited, little-better-than-name-calling vitriol.

However, there can often be thoughtful discussion woven through the midst of all the garbage.

I was impressed by the following interchange on Matt Walsh's blog as a result of his post Wednesday on Senator Cafaro's proposed legislation.

imsargarepa wrote:

I think there is an ideology associated with some brands of homeschooling (and I sense this from you) that is a dangerous current in American society. Here’s why: how lovely that you are financially and intellectually able to educate your children in your home. Good for you. There are MANY, MANY, a MAJORITY of families who can’t. When families like yours continue to pull out of the public sector, you take with you valuable resources, energy, and parental support that could benefit the community as a whole. While there are some valid and good reasons to homeschool, I consider the practice, in general, to be incredibly selfish, shortsighted and individualistic. Way to teach your children to be a part of something greater than themselves and their own ideals.

What I fear more than the dystopia of which you speak is a generation of children who have never heard any other perspectives than those of their extremist parents.

And LYM replied:

Do you put your children in failing inner city schools? Or do you use schools with the highest academic standards whose participating homes you can afford? If you don’t put your kids in the worst schools, you are pulling out of their tax base and taking with you the valuable resources, energy, and parental support that could benefit that community as a whole. While there are some valid and good reasons to go to non-horrible schools, [should I quote back to you what you just wrote?] "I consider the practice, in general, to be incredibly selfish, shortsighted and individualistic. Way to teach your children to be a part of something greater than themselves and their own ideals."

Truly, unless you have had personal contact with schools like this (I have), you have NO IDEA how much they could benefit from a family like yours participating in it. How selfish that you go to a school where students can afford their own lunches, buses get the kids to school in time for the first bell, and teachers aren’t sworn at by, or swearing at, children every hour!

imsargarepa responded:

Yep. My husband [and I] do, in fact, live purposely in the inner city and send our children to the local school, which is not by anyone’s standard a stand out institution. Our school is 80% free and reduced lunch; however there is no swearing at or by teachers at our school. My children are thriving there despite many problems we encounter there. It’s a very real world situation. We try to pour ourselves and our resources in to making a difference where we can, with what we have.

And, once more, LYM replied:

If it is not a charter school, and truly is an inner city school, kudos to you for putting your money where your mouth is. With my honest admiration in mind, though, I have two points for you.

The schools I am talking about are 100% free (not even reduced) breakfast and lunch. Yes, the students swear at and hit the teachers. Daily. Yes, one of the school buses arrives half an hour late for school, every day. Yes, the 6 year old is bullied and beaten regularly (no one does anything), but is somehow expected to know what a declarative sentence is (developmentally inappropriate expectation). No, the middle schooler does not know who the first president of the US was. No, the high schooler making A’s in history does not know who George Washington was. Yes, the school calls CPS on parents because a child regularly loses her glasses and doesn’t tell the parents she lost them again, resulting in yet another pointless months-long investigation. Yes, the principals and teachers have been indicted for cheating scandals. Yes, 50% of the students are pregnant before graduation, if they graduate.

Now, with that in mind, would you put your children in *that* school? If not, why not?

My point is that there is a scale of what any individual is called to do on a given issue. And that brings me to my second point. I cloth diaper, make my own cleaners of baking soda & vinegar, compost, recycle, buy organic food from local farmers only, refuse to buy synthetic fabrics or new clothes made by sweat shops, and as a result of all my efforts, put out only one bag of trash per week for 7 people. Is it right for me to go around saying that any of my friends who do less are incredibly selfish and short-sighted? NO. We all have causes that tug at our hearts, and we throw ourselves into the things about which we’re most passionate, even while recognizing that there are other causes deserving of attention. We can’t all do everything, and we shouldn’t go around verbally assaulting those being called to work on something else, or work on the same issue in a different way.

I homeschool my children not because I’m selfish or individualistic (actually, I find that homeschooling them has created much more community-minded children than the dog-eat-dog public school peer-herd mentality in which I was educated), but because I feel that is the best way for me to produce well-rounded, compassionate, generous, extremely well-educated human beings for the next generation. I help inner city families who wish to get out of the atrocious schools I mentioned to homeschool. You help them by putting your children into the pit with their children, and I trust that your judgment is correct that the net effect is positive both for them and for your children. I help them by helping them to get out of the pit. Who am I and who are you to say that the other has made the wrong, selfish, short-sighted choice?

Peace be with you.

As with so many things in life--whether haircuts and hair color, clothing, cars, sporting events, other forms of entertainment, exercise, health, food, drink, vacations . . . and just about anything else on which we might spend our time or money, some of us are willing to invest more . . . and some of us are willing to invest very much less.

So the question becomes: must everyone else toe my party line? Or . . . ????

Abuse at home and/or school; who is being regulated?

This just in courtesy Matt Walsh: 

[Ohio State Senator Capri Cafaro] wants to require all homeschool parents to undergo a Social Services investigation [before they will be permitted to teach their children. Her proposal comes following] the child abuse death of a 14 year old kid. Teddy Foltz-Tedesco died last year after his mother pulled him out of school to hide his abuse from authorities. The boy was finally beaten to death by the mother’s boyfriend. . . .

[Teddy]’s abuse was already reported to Social Services. Social Services failed to act, and now, in response to THEIR OWN failures, politicians want to give them MORE power. . . .

Walsh has more to say about tyranny in Ohio. But then he brings up something that completely blew me away. VERY disturbing.

[I]f the rare case of an abusive homeschool parent can serve as an indictment of homeschooling, why can’t the more common case of a sexually abusive teacher serve as an indictment of public schools? By this politician’s . . . logic, all government schools should have been shutdown long ago. In fact, there was a 2004 study titled Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature, commissioned by the Department of Education. It received no attention from anyone, but the findings were terrifying: nearly 10 percent of all public schooled students had been raped, abused, or sexually harassed by teachers someone at school. Over two percent by teachers. teachers [NOTE: I made the correction, here, based on the fact that I actually read the referenced study. (Walsh never referenced it directly. He merely referenced a Psychology Today article that referenced the study. I was the one who replaced the link in the article to the actual study by Charol Shakeshaft. If you go to the original study, see pp. 16ff (PDF pages 24ff) and pay particular attention to the paragraph that straddles pp. 17 and 18 (25 and 26). There you will read, "This analysis (Shakeshaft, 2003) indicates that 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report contact and/or noncontact educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted." Many reports--like Walsh's--have run with that number alone. They have not gone on to note (what appears three sentences later, in the same paragraph) that "Of students who experienced any kind of sexual misconduct in schools, 21 percent were targets of educators, while the remaining 79 percent were targets of other students" (emphases added; JAH). Multiply 9.6% by 21 percent and you wind up with 2.016%. So--adding in one more caveat made by Shakeshaft (p. 17 (25)), that her "findings can be generalized to all public school students in 8th to 11th grades at a 95 percent confidence level with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points"--we can conclude that approximately 2 percent of all students may, indeed, be sexually abused or harassed by adult educators at school using "civil and criminal definitions of sexual abuse and harassment." --I find that figure more believable. But every bit as much disturbing!--JAH] [NOTE (23 January 2014: Following Melissa's comment on 22 January, I re-read the article and did some further study. Walsh was correct all along. My emendations of the text of his article were unwarranted. Please see my follow-up article here.]

TEN TWO TEN PERCENT.

That makes the sex scandal in public schools many, many, many times more prevalent than the abuse epidemic in the Catholic Church. It’s not even close, actually. The Hofstra researcher who conducted the study had this to say: “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.” [Quote found here. NOTE: It is well worth your while to study the larger context in which the quote appears. The multiplier might be far lower than that. Perhaps "only" 5 or 10 or 50. As the author of the article writes: "Ms. Shakeshaft acknowledged that the accuracy of such comparisons might be thrown off by any number of factors, including undercounting of youngsters abused by priests. But that uncertainty only underscores the need for better research on the prevalence of sexual misconduct in the schools. . . ."Educator sexual misconduct is woefully understudied." Despite all of these qualifiers, I think Walsh's point remains. --JAH]

And homeschool kids are the ones at risk?

Add school shootings, gang violence, fights, bullying, and administrative abuse in the form of zero tolerance policies that brand and label young kids as criminals, and public school is clearly a much more dangerous proposition.

But what serious attempt have our politicians made to curb the sexual abuse of kids in public schools? It’s hard to address a problem if you’ve decided that the problem doesn’t exist.

Some teacher’s unions even think teachers ought to be given cash rewards after being found guilty of serial rape. A severance package for a man who sexually abused a young boy for three years? That’s not just “inappropriate,” that’s co-conspiratorial, as far as I’m concerned.

The government has no place pointing the finger of suspicion at parents. We are the ones who have every possible reason to be suspicious of them. The vast majority of us are doing our best to raise our kids in a hostile environment; an environment made all the more hostile by the very government entities that pretend to be concerned about the health and safety of our children.

If you got this far, I hope you are as enraged as I am at the duplicity. Something about the pot calling the kettle black. Or people in glass houses throwing stones. Or, simply, justice, even playing fields, and getting your own house in order.

But Walsh continues. He's on a roll. Why not?

We have a problem, America. We seem to be under the impression that our kids are safer in government buildings than they are in our homes. We have succumbed to a brainwashing campaign. . . .

Homeschooling laws vary by state. Some have virtually no regulations, some make moderate efforts to “keep tabs” on those dangerous homeschooling terrorists, while others are ruthless in protecting and expanding their government education system. In these states, homeschooling parents have to (among other things) register their curriculum with the education department, and even endure home visitations from government agents.

Surely, we can all see how terrible that is, can’t we? A government agent invading your house to investigate what information you’re passing on to your child? Can any substantive notion of freedom coexist along side such a thing? Extremist that I am, I don’t think homeschool parents should be required to make any effort to “check in” with any government agency, no matter how convenient they make the process. But even if you aren’t ready to meet me there, even if you can’t quite get on board with full parental liberty, aren’t we at least on the same page that homeschool parents shouldn’t be treated like sex offenders on parole?

I'll buy that!

Full original article: Politician: “Let’s treat all homeschool parents like felony child abusers” | The Matt Walsh Blog

One of those things that just makes me shake my head and want to cry . . .

Are people REALLY this uneducated? (Sadly, I have no doubt: YES. They are.)

First two posts seem cute. But then you start realizing, no, these things are serious. . . .  

Click through for more than 20 additional such posts . . . many of which are way--WAY--worse.

New "Common Core Standards" for reading in education

The Educrats have got to be insane. And those among us who let them rule the asylum are just as crazy.

From

Alexandra Petri of The Washington Post:

Forget “The Great Gatsby.”

New Common Core standards (which affect 46 states and the District of Columbia) will require that, by 2014, 70 percent of high school seniors' reading assignments be nonfiction. Some suggested texts include “FedViews” by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the EPA's “Recommended Levels of Insulation” and “Invasive Plant Inventory” by California's Invasive Plant Council.

Forget “Catcher in the Rye” (seems to encourage assassins), “The Great Gatsby” (too 1 percenty), “Huckleberry Finn” (anything written before 1970 must be racist) and “To Kill A Mockingbird” (probably a Suzanne Collins rip-off). Bring out the woodchipping manuals!

I like reading. I love reading. I always have. I read recreationally still. . . . And it's all because, as a child, my parents took the time to read me “Recommended Levels of Insulation.” . . . That was always my favorite, although “Invasive Plant Inventory” was a close second. (What phrases in literature or life will ever top the rich resonance of that “The Inventory categorizes plants as High, Moderate, or Limited, reflecting the level of each species’ negative ecological impact in California. Other factors, such as economic impact or difficulty of management, are not included in this assessment.” "And we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" has nothing on it!)

“It is important to note that even Limited species are invasive and should be of concern to land managers,” I frequently tell myself, in moments of crisis. “Although the impact of each plant varies regionally, its rating represents cumulative impacts statewide.” How true that is, even today. Those words have brought me through moments of joy and moments of sorrow. They are graven on my heart. I bound them as a seal on my hand.

My dog-eared, beaten copy of “Recommended Levels of Insulation” still sits on my desk. I even got it autographed. Their delay in making a movie of this classic astounds me. That was where I first learned the magic of literature.

“Insulation level are specified by R-Value. R-Value is a measure of insulation's ability to resist heat traveling through it.” What authority in that sentence! . . .

I remember curling up with [“Recommended Levels of Insulation”] and reading it over and over again. It was this that drove me to pursue writing as a career — the hope one day of crafting a sentence that sang the way “Drill holes in the sheathing and blow insulation into the empty wall cavity before installing the new siding and” sings.

But I doubt I will ever achieve this lambent perfection.

Look, I was an English major, so I may be biased. . . . [But l]ife is full of enough instruction manuals.

The best way to understand what words can do is to see them in their natural habitat, not constrained in the dull straitjackets of legalese and regulationish and manualect. . . . Words in regulations and manuals have been mangled and tortured and bent into unnatural positions, and the later you have to discover such cruelty, the better.

The people behind the core have sought to defend it, saying that this was not meant to supplant literature. This increased emphasis on nonfiction would not be a concern if the core worked the way it was supposed to, with teachers in other disciplines like math and science assigning the hard technical texts that went along with their subjects.

But teachers worry that this will not happen. Principals seem to be having trouble comprehending the requirement themselves. Besides, the other teachers are too busy, well, teaching their subjects to inflict technical manuals on their students too, and they may expect the English department to pick up the slack. And hence the great Purge of Literature . . .

All in all, . . . a great way to make the kids who like reading hate reading.

[But, hey, t]hat’s certainly one way of addressing the reading gap.

Read more here.

By the way: Is Petri overstating the case or misstating what the Educrats are really demanding?

I urge you to read the links in the article itself. The last one, in particular, makes clear: those who wrote the standards "didn't intend" them to be implemented in the manner Petri suggests. But who cares? It's how they are being implemented that matters.

Yes, the standards do require increasing amounts of nonfiction, [said David Coleman, who led the effort to write the standards with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation]. But that refers to reading across all subjects, he said.

Teachers in social studies, science and math should require more reading, which would allow English teachers to continue to assign literature, he said.

The standards explicitly say that Shakespeare and classic American literature should be taught, Coleman said. “It does really concern me that these facts are not as clear as they should be.”

In practice, the burden of teaching the nonfiction texts is falling to English teachers, said Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University: “You have chemistry teachers, history teachers saying, ‘We’re not going to teach reading and writing, we have to teach our subject matter. That’s what you English teachers do.’ ”

Sheridan Blau, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, said teachers across the country have told him that their principals are insisting that English teachers make 70 percent of their readings nonfiction. “The effect of the new standards is to drive literature out of the English classroom,” he said.

Necessary math education

While I'm away, I thought this little opinion piece by William Falk, editor-in-chief of my favorite magazine, The Week, deserves some close attention:

I recall nothing of trigonometry and physics, except the feeling of nausea as the teacher filled the blackboard with a mystifying jumble of numbers and letters (the infernal, elusive x!). Higher math, I assumed at the time, was created for the sole purpose of adding to teenagers’ misery and self-loathing—the academic equivalent of acne. This awful memory comes to mind because my daughter Jessica is now taking trig and physics in her junior year of high school. Jessie is a better math student than I was, but she shares the family predilection for English, history, and verbal subjects, and will not be making a career in engineering or science. So why must she break her brain on quadratic equations?

Two brave mathematicians have stepped forward to argue she need not. In a column in The New York Times, Sol Garfunkel and David Mumford say algebra, trig, and calculus are wasted on those of us with no aptitude for higher math. Students clearly not headed for science or engineering careers, they propose, should track to courses that provide “quantitative literacy”—the ability to handle our own finances, understand percentages and probability and risk, and intelligently assess what “experts” like banks and doctors and politicians tell us about the mathematics of real life. The desperate need for literacy of this sort is indisputable: The average American carries more than $6,000 in credit-card debt; about half of all retirees have saved less than a quarter of what they will need; and our elected leaders convince the gullible it’s possible to balance budgets while preserving their benefits and cutting their taxes. Why keep fiddling with x, while Rome burns?

In case you want to see the original article to which Falk refers, check out How to Fix Our Math Education.

And, if you haven't subscribed yet, may I encourage you seriously to consider The Week? Sarita and I love it!

An analysis of modern education by Sir Ken Robinson

Oh. My. Goodness. Back to listening to Sir Ken Robinson. (Last visited in October 2008.)

Stunned. And entertained. And inspired!



I'm bummed that the RSA Animate people quit animating before Sir Robinson finished his talk!

Below, I have also included the original, very much longer (and slower, but still extremely pleasant and inspiring!) version of the talk--including many more practical illustrations and sidelight bunny-trails.

If you want to "get right into it" from the point where he begins his talk above, start listening at 12:47:



The animated version "finishes" at 50:56 in the orginal!

If you want to see how he ends the speech, I'd suggest "checking back in" at 52:02.

Enjoy!

--Thanks, Keith, for the initial link!

Oh. PS. At about 9:00 into the animated version, the illustrator fails to convey a few pieces of essential information that you know Robinson is showing his original audience. He's talking about the percentage of people, at different ages, tested at the genius level for divergent thinking.

By watching the original speech (at around the 49:00 mark), I discovered that the statistics were the following:

Age	Divergent Thinking Geniuses
3-5	98%
8-10	32%
13-15	10%
25+	2%

"Other" ways of thinking and learning . . .

I thought this cartoon from "One Big Happy," by Rick Detorie, perfectly reflects something I've seen numerous times throughout my life. Grandpa is helping Ruthie, a young elementary school age girl, with her homework. He reads the major, defining portion of the sentence. She completes it:

Choose [the best] word from the word box to complete each sentence. Word Box chair store park horse

"You buy food at a . . ." Grandpa begins. "--Park!" says Ruthie. "You know, hot dogs and ice cream from the li'l carts."

"You sit down on a . . ." "--Horse! Unless you're one of those trick riders."

"You play at the . . ." "--Store. . . . When mom's shopping, Joe and I play hide and seek in the deli section!"

"You ride a . . ." "--Chair! I love rockers!"

There's a little more (Grandpa expresses concern about how well Ruthie may be doing in school and she offers her perspective), but I think what I've quoted gets to the heart of what I'm interested in, here.

Ever bumped into someone like Ruthie?

It seems as if some of us tend to think in ways alternative to the mainstream. "Regular" people find these ways of thinking completely baffling. Ridiculous. Inappropriate.

"Quit trying to be cute!" they may say. Or, "You're making it more difficult than it needs to be!" Or, "Quit trying to think of the most obscure option. Choose the most obvious." Or, even, "Don't look for ways that all answers could work. Just try to think of the answer that most people are likely to think of."

And, yet, still some of us rebel: "I'm not 'trying to be cute.'" "I'm not trying to 'make it difficult'; I'm simply trying to acknowledge the truth: Things are not as simple as you (and, apparently, many--most?--other people) want to believe." "I see how and why you think ______ is obvious. But this other answer is also 'obvious.' At least it is to me!" "As for whatever answer you think 'most people' are likely to think of: Well, I haven't interviewed most people."

"You're just being obstinate."

"I'm just trying to be truthful. There is not just one answer to your question. So when you ask me which one is the 'right' answer, I have to tell you that there are two or three right answers. Your 'one' is not 'the' right answer!"

The impact of a caring teacher . . .

I glanced at the October issue of Reader's Digest that just came to our house and happened across an article that moved me very deeply. In Reader's Digest the article is titled My Mother's Gift. In the Washington Post, from which it comes, it is titled Talented and Gifted: In one year, she taught her students to see the wonders of their talents -- then and forever. It's written by a regular columnist in the Washington Post, Steve Hendrix. Steve's article reminded me of my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Strange. Mr. Strange ran our classroom much the way Mrs. Hendrix ran her classroom for talented and gifted fourth- and fifth-graders about 10 years later.

A big difference: Mrs. Hendrix was teaching in a small town in South Georgia; Mr. Strange was teaching sons and daughters of PhD students and university professors at Stanford University in the late 60s. Escondido Elementary school in Stanford was designed for cutting-edge teaching to help these children of well-educated parents reach their full potential. Mrs. Hendrix's school, by contrast, was unprepared to help students even imagine that college was a worthy goal. But Mrs. Hendrix was. . . .

Before I recount a bit of her story, I should probably note that as I worked on helping to found Sonlight Curriculum 15 to 20 years ago, I often had my classmates at Escondido Elementary in mind. And Mr. Strange was in my mind as well. I wanted to be as creative as Mr. Strange was and to offer students the kind of wondrous opportunity to investigate the world that he gave us. And I wanted to make sure that every Peter Hogness, Philip Scowcroft, Bruce Jaffe, Mark Coombs . . . or John Holzmann--not to mention all our other classmates, male and female, most of whom I can only recall by first name at the moment . . . --I wanted to make sure that all our modern equivalent peers would receive an education that permitted them to develop to the fulness of their potential.

As I read the testimonies of Sonlight moms (see the "Sonlight Moments" in the right sidebar of this blog), I sense that maybe Sarita and I achieved my goal.

But back to the story of Mrs. Hendrix. . . .

The kids selected for [her] class were seven fifth-graders and 14 fourth-graders, all of whom were testing at three or four years above grade level.

"They were taking the tops out of any test we could give them," recalled Patsy Knotts, the [school district]'s curriculum director at the time. "They were bored stiff."

It was just as the gifted education movement was coming into vogue among progressive educators, and Knotts persuaded her superintendent to give it try. At first, not all parents were enthusiastic about pulling their kids out of the regular classroom. One father told Knotts he didn't want his son labeled an egghead. But the kids themselves knew they were already marked -- by their fellow students. They were geeks decades before geeks ruled the economy, culture and eyewear design.

"We were all pretty odd by South Georgia standards," said Frank Lowrey, at that time a fourth-grader. "We didn't hunt or fish. We liked 'Star Trek.' It wasn't always comfortable in other classrooms. We didn't always fit in."

Suddenly, they found themselves in a room where reading wasn't mocked, where being creative, outlandish, even effete didn't risk a punch from a recess tough.

"It was a sanctuary," Christopher said. "Before that, I was hiding out. She looked us each in the eye and knew us as individuals."

During the first month of school, Mrs. Hendrix visited each of her new students at home. She wanted to meet their parents and brace them for the pell-mell year to follow. But mostly she wanted to give the students a chance to see her off that front-of-the-class pedestal.

Mrs. Kipp served cherry pie. While the grown-ups talked, Neill and his new teacher played a game of chess on the couch. At the end of the game and the visit, she looked steadily at Neill and said, "I can tell you're a very patient person."

"It was just a casual compliment," he said. "But I can still picture her saying it. Ever since that moment, I have thought of myself as a patient person." . . .

It was this kind of attention to detail and personal involvement with her students that set Mrs. Hendrix apart from all the other teachers . . . and that made her input in these children's lives memorable even today, 34 years later.

One of the first big class projects, Mrs. Hendrix announced, would be a play. They were going to stage Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol." Neill and a fifth-grader named Becky Thurman would direct. Everyone would work on the set. Mothers, of course, would sew the costumes.

The production encompassed almost all their subjects. Building scenery would reveal geometry. Decorating them was art. Decoding the dense English was reading. Dickens's portrayals of class and poverty were portals to social studies. . . .

Brad Ewing, then a fourth-grader, was the town crier in Scrooge's London. That was fine, but what he really got into was his second job, running the spotlight.

"I really loved electronics and taking things apart," Brad said, "and that was not something I had been allowed to do in school much."

Despite his interest in things electronic, Brad was no obvious prodigy. "Based on my grades and test scores, most guidance counselors would say anything but math or engineering."

But Mrs. Hendrix invited him to bring in some of his home-wired gizmos. She let Brad and Frank rig the class bulletin board with working lights. For a lesson in arithmetic, Brad assembled a kind of abacus out of colored blocks, astounding his teacher.

"She said, 'One day, I'm going to be able to say that I knew the person who invented these really cool things,'" Brad recalled. "I became kind of determined to make that come true."

His mother remembers it, too.

"I picked him up one day, and he said, 'I'm going to be an electrical engineer,'" June Ewing said. "He came home happy almost every day from that class. He had so much fun learning, and that has stayed with him."

For Cynthia Counts, it was the mock court.

Forgive me. I'd love to quote more. I'd love to point out how Mrs. Hendrix's use of Dickens' play is a perfect example of the kind of thing I know many masterful homeschoolers do. But I'm going to stop quoting the article at this point and let you read the original.

For the most moving parts, I particularly recommend Page 5 in the online version of the article.

Enjoy!

For all my friends in the book publishing and educational marketplace.

Watch this video to the end. Something remarkable happens at about 1:06 into it.

What do you believe?

CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part IV (The Principle of Relationships)

#10 in an ongoing series on Christian Home Educators of Colorado 2009 "Men's Leadership Summit" (otherwise known as the "The Vision of the Leadership Summit") held in Indianapolis, Indiana, at one of the hotels owned by Bill Gothard's group over the weekend of March 5-7, 2009. Previous post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part III (The Principle of Individuality). First post in the series: 2009 Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) "Men's Leadership Summit," Part I.

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The following content is Part IV (my divisions!) from Kevin Swanson's second speech at the 2009 CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" ("MLS")--"Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision"--delivered on Friday, March 6, 2009 and available in full, audio form from ResoundingVoice.com.

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The Educational Principle of Relationships

Swanson's father sent him a news clipping a few years ago.

My dad . . . [is the chief researcher] for my radio show which airs . . . at kevinswanson.com. . . .

[T]his one [great little] story came in . . . about [a] family who was living in the inner city somewhere, and at some point, four years earlier, the dad--it was just the dad and a daughter--the dad just says, “I’ve got to get out of here; got to get out of these schools. It’s gonna ruin my daughter academically, character-wise. . . .”

So he just . . . goes and lives in the woods somewhere.

They live in the woods for four years, and the police just found them. They come in, and they test this 12-year-old girl. They give her the standardized test, and she tests out as a 12th-grade high school graduate. But here’s the clincher--here is the amazing thing. The curriculum--all the curriculum they had--was a Bible and a set of encyclopedias.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: I'm not sure what we are supposed to take away from this.

1. Does he really mean that this girl had the true equivalent of a quality, 12th-grade education? She knew and understood high school algebra? Trigonometry? Biology? Chemistry? Physics? History? Music? . . . She had an appreciation for a full range of cultural heroes? She could comment intelligently on current events? . . .
   
   Was she really and truly a well-rounded person with the equivalent of an excellent (or, even, medium-quality) high school education?
   
   Or did the tests reveal, rather, that she was able, perhaps, to read on a 12th grade level? (I have no difficulty believing that.)
   
   But,
    
2. Supposing this young woman actually did exhibit the knowledge of an average 12th-grade high school graduate: Is that level of achievement--average--all that the average homeschool parents desire for their children? (I doubt it. Though it sounds as if that is the aspirational level of Kevin Swanson for his children.)
    
3. I am reminded of my comment, earlier today, about what we discussed last night with our daughter and son-in-law: about how Ralph Moody's mother had recognized the handicap under which her husband had labored due to his lack of book-learning. He was smart. He was skilled. He was a man of tremendous character. But his lack of academic training severely limited his ability in a number of areas.
   
   If our aspirations for our children are solely to become business-owning entrepreneurs (as it sounds as if Mr. Swanson wants for his son--and Mr. Swanson's son desires for himself), that is wonderful.
   
   But should the rest of us who have other aspirations for our children (or whose children have different aspirations for themselves): Should we simply lay these aside so we can fulfill Mr. Swanson's dreams?

It was around this time that we were at the CHEC conference. In fact, I had just gotten the story. We were at the CHEC conference, and my wife comes out of the vendor hall--which is like a lot of these huge conference vendor halls, where you have 150 vendors, and they’re all saying, "Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. If you don’t buy my stuff, you’re giving your kids a sub-standard education."

Swanson overstates the case. I know of at least one vendor that has deliberately and studiously sought to avoid ever saying such a thing. Its name is Sonlight Curriculum.

Indeed, in order to reduce the pressure on potential buyers to "buy right now!", Sonlight doesn't even bring products to conventions that potential customers could walk away with.

Sorry to point out this overstatment on Swanson's part, but he pushed my button, and I figured I should protest.

My wife comes out and says, “Honey, shall I buy it all?”

Has that ever happened to any of you, where your wife goes, “Oh, what do I do? I've got to buy it all?”

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: No. And I know of no woman who would ever say such a thing.

*******
I get the sense Swanson is speaking in a highly derogatory manner, here. Is he expressing disdain for his own wife?

I had just read the story [about the man and his daughter], and I said, “Honey, here’s what you need to do: blindfold me, and I will walk randomly into the hall, and I’ll find six things, and we’ll give them [recording is unclear, but I think he says "we'll give them back our math"--JAH].”

Why is that? See, we’ve been sold a bill of goods that it’s gonna take thousands of dollars--and this is, by the way, the way that you get the government foot in education, anyway. They come in and they say it takes a professional. No wait. It takes $10,000. "You’ve got to get this really, really nice curriculum. . . . Look at the cover. Come on, look at it, huh? You’ve got to get the satellite feed. You’ve got to get this. You’ve got to get some professional teachers coming over by satellites. It’ll work really good."

But there’s something else . . . that is so much more effective in the education of a child.

Why is it that you have moms and dads--just ordinary moms and dads--that take that lousy 50 percentile and jack it up 36 percentile points, to 86?¹ How does that happen?

Does that happen because you’ve got experts out there who’ve been trained in four-year teaching colleges, by the millions, coming in and teaching your kids? No, they’re not experts.

Is it because they have the best curriculum? No, it’s not because they have the best curriculum.

What really clinched this for me was in the story, they interview the sheriff who investigated this case. He said what was incredible about the story was the unacceptable, impoverished conditions in which [the father and daughter] lived. They lived in this lean-to he had built next to a little creek, and it was really, really, really beat up. Sort of a rustic living. [The sheriff] said what was incredibly obvious was how unacceptable the living conditions were, but how close and loving a relationship they had.

You see, brothers, it’s the relationship that matters. That’s the core of it. That’s the heart of it.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: The heart of it?

Important? Yes! No question.

Will it make a difference? Absolutely. No doubt.

But that relationship, by itself, is the heart of education? I don't know!

Forget the curriculum. Forget the trivium, classical unit study--whatever it is. It doesn’t really matter. Just go randomly grab something, please. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you have a four-year teaching certificate.

What matters is the relationship. What matters is focusing on what God considers to be the most important thing.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: Again, I'm astonished that Swanson, the executive director and biggest public spokesperson for Christian Home Educators of Colorado can say such disdainful and unguarded comments about all the vendors who have ever gone into business to serve homeschooling parents.

But perhaps he reveals less about the majority of the vendors who come to his convention and more about people like himself, his buddy Doug Phillips, and their good friend Greg Harris, who all seem to delight in their ability to sell their wares as "non-profit ministries" to the homeschool audiences they gather.

I find myself unable to hold back from making another comment.

Swanson heaps contempt on the trivium, classical education, and so forth. None of these things matter, he says. "All you need," he seems to say, "is the Bible (and my four-book curriculum . . . and the other wonderful materials I have produced)."

But ignore his apparent exceptions reserved for the things he himself has produced (and for the other educational materials being sold directly by Christian Home Educators of Colorado?). [Interesting that this non-profit organization is going into direct competition with the companies that pay money to attend its conventions!]

I am struck--as I have noted before--that Swanson and Phillips and their pals are all very highly educated men. They have followed more than a haphazard, "pick anything" approach to "education." Swanson and Phillips and Baucham know their history. Yet they--and, here, Swanson in particular--pour contempt on everyone who would studiously attempt to follow such a path in order to prepare themselves for equal or even more effective service for the Kingdom. [Are these men, perhaps, concerned that others better than themselves might arise to take their places? --I find Swanson's and Phillips's negative comments about disciplined content-rich education particularly disturbing.]

But back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Swanson continues . . .

Now, when my wife came to me and said, “Honey, you’ve got to take this boy.” I really wasn’t sure what to do . . . because I work for a living. I’m a busy guy. Besides, for years I’ve been working to change the world. You guys have got to know the kind of guy I am.

Chris Klicka talked about the next generation being prepared to change the world. I was that next generation. I was ready to change the world. I ran for student body president at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I was active in pro-life and stuff. I was active in Republican politics. I ran for governor of Colorado in 1994, and I had a little, screaming little boy who kept trying to get in my way.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: Interesting that Swanson could even aspire to run for governor of Colorado. What the-Bible-and-an-encyclopedia-only-and-no-college-educated person could possibly hope, seriously, to run for governor?

As I was writing my book, The Second Mayflower, on how to change the world, there were these little fingers coming under the door, trying to get at me. He was screaming and yelling, and I couldn’t concentrate on changing the world, . . . until I realized that changing the world had everything to do with two things: one, changing the life of one little boy, and changing the life of this little boy.

You know, that’s what it’s about, brothers. You’ve heard it already from Chris, and you’re gonna hear it again from me.

I was that guy. I was too busy for my boy. But God says, “Tag. You’re it, man.” Because I’m sitting here--I’m not trying to impose my particular regimen on all you guys, here. I’m not trying to do that. I’m just saying, here was a boy surrounded by five women all day long, and he needed a man in his life. He’s 11-years-old and--I see this among a lot of homeschooled boys--[he needs] a man in his life. I could see my wife trying to fix these issues, and maybe this metaphor will help. It came to me a while back. She was out there trying to frame a house with a little, tiny, 6-ounce hammer, going dink-dink-dink, dink-dink-dink-dink, trying to get that first nail in: dink-dink-dink. And I’m sitting here with an 80-psi nail gun, watching her, going, “Too bad for you. I’m sorry about you. Keep working, honey. Keep working. Oh, I feel bad for you.”

Guys, I have an 85-psi nail gun, where I could get into that little boy’s life, and I could do something. I just knew that I could.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: ????

What's this about his wife's little hammer and Swanson's supposed 80- or 85-psi nail gun? Why is he Mr. Big Bruiser and she has so little to offer?

Or does Swanson exhibit such swagger because he had been saddling her with the education of five children--by herself--and now, suddenly, he takes on the education of one?

Is he, suddenly, an expert on how to train boys because he has been doing some things with his one son?

His heart was crying out for me, and he had sins in his life that I had in my life.

I thought, “One and one makes two.” I put it together, and I knew that there was nobody--nobody on Planet Earth--not a pastor, not a youth group leader, not a Sunday school teacher, not a PE teacher--nobody on Planet Earth that could wade into this little boy’s life and do something for him like one man on Planet Earth. And that was me.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: I am so happy to hear he decided to fulfill some of his responsibility as a father.

Based on what I hear of many men, Swanson is by no means alone in his former neglect of his son. Each one of us fathers needs to consider how we should interact with our kids most effectively. I am sincerely grateful for Swanson to challenge us with this need to be involved in our kids'--and especially, if possible, our sons' lives.

So God called me to this and for the last five or six years, that’s what we’re doing. We travel together. We don’t really homeschool. We car school and we office school and conference-room school. And we come out here and we school. We’re just schooling all over the place. It’s kind of all mixed up. Everything’s sort of integrated together.

I’m not really sure how it’s gonna work out. It’s really crazy. We just try to catch a little math in the car from time to time.

A couple years ago, we were traveling down Road 98 near our house. It’s all dirt, where we live. So we’re down this dirt road. I’m doing typical 65 miles per hour. My son turns to me and says, “Dad, I’m having a hard time with this trinomial over here. Can you help me, here, with this trinomial?”

So I start working the problem on the gearshift. I forgot that I’m driving the car. So I look up, and suddenly, we’re coming right to 1721. I hit the brakes, going, “Aggghhh.” We stopped right there by the ditch, and we didn’t fall in the ditch, so everything’s fine. "Okay, so let’s finish this problem, now. Let’s work it." That’s pretty much the way our homeschooling works.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: And this is supposed to somehow show us how involved Swanson is in his son's life? That he "grabs a moment" from his otherwise busy life and almost kills the two of them while he works a problem with his son?

*******
I don't want to be too hard on Swanson, but I think it is worth asking: How is this model that he holds out for "the rest of us" supposed to work for the dad who has a different vocation than does Swanson?

Besides being the executive director of CHEC, Swanson is an entrepreneur and a pastor. I can see how having one of your children tag along might work in many situations for such a person. But what if a dad works in aerospace, or in a manufacturing job, at a meatpacking plant, or elsewhere where there is no way a child will be permitted to tag along? Is Swanson going to tell such a man he has to give up his job because anything else is to disobey Deuteronomy 6:6-8?

He seems to imply No. He says, "I’m not trying to impose my particular regimen on all you guys, here. I’m not trying to do that."

And yet. And yet. He seems strongly to imply we really are in sin if we don't do it in the same way he does.

So what is such a man to do? Give up his job? Feel like he's a failure as a dad if he doesn't give up his job?

Or, forget the problems associated with a dad who won't give up a job for which he is suited and that pays the family's bills. What if a father has two or three or four son? Would the kind of on-the-go lifestyle Swanson seems to advocate work for such a father?

I don't think so. Even if he had a job that would allow so many sons to stay by their father's side.

Imagine a man in very much the same circumstances as Swanson himself. Suppose his son were not as . . . ummmm . . . quiescent as is Swanson's son? Could dad serve his son in the manner Swanson has found he is able to? I don't think so! . . .

Please don't misunderstand my purpose, here.

I think it is wonderful that Swanson has found a "solution" that meets his and his family's needs at this time. But while it is wonderful that he has found a "solution" that works for him and his son, I think it is not workable for many--perhaps most--others. And I believe Swanson should recognize that and perhaps tone down or shade the way he seems to speak of his unique situation as a model for everyone.

It’s kind of a mess, but my son’s in my life, and that’s what matters. He is sitting right there, on the front row of my life, and I need his heart.

In Proverbs Chapter 23, it says, “My Son, give me your heart. Come close and observe my ways.” See, he’s inviting his son into his life. He says, “Son, come on. Sit right here in my office. I want you sitting right across from me, so you can listen to me when I raise my voice in impatience, and then I’ve got to ask forgiveness, and then I’ve got to deal with this issue, and deal with that issue.”

You know what, guys? It’s difficult. There’s accountability between him and I, and the sins that I see in his life are the same sins in my life. I’m all ready to correct him, saying, “Son, you’re speaking to your sisters in an impatient tone of voice. That sarcasm has got to stop.”

And I think, “He’s using the same sarcasm that I used with him yesterday.”

See, it’s a very difficult thing when you invite relationships into your life, guys. We have protected ourselves from relationships, to a great extent. I think one of the reasons is because it does bring sin to the surface. When you walk into somebody’s life--you start working with somebody--you begin to take a vital interest in their life. You want to see their success. You want to see them grow in Christ. Then, you realize that you’ve got the same issues. Now, you’ve got to deal with yourself. God is working in you, as He is working in him. He sometimes uses the work in you to effect the work that goes on in him.

Sometimes I look at [my son] and I think to myself, “He’s really irritating me, right now. Do I really like him? 'Kevin, do you love this person, here? Do you love him? After just what he did--after the way he blew that--after his disobedience--do you love this boy?'”

Then, I hear another voice, “Hey, wait, wait, wait. Here’s another question: do you love Me? Do you love Me?” Then, I put it together and I understand that I do love You because You first loved me. Then He says, “Well then, love him. Love him with all his warts and foibles and his sins and all the stuff that I see in your life. I want you to love him the way that I loved you, and feel.”

Brothers, relationships is the real core of the education of a child. As I plead for his heart, I recognize there are a lot of competing forces that go for a son’s heart. This happens all the time. This is not an automatic thing, to have your son’s heart. Sometimes it’s there; sometimes it’s not. You have to pray for it. You have to ask for it, and you have to spend the time.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: Good stuff.

I think it’s a matter of quantity time, not quality time. Shepherding boys--somebody once said--a friend of mine had six or seven boys. He said it’s like duck hunting. You spend about three hours behind the blind for about 30 seconds of action. That’s kind of the way it is. You just hang out together, and you hang out together for hours upon hours upon hours, and then you get 30 seconds of action. You get a real good conversation, and you’ve got his heart.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 9:45 PM: Maybe.

--I liked this illustration, though, enough to blog it on Strategic Inheritance. I think there is a lot of truth there. Guys are not as prone to open, deep, soul-baring conversations as are girls and women (one of the reasons, in general, that I seem to prefer talking with women).

The world is after him. In fact, the Proverbs talk about binding the commandments of God around your neck and your wrist--taking the commandments of your father and tying them around your wrist. When it refers to the commandments of God, we know what that refers to. When it refers to the commandments of a father, brothers, it ultimately is the applications of a father. It’s the way the father incarnates and applies the Word of God to his family.

So what we learn, from our fathers, is a biblical application or enculturation of the commandments of God.

Let’s say there’s a son who says, “Dad, you talk about respect; you talk about honor. I’m with you there, Dad, but I don’t agree when you say I’ve got to say Yes, Sir or No, Sir. I’m not gonna tuck in my shirt at the table. I’m not gonna wear clothes that are clean and are presentable and respectful to my parents or to others. I’m just not gonna do that, because I don’t see anything in the Word of God about tucking in your shirt. Jesus never tucked in His shirt. They don’t have a Yes, Sir or No, Sir in the Bible, here. Dad, come on, you’re being legalistic with me.”

Okay. Your son gets all lawyer-like with you like that.

It’s because he doesn’t understand what the Proverbs are saying. When the Proverb says, Take the approaches, the dress, the attitudes, the perspectives, the language that your parents have incorporated, in order to apply the Word of God--in order to, as best as they can, express honor for others and for the parents--you just incorporate those into your own life. You tie those commandments around your neck and you walk in your parents’ ways, to the extent that they have, to the best of their ability, tried to bring about the commandments of God in their lives.

Now, as our sons honor us, and honor these applications--honor our culture--they will stand upon our shoulders. Now, if they dishonor, they will cut us off at the knees, and they will destroy the culture. So this is what we’re trying to do as we teach our children, as we are discipling our sons in the ways of God, and trying to apply the ways of God in our children’s lives.

Now, the last thing I have learned about these relationships is that I’m teaching my son how to live. My son is on the front-row of my life. He’s understanding the issues that I’m dealing with. He’s right there, and it’s hard, sometimes, to be transparent because if you’re transparent, and you’ve got a guy sitting at the front-row of your life, you’re gonna have to start stripping off layers of hypocrisy. You’re gonna have to start confessing your sins, in a humble sense, to your own son.

As we get older--as our sons get older, and they start walking beside us--we have to increase that transparency with our own sons. That’s difficult, and that’s a tug at my heart. That’s calling for humbling myself before my own son. But see, I don’t want to deal with his sins anymore, either. I want him to deal with his own sins.

When he was very young, he was behind me. I was fighting his battles for him. Now, he’s right beside me. I’ve invited him right beside me, and I see him battle. I can look at him across the entire room, and look in my son’s eyes, and tell when he’s battling with a sin; I know him that well. When he’s got pride in his life--I’ve been discipling him for six years; I can smell pride at 40 feet. I can tell when he’s got some selfish issues. I can tell when he’s starting to get this sin or that sin creeping up on him. I say, “Son, I want you fighting in this war. I want you engaged in the battle.” I hand him the sword, and he takes it, and I say, “Son, you stab it. Come on; bring the Word of God to bear. I want to see some blood on that sword. You’ve seen blood on my sword. You’ve seen me confess my sins. I want you to humble yourself, and I want you to start cutting out flesh, right there, right here. Let’s get on our knees, and let’s pray to God, that He would help us in this battle."

"Oh, God, help us” -- my son will pray in tears. “Oh, God, help me to overcome these things.”

Brothers, when you are in this kind of discipling relationship, you know that the stakes are higher.

I think somebody once said if you’re gonna teach somebody else’s children, you hardly ever raise your voice; you’re not getting angry. But somehow, you invite your own children into your life, and before you know it, you’re raising your voice. You’re getting upset. Sometimes, that’s anger, and sometimes, that’s just passion because you are impassioned that this child learn how not to be a scoffer as she studies her Algebra. You are intense. You want to see victory over these sins. You know what’s at stake.

Your heart is wrapped around that child because you’ve been walking with that child for the last 6 or 7 years, or 12 or 13 years.

So, brothers, there are times when you hit the wall; when you just hit the wall. We have corrected this sin for 478 times, and here we are, right together again; we’re correcting this child, on this sin, again. After all of these years that we’ve been working on it, here we are again, and that child turns to me and says, “Daddy, I can’t be good. I can’t be good.”

At that point, what do we say? "Yes! You got it! You can’t be good. Speak into the microphone. You can’t be good. Everybody, she can’t be good. But I know Somebody who can help you, there, and that is Jesus."

But what do you say, when they come to you and say, “Daddy, I don’t want to be good”? What do you say then? "O, God--O, God, help us now. There’s nothing I can do."

Brothers, we’ve got to come to the end of ourselves in the education of our children.

*******
I started with the question: are you qualified for educating your children? Are you qualified? Well, what do the experts say? The experts said, “Unqualified persons should not perform brain surgery, and they shouldn’t try to teach children.”

I agree.

But we’re not performing brain surgery. We’re performing heart surgery, and nobody’s qualified for that. Amen?

This, my friends, is why what you’re doing is impossible.

Once more--though I, personally, would probably speak to my kids using language that's a bit more direct than Swanson's metaphorical references to the Bible as the sword of the Spirit with which we need to "stab" sins--I sense Swanson is "right on" in his analysis, here. And he has a message, I'm afraid, too many fathers (including this one!) really need to take to heart.

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¹ Swanson says the 50th percentile is "lousy." It is not. It is simply what it is: it is the mathematical average of all samples in the (large) group of American students. Period. Exactly the mid-point. 50% of all participants score lower and 50% score higher.

Now. Any smaller group may enjoy a mid-point/average that is lower, higher, or the same as the larger/national average. In the case of homeschoolers, it seems, the average trends high, indeed, significantly high--as Swanson says, by an average of about 36%--so that homeschoolers' 50th percentile is the equivalent of the 86th percentile for all students who take these exams in the United States as a whole . . . and the improved averages are consistent across socio-economic, racial, and other factors. Return to text.

CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part III (The Principle of Individuality)

#9 in an ongoing series on Christian Home Educators of Colorado 2009 "Men's Leadership Summit" (otherwise known as the "The Vision of the Leadership Summit") held in Indianapolis, Indiana, at one of the hotels owned by Bill Gothard's group over the weekend of March 5-7, 2009. Previous post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part II (Keep the PURPOSE in Mind). First post in the series: 2009 Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) "Men's Leadership Summit," Part I.

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The following content is Part III (my divisions!) from Kevin Swanson's second speech at the 2009 CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" ("MLS")--"Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision"--delivered on Friday, March 6, 2009 and available in full, audio form from ResoundingVoice.com.

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Having stressed the need for education to have practical implications, Swanson moved on to what he called the "Principle of Liberty" or "Principle of Individuality":

The Word of God says, “If the Son shall make you free, you will be free, indeed.” [John 8:36 --JAH] . . .

Guys, . . . [t]here is nowhere in the Word of God where we read a 12-year-old has got to be reading Aristotle. There is nowhere in the Word of God where it says a 13-year-old has got to be able to read.

Parents that come to me and say, “Oh, Mr. Swanson, my little Joey is 9 years old, and he can’t read, and we have been bolting him to a desk, like the Department of Education tells us to, four compulsory hours, every single day, for 172 days out of every year, and he just sits there and he vibrates. He’s got ADD and ADHD and ABD – American Boy Disease – and everything else. What do I do?”

I say, “Here’s what you do: when that little boy is young, you just let him go out and plow the fields with dad all day long. Let him fish for an hour in the afternoon. He can come home; you read to him a little bit and put him to bed. Do that until he’s 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-years old. And don’t give him any television, whatsoever. And don’t give him any of those drugs.

"You come back to me when he’s 13-14 years old, and we’ll talk about whether he’s ready to learn how to read.”

Okay, now. Is there anybody in this room, right now, that says, “Oh, that’s illegal! Oh, the Department of Education’s gonna come after us, now!”?

No, brothers – if the Son will make you free, you will be free, indeed.

You are the parent, here. You are the father and the mother. There’s nobody who knows that child and loves that child more than you do. So if you come to me and you say, “My little boy can’t read. He’s not ready to read until he’s 13. Yes, his little sister’s reading at 3." --I say, “Great! Big deal about the little sister; that’s the way it is for her. She’s got gifts and talents and abilities that God has given her, and that’s just fine.”

See, my daughter, Emily, is a zero at math. And it was frustrating for me. At first, I was really getting all tight inside because she was slipping behind. Being as I like math and all . . . she was not performing. And I was getting pretty stressed about it.

We left Saxon Math in the dust, and we went with Math-U-See. We have the little block things, and you put the little block things together, and you can feel them and touch them.

That didn’t do any good.

Then we had her in CalcuLadders for a while, where the CalcuLadders – you just keep repeating it over and over again: "3+3=6. 1+1=2. . . ."

"It doesn’t matter what it means, just say, '1+1=2.' Just memorize that. . . . Whenever you see a one and one together, do something like this."

We worked on that for a while. And then, after a while, just out of the blue, Emily gets it. Just out of the blue. I don’t know how she got it; she just got it.

What I found is that children do not learn on a nice neat little line like this. Some learn like this. Some learn like this. Some learn like this. Some don’t learn anything for 14 years, and [then suddenly] they pick it up.

And some are like Rebecca, just the other day.

Rebecca has learned math very nicely, and then, my wife came to me and says, “Rebecca, yesterday, forgot everything she’s ever learned. Five years, gone.”

I said, “Well, just start over again, I guess. We’ll go back to one. It’s okay.”

Then, a couple weeks later, she picks it up.

It’s just the way it works.

Every child is completely different, guys. . . .

My little Rebecca Joy . . . My other kids are way ahead in some of their subjects (whatever ahead means). But on the standardized tests . . . In Colorado, we’ve got to take the standardized tests.

My older children were doing the 95s and 99s, and Rebecca Joy comes along, and she does the 56s. Of course, I’m Executive Director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado. I want to do something for the average.

You heard about Brian Ray’s study. You know, [homeschoolers a]re at the 86th percentile, and right now, [Rebecca Joy] has taken our average down to, like, 72. So, "Come on! Let’s go!"

I was concerned about this, but see, Rebecca Joy is just completely different from the other children. She’s just a very artsy person. She walks like this. She’s got a style to everything. She does dishes in an artsy sort of way, with her fingers up and stuff. It usually takes a little more time, but she’s got to do it artistically. It’s got to be right.

I’m watching her doing the standardized test. One year, I’m coming to her – she’s doing the fifth grade – and I’m coming to her. I say, “Okay, now I’m gonna watch and see how this happens.” Well, she’s doing this test, and she is – before she gets on with things, she’s got to do these little drawings on the margins of the tests. I’m sitting there going, “Honey, this is a timed test. Can’t we get on with things, here?” But she has to make it very pretty first.

That’s just the way she is. And you can’t rush her through these things, otherwise she gets all tight inside.

So we’d send the tests in for grading, and, do you know: they don’t actually even bother looking at the margins of the tests? The machines just kind of [ignore that kind of stuff].

Ask yourself: Is that fair? Is that right? My little girl, Rebecca Joy, has been so blessed by God with these talents, gifts and abilities, and these machines are not looking at her drawings! I just think that’s wrong. We ought to be respecting the talents and abilities that God has given.

By the way, at one point I was gloating over my son’s – he had the 99. He got the 99, and I’m saying, "Too bad they didn’t give us the decimal point – could have [come out as] 99.99 or something."

My wife, she nails it. She says, “Yeah, but you notice that they didn’t give him a mark on character, there, anywhere.”

What did we just say was preeminent in the education of a child, per God? Does anybody remember that far back? I think it was something to do with character, right? Isn’t that right?

Where are our priorities? What are we doing?

See, we have the wrong system, here. We have the wrong system.

You know that it’s parents that know and love their children the best, normatively. So I think it makes perfect sense why God has established the paideia of a child, and placed that child in the hands of parents. Moreover, the Principle of Relationships, I think, is the key issue, here.

--We'll continue on the theme of the Principle of Relationships in my next post in this series.*******
Once more: I think this is great content, good stuff we need to pay attention to.

I'm not sure I want to encourage parents to ignore all academic education for their "ADD, ADHD, ABD" sons until they are young teens. But, even there, I think Swanson is offering a useful counterbalancing/antidote to the extreme pro-academic perspective too often advocated in our world today.

Just last night, as we have been doing rather frequently lately, when our daughter and son-in-law came over, we read a few more chapters in Ralph Moody's astonishingly wonderful autobiographical Little Britches series of books.

We stopped at a certain point. Ralph's father dies in the first volume and we are halfway through volume 2. It seems a number of men in the community were smitten by Mrs. Moody. "So why is she so uninterested in them?"--the question seemed to hang in the air.

An interesting question. The men were all successful in their own ways. But none of them were educated (we're talking "book learning"). "Book learning" is obviously a high priority for Ralph's mom. (She won't let him drop out of school at 11 years old, though that would have been his preference and it was still legal in Colorado back in 1910 when this story takes place.)

"But Ralph's dad hadn't graduated from high school . . . "

"No."

So we talked about it.

Mrs. Moody was clearly not looking merely for a "successful" man--someone who could make lots of money and provide a (physically) comfortable life for her and her children. She wanted a man of high character.

And Mr. Moody--Ralph's father--had obviously been such a man. Maybe not school-educated. But he was smart and he had good character.

So she had married him.

But she had also recognized the handicap under which he had labored due to his lack of education.

So. My point: I agree with Mrs. Moody of a hundred years ago that I prefer character over book learning. But, frankly (honestly), I'd prefer both.

I wanted both in my wife.

If I were a woman, I would want both in the man who would be my husband.

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Back to the primary subject of Swanson's speech, however: I agree with him: Parents (and other educators) need to concentrate on their children's (or students') unique, individual characteristics and pay less attention to whatever "the norm" is. Find your kids' strengths and maximize them rather than seeking to make them conform to the way "everyone else" is.

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One last comment.

For what it's worth.

This comes from something I learned from Dan Sullivan in his Strategic Coach program program. It's explained rather thoroughly in the book Unique Ability and developed also in Now, Discover Your Strengths.

Basic idea: You don't have to become "good" or even "excellent" at the things where you lack natural ability. Indeed, you will waste a lot of time and energy (both physical and emotional) if you concentrate on improving your abilities in areas of weakness. Rather, you need to find ways to "manage around" your weaknesses so you can concentrate on your strengths to use them and make them stronger. Concentrate on your unique abilities rather than your myriad weaknesses.

--If everyone concentrated on maximizing their ability to use their strengths (what Christians might call "gifts"), the world would be a better place, indeed.

--For a little more on this last theme, see my post on the Strategic Inheritance blog titled Family wealth, unique abilities, and personal resumés and/or my post, right here on John's Corner, titled Strengths & Talents: Finding one's life mission or purpose.

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Next post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part IV (The Principle of Relationships).

CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part II (Keep the PURPOSE in Mind)

#8 in an ongoing series on Christian Home Educators of Colorado 2009 "Men's Leadership Summit" (otherwise known as the "The Vision of the Leadership Summit") held in Indianapolis, Indiana, at one of the hotels owned by Bill Gothard's group over the weekend of March 5-7, 2009. Previous post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part I (Character in Academics). First post in the series: 2009 Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) "Men's Leadership Summit," Part I.

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The following content is Part II (my divisions!) from Kevin Swanson's second speech at the 2009 CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" ("MLS")--"Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision"--delivered on Friday, March 6, 2009 and available in full, audio form from ResoundingVoice.com.

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Swanson spoke about the need to apply the knowledge one learns. Academic training ought to issue forth not merely in head knowledge, but practical knowledge. Thus,

[D]oing . . . is essential. In fact, brothers, if you guys are sitting through two or three days of these talks, and you guys are just absorbing a few things, but you’re not gonna go out there and do anything, you might as well have not have come to this conference. It’s just the way it works. It’s the way it works with the preaching of the Word of God. It’s the way it works with education; with knowledge and wisdom of any sorts, whatsoever. If we’re not doers of the Word, we’re wasting our time. What happens in education is you get, again, this very, very distinct separation from the inculcation of knowledge and the application of it.

We see this again and again, and this really came home to us one night. . . . We’re going to bed – the kids have been in bed for an hour – and [my wife i]s going, “Emily forgot to do her grammar today!” Kinda this panic thing. “What are we gonna do? The Department of Education’s gonna come and get us.”

I kinda got into the flurry of the whole thing for a minute or two. I said, “Well, let’s just get Emily out of bed and we’ll work –” which was kind of a stupid idea, on the outset. Then, sort of some better sense came back, and I said, “What was Emily doing all day, if she wasn’t doing her grammar?” She was doing something. It was at the time where Emily was writing a lot of letters.

My wife comes back: “She was writing a letter to grandma.”

She was writing a letter to grandma. That’s why she didn’t do her grammar today. She was writing a letter to grandma.

It was a three-page, single-spaced type [letter]. For a 9-year-old, that’s not bad, right? But she was writing the chronicles of the Swanson life, which is actually – turned out to be a little bit embarrassing because she liked to go through everything that happened in our house. But she was writing this letter to grandma.

So before we got everybody out of bed, I said, “Okay, stop. Stop. Why do we do grammar?” It’s one of those questions, right, that comes to your mind, occasionally. Not very often, but occasionally, you get the obvious question: "Why do we do grammar?"

Is it so that when you’re 25 years old, you get out of bed and say, “Oh, it’s time to do grammar, today. I’ve prepared, all my life, to do some grammar”? No.

The reason you study grammar is so that you can write letters to grandma. Duh.

But see, in our minds, we have so separated these things, brothers. It’s like we’re learning how to ride a bike by "taking Bike" for 12 years. We have Bike 101, Bike 102, Bike Accident Recovery Workshop, Bike Metallurgy, Bike Statics, Bike Dynamics. We get all the Bike, and yet, for 12 years, we’ve never really gotten on the bike.

When, a thousand years ago, we took education out of the real-life situation of family and church and business, and we put it on a sterile little island out here in the middle of nowhere called schools, where teachers teach, and where people say, “If you can’t work, teach. If you can’t teach, write a textbook,” and where, when you graduate, A students wind up teaching on the island, and B students wind up working for C students. You see, this is something fundamentally wrong with education. It’s fundamentally wrong.

We’ve got to bring the knowing and the doing together – the knowledge and the faith and the character into the academics of the education of our children, and teach them the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.

I think it begins with worship in the classroom – the worship of the living God in the classroom.

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I'm not exactly sure what he means or where he intended to go with that last sentence. (He didn't follow up on it. He immediately transitioned to another topic.)

I agree, we want to worship God--indeed, we want to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to the LORD, which is, we are told, spiritual [or rational/reasonable] worship (Romans 12:1). We want to "love the LORD [our] God with all [our] heart and soul and mind and strength" (Mark 12:30). We want to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). "In everything," we want to "give thanks" (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

So, no question, since education, too, falls under life (offering bodies as living sacrifices) and has something to do with our hearts and souls and minds (and, possibly, strength); and since we don't want to cease praying or fail to give thanks in education anymore than in anything else: then I absolutely agree that worship is--or ought to be--integral to our educational regimen. May that be.

I "simply" don't understand why Swanson seemed to "throw in" that last comment at the end of his discussion of (what I thought was his bigger thematic element) the idea--as best as I could understand his point--that our educational program needs to seek practical application and not mere theoretical understanding.

I believe it can be very helpful to have the theoretical understanding. But, ultimately, the theory must give way to application.

Good stuff, it seems to me!

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Next post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part III (The Principle of Individuality).