Education: Are We Slaves to “the Test”?

Credit: cartoonwork.com

“Instead of duplicating the only method we knew regarding how to “do school”, we backed up and began to ask ourselves the simple question:“What is education”? In order to begin building, we must know what we’re building in the first place. A storage shed and a cathedral are going to have very different-looking blueprints.Most parents fail to realize that the structure the state is trying to design is in the shape of a TEST.Tests are the gage schools use to determine their success. And while a test can be an important tool for assessing progress, it should not be the end-all for determining the method. In other words, if we teach solely for the purpose of achieving a desired test score, we have missed the entire purpose of education.” From Think Outside the Classroom

Several discussions about education this week caused me to revisit what I believe are fundamental flaws in the way most of us think. And our thinking about education is so deeply entrenched that the topic causes heated controversy and reaction to anything that challenges our opinions.

I would love to challenge some of your thoughts without evoking that reaction.

Standardized testing has long been the accepted measure of academic achievement. I do believe those test can be a good tool and can reveal a certain level of achievement–sometimes.

But I also think we are the victims of fear which can drive us to bow to the tests at the expense of a more “real” and thorough education. When I taught school, even at a Christian school, we were required to write our lesson plans based entirely on which standardized concepts (including the number of the test section) we were covering.

“The first thing to consider, obviously, is what you want to teach. This should be developed based upon your state (or school) standards….Having your lesson plan correctly aligned with state standards helps to prove its worthiness and necessity. It also helps in assuring that your students are being taught what your state requires.” Lesson Plan Page

We must step back and ask, “Are we responsible for ‘teaching what the state requires’?”

Even in states that do not require standardized testing, we homeschoolers acknowledge it as the standard and live in fear that our children won’t measure up.

I’ll surely be misunderstood, so let me clarify that I am NOT opposed to testing or standardized measures to help guide us as we educate our children. (And I also know that many occupations require that testing.)

I AM opposed to teaching in fear of the state, as a Christian parent who has been given authority over my children as well as specifics for the important things they are to be learning…

“Teach them to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul and mind…”

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge…”

“Him [Jesus] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”

And let’s remember to what extent He commanded our efforts…”bind them around your necks, write them on the doorposts of your home…when you rise up, when you lie down, when you sit in your house, when you walk along the way…”

It is a deliberate “saturation” of teaching our children to know the Lord.

“But, we must teach them things besides loving the Lord.”

And to that I would say absolutely. But not apart from it. To recognize God as the Creator in which we “live and move and have our being”, to recognize that He is the Author and Finisher, the One for Whom we were created, should drastically change the way we think about education.

It is not that we throw away the academics, it’s that they become secondary to our pursuit of the Word of God. Yes, I said it. They become our servant, not our slave.  And here’s how it works:  if our children become saturated by the principles of Scripture, taught to “search out wisdom”, learn to love the precepts of God in the deliberate, intense way Scripture commands, then academics will be held and studied in the right light.

Diligence will be the force that bolsters their studies. Thoroughness will be the inspiration that carries them through. Awe and wonder will be the spark that ignites their desire to learn more.  And a sense of responsibility and good stewardship will be the energy that propels them when things are hard.

At best, I would say that we often have our educational paradigm upside down. We do not serve man, but God. Let’s be consistent in all things, including the education of our children, if that is true of us.

Education: It Must Begin and End With Virtue

“We are not raising workers or consumers for the materialistic state, but souls that will live forever in paradise. Poetry. Drama. Art. Music. These are the skills of the lady or gentleman……Produce art, don’t consume it.”

Even if you do not homeschool, there are invaluable treasures in the following article that any parent would do well to ponder.

We don’t consider ourselves “eclectic” homeschoolers; I have, however, over the past ten years of homeschooling, discovered a whole world of education that looks rather different from the 8-3 classroom setting we all came to think was “the only way to do school.” We have enjoyed a “lifestyle of learning” that extends education beyond a desk and classroom. (Read more about this idea in my ebook “Think Outside the Classroom“)

If you are an 8-3 homeschooling mom, that’s fine! Every family, mom, child and situation is different. What some families thrive in doing, others find miserable. I just LOVE presenting the reality that there ARE many freedoms and alternative methods of giving our children wonderful educations.

The following excerpt is by John Mark Reynolds, homeschooling father and author.  His wisdom is profound and the article is very worth the read for any parent.

“I have seen children from every type of home schooling and have never seen a success from an unhappy and unloving home…and never a failure from a relaxed and happy house running over with love.

First, education must begin and end with virtue.

Liberty, soul liberty, must be the default position if we wish our children to reach true adulthood…

Three Educational Lessons:

Too often home educators try to set up a government school at home. How foolish I was with all my records, charts, tests, and clip boards at the start!

Students should read well, write well, be numerate, and cultured.

~He must read….If he can read, then Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, and Lewis can be his primary teachers. If he cannot read, then he is limited to teachers in his neighborhood. I home school so my children can study under Aristotle and Saint Paul, not under me.”

I have to add something here…he is not just using the word “read” to mean the literal ability to read. When I taught high school English Literature, most of the senior students glazed over when we read Shakespeare or Hawthorne. I had to “interpret” any reading that exceeded a 5th or 6th grade level. That would be an example of a student “not reading”…meaning their level of understanding fell below what was once considered reading for a general audience. (Shakespeare’s plays were written for a mostly illiterate audience…and few people today can understand it…that means we’ve been dumbed down.)

(Back to the article…)

“Provide the bulk of the school day to exploring books and show him the way to his public library.

~She must write…Grammar is good…Latin is better. Have her copy the essays and style of her favorite authors…that Bronte style can tutor her in the language of passion.

~They must be musical….We are not raising workers or consumers for the materialistic state, but souls that will live forever in paradise. Poetry. Drama. Art. Music. These are the skills of the lady or gentleman…These musical disciplines bring the passion, intellect, spirit, and body into harmony…Produce art, don’t consume it. (Ultimately, we worship God with mind, soul and body through art.)

Read and write all the poetry you can.

We imagine the perfect home school family, in our case the Evil Home School Family Von Trapp. We see them sitting about their antique dining room table (built by Father and the Lads) sharing a dinner made by their charming old Auntie (who conveniently has moved in to do all the house work for free).

All the Von Trapp children can read Greek while playing the violin simultaneously solving physics problems. The Father looks like an erudite and sober Mel Gibson . . . the Mother like Julie Andrews before Victor, Victoria. The entire family has the piety of Saint Francis while living in the little home they built themselves on the prairie with the proceeds of their Internet business and cheerful herd of Alpacas.

We are not that family. Both of us struggle with dark moods, a sense of failure, and organizational skills that often end with the purchase of the day timer we forget to use.

At the end of this decade of home schooling, however, looking back on the best we could do . . . I realize that most of our failures did not matter much and that our children still love us, read, play the piano (some more than others!), and are much better than either of us were at their age. They are pleasant and charming people. We like them . . . and most days we suspect that they like us!”

We are not perfect educators . . . most days we are just good enough, but we are who we are! I suspect that is a good thing . . . as the million home school house holds will all be unique, failing at different things, and flourishing in their own odd ways.

Finally, the home school family is creating culture . . . and in most houses that rests on the mother. She, like Dante’s Beatrice, is a figure of beauty that calls a culture back to true love and life. It is a job that our culture ignores or despises since it defies every convention and every demand of our materialistic age. She works without wages, teaches for the love only of her students, and receives only the honor we can give her.”

More from John Mark Reynolds:

Overview of Family Enterprise

An excellent overview of the family economy and the way the Industrial Revolution changed families:

“In early American history (and indeed much of world history), most business enterprises were family businesses with fathers working together with wives and children, where the fathers and mothers not only passed along skills, but also shepherded their children while working for a common purpose: the family economy.  The family could bond as they had common motivation, common compensation and common culture, all inside the intact family jurisdiction, the very center of economic activity.

As the industrial revolution spread across America, men were lured away from the home into the workplace and later on with the rise of public schools, children were also taken out of the home.  And in the last century, women abandoned their homes for the workplace in droves, leaving the majority of American homes dark, empty shells only used in the evenings and on weekends.  This has not only led to the disintegration of the family during the best hours of the day, but has also often led to the permanent death of a family as commonplace workplace romances split marriages and families asunder.”

Read the rest of “The Problem with Employees (Compared to Family Entrepreneurship)”, from New Venture Lab

Raising Entrepreneurs, Raising Leaders

We have been carefully defining “education” and implementing a “life-learning” educational paradigm for a while now.  This year, we’re kicking it up a notch.

Besides our basic 3 R’s, fundamental to any life pursuit, we are studying entrepreneurship as our focal subject.  Using a combination of inspiration (reading stories of other young entrepreneurs, casting a vision for the concept of entrepreneurship, etc.) and instruction, each child will develop his own business (the younger ones will help the older ones), implementing what we are learning as we go.

(Our son began his own business last year, and though he’s already making money from it–he’s got a knack for portrait sketching–we haven’t utilized the opportunity as we should to teach him all the mechanics of a working business. That is changing.)

Regardless of what our children grow up to pursue, the skills and knowledge to be gained from studying and establishing a business are priceless.

In simplified terms, I think of entrepreneurship as simply the ability to see lemonade when I look at lemons.  Giving our children the vision and skill sets to see opportunities and to embrace the challenges of life with optimism is an invaluable part of their education–a crucial life skill many young people are missing.

Are entrepreneurs born or made?  Perhaps both. But I can’t help but think we need to be more vigilant about showing our children the advantages and power of being self-made leaders, showing them that families can thrive working together, showing them that there are other options besides “assembly line education” that often just leaves college graduates thousands of dollars in debt with a job that sucks the life out of them.

Kerry Beck has some thought-provoking things to say:

“The first place to start in raising your students into leadership is to change your own education paradigm….Most of us grew up in a public or private school, which can be likened to a factory. All the students come to the factory or the school. They start in kindergarten and move on to first grade, down the conveyor belt. At each stage of the conveyor belt (or grade level), the student learns the exact same information as everyone else. The students are told what to think.”

“Leadership education ultimately involves the family as a whole. Initially, it takes much effort from a parent because you must be involved in learning and growing yourself. You cannot hand over some workbooks and say, “go for it.” Workbooks merely teach your children what to think, not how to think.”

-Kerry Beck

From Curriculum Connection

Kerry Beck is a homeschool mom and wife! She is the author of Raising Leaders, Not Followers, which encourages parents to train their children to be leaders who lead wisely. She would like to give you a free report about Leadership Education in Homeschool Curriculum

Think Outside the Classroom

Balancing Your Life: Healthy, Happy Homemaker

I wanted to wrap up the “Balancing Your Life Series” with some inspiration and resources to inspire you.

I don’t think there can be balance in your life without talking about balancing your responsibilities as a homemaker with physical and emotional health.

I can have all my homemaking ducks in a row (which never happens, by the way!) but if I’m physically under par or emotionally drained, things aren’t going well.

I recently wrote “Easy Health for Busy Moms” because I wanted to show women how easy (and painless) it can be to ease into a healthier lifestyle. Small changes can make a big difference in the way we feel and feeling well significantly affects our performance as wives, mothers and home-managers.

I’ve touched on keeping our spiritual lives vibrant (though much more could be said), but emotional health is closely tied to our physical health and can make such a difference in the way we function! Besides a healthy diet and exercise (I mention an excellent 5-minute exercise in the book!), I am of the opinion that women who are productive are emotionally healthier.

That will look very different for different women, but part of our nature that reflects our Creator is…creating! I think we have to be careful to make room amid all the chores and work that must be done to create, produce, and enjoy being a homemaker.

For some, it may be a ministry of hospitality, making cards to send to someone who needs a kind word, sending a meal, or some other venue of service.  Some enjoy turning a simple meal into a culinary work of art.  Some sew, some paint, some garden, some are simply encouragers and exhorters of others.  Some enjoy entrepreneurial endeavors and act as their husband’s helper exercising those gifts.

What do you enjoy?  Consider it an important part of your homemaking duties. This is the secret–homemaking is NOT just about the nuts and bolts of keeping a house. It’s about the freedom to create a home that is bustling with productivity, using our gifts to bless our family and those around us.

As you seek to become more organized, remember the goal:  making a home that radiates joy, freedom and the love of Christ.

Some resources you may find helpful:

Sarah Mae’s new ebook:  31 Days to Clean

The Fly Lady:  Getting Organized

Back to Scratch:  Saving Money in the Kitchen

Think Outside the Classroom: A Practical Approach to Relaxed Homeschooling

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