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What if I don’t get it right?
What is the very best curriculum?
I have failed my children up until now.
I have to work, how will my children, who will be at home be ok?
Every day, lately, I am getting so many messages and letters from sweet women who are so very burdened with pressures, voices, worries, fears and of course exhaustion.
I wanted to share just a few verses with you that I hope will encourage you and a bit from my own life.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:31
“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16
Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
“Cast your cares on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall.” Psalm 55:22
Today, I want to encourage you—and I will share a little bit about education, ,too. And a story…
Education should not be about drilling facts into student’s heads, or teaching them to strain for the highest grade, but about cultivating a holy sense of wonder that drives them to discover, explore, and protect all that is good and beautiful.
Awaking Wonder
Educating Others, whether adults, children, women in a Bible study, a book club, whatever the venue, teaching others will change and transform you. When we take on the responsibility of giving others wisdom, truth, knowledge, it forces us to become responsible for our own development, our own academic muscle, our ability to think.
We were all made to know, to understand, to discuss, to pass on wisdom and truth and to live it out in the context of our real lives.
Many parents are confused right now about how they will be able to educate their children at home this fall. Naturally, because they are thinking about what has been required of “school children” from their own experience, they think, “Can I cover all the facts? Can I do my job and teach my chid. Can I cover all the bases.?
Yet, when we step back and begin to rethink education, we realize that that the goal is not merely just to open their heads and pour in the right facts. But children are human beings, with personality, skill sets, dreams, emotions, needs, drives. When we take time to see them for what they are, real people just like us, then we are better able to figure out how to inspire them, to lead them forward in intellect, habits, manners, morality and virtue, faith, knowledge and truth, and hands on experiences to give them an opportunity to develop their potential in real life situations.
It was the lunch that changed my life.
Clay and I were working at the International Chapel of Vienna in those days, and we often invited people home for lunch after our church service. On one such day, our table included an opera singer and her musician husband; a refugee who had escaped under the barbed wire, running from guards in Iraq; a couple who worked as attachés in the South African embassy; and a businessman and his wife who worked in Russia. (Because Vienna is one of the four headquarters of the United Nations, on some Sundays we had as many as thirty-five countries rep- resented in our English-speaking chapel.)
This particular day, I had put chicken and rice in my slow cooker in the morning and tossed a quick salad before everyone came knocking at my door. Throughout the meal, I heard riveting personal stories, stimulating discussions of books and music, knowledgeable debates about biblical ideas, and a fascinating sharing of customs.
I distinctly remember sitting there with a burning passion building in my heart. I longed to understand history better, to know more about these countries I did not know existed, to be familiar with composers and art and great writers and ideas. Though I had graduated from college and could speak four languages with varying degrees of fluency, I still felt terribly uneducated and underinformed.
Having been one of those students who had been bored most of my years in school, I had just passed from one year to the next by the seat of my pants. I made pretty good graces, but I always took shortcuts to get my homework finished, I took as many creative, fun classes as I could and could not wait to get “out” of school.
Yet in this environment I recognized a deep hunger to know, to understand, to be able to converse with these interesting friends—in short, to become more personally educated in these vast ideas that interested me so much.
Perhaps if all I was hearing around our table had been presented to me in lecture form, requiring me to sit still and listen for hours on end, I might still have been bored.
But hearing stories from real, live human beings, friends from Russia, South Africa, Iraq and a player in the Vienna philharmonic, as well as an opera singer, laughing together and engaging in discussion over coffee and cake, kept me deeply absorbed. I realized that this was a better way to learn, in the context of real life, real people.
And a conviction began growing inside me. I decided that if Clay and I ever had children, we would present interesting topics at our own table. We would discuss stories, read books out loud together, listen to and evaluate music, critique movies, evaluate world view, and talk lots about faith and the Bible (we would later come to call this “talking Torah”). This might have been the moment when I began to consider home education, even though I had never heard of it before. I wanted to know more than my education had ever provided and I found this out in the context of a meal.
I understood for the first time that education is not merely about facts learned in a classroom, but about living ideas that can fill hearts, minds, and souls with intellectual food that satisfies. And for the first time in my life I got a vision for creating a truly lifegiving table, a feast for the whole person.
Books Referenced in this Podcast:
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