Every Good Path

Here are several widgets we've developed recently to allow homeschoolers and other bloggers to easily display the Shorter Catechism, Children's Catechism, Luther's Small Catechism, George Washington's Rules of Civility, Luther's 95 Theses, the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, Haiku Poetry, and quotes from great composers.  My daughter Grace worked on the content of the Composer Quotes widget and we assembled it together.

The widget displays a random item when it first loads and the user can then navigate with simple links. Try them out right here and then "embed" your favorite in your site's sidebar. If you have questions or suggestions for other types of widget, let me know.

Martin Luther's Small Catechism is now available as a widget for your personal website or blog. There are two different styles - wide and narrow. One should work for your site.

Three more bits of evidence supporting my contention that the typical modern college experience is harmful for Christians.

There is overwhelming political bias on campuses. Affirmative action is shamelessly practiced, the ROTC and military recruiters are banned, "heteronormativity" is rebuked, atheism and skepticism are the norm, Marxism and socialism are held in high regard, and males are outnumbered by females 58 to 42 percent.

For 40 years straight middle-class bourgeois households have been shipping their conservative, patriotic, church-going kids off to college and spending a fortune to turn them, four years later, into socialists, atheists, sexual libertines, drug users, and despisers of the United States and Western culture. All of this has been subsidized by the Federal government and enforced by the courts.

Reference: Michael Filozof, an adjunct professor at Niagara County Communiity College

More of today's students come to campus with dreadful study habits. Too few of them read for pleasure. Too many drink and smoke excessively. They are terribly ill-prepared for four years of hard work, and most dangerously, they do not think that college should be arduous. Instead they perceive college as an overnight recreation center in which they exercise, eat, and in between playing extracurricular sports, they carry books around. If a professor is lucky, the books are being skimmed hours before class.

How do I know that my concerns are not unique to my employer, or my classroom? My students are brutally honest – they tell me with candor and without shame that their peers think of college as a four year cruise without a destination.

Reference: "I'm Leaving"

And finally, Wendell Berry's magnificent essay "The Loss of the University". I could not find it online. It's in his essay collection - Home Economics . Mr. Berry reminds us that the word "educate" literally means "to lead forth". Into what does the modern college lead students? Students are indeed being lead. Evidence is mounting that the destination is not to a higher understanding of wisdom, but to a lower way of life.

John Piper was in Austin last week for the 2008 Desiring God Regional Conference. The subject was the book of Job and the suffering of the righteous. No one questions why the wicked suffer, but all are perplexed when the upright and blameless go through great difficulty.

John Piper presented his study of the book of Job, born of 28 years of pastoral experience as well as scholarship. This was the most satisfying treatment of this difficult issue that I've had the pleasure to experience.

The audio and video of the sessions are available free online. If you are in a hurry, I recommend Part 2, as it has adequate review of Session 1 before concluding with the reasons we suffer and how we should respond.

John Piper: Job sessions

Each Christian family must have a routine time of focusing on the scripture and praying for one another.  Here's what has worked well for us...

In 10th grade, we shift our focus from more recent US history (1700-present) back to earlier world history. We'll use Church History in Plain Language as our major source, and add various real books appropriate for each historical period. Here are the real books and the approximate historical periods they cover:

Apostle, a Life of Paul by John Pollock - 1st century

Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown - 300-400AD

Confessions by St. Augustine - 300-400AD

St. Francis by G. K. Chesterton - 1100AD

St. Thomas by G. K. Chesterton - 1200AD

Inferno by Dante 1300 AD

And reading throughout: History of Art for Young People

Other subjects:
Saxon Advanced Mathematics (pre-calculus)

Bob Jones Geography

Abeka Economics: Work and Prosperity

and rounding the education out with choir, piano, and a couple hours a day taking care of young baby brother.

Here's a fascinating U.S. map indicating which states' populations are buying predominately conservative or liberal books. McCain landslide looks to be in the offing if this is any indication: Amazon Election 2008

Obama's comment about the determination of when live begins being "above his paygrade" continues to surface in the news. Wall Street Journal had an article about it today. Folks continue to say "it's a theological issue" - but I see it as not theological at all. I added my comment to the WSJ article:

From conception, the fetus is living (as in “not dead”), it is human (DNA proves this), and it is not the mother (DNA proves this). So from conception, there is a unique, living, distinct human.
This is simple science and reason, it’s not theology. Anyone who cannot follow this simple logic is not fit to hold any position of leadership. Most issues are far more complex than this, so if Obama can’t follow this, he needs to go back to elementary school.

Link to comment in the WSJ article

Nov 6, 2008 update - Mr. Obama is now president-elect. Clearly he's a smart man and knows the unborn baby is a living human. He just won't say it, as the ramifications to him are too painful. It would be a real "change" - not the hype from the campaign.

Mr. Obama - "yes, you can" stand up for all Americans - especially the most vulnerable.

The Association of Classical Christian Schools annual conference was a wonderful feast of insight and wisdom. The conference fulfilled its theme of "Truth, Goodness, and Beauty". As homeschoolers, attending this conference aimed at private school teachers was a good sanity check of our methods and ideals. By and large, our family's approach was confirmed. As with any great conference, a few ideas emerged which we will adopt. Here are several conclusions and ideas I took away from the conference.

1) Confirmed our focus on "readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic". Amid all the talk of Aristotle, Cicero, Epistemology, and the like, the bottom line remains that kids need to read good books, write about what they read, and do math consistently. The Schlect session on the survey results confirmed this.

2) Our family needs to spend more time reading together and discussing what we read. I want to spend about 2 hours together each Wednesday and Friday morning. Start with singing a hymn, then read a poem. The five of us older ones can take turns selecting and reading a favorite poem. It will be clunky and weird at first, but overtime should become beautiful. Then we'll read about 45 minutes in an elementary/middle school level book and then 45 minutes in a high school/adult level book. The books should be of opposite types. For example, if the elementary book is non-fiction narrative, then the adult book should be fiction/literature. Spend about 2-3 weeks on a book. If it's compelling stay with it. If not, drop it and start another. The older kids could be assigned further independent reading/writing in the more difficult books. I don't want to be afraid to start Augustine's City of God just because it's 1200 page and would take 18 months to read. We can read it a couple weeks and move on.

3) Just as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are used to describe the nature of God, so the triad of Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom describe the nature of true education and maturity. Wisdom is the goal, built on a solid foundation of true knowledge and understanding how that knowledge (facts) relates to reality. I've always considered the goal of education to be wisdom. But I see now, it's actually more. The goal is not wisdom, but to love wisdom. The difference is substantial. A wise student may wither and over time lose their wisdom. But a lover of wisdom will pursue it relentlessly. A lover of wisdom is a self-learner, able to resist distraction and deception.

The ancients had it right after all. "Philosophy" is literally the "love of wisdom". So we must all be philosophers.

Ongoing journal of thoughts and decisions "real time" as our 9th grade homeschool plan is developed and implemented

August 2008 - 9th grade wrap-up
Grace finished the major sections of Democracy in America in May.  Summer has been a light dose of Saxon Algebra 2 - only about a lesson a week.  She has less than 10 lessons left to finish it and then on the Saxon Advanced to start 10th grade.  She's continuing working through Bob Jones Geography.  We'll keep that up into 10th grade, rotating with other subjects as we did in 9th.
This summer our girls we're involved in Austin Christian Theatre's production of "Circle of Heaven".  They loved it immensely.  That's wrapped up now and they're spending time on sewing projects and will attend a week long choir camp later in August.  They also did several longer term projects before the production rehearsals got busy - scrapbooks, photo albums, and other sewing. 
A well-rounded summer for the whole family.

April 11, 2008 - Essays and Poetry
Following The Wealth of Nations, Grace read The Law.  This was during the Presidential primary campaign here in Texas so very relevant to all the promises being made by the statists running for office.  Here's one of the essays. 
She's now in the middle of Democracy in America and has written several essays on her weekly readings.  Here's the first essay.

Grace has posted a recent sonnet on her blog.  This was an assignment from her work in the poetry survey Roar on the Other Side.

April 9, 2008 - Consumer Math
Grace is at lesson 105 in Saxon Algebra 2.  We'll switch back to Abeka Consumer Math for 2 or 3 weeks.  This is simple math compared to the algebra she's been doing.  So she's covering 2 sections a day and working 25% of the exercises in the 2 sections.  Picking up Consumer Math at Unit 6 and expect to complete Units 6, 7, and 8 in about 3 weeks.

Click to see prior entries:
January 25, 2008 - Wealth of Nations; Time Travel
November 20, 2007 - Latest Essay
November 7, 2007 - Symposium adjustment
October 8, 2007 - Sample Essay
September 19, 2007 - Booklist and Skill subjects
September 12, 2007 - Symposium progress report
September 11, 2007 - What to expect from a teenager
September 5, 2007 - Symposium 
August 29, 2007 - History planning

The Visionary Father’s Role in Home Education

Here's an excerpt from a recent Vision Forum email about the CD:

"The Visionary Father’s Role in Home Education tackles these questions and more by laying out seven fundamentals of biblical fatherhood applied to home education: The duty of fathers to lead with love by casting vision; providing distinctively biblical discipleship; spiritually defending the realm of the Christian household from external danger; overseeing the “big picture” direction for household management; enforcing discipline; serving as the resident historian; and leading in family worship."

More on the CD

(This article featured in Carnival of Homeschooling for week of July 28, 2008)

Several of the ACCS Conference speakers remarked that their greatest joy is in seeing some of their former students return to their schools - as teachers.  The movement is maturing and the second generation is emerging.  Teachers who early on were not sure they were making an impact are thrilled to see that many of their students did actually learn and mature and now are returning to teach or to enroll their own children in the school.

Most educators would agree that great education begins with great teachers.  If the teacher has taught well, the students are transformed into great people, well rounded and mature.  Mature, whole people are also able to lead and teach others.  They may not have the gift or desire to teach in a classroom setting, but surely their wisdom and sound living is contagious.  Having been well trained in rhetoric, they're able to impact the lives of others in their speech and their actions confirm their spoken word.

Success for the classical schooling method would mean that most of the graduates are wonderful, well rounded, articulate folks.  Mature, godly, biblically-minded students marry and presumably will follow the wise biblical instruction to multiply greatly.  Their families will have 5, 6, maybe even 10 children.  How will these children be educated?

The parents, successful graduates of a classical school, could send them all to the classical school.  However, financial costs of between $5,000 and $10,000 yearly, per student, make this impossible for all but the very wealthy.  Since the parents are themselves well rounded, intelligent, articulate, mature adults, they could join the faculty of the classical school.  Most schools permit the children of faculty to attend for free.  So the father could teach at the school, to solve the financial problem for the large family.

My guess is that the optimum class size for a teacher/classroom setting is under 10 students.  Many of the elite private schools boast class sizes under 10 and student:teacher ratio of 5 to 7 (see footnote).  So in the optimum classical school, great teachers teach classes of about 5 to 10 students - let's say 8 for this scenario.  So when the classically trained parents return to the faculty of the school, as the only way they can afford classical education for their large family, they find themselves teaching 8 children from other families.  Their children are in turn in classes of 8, taught by other parents, presumably classically trained, presumably with a large family they can't otherwise afford to enroll in the school.  Since the teachers are all intelligent, mature folks, I imagine that about 3 weeks into the school year, while standing around the water cooler after lunch, the conversation goes something like this:

Ted: "Hey Mike, you have my Carl and Cindy in your class - how's it going?"

Mike: "Great, they're a real joy, and you have my Wendy and Sam in yours.  Are they staying out of trouble?"

Ted: "Oh, we're having a ball, drop by anytime.  And Bill, how's my Catherine doing in 4th grade."

Bill: "Excellent, her project for the Science Fair is coming together nicely.  Take care of my Sally, tell her Hi for me."

Ted: "Uhh, yeah, I... I will..   Hey, wait a minute - Mike, you have my Carl and Cindy and I have two of yours.  Bill, you have my Catherine, and I have your Sally.  Joe has my middle schoolers...  and, and... Jeff has my older ones.. and, and.."

Mike:  "Ted, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Ted: "I think so - why not get my kids in my class and you take your kids to your class?  Why should I have you keep tabs on my kids when they're just down the hall, and I'm keeping up with your kids?  Makes perfect sense!"

Bill: "But guys, remember we all have our areas of expertise and are not able to teach all these other areas."

Ted: "Wait Bill, I went to a great school and got a complete education, well rounded in all the liberal arts, including math and science.  Didn't you?  Didn't the administrator require us all to demonstrate mastery in all the basic fields of study before we were hired?"

Bill: "Well, that's right, so really I know art well enough to teach it, and I can teach reading and math.  I learned to love history and poetry from my classical education.  I can teach more than just my science class..."

Mike: "But Ted, But what about age differences?  Can the high schoolers really learn with the younger kids?  How can we mix all the ages in a single classroom - it wouldn't work."

Ted: "What if we had our kids all day, not just for a 1 hour class.  We could start the older ones on some reading and math they could do on their own.  Then we could attend to the younger ones.  Let's face it, the little ones really don't need 8 hours of continuous classroom time.... Later we could get back with the older ones to discuss what they read and give them some direction in their writing projects."

Bill: "But what chaos that would be in a single school room!  What you'd need is a couple rooms where the kids could get alone when they needed to concentrate, and some place for the kids to spend their time between subjects - maybe a music room to practice piano or a basketball hoop outside where they could get some exercise while they took a break.  But that's crazy - no school has the budget to provide all those facilities for each teacher.  I mean, it sounds like we're describing somebody's home...."

Ted, Bill, Mike (in unison):  "...EXACTLY!!!"

So Ted, Bill, and Mike withdrew their kids from the school at the Christmas break and resigned from the school staff.  Each day at home they taught their own 8 kids whom they knew and loved, ate lunch with them, played with them, prayed with  them.  The dads started businesses with their kids help.  In short they lived together, learned together, loved together as the family they were intended to be.  Ted's, Bill's, and Mike's families worshipped together at the same church, their kids played on the same sports teams and the older ones enjoyed helping each other at the annual homeschool science fair.

Now, this is what will happen if the classical school movement is successful.  What would prevent it?

-Graduates are not qualified to teach their own kids.  Possible, but this would be a failure of the school, whose goal is to produce just these types of graduates.

-Graduates do not have large families. They have 2 or 3 kids so can afford to send them to the school and work elsewhere.  Possible, but this is a failure to be faithful to the biblical instructions to multiply greatly.

-Graduates are very wealthy and can afford $50,000-100,000 a year tuition.  Possible, but then parents don't need to work outside the home at all.  They can live modestly off of the money they would have spent on tuition.  Wise, mature parents would have saved this money while the children were pre-school age then be able to live on it indefinitely.  If they can't do this, then they aren't mature, selfless Christians - which again they would be if the classical school movement succeeds.

In conclusion, I support the classical Christian schools and wish them complete success.  I suspect there will always be a need for these schools.  However, their students should be first generation classical schoolers.  In this case, the parents may not have had a wonderful education.  They may want their kids to have a glorious education so that they in turn could homeschool their kids.  So the movement remains necessary as a transitional, remedial work.  But the real endgame - given 5 or 6 generations of faithfulness by the churches and by the schools, would be that the need for the schools ends and all live happily ever after, learning in their homes, with their parents.

Footnote: A search of private schools at http://www.petersons.com/pschools/code/psector.asp, using the term "student-teacher ratio".  Results show school profiles listing student-teacher ratios in the range mentioned.

I attended a workshop by Chris Schlect in which he present results of a recent survey of longtime teachers and administrators in the ACCS. As we homeschool, I'm not in the classical school movement directly. It was fascinating to hear the inside scoop on where educators see the movement as succeeding, making progress, or struggling. There were 114 respondents, all of which have been involved in the movement at least 5 years. 43 different schools were represented.

No real suprises were presented. Most interesting to me were the issues of Latin and teaching at the Rhetoric level (a.k.a. High School). Conclusion on Latin was that students knew it well enough to "cipher" or translate original classic texts, but not like a true second language. As homeschoolers, we've never studied Latin. This helped confirm that we really aren't missing much, compared to the Classical Schools. It would be great to have a "classical" mindset that would come from immersion in Latin/Greek studies, but if most of the best schools/teachers/student had not attained it, I don't expect we will. I'll leave the translation to the experts and focus on other areas.

For the high school teaching issues, opinions varied but consensus was a general uneasiness at the results. Many schools seem strong and confident at the Grammar (Elementary) and Logic (Middle School) levels, but that confidence doesn't hold for the final years of schooling. One idea was to move to a more elective approach, narrowing the subjects depending on a student's calling.

George Grant is a classical educator who has great success teaching at the Rhetoric level. He's a brilliant man able to combine knowledge in areas of history, aesthetics, literature, culture, and church history into a coherent 4 year series of lectures. These are the Gileskirk lectures. I've heard most of the 4th year of these and they are very impressive. Dr. Grant also spoke at the conference on how he integrates these various areas so that his Rhetoric level students get the big picture. He said that the typical student is overwhelmed by his approach during the 1st year (9th grade). About 2/3 of the way through their sophomore year "the lights come on" and the student begins to really "get it". This would be about age 16 for most students.

Combining Mr. Schlect's findings about the struggles of Rhetoric teachers, with Dr. Grant's observation, with my earlier article on Puritan education, I reach the following insight. What if education for students age 16+ is more appropriately considered "college"? This would more accurately match the historical norm where a student's "secondary" schooling was considered college. Early schooling is the grammar/logic stage of preparation. Grammar is for childhood. Logic is for the short transition between childhood and adulthood. Rhetoric is for students beginning their adult lives. This would be more like today's "college" where a student begins to work on their specific calling. A good student and teacher in a discipleship/mentoring relationship could complete "college" in a couple years so that by age 18 or 19, the student is fully equipped to begin work in their calling.

This fits our experience as homeschoolers, fits the historical norm, and I believe has support from evidence presented at the ACCS conference. No one at the conference proposed such a framework, but as a homeschooler able to think outside the K-12 box, it jumped out at me.

Nathan Wilson spoke on "Story and Rhetoric".  Rhetoric is the final stage of classical education, in which the student learns to present their knowledge and wisdom persuasively and beautifully.  The talk focused on the idea of "proof".  Nathan presented "proof" not as mathematical certainty but as "that which obligates belief".  You may prove your point even if folks don't agree.  The listener is moved to a response by your presentation even if that may not be wholesale agreement - they may feel guilty and stone you to death to silence you.  That they take an action shows they are moved by your argument.

The nature of persuasion - use beauty and style to complement your reasoning.  It's OK to appeal to the credibility of authorities that hold the position ("ethos" type of proof) or to the listener's emotions ("pathos").  Logos (logic), Ethos, and Pathos are the three types of proof Cicero and the ancients held to.

Remember that "mathematical certainty" applies only to mathematics.  All other areas of reasoning involve some measure of faith, even faith that our senses are not deceiving us, etc.  Descartes insisted on mathematical certainty and ended up rejecting much of reality.  The biblical definitions of knowledge exceed mathematical proof.  One example is Solomon's musings in Ecclesiastes.  Another is Jesus' answering His critics in ways that appear to dodge the question.  His answer actually cuts directly to the root of the matter, but our insistence on "proof as pure logic" prevents us from hearing His truth.

Logic is not the "cornerstone" of persuasion.  It's more like a wall - necessary but not the only essential quality.  Rhetoric is about everything.  You are in God's story, look around and learn to read it.

Many of the men in our church have embarked on a study of marriage. The goal is to eventually determine a framework for the biblical process whereby the unmarried become married. Various terms for this are courtship, betrothal, or engagement. We are studying the Scripture with a desire to limit extra-biblical influences. All of us have opinions and cultural backgrounds. We aren't necessarily rejecting these, but trying to find the scriptural principles. We hope to apply these in wisdom so that each of our children begin their married lives with the Lord's richest blessing.

Here are my summary notes on purpose. Several of us searched the scripture independently, then we discussed our findings on a Sunday afternoon. Here's the summary of what I took away from our meeting.

Purpose for Marriage

God initially created Adam/Man as a single person. The Man was single – he was alone. Man was good, but his aloneness was not good. God then intentionally took the Woman out of the Man. Marriage is the action by which two alone people join together in a holy companionship that is so complete and so deep that the two become a single flesh.

The separation of the woman from man and their rejoining in marriage is not an after thought by God. It is His intentional action to show His glory in a unique way. The mystery of marriage whereby two become one gives insight into the nature of Christ’s relationship to His church. It may also reveal some of the mystery of the Trinity, where 3 distinct Persons are so profoundly united that Theirs is a single Essence and Nature. It allows for the deepest possible human love in a companionship where man and woman are thrilled with one another.

As two become one flesh, fruitfulness is the natural result. Children come into the family, surrounded by the love present in the thrilling companionship of father and mother. Together the family subdues and rules the earth. The man provides for and protects his wife and family. The woman is his helper, bearing children, tending the home. In a home of purpose, work, love, and joy, children thrive and mature to follow their parent’s calling, expand the work of God, and surpass the parent’s righteousness.

Scriptures on the purpose of marriage, supporting this summary:

· Companionship, helper for man Gen 2:18-23, Mal 2:14-16
· Male/Female distinct, yet united portray God’s image (Gen 1:26-28)
(Gen 2: 22-24) Women from man (distinct), so must re-unite w/ Man as one flesh for completion, fruitfulness
· Fruitfulness, godly offspring taking dominion Gen 1:26-28,Lev 21:13-15, Jer 29:6, Mal 2:14-16
· Happiness of bride Deu 24:5, Song of Solomon
· Happiness of husband Prov 5:18, Song of Solomon 4:9-10
· Husband’s crown, Lord’s favor; Husband receives God’s blessing in his wife
Prov 12:4, Prov 18:22
· Prophetic message to God’s people Hosea 1:2
· To meet need of a non-eunuch Matt 19:3-12, even one w/ impeccable self-control?
· To avoid sexual immorality 1 Cor 7:2-9
· To satisfy a man’s longing for a beautiful woman - Deut 21:10-14
· Authority, legal protection for wife. Numbers 30
· Place of rest (comfort, stability, protection) for the wife - Ruth 1:8-9
· Displays Christ/Church relationship Rev 19:6-9

Remarriage purpose
· To “establish a name” for a deceased husband Deu 25:5-7, Ruth 4:10, Matt 22:24-33, Luke 20:28-34
· David/Abigail – reason unclear, merely David taking opportunity to marry a godly woman? David feels responsible for her after she’s widowed? 1Sam 25:32-42
· Resolve woman’s sensual desires - marry; bear children; keep house 1 Tim 5:11-14