Profound shift in kind of families who are home schooling their children

Parents who home-school children increasingly are white, wealthy and well-educated — and their numbers have nearly doubled in a decade, a new federal government report says. What else has nearly doubled? The percentage of girls who are home-schooled. They now outnumber home-schooled boys by a wide margin. (more)

Rushdoony on the "Functions of the Family"

"Historically and Biblically, the family is the central institution in law and in society. Although we do not think of the family normally as a law-making body, the family is nonetheless the basic law-making body in all history…

"Procreation is a function of the family, and, in a healthy, Biblically oriented and governed family system, this function is preceded by an important fact that conditions birth. The parents marry because there is a bond of faith and love between them, a resolution to maintain for life a covenant under God. As a result, a heredity of faith and a unity in terms of it is established as a prior condition of birth, so that a child born into such a family has an inheritance that cannot be duplicated. The Biblical family cannot be rivaled by man’s science or imagination as the institution for the procreation and rearing of children.

"The family is man’s first and basic school…

"The family is also the first government in the life of the child, with the father as the God-ordained head of the household and his government under God as the child’s basic government…

"A basic function of the family is motivation and guidance. The child is provided with the best kind of guidance, because the family is most interested in him, and the child is, in the Christian family, given the highest kind of motivation for his own future and present development…

"The family also has a major economic function. The father provides for his family, not for strangers….The family as an economic unit has an excellent division of labor plan, whereby certain duties are required of the father, others of the mother, and still others of the children. There are mutual rights and duties, all of which are discharged with a greater degree of success and efficiency, despite all the problems, than in any other institution. The family, moreover, can withstand and survive more shock than any other institution – economic disasters, personal disagreements, social catastrophes, and the like…

"The state has extensively interfered in the family’s functions, and it has claimed vast areas that properly belong to the family. Does this mean that the family has been weakened? Does the future portend a decline in the importance of the family? On the contrary, the more the state has interfered, the more it has thereby underscored man’s need for the family. The incompetence of the state as family has made more obvious the competence of the family as a family. The prevalence of sickness does not make health obsolete, but only all the more urgently needed and desired. Historically, every period of statism is followed by an era of an intensely family-oriented society as men turn from sickness to health.

"We are today in an era of burgeoning statism. On every side, the family is under attack, and the state is assuming progressively more and more of the family’s functions, and progressively finding itself more and more prone to social disintegration and demoralization. More than ever before, the Biblical faith and law concerning the family, its functions, property, and faith, must be stressed and taught. The future does no belong to disease; it belongs to health. Because this is God’s world, it is God’s order that shall prevail. “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Ps. 127:1)."


{Excerpted from Law & Liberty, by RJ Rushdoony.}

The Basic Operations of God's Law in Your Life

"...[T]he true God is the God of Scripture, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who blesses and curses. And He shall prevail, “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). The real question is not as to whether God is alive or dead, but rather, it concerns ourselves. Where do we stand in terms of His word, law, grace, and calling? Under blessings, or curses?"

~(RJ. Rushdoony)

Destined Daughters

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing sisters Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin , authors of the book So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God, featured in the follow-up DVD Return of the Daughters, and founders of VisionaryDaughters.com.

We had a lively discussion regarding the dominion role of daughters and their impact on the Kingdom of God. Listen to this special Law & Liberty Podcast.

No Short-Cuts to Liberty

"Our society makes adolescence a legitimate form of insanity. We have come to associate adolescence with rebelliousness and emotionalism, and we consider this to be naturally a time of stress in a person’s life. But this is not true of every culture, nor was it once true of our own. Adolescence has often been in history a particularly proud and happy age, the time of maturity. It is a mentally sick and spiritually sinful adolescence that wants independence while being subsidized by the parents...

"Socialism is simply a social order which attempts to take over the functions of the family and provide cradle-to-grave security which is the function of the family. In order to have socialism, there must be a population of spoiled children who want a great father who can provide them with more than their parents can, take their parents off their hands, and protect them from the necessity of growing up. Whenever and wherever the family breaks down, socialism results as the substitute for the family. But socialism destroys itself, because is cannot truly replace the family, and, unless the family re-establishes its godly order, the result is chaos. There are no short-cuts to liberty and maturity. The godly family is basic to a free country."

[excerpted from RJ Rushdoony, Law & Liberty (Vallecito, CA:Ross House Books, 1984), 103-07.]

"Custom and Morality"

Excerpted from Law & Liberty, "Custom and Morality" by R.J. Rushdoony.

"Customs or social mores govern us often much more strongly than does morality. Most people are more afraid of offending their friends through bad taste than of offending God by sin...

"In every age there are many to whom appearance is more important than morality, but, when an age is dominated and controlled by such a disposition, the result is a rapid social decline. Morality requires faith and courage. It means making a stand and taking a course in terms of God’s reality rather than man’s reality. Morality in a sinful world places a man in tension with that world at the very least, and potentially in direct opposition to it. The moral man is governed by God and his conscience, and as a result, he is more inclined to be independent of the group and self-reliant in relationship to society. Morality is productive of godly individualism and independence of spirit.

"Where custom rules, however, a contrary spirit prevails. People become group-directed, and they feel it imperative to be members of the pack. Their standards vary as the customs and fads of the group vary. Instead of being individualistic, they are collectivistic, anxious at all times to be with a particular group whose customs are their social code. Society then is governed by mob psychology, by the law of the pack, and the social order lacks stability or character...

"Wherever a society places custom above morality, there a revolutionary situation exists. When custom is more important than morality, the first step toward revolution has been taken. The moral foundations of the social order have been denied, and a revolution in standards and behavior has taken place. As a result, an important thrust of all subversive activity is the undermining of morality. Where morality has been undermined, law and religion have also been undermined, so that the major task of revolution has been accomplished. A revolution cannot readily succeed where the existing order has moral vitality, but a revolution is virtually accomplished where moral order has been destroyed...

"The greatest asset to any revolutionary group is a large body of people who are governed by conventions or customs. With such people, since appearance is all that matters, the country can be gutted of its historical position, constitutionalism, and liberties, and there will be no objection as long as the form is retained. The same is true of their church relationships; they do not ask that their church be truly Christian, but only that it retain the form of being Christian. Their church can deny the faith every Sunday, teach their children the new morality, abandon its confession of faith, maintain through its missionary programs a revolutionary campaign and these people will never leave. They will maintain a façade of being Christian by complaining indignantly about some of the most flagrant activities of their church and clergy, but they will never leave. And rightly so, because they belong there: the dead among the dead. These people who cling to the appearance rather than the reality are the bread and butter of all revolutionary groups; they finance them, support them, and defend them, because they too are revolutionists. They are in revolt against moral order, and they substitute conventional order in its place. They are the first wave of every revolution, and, even though the second wave first uses them and then destroys them, the conventional people are still part of the revolution.

"This means we cannot treat people who sit complacently in apostate churches, and who ignore all subversion in the political order, simply as blind people. They are themselves the first great wave of social revolution, of moral anarchy and national and religious decadence. They are more deadly, these conventional people, than the organized revolutionists, because their position is more contagious and more destructive. There is, after all, a measure of honesty about an out and out revolutionist. He knows what he is, and he makes sure that you also are aware of it. He issues his manifestos and tells the world what he plans to do.

"But the conventional people have a deadlier revolution. They approach Christianity and they bury it under their mass of conventions and forms. They are for the Bible, but it doesn’t really mean what it says, and we mustn’t go overboard on these things. They believe in Christ, but only in terms of a sensibly modern perspective, of course, and so on. They retain the form of Christianity and the church, but totally deny the faith in actuality. They replace reality with their conventions...

"[T]he conventional people, having substituted appearance for reality, customs for moral order, cannot face reality in any direction. They cannot see God as God, nor Satan as Satan. They recognize neither good nor evil, only appearances. Nothing else is real for them. All people are exactly like themselves, or they are mentally sick. Conventional people are only blind in the sense that they are self-consciously, deliberately, and passionately averse to facing reality. They are like the people of whom Isaiah spoke, who, hearing will not hear, and seeing will not see, lest their minds understand, and their health be restored (Isa. 6:10-11). The destiny of such people is then to be blinded by God and led to destruction. Their nature and destiny is death. Our nature and destiny in Jesus Christ is righteousness and life."

CreationMinute.com

A wonderful blend of creativity, technology, good science, and "storming the gates of hell." My personal favorite is episode #2. Visit their website @ creationminute.com.

Does It All Add Up?

While speaking with a teacher this past weekend, I commented that many homeschool mothers spend inordinate amounts of time trying to be "as good as their public school counterparts" when it comes to subjects like math. The following is this teacher's account of what much of state education has become. Although this account focuses on the UK, I have heard corroborating accounts from many teachers here in the U.S.

By What Standard?*
by M.T.

State education has sought to divorce itself from a Biblical standard and as a result every school is left to determine the standard for itself. Everyone does what is “right in his own eyes.” The results should not surprise us.

As a high school mathematics teacher I am increasingly aware of the lack of standards. With no set standard in place, teachers are encouraged to do “what looks the best” for the school. The State argues that it has introduced standardized tests to ensure that all schools are meeting established standards, but the reality is that these are counterproductive and their results are deceptive.

I could give many examples of this. Perhaps a good place to start is to share my recent experience with the Year 9 (grade 9) SAT examinations in the UK. The 2008 national SAT examinations for year 9 were a complete fiasco, and, as a result, the government of the UK has cancelled national testing of students in year 9. Many schools are still writing the examinations that had been planned for 2009 but are marking them internally. The school I teach in is doing this in order to track students’ progress in order to publish our school statistics as to how well we are achieving. That may sound good to most parents, but there is much that parents do not realize.

Our year 9 students have just written their examinations. I am marking them at the moment. I will have final marks out of 150 for each student, but will not know how my students have achieved until after the assessment process. We, as a department, are not able to determine what the grade boundaries are until after the results have been recorded. This is usually the case in standardized public school testing. Children’s results are, literally, first determined and then the grade boundary (what level of achievement for an grade A, B, C , etc (in USA terms) – or 6, 7, 8, etc(in UK terms) would be acceptable. Our school has set targets as to how many students should have a certain level of achievement, and the idea is that the grade boundary should be adjusted to meet that – else the teachers’ heads will be on the chopping board. In a world where students’ laziness cannot be an adequate excuse for lack of achievement, teachers are made the scapegoats for poor grades and, therefore told by schools to adjust marks so that the truth of the students’ lack of achievement is not revealed to parents. Conversations involving being asked to alter results or “make up a grade that fits” are not unusual and are common practice – though for obvious reasons disguised.

That is just one aspect of the testing that takes place. The other side is that when exams are being set, standards are being dropped so that the grade boundaries do not have to be so low. I think this will be more obvious to you if I give you some examples of the type of questions on this year’s final year 9/grade 9 (13-14-year-olds) mathematics examination.

Here are some examples:

1) Join the numbers that add together to equal 1

0.1        0.99
0.11       0.9
0.01       0.999
0.91       0.89
0.001      0.09

2) How many millilitres are there in half a litre?

3) Houses cost GBP60000 one year ago. They now cost _______________. This is a 25% increase.

Many parents will recognize that this level of mathematics is what they did in primary school yet it is now high school curriculum. I graduated high school less than 10 years ago and can see a lowering of standards in that time, which to me is mind-blowing.

Schools are teaching-to-the-test. They tell students to answer "examination style" questions in a certain way. Since students are unthinkingly following a rote method, they have little comprehension of what they are actually doing. As a result, parents who help their children with their homework often find the schoolwork difficult as they do not understand the one method that students are being taught. The truth is that many parents are more than capable of doing the math, but their method of getting to the same answer is often different from their child’s “reproduce what the teacher does” method. This leaves parents thinking that the level of education is high when, in fact, it is designed to give parents that impression and make them more dependent on the schoolteacher.

The public school system is symptomatic of a society seeking to live autonomously, throwing out the standard of God’s Word. Each person seeks to benefit "self" and do what will make "self" look good. If a few grades need to get altered in the process, then that is what happens. Students, teachers and parents are left confused as to how their children really are progressing (or regressing). That is why I believe that only a school that recognizes the absolute and unchanging standard of the Word of God can truly be effective in educating children.

* (In order to maintain her anonymity, the pseudonym "Mae Thematics" has been used!)

Lines That Divide

Brian Godawa's Lines That Divide: The Great Stem Cell Debate is an excellent resource to understand and explore the core ethical and scientific issues involved in the use of embryonic stem cells.

This 57 minute documentary is an important addition to a family or church library and would make for an excellent Sunday School presentation, sure to produce lively discussion. I recommend that Christians purchase this excellent educational tool,and lend it out for viewing to other family members and friends as an effective means by which to unmask all the euphemisms and double-speak surrounding this topic.

Once Upon a Time: Challenging the Status Quo

Once upon a time, there were children who were eager to learn to read. They wanted as much help as possible to be able to read wonderful books like the Bible. This was not surprising because these children watched and listened as their parents and older brothers and sisters looked at pages with small, black symbols on them and learned important ideas such as our duty to love and obey God and how Jesus Christ died on the cross to make atonement for His people. In fact, in many households, the reward for learning how to decipher this code was a Bible of one’s own. These children did not work for test scores or scholarships. They just wanted to learn. (more)

A Father's Charge

This clip provides an excellent example of the vital role God directs a godly father to play in the life of his daughter and her future family.

Work & Responsibility

It is important that education does not become an end unto itself, but rather a means to an end.

Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary defines education:

EDUCA'TION, n. [L. educatio.] The bringing up, as of a child, instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties. (emphasis added)

Christian homeschooling provides the atmosphere and supervision to achieve the educational ends expressed in the definition above. A truly Christian education identifies all people as sinners in need of a redeemer. All subjects are taught within this framework and each subject is brought under the guidance and direction of the Bible, with an eye to refining and advancing the talents and gifts God has placed in each student so he can fulfill his calling under God. On the other hand, humanistic education promotes the deception that people are inherently good, but require the guidance and direction of an all-powerful, Messianic state in order to help them reach their fullest potential, which they define as service to the state. The Christian model is firmly planted in the real world. The humanistic model is the world of illusion, a flight from knowledge, and a pronounced escapism, which reaches its fullest expression in the area of higher education.

Rushdoony, in Law and Liberty (p. 123-24), states:

A prominent area of escape for the past century has been the academic world, the university in particular. Men who found the realities of the workaday world unpleasant turned to the university as a way out. It was not scholarship they loved, but the business world which they hated. To them the test of a working world was anathema; they were in a sense a new kind of hermit, running away from the civilized world and renouncing it for a new way of life. Speaking of some of these men in England, the critic Edmund Wilson spoke of them as belonging to the “monastic order of English university ascetics.” Their asceticism was forsaking the world of capitalism and Christianity, the world of the family and its morality, for a new order, an anti-Christian one. Everything in the old world was and is to these men evil and anathema, and they denounce it with religious intensity and passion…

The university is still a major form of escapism. The perpetual student who is unwilling to grow up and leave the university is a common fact today. Most universities are crowded with non-students or unweaned students who cling to the school because they are unwilling to face the hated adult world of work and responsibility.

Parents who have taken on the God-ordained role of teachers in their children’s lives must not lose sight of the fact that the overriding purpose of the educational endeavor is to further the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Thus, ample time needs to be spent in searching out and developing those gifts and talents God has placed in each student, with an eye for effective service in the Kingdom. However, this will not happen unless parents become Kingdom-minded themselves, placing more emphasis on furthering God’s agenda rather than working for test scores, athletic achievements, and potential earning power. Home education needs to prepare students for much more than just being students.