Look what my camera did to a perfectly sultry spring dawn!
In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion . . . It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. Psalm 19:4b-6
We are fighting a discouraging case of bronchitis here, but did have time to send a couple snaps of this glorious sunrise on this hot spring day. Enjoy!
Listen! My lover!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle or young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.
My lover spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.
See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.
The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
my beautiful one, come with me.”
– Song of Songs 2:8-13
On another note: Friends, please pray for my son who is in a position of having to fly to Shanghai this Monday, via California, over Japan. Thanks.
From all the research that has been done, I think we might, might, might be able to make some progress solving the problems in governmental institutionalization of our children. It would take drastic change, though.
No matter what you are thinking, I meant more drastic than that.
Most classrooms have far too many children in them.
Instead, each classroom would have to reduce to only around 5 children per adult. Many homes have something like that, and national research shows it is the best way to learn. It certainly would be more natural. Some high school children might make do with 10 to 12 per adult, if they were mature .
It’s how the ancient Greeks taught.
Most classrooms have all same-age children in them.
Bizarre! Instead, each child should be allowed to receive the gift of relationships with vastly different-aged others. Most homes have that and the learning potential is expanded when the students are of differing levels of learning. Especially the older ones would learn, truly learn the subjects if they were, in this more organic approach, occasionally in positions to help teach.
We do learn most when we teach, right?
Most classrooms labor under the false assumption that touch, being sexual and subject to lawsuit, should be prohibited.
Instead, we all should acknowledge what we instinctively know, and has been proven, that hugs and pats and other touch, including light corporal punishment, are part of socializing and leaving them out is wrong. Most homes have touch. Remember, orphans who are never touched die, whereas touched children are healthier and grow taller.
To protect the child from the occasional bad teacher, and the teacher from the occasional bad parent, of course video cameras in every room and every hall would be essential. That way, any teacher or child who doesn’t care about God, could realize that Big Brother is also up there.
We have the space, really. We are closing schools every day because we’ve aborted zillions of the children who could have filled them.
We do not have enough teachers, but how quickly they would come if they learned we’d solved the discipline problems, wouldn’t they!
It would take a large staff of volunteers, but what better place to volunteer! Lots of families have become single-income these days, so one spouse must be somewhat free. Then that parent could discover the joy of watching or even helping his or her own child learn things of great value, even about volunteerism. It would be a whole lot like home schooling, and might even get the better results of homeschooling, but would happen at the school.
Or, we could just send them all home, which would be lots more cost effective.
Children need to be in homes.
Arresting thought, isn’t it.
If there exists any type of divine design, then for argument’s sake, we must think that children were put into homes for a reason.
But even those who cannot swallow the idea of a God must consider why all creatures seem to have evolved to higher and higher plains while passing through a home- or family-type stage, and the higher the plain, the longer the prerequisite familial stage, with homo-sapiens needing a family for the longest time of all.
It is worth a thought.
Many who have given it a thought have withdrawn their children from the bedlam outside the home. Then—surprise!—their children begin auto-correcting their psyches, learning more, retaining more, doing more with it, and growing up to be more productive.
I am not making this up. It is heavily-researched scientific fact that no thinking person should ignore, especially if that person cares about children, about the state of his country, or about the future at all.
And before we continue, we must define a home: a set of parents who function adequately, with each other and with their children, as mom and dad. To use a broken, dysfunctional, or abusive home as a reason for schools is as fair as using a broken, dysfunctional, or abusive school as a reason for home schools.
But bad schools are not the reason to homeschool.
CHILDREN are the reason to homeschool.
If you have them, you should.
Today’s children are being destroyed in schools. They were not made to be in schools and do not thrive there. They are tormented daily, growing warped personalities we see depicted in the worst national headlines.
And they’re not allowed to pray
Putting children into a school is asking them to pass the socializing test before ever receiving any instruction, correction,or reinforcements about HOW to socialize. They encounter children even less trained than they are, with no chance of escape from this zoo.
Sink-or-swim is often a great way to drown a kid.
The typical classroom is sink-or-swim. When drowning, it is natural for the inexperienced to attempt survival by pushing down on other swimmers.
Just natural.
Empathy is the natural product of a home education. Each older child who cherishes the home’s newest infant later has patience with that same child doing wrong, cares if that sibling falls down, laughs with—not at—that little one.
Resilience is another natural product of a home education. Encouraging, even requiring social resilience, leads to practice in resilience. The old “get back on the horse” motto prevails and in time, becomes instilled. As the child matures, he develops the ability to keep going, no matter what, if only someone has taught him how.
Confidence is another natural product of a home education, and it is born of hope. A child who is dumped at the door of an antagonistic, institutionalized experience has no hope. A child who has a mommy who will keep everyone on a good social plane while they learn, just because she loves them, has hope and learns confidence.
Tomorrow, part 3 about how to fix the schools. See ya’!
People forget children are not adults. Adults can handle many things children cannot. The adult thinks to himself, “Oh, it won’t be that bad.” But he forgets. Time has a way of rewriting our memories.
We project ourselves onto our children and think of how great it would be to be surrounded with 25 five-year-olds every day for nine months. We think as an adult who has authority and could quell any problem with a child. We forget a child has no such ability and does not even know what to do, let alone how.
Or we look at other kids or our own childhood and think, “They did okay. I did okay. Troubles make you stronger, after all.” That is true to an extent. When air blows over a plant, it does make it stronger, unless it is a tornado.
If we look deeper, though, we realize those who did well in school were taught how, as were most of their peers. In my day, kids were polite. It was considered a huge breach of civilized behavior to forget to say “please.” The child who did this was ostracized. Now it is a joke. It is a different world. It is truly bad.
Bad has always been a possibility, though, in schools. Some were blown away by the tornadoes of troubles they faced. Einstein, Edison, Disraeli, and T. Roosevelt all did poorly in the institutions of their days—very poorly.
If we actually were to place ourselves in our children’s shoes, we would think twice, and that would be good.
Think: if everyone at your workplace were mean to you, had better stuff than you, outperformed you, or got chosen before you.
How well could you cope with that?
Would you change jobs?
They say in those circumstances, a person should change jobs. However, children in those circumstances cannot change jobs. Their job must always remain to go to the school of someone else’s determining. Period.
If you did stay in that job, though, would you seek comfort from family or friends? Sure you would, and you should!
The child, though, often finds his family does not believe how bad it is, as discussed above, or does not understand the enormity of it. And his friends! They are all at the school, all in the same boat! How can they help? The child and all his friends are in a social drain that leaves them socially depleted by day’s end. And then he usually has more school to do at home.
You know how you would resent having to bring work home. Daily. Hours and hours of it.
Yet, you have freedom to leave your job if you want, even to take vacation whenever you want. The child is required by law to remain in his torture chamber for 12 years, at least. No wonder they think of suicide.
We will discuss the solution to this ongoing problem tomorrow. See ya!
My Secret Recipe for a Home
Winter’s laundry hanging by the wood heater.
Homegrown bouquets.
Porch plants sharing spaces with us in winter.
A teakettle that whistles.
A coffeepot, not a coffee maker.
A few herb plants growing around the house.
A garden plot.
A rosebush or two.
Homemade curtains and crocheted do-dads.
Quilts made by someone you know.
Lots and lots of ancient books.
Art made by someone you know.
Little places for the little people you love.
A well-worn broom.
Floor lamps, pillows, afghans, lace, birding books.
Oh, and lots of love, laughter, tears, and prayers.
Another reason we practice Spring Cleaning has little to do with clean.
Read:
The next in line for the Spring Cleaning ritual in our home is the bookcase area. We own enough books to fuel a small school, because we were once exactly that. You may wonder why I do not store some of them —
I have.
Let’s pretend, though, that yesterday’s scenario has aged five years, and the three imagined daughters are now 12, 10, and 7. You’ve been practicing inclusion of these girls for five years and now you are ready to tackle these bookcases. Your conversation might go like this:
Girls, help me get a couple of these bookcases done today, okay? Mary, get the dusting spray, the vacuum, and the paper towels. Hmm, I think we need this table cleared to stack the books on it. Can you take care of that, too, Mary? Thanks.
As we put the books on the table, we’ll stack them all in the same direction and then we can vacuum the tops of them all at once. Oh, yes, we should align the tops of them to make it easier. And keep them in order, so we won’t have to reorganize them. I think this will work.
Okay, let’s see if we can do two units in a half hour. Set the timer. Go!
Look at this old crocheted bookmark from Grandma—I want to clean and starch it. Set it aside for later. Someone make a note; we need to reinforce the spine on the “B” volume of this encyclopedia.
Thanks for collecting all our supplies, Mary. Can you attach the hose and the duster? Good.
Let’s hurry, here. It’s a big job. Susan, can you see the top shelf or do we need the step stool. Go get it, then, Leah. I want you two on the dusting job and I will vacuum the books. Try hard to keep the spray off the floor. It can be dangerously slick. And be sure you wipe the corners well and get all the spray wiped off.
Okay, start handing me books, in order, and I’ll restack them in their places. This is going well, time-wise, but I think we’ll stop in the middle of the second bookcase, so we don’t go overtime. No need to wear ourselves out with such heavy work.
No, I think we’d better stop short of that. There’s always tomorrow. Let’s call it done for now, and have some tea, okay? Then I want to show you all how to wash a delicate piece of crochet. Mary, you take care of the vacuum. That’s my girl.
Oh, how good it is to have all your help, girls! I don’t know what I’d do without you.
Can you see how, since the girls have received diligent training, they have become like extra arms and legs for the mom? Not only that, but also, they are learning good, quick, efficient work habits they can take with them into their futures.
In exchange for all the training you gave them before, you now are reaping great helpers. They, in return for their help, are receiving a gift many people lack: the ability to be diligent, reliable, trustworthy, hard-working members of their future worlds.
Wherever they go, whether into marriage or some other career, they will be ahead of their peers and rise quickly to betterment at every possibility.
It’s worth 30 minutes of my time.
How about you?
Home's Cool! 