As we near the end of a school year, introspection tends to set in. Did I accomplish all I had planned for this year? Of course not. Did my children co-operate in all their lessons? Not exactly. In short, how did we do? Are my children getting a rich education? I think yes.
As each year goes by, I get a different perspective. The preschool and most of the elementary years are behind me. We have graduated two of four children. Another child starts his senior year next year and my youngest begins 5th grade. We have a son who is a sophomore at UTC and doing quite well. Our oldest, our only daughter, went right from being homeschooled through high school to moving to New York and studying classical figure sculpting. She is just finishing her third year and is thriving as a young artist in a very big city.
“The figure and classical art have held my interest from early youth,” writes Abigail in a blog post we shared for Charlotte Mason Childlight USA. “In elementary school I pored over art history and how-to-drawpeople books. My homeschool lessons included weekly studies of the inspiring masterpieces of Western art as well as painting and drawing.
“The idea of beauty in literature and art is something to pursue in work and study as well as in one’s leisure hours. This yearning as a child shaped my life. Recognizing beauty leads to truth, to right forms and to the desire for more understanding.
“The environment provided by home education allows a child’s creativity to grow unhindered. For an impressionable child, this advantage has profound implications. I am ahead of many of my peers in that I was nurtured on the classics and fine arts.
“Thankfully the school I attend is a small one filled with like-minded people who value the pursuit of beauty and truth. Yet my friends who did not have the benefit of this type of education had to fight the system most of their lives and are still suffering repercussions of that battle, whereas I had fertile soil in which to grow.
“To know and savor beauty in one’s youth ensures that as the artist matures and begins to learn the principles of design, color and form, he or she will have a deeper capacity for understanding and a clear goal towards which to direct those principles. The classical artist is able to soar to heights almost out of view of the shortsighted modern artist who stands alone and apart from the classical tradition.
“Today we live in a wasteland where, even among artists and teachers of art, shockingly few can draw. Even though I have gone to an elite academic figurative art school in New York, the teachers who have taught me most and will stay with me my whole life are the old masters. Many people do not know how to learn from the works of the dead, but must have someone constantly over their shoulder telling them what to do, and will, upon leaving school, stop learning.
“Having books available — printed image above overwhelming online content — is also essential. Being taught how to look, see, and enjoy paintings was something I started learning though picture study at home. My homeschool curriculum with all its wealth of beauty has given me what I have come to realize is a great and rare gift.”
For this young woman, homeschooling was an especially good fit. Our literature-rich and arts-rich curriculum fed her imagination and a love for beauty. In her high school years, she apprenticed with a local sculptor and still kept up with the academics on her schedule.
Young entrepreneurs, meet your public
Our yearly used book sale is June 8, a Saturday, at the spacious Camp Jordan Arena in East Ridge.
In addition to the swapping of books, the event is a great opportunity for young homeschooled entrepreneurs to showcase products to a large group of people.
Teen volunteers needed to help us serve moms and families with tables and chairs, 7-9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. to 1
A map to Camp Jordan is available here.
Make our book sale and entrepreneur day a memorable event for yourself and your children:
Image courtesy of Phaitoon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Recently I offered a column on the importance of story in terms of what makes a good story or what makes a story good. But the power of a good story is not just in the plot and its conclusion. The stories we tell go to a child’s heart. Stories are useful in home education to teach all kinds of lessons. The boon to clothe a lesson in literary language is that it will be a lesson that more likely will be remembered. What is more, the child absorbed by a story will process that story, make connections with that story and will live in the story.
Why make the effort to include stories in our homeschool lessons?
I found an interesting article by Neil Postman of Amusing Ourselves to Death fame. I have developed a real fondness for this author. Currently I am reading aloud to one of my students his seminal work, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and am finding much wisdom and encouragement.
Certain recent political events have been discouraging, to say the least. Not that we should ever put our hope in any candidate to save us, or to fix what is broken. Our hope is in Christ and in His Kingdom.
It is also not the case that I was especially excited about any candidate because I was not. Rather I found myself despondent because of what the recent election seemed to say about our future as a nation, and what we are becoming or worse yet, have become. Furthermore, if what I suspected was true, there does not seem to be much hope for the future as it seemed as if the current transformation in our electorate is one that will only self-perpetuate.
One contributor to Breakpoint, Diane Singer, articulated my feelings exactly in an article titled, “When the foundations are destroyed,” wherein she says:
The results of this last election, however, indicate that the values I was raised with have been widely rejected by the majority of voters. They booed God at their convention; they want official approval of deviant lifestyles; they are jealous of wealthy and successful people (unless they come from the entertainment industry, evidently); they live with a sense of victimization and entitlement; they want as much “free stuff” as they can get from the government; they are quick to cry “racist” when anyone dares disagree with the current president; and they are obsessed with keeping their right to murder their unborn children. That’s not the America I grew up in, and I’m grief-stricken over the fact that it’s what America has become.
Other columnists point a finger at the education system bearing its fruit of years of government school indoctrination resulting in the current administration getting over 60% of the youth vote.
Susan Brown, a columnist on Townhall, says, “liberalism has wormed its way into our school systems and universities; hence infiltrating our children’s minds.”
Make no mistake, this is not just a drift. It is a planned attack on what many of us believe to be the founding ideas and values of our country. A recent article in World magazine detailed just how the major Ivy league universities fell to liberal ideas and liberal leaders back in the first half of the 20th century. (“Soaping the Slippery Slope” by Marvin Olasky, World, Aug. 25, 2012)
This month I did something I could never have imagined I would do. I ran the Scenic City 5K and didn’t come in last.
After a lifetime of enjoying a sedentary lifestyle something changed in my thinking. I am still not completely sure what. It started with the Couch to 5K app on my phone.
I began running in tiny increments and struggled through each one. I only ran one day a week or two but over the course of far more than the nine weeks recommended I just kept doing the next day on the app.
These tiny changes in my life ended up with me (why exercise when we can sit and read?) running in one 5K and excited about the next one. In spite of a lifetime habit I had accidentally changed my habits.
The public discourse in any city about the problem of gangs is certain to delve sociologically into the role of the family and its myriad failings. In Chattanooga, aspiring hoods as young as 9 are seen being drawn into neighborhood groups that police identify as a public menace and source of street crime. How is it that such boys — and girls — are not better supervised?
An academic study of gangs in mid-sized Chattanooga, a city of 160,000, reveals in its very design the moral and spiritual problem whose symptoms it explores. Its authors do not enter into the moral realm or seek aid from the preeminent field of study, theology. The study regards the work of the church as slightingly as do employees of Hamilton County department of education. A survey of these people finds that fewer than one in a 100 think “religion/church/God” offer a solution (p. 79). The study places little hope there, and sees little scope for the gospel.
This indifference to the Lord Jesus and His way is one since the 1970s is so powerful that it sparked the Christian school and homeschool movement, of which we are beneficiaries — and participants.
Christianity has much to say to princes, governors and masters— “policy makers,” as they are styled nowadays. Kings and presidents are not exempt from its directives, that they be just and pure in heart, knowing God’s laws, that their courts rule with equity, favoring neither the person or the rich or poor. Christianity requires much of governors of great realms, and the governors of single houses — namely fathers.
The little ones are raring to go, so mark your calendar!
Friday, May 10
No advanced registration this year.
Just show up at the gate, look for the CSTHEA booth, and pay for your ticket.
$17 a ticket
Who: Graduates and Underclassman What: Perform song, skit, etc at the graduation banquet When: Friday, May 17th 6p-9p
Please email Mrs. Lynn Smith at tleca1@comcast.net no later than April 27th with details of requested performance. All performances are subject to approval.
