Recently my blog book club has been reading through Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order. Many of us were daunted just looking at the 500-page tome, but we have been pleasantly surprised that this conservative classic is also highly readable. To tell the truth, I don’t always get all excited when I hear the word “order.” This in spite of the fact that I have named my blog Ordo Amoris which can be translated ‘the ordering of the affections.”

I think sometimes I think of order as a form of fascism, some great big helper is going to step in and help us order our Christianity, our homeschools and our lives.

While reading this chapter I realized that fascism is a reaction to perceived disorder, not order. If I feel that my homeschool is out of control, because maybe it is out of control, I tend to look for someone — anyone — to tell me what to do. The fact that there are plenty of people out there just waiting to take advantage of my disordered state of mind is natural.

This is why I get passionate about telling moms that they CAN homeschool and they CAN order their own homes and I get frustrated with catalogs and programs that use “order” as a tool of discouragement. When you get your home and school in order, you are better able to judge what kind of outside help you need. In the first chapter, Kirk says that: “Order is the first need of the soul. It is not possible to love what one ought to love, unless we recognize some principles of order by which to govern ourselves.” There it is, the “Ordo Amoris.”

Order is not an instrument of control but rather a tool which helps us have the things we want to have.

Some other helpful quotes from Kirk:

• “Order is the first need of the commonwealth. It is not possible for us to live in peace with one another, unless we recognize some principle of order by which to do justice.”
• “But also we must have permanence in some things, if change is to be improvement. Americans generally retain a respect for their old moral habits and their old political forms, because those habits and forms express their understanding of order. This attachment to certain enduring principles of order has done much to preserve America from the confused and violent change that plagues most modern nations.”
• “Permanence and progression are not enemies, for there can be no improvement except upon a sound foundation, and that foundation cannot endure unless it is progressively renewed.”

Kirk studies four cities to discover the United States’ orderly ‘roots’: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London. I like those cities. Each has contributed to the ideas that have had the consequence of creating our government, especially its founding.

In Jerusalem we find “the moral commandments revealed to Moses upon Mount Sinai were broken by the Israelites almost as soon as they were made known; the principles of order reaffirmed by Winthrop were violated by the settlers in New England not long after the landing in Massachusetts. Yet without knowledge of that moral order, the men of ancient Israel and Judah could not have lived in community.” You see even when we fail to fully live up to ideas they still change us and change history.

In Athens we find the Greeks but here we have a twist. Kirk uses this chapter to explain just how and what the colonial Americans knew about the Greeks. Unlike the French, the Americans took the Greek ideals of government with a grain of salt because they were looking for a more lasting Earthly city.

Kirk says that a great deal of what the Americans knew about Ancient Greece came from Plutarch. This is the same Plutarch that you and I can read to our children. Plutarch is preparation for reading Kirk too.

I found this chapter delightfully easy to understand because I was already familiar with the Greek names. Not just Socrates, Plato and Aristotle but Solon and Numa Pompilius. In fact, our family just studied Numa and had noted his political ideals.

Rome, because of its poets captured the moral imagination of the founding fathers. The Roman poets and rhetorician: Livy, Horace, Virgil, Cicero and Cato, promoted the Latin idea of virtue. Interestingly enough this word when translated literally means “energetic manhood.” Isn’t it interesting that today we often tie virtue to feminine qualities rather than masculine ones? This point is one we should ponder in our homeschool, where mom can sometimes interpret right and wrong from a very feminine perspective.

Cindy Rollins is a homeschool mom of 9 children who lives in Hixson and blogs at dominionfamily.blogspot.com. Email Cindy at dominionfamily@gmail.com.

I once read a book that answered the question of what to do about sibling rivalry with the answer, “Do not allow it.” That was super discouraging because I didn’t ‘allow’ it but there it was. You try rearing eight sons out in the country while being pregnant or nursing most of the time.

Sometimes the boys acted exactly like a cross between the Pontipees (that wild family of brothers from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and the crazy shoot-‘em-up Tennessee York brothers of Sgt. Alvin York fame.

Let us just say that at times bones were broken but since the boys were not tattletales, doctors were not called.

One famous incident occurred during a friendly, brotherly campfire. The boys were sitting around grilling a deer carcass after a hunting trip. They were literally cutting off hunks of carcass, putting it on sticks and grilling it. Periodically, they would come in the house and beg me to ‘just try it.”

You can see how I became impervious (save that word, you will need it later.) Suddenly, randomly during the cheery scene one brother jumped up walked over to another unsuspecting brother and punched him in the jaw yelling, “I can’t support your social life any longer.” I guess chawing on fresh deer had made him brave.

Apparently there was a lot more punching than that going on over the years but once I put on my imperviousness I didn’t notice.

The answer to the question what to do about sibling rivalry is the same as the answer as to what to do about toddlers. The answer in algebra is Prime. It cannot be factored. It does not have a rational answer. What is also not rational is trying to teach little poems such as this one:

Love between brothers and sisters

Whatever brawls disturb the street,
There should be peace at home;
Where sisters dwell and brothers meet
Quarrels should never come.

Birds in their little nests agree;
And ’tis a shameful sight,
When children of one family
Fall out, and chide, and fight.

Hard names at first, and threat’ning words
That are but noisy breath,
May grow to clubs and naked swords,
To murder and to death.

The devil tempts one mother’s son
To rage against another:
So wicked Cain was hurried on,
Till he had kill’d his brother.

The wise will let their anger cool,
At least before ’tis night;
But in the bosom of a fool
It burns till morning light.

Pardon, O Lord, our childish rage,
Our little brawls remove,
That, as we grow to riper age,
Our hearts may all be love!

Most boys will not appreciate the line about ‘birds in their little nests’ nor ‘our little brawls remove’ and they might even begin to admire Cain when pitched up against such dreadful sweetness. But moms, including me, love this poem and before we become impervious we hope that it will do some good especially if we can recite the verse about ‘wicked Cain’ with sufficient malice in our voices imagining that we are quite scaring the rivalry out of the siblings.

I don’t have the answer to sibling rivalry except maybe to not have siblings but since that is a little extreme I will give you a few things that might help:

• Don’t stress over it too much. It happens.
• Make each of your children feel as if they were an only child not a group. I have 9 favorite children and truthfully, I really do.
• Spanking is always more effective than spiritualizing. Don’t ask me what I mean by that. I don’t have time to answer.
• Become impervious.
• Don’t notice every little infraction of rivalry. Let them work it out.
• Watch out for bullies. In the above bonfire scene the punching brother was not being a bully.

Bonus Extravaganza Tip:

• Finally, when disciplining do not ask each person what the other person did wrong or to tell their side of the story. There goeth madness. Ask each child what THEY did wrong in the situation. And that is a very good tip, if I may so myself.

Cindy Rollins is a homeschool mom of 9 children who lives in Hixson and blogs at http://dominionfamily.blogspot.com/. Email Cindy at dominionfamily@gmail.com.

It’s been said that “history teaches us that mankind learns nothing from history,” and while this may often be the case, it does not have to be so. In the history of every individual, family, organization or nation, there are crossroads at which remembrance of the past is critical to protecting the future. Scripture speaks to this truth in Deuteronomy 6. The book of Deuteronomy records the instruction of Moses, the leader of the Israelite nation, at a pivotal point in Israel’s history. The Israelites had been wandering in the desert for forty years and the new generation was about to cross over the Jordan River to enter the land that God had promised to them, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Chapter 6, Moses speaks these wellknown words to the people:

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This passage captures what I believe was at the heart of the return to home education movement when our family began homeschooling in 1984. I say return to home education because before the industrial revolution in America — when public education became the norm, home education was the predominant method used to train children in this country.

Edge of legality

Even before we were married, my wife and I had been convicted by the Holy Spirit that we were called to live out our faith before our children on a daily basis, and that our children’s education was our God-ordained privilege and responsibility. We viewed the education process as a part of everyday life and character development. And so our family ventured into what at the time were the mostly uncharted waters of modern-day homeschooling.

In those early years, we lived on the edge of legality as battles were waged in the state legislature of Tennessee and other states that set the boundaries for what was and was not legal regarding a parent’s right to educate at home. It quickly became apparent that we needed protection from the potential threat of intervening authorities, such as truant officers and social workers. We also lived on the edge of social acceptability as family, friends and neighbors questioned us about whether our children would be properly socialized and/or adequately educated. It was obvious that we needed encouragement and support and we were attracted to other families who shared our heartfelt desire to home educate our children. We homeschoolers had the real sense that if we did not “hang together,” we would all hang separately. It was out of this environment that the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), the Tennessee Home Education Association (THEA), and the Smoky Mountain Home Education Association (SMHEA) were born.

As homeschooling developed and proved its merit, it gradually became more and more acceptable and even favorable in the eyes of the general populace, so much so that we now have a new law in Tennessee that is quite supportive of home education. We no longer have to fear a knock on the door from a truancy officer questioning us about violating mandatory attendance laws or from a social service worker asking about whether or not we are abusing our children. We can safely and legally teach our children in our own homes with a minimum of interference. And we are glad that this is so.

Taking blessings for granted

But herein lurks danger – one that Scripture also addresses in the verses immediately following the passage previously noted. The Holy Spirit, through Moses, warns the people of a day when their blessing would be taken for granted:

“Then it shall come about when the LORD your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the LORD who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

This passage has always sobered me, because I recognize that my situation is exactly this. I live in a great and splendid city that I did not build. I live in a house full of good things that I did not make with my own hands. I drink from water supplies that I did not create. I eat rich foods from fields and trees that I neither planted nor harvested. I am satisfied beyond my need. The very real danger for me at this point is that I will think to myself, “Man, I have it made. I don’t need anything and I’m not dependent on anybody!” The natural man in you and me is prone to forget that it is the Lord who has provided these blessings, that others have labored and sacrificed so that we may dwell securely, and that we are always dependent on one another for our true wellbeing. I realize that my “natural” tendency is to take these things for granted, to lazily enjoy the fruits of the labors of others, to become increasingly self-absorbed, and to let “someone else” do the work of maintenance and upkeep that is always necessary to preserve that which I have inherited and to which I have become accustomed.

This is a danger that is real, not only for us as individuals, but also for us collectively —as a movement and as people. And because the Lord knows our hearts in ways we do not, He graciously warns us well when He warned the Israelite nation of this danger even as they were preparing to go into the land of promise. This is a danger that the home education movement is just beginning to face as well. Because we now have wider freedom and more latitude to operate independently, our natural tendency will be to do precisely that: Be independent of one another.

This tendency will be compounded by the fact that, as a general characteristic, home educators are a rather independent lot anyway. Furthermore, because there is no clear and present danger, nor common peril, we do not sense the same urgent need for mutual protection and support that we felt in the pioneering days of the homeschooling movement.

We have begun to live in a house that some of us didn’t build, drink from a well that some of us didn’t dig, and eat from a vine that some of us didn’t plant. Thus, we are in danger of forgetting that the victory that the Lord has given came at a cost and that in order to preserve and further these freedoms we have inherited, we must continue to be diligent in our support and encouragement of one another in the broader homeschooling community.

Downside of independency

It is easy for us to take for granted the freedoms we enjoy in teaching our children at home. It is now easier for us to become increasingly isolated and to only be concerned about our immediate families. It is easy for us to let “someone else” lead a support group, coordinate a science fair, plan a field trip for a group, work on a graduation committee or be a resource for someone who is just beginning to homeschool. It is all too easy to lose sight of the big picture that there are others who need our experience, support, and encouragement so that they know that they are not alone in their efforts to make a difference as they raise the next generation.

As one who remembers firsthand the struggles and commensurate joys and fellowship of the early days of home education, I also realize, thanks to the warning of the Lord, that I must diligently bring to mind and recall the past to overcome my natural tendency toward independence and isolation. I must not become lazy and self-absorbed, but rather be vigilant and selfsacrificing in working hard to preserve what is and to cultivate what can be so that these blessings will remain for future generations to enjoy.

Likewise, all of us who are seasoned home educators have come to a crossroads in our movement’s history. If we fail to remember how we arrived at this place, what we have today may easily be lost over time as the fabric of the home education community weakens and we become increasingly vulnerable.

There are still threats to our freedom lurking, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the ratification of which could quickly undermine our freedoms. Yet, if we choose to remember our past and continue to work diligently against becoming self-absorbed and independent of one another, then we have hope that the freedoms we have today will be preserved into the future for as long as we protect what we have inherited.

The bottom line is this: As in the formative years, we must actively work together for the greater good and encourage one another across the spectrum of the homeschooling community to maintain vigilance in preserving our freedoms. We must continue to serve one another and to volunteer in the giving of our time, effort and energy to enrich and support the home education experience of ourselves and others.

This continues to be the work of the Tennessee Home Education Association and the Smoky Mountain Home Education Association. May we all faithfully participate in protecting the future by remembering our past.

Rich and Ruth Melton live in Knoxville and homeschooled all five of their children, four of whom have graduated. Rich Is pastor/teacher at Christ Chapel, treasurer of Smoky Mountain Home Education Association, a chapter of THEA.

The last issue of Home School Marketplace explained what researchers are discovering about multitasking. It seems that trying to do more than one thing at a time muddles the brain in a variety of ways. Here are just a few.

• Multitasking adversely affects how you learn
• Multitasking creates chemical reactions in your brain that resemble addiction
• Multitasking produces stress
• Multitasking actually reduces productivity
• Multitasking creates shorter attention spans

The idea that multi-tasking, particularly with technology, causes information overload which causes distraction and decreased ability to learn or be productive has been supported by more and more research. But there is another hidden danger to multitasking that is even more disturbing than the ones listed above. There is some indication that heavy multi-tasking among children not only rewires their brain in such a way that it disrupts the natural learning process, but it also creates a lack of empathy and social connectivity, two of the characteristics of being human. Some scientists believe heavy multitasking, particularly with technology, can produce forms of autism resembling Aspergers Syndrome. In short, chronic multitasking in childhood can lead to an inability to relate to other people.It seems strange that a high level of computer and cell phone use can actually cause an inability to relate to other people since cell phones, email, and websites like Skype, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are all about social connectivity. But, actually, they aren’t about real social connectivity, they foster virtual social connectivity—a form of social interaction that relies on brief interchanges and minimal face-to-face contact.

I’ve actually experienced this with a friend I once was very close to. We would spend hours together each week and we kept up with each other by phone when we couldn’t actually be together. But once she discovered texting, most of our conversations began taking place by text in messages that were never over 160 characters long. The more she relied on texts to communicate, the less actual face-time she wanted to spend with me. Nothing really happened to make the relationship fade, it just gradually became reduced to a few texts every few days. And when I did see her, she spent a large part of our time together texting other people in the midst of our conversation. What had once been a rich, deep relationship of sharing our lives together became reduced to short snippets of contact. She had become unable to sustain the level of interaction and focus required in personal contact.

My experience correlates with recent studies that show people who spend a lot of their personal time on electronic devices (computers, cell phones, etc.) tend to be generally more scattered and less focused because their minds are always somewhere else and they tend to live in a virtual reality in their heads instead of being here and now and having real relationships with people and real interactions with life.

In a previous article I shared some of the research from Dr. Clifford Nass of Stanford University about how multitasking affects the ability to focus, to learn, and to remember what you’ve learned. Other Stanford studies have shown that increased dependence on technology has resulted in the diminishing of empathy by limiting the amount of human interaction that takes place. A recent analysis of 72 studies performed on nearly 14,000 college students between 1979 and 2009 showed a sharp decline in the empathy trait over the last 10 years.

Professor Poldrack from UCLA says, “There is a cost to the way that our society is changing. Humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus.” The growing problem of lack of focus has been christened “attention deficit trait” by psychiatrist Edward Hallowell. “As our minds fill with noise, the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and gradually to anything,” he argues.

And Professor Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with each other, even if they are in the same room. “The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other, he said. “It shows how much you care.”

Gary Small, a neuroscientist and author of the book iBrain, warns that children who spend their formative years multitasking lose out on chances to focus on developing crucial but slow-forming interpersonal skills. “With the weakening of the brain’s neural circuitry controlling human contact, our social interactions may become awkward, and we tend to misinterpret—and even miss—subtle, non-verbal messages,” he says. Such constant “attention switching” affects a person’s ability to interact with others and Small fears may be causing a form of autism, particularly in children who are immersed in technology. Small states, “You can think of it along the scale of Asperger’s syndrome, which is a mild form of it, where there’s not social connectiveness.” And one of the hallmarks of autism is a lack of empathy.

Mr. Nass at Stanford agrees and believes empathy is essential to the human condition. “We are at an inflection point,” he says. “A significant fraction of people’s experiences are now fragmented.”

So what can we do?

The most obvious thing we can do is move slowly but surely in the direction of mono-tasking and encourage our children to do the same. But if you must multitask, researchers recommend you do the following:

DON’T multitask in the afternoon. Your brain struggles hardest to multitask in the afternoon and can easily overload.

MEDITATE. Brain scans of those who meditate indicate that meditation makes brains more efficient at paying attention, so there is more brain power available when doing two tasks at once.

PRACTICE multi-tasking with simple tasks, like folding the laundry, not with complex tasks like talking on the phone.

Other measures you might want to consider are:

• Become a mono-tasker. Even when using electronic media such as the computer, try to focus on only one task at a time and minimize the amount of time you spend switching from one activity to another.
• Spend face time with others. Build in as much face-to-face relational time with the people you love without distractions or interruptions.
• Wean from screens. Keep the TV and computer off when you’re not actually using them. The brain finds it almost impossible to not look at a TV screen or computer monitor when it is on. So turn them off.
• Read more. Books require single focus.
• Try to be in the moment. Multitasking takes you out of the here and now.

This article is reprinted from the August 25, 2011 Home School Marketplace newsletter. For more articles on topics of interest to home educators as well as helpful resources for your homeschooling journey, sign up for the Home School Marketplace newsletter at www.homeschoolmarketplace.com.

I have been asked if there are ever circumstances where a boy might flourish in a school environment rather than at home with his mother, acknowledging that not everyone has that option.

I did not have that option and I always consoled myself by remembering that most boys in schools are taught by somebody else’s mother.

What are some of the obstacles a mother faces while homeschooling older boys?

After talking to a friend it occurred to me that these problems might not be exclusive to boys, only most of my experience is exclusive to boys so I will address that.

Two Scenarios

When boys enter 9th grade they are often immature. They still don’t care about much but as they begin to mature in 10th grade, I have found, they either become increasingly concerned that they are going to look stupid when they get out into the world, a bit self-conscious about being judged as a homeschooler, and as a consequence willing to go through almost any hoop you put them through in order to succeed, or they begin to think that the other kids they know have it a lot easier than they do and that public school is a piece of cake and that their mother’s expectations are completely ridiculous. All of my older boys so far (6 of them) have fallen loosely into one of these two categories in 11th and 12th grades. Other families are probably not quite so extreme. We tend to run hot or cold around here.

Solution for Scenario 1

The first scenario while not exactly a mature attitude is very easy to deal with. Lay it on thick, mom.

Solution for Scenario 2

The second scenario is much more difficult. As a matter of fact, the ideal at this point would be to get the child under other academic authorities. Mom should try to remove herself from the equation either through some sort of school, outside courses, online courses, dual enrollment, etc. Our options for this are growing exponentially in this age of the Internet.

As I have mentioned, I have not been able to remove myself from the equation which has added stress to my life. Insert Big Smiley Face. But in spite of the smiley face homeschooling a resistant son can be hard on mom. I suppose I might have lived to 100 if I had not had so many boys now I will be lucky to hit 60.

If you find yourself in that situation, with an uncooperative child, you are going to have to, as a last resort, pray.

Hope for the Future

After you have prayed you are just going to have to do the best you can. You are going to have to choose your battles wisely, you are going to have to communicate the ideas of self-government and you are going to have to be brave and let your child fail. And while you are doing all that, may I suggest that you try not to take the situation too personally.

Taking things too personally is a fatal flaw of any parent/child relationship. It causes you to lash out and misinterpret what is really going on. It causes you to overreact. This is especially lethal in parenting boys. A boy will naturally be confused and repelled by this sort of emotion. It will make him feel manipulated, especially if he is a very nice boy and ultimately wanting to please you. You see, a boy can be very nice and resistant at the same time.

It is most likely a situation that could not have been avoided due to the temperament of the boy and his reaction to your personality and expectations. If you can navigate through it prayerfully you can still go on in future years to have good relationships with your stubborn sons and they may still have tenderness and love for their stubborn mother too.

But perhaps you are thinking about all those boys in the homeschooling catalog that seem willing to sit at their parent’s feet until they are at least 30. I am sorry to say that you cannot order boys from a catalog.

You are stuck with the real kind that came filled with testosterone straight from the factory. The only way to deal with a real boy is to speak to the manufacturer about him on a regular basis, not expect him to act like a girl, make sure he is not on the computer too much and get him in the fresh air and sunshine.

May I suggest baseball?

Cindy Rollins is a homeschool mom of 9 children who lives in Hixson and blogs at dominionfamily.blogspot.com. Email Cindy at dominionfamily@gmail.com

By Paige Coker Rekers

At 15 my life revolved around one person – me. On the way to school one day at the end of my sophomore year, my mom gave me the ultimatum of either staying at the Christian school I was attending or be homeschooled with my two younger siblings. I scowled and said I would stick it out at school (I am sure eye rolling was involved and a slamming of a van door). However, as the day progressed, the Lord made it very clear to me that I needed to be educated at home for the remainder of my high school career. I was apprehensive at first but God gave me such a peace that I could not ignore it.

As I began my first year of homeschooling in 11th grade, I was stunned to see that children of all ages were interacting with adults, and each other in a positive way. While attending conventional school all of my life, it was very uncommon to see a younger student conversing with an older student even if they were a mere one grade apart. Very quickly I felt welcomed into a small community of people. That year was so pivotal in my young life. Always shy and introverted, I finally felt at home.

Opportunities to socialize and interact with others abounded. Without the stress of classroom settings, grades, teachers and peer pressure, my creativity flourished through sketching, creative writing classes, and discovering museums. I made friends with whom I am still close, even to this day. After graduation in 1999, I pursued Interior design at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. College became an opportunity to deepen the confidence I had gained in myself and in my abilities through homeschooling.

Now, 15 years later, I am able to grasp the importance of relating to others of all ages. I learned how not to ignore the innocent voices of the little ones. I also discovered how to respect the adults involved in my teaching which overflowed into my relationship with my parents. With two children of our own, my husband and I believe the Lord is leading us to teach them at home, and I hope they will learn these things. Homeschooling is just an illustration of life — people of all ages interacting with each other, learning from each other.

Paige, the daughter of Neil and Beth Coker, resides with her family in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

When I first read Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s For the Children’s Sake I was intrigued by the idea of reading Shakespeare to children. At the time my oldest was only three.

My own experiences with Shakespeare up to that point had been watching Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli’s beautiful version) in 8th grade, and then finally buying a huge, small-printed volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare when I was 17 just because it seemed like something cool to own. Back then my bibliophile disease was still latent. At that time I read, for my own pleasure, The Taming of the Shrew and absolutely fell in love with iambic pentameter although it would be years before I even knew what that was.

I was inspired by the idea of reading this delightful author to my own children but year after year went by. I read Charlotte Mason’s Original Homeschooling Series which also promoted the reading of Shakespeare to children, and still I had not found a way to incorporate Shakespeare into our lives. Every once in a while we would rent a TV and VCR and watch The Taming of the Shrew etc. but still we weren’t reading the plays regularly.

And then one summer when Timothy, my oldest, was maybe 14, we sat out in the backyard and read aloud A Midsummer Night’s Dream and it was a success. The children laughed in the right places and I gained courage. From then on we have read 2 to 3 plays a year. Now we have read almost all of the plays, a few several times.

This year we are reading Henry IV Parts I and II for the first time. I am so excited.

My general procedure is to read aloud a synopsis of the play from either Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare or Nesbit’s Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.

We then read the play, scene by scene, one scene a day. I usually just read all the parts stopping to aid comprehension with discussion. Every once in a while I have had different children read different parts but that works better with plays we already know well.

We also try to memorize some piece from the play we are working on. Some of our favorite memory pieces from Shakespeare are: The St Crispin Day’s Speech from Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…” and Portia’s lovely speech on mercy from The Merchant of Venice: “The Quality of mercy is not strained.”

Finally we try and watch a video production of the play or even two different productions. The videos have been hit and miss ranging from the glorious Richard Burton as Petruchio to the seemingly harmless BBC version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream dated 1960s which opens with a scene of now famous British actresses unclothed or from the dreadfully realistic King Lear which shows a hobbit without clothes or eyes to the delightful 1930s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring Mendelssohn’s music. One of our favorite films is the rousing Kenneth Branagh version of Henry V. You will definitely have to do a little research online to make sure certain productions of the plays are appropriate for your family. The good news is that the information is out there.

The best sequence for long term retention is probably to read a synopsis of the play, watch a version of the play (Netflix is great for this), read the play out loud slowly, and finally watch a different version of the play.

My children have not all been enthusiastic Shakespeareans. They often groan and question why we read some of the plays. I always tell new students of the bard that if they do not like Shakespeare that is fine but it is the height of ignorance to conclude that it is the Bard’s fault rather than something lacking within themselves. Harsh, I know.

After years and years of reading and discussing, quotes and lines from Shakespeare have taken root in our hearts. We begin to recognize cultural tidbits that have derived from Shakespeare’s plays: “Teeth set on edge” “give the Devil his due” “budge an inch” “green-eyed monster” “cold comfort” “fair play” “stood on ceremony.” You probably quoted the playwright today without even knowing it.

The college boys have found having knowledge of Shakespeare is quite handy for class discussions and papers and popular with professors. In the end they have thanked me for the utilitarian uses of knowing the plays. Perhaps not my original goal, but something I am happy about.

Reading Shakespeare with some children is not always going to bring immediate results. I do have friends with those naturally Elizabethan children who revel in the readings. My children often just try to make the best of it. On the other hand, Alex and Andrew, my youngest sons, having heard the plays from the cradle seem to actually enjoy them.

In the last couple of years I have collected one resource that has greatly helped my understanding of the plays. It is Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare in Two Volumes. If I read through this book a little ahead of our Morning Time reading of the plays I can add interesting historical remarks such as who Hotspur was or what it meant that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Or after a confusing day’s reading I can pull out Asimov and straighten myself out.

It is pricey because it is out of print, but I highly recommend it if you plan to discuss the plays with the children. You could read it aloud to them but I suggest instead you use it as a way to increase your own wisdom and understanding of the plays and pass that knowledge along to the children as you read.

It is true that I have been aided by my own love of Shakespeare in persevering year after year but even with that love I had a hard time getting the horse out of the gate in those early years as my eldest son grew. But it turns out that reading Shakespeare is not so hard after all. It is already divided up into small chunks. All you need to begin is a few minutes every morning and before you know it your children will be all grown up and you will be making jokes with phrases like “get thee to a nunnery” regularly.

The beauty of building a family culture around Shakespeare is that it is something that can still be shared with a wide, though shrinking, cache of other people. It is lighting a small candle in the darkness of cultural decay and looking out to see other candles twinkling all around.

Cindy Rollins, who resides in Hixson with her husband and children, is a homeschooling mom of nine. Visit her blog at www.dominionfamily.blogspot.com. E-mail Cindy at dominionfamily@gmail.com.

By Jeanie B. Cheaney

Last month, in the journal First Things, senior editor R.R. Reno confessed his participation in “An Error Worse Than Error,” namely the purported goal of higher education to question everything. “Students are trained—I was trained—to believe as little as possible so that the mind can be spared the ignominy of error. The consequences: an impoverished intellectual life.”

Reno must know he’s late to the party. The premise of Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) is that “almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” In The Abolition of Man (1947), C.S. Lewis described how the exchange of skepticism for truth created Men without Chests. In Chesterton’s parable of the lamppost, widespread zeal to tear down a public source of light (because it’s out of fashion and inconvenient) leads to men arguing forever after in the dark. All three authors were contemplating the effect of dismissing foundational principles as an aim of education. John Dewey already occupied that dark public square, passionately arguing that “education as such has no aims” beyond equipping workers to work.

So the idea has been around for a while, but in order to seem fresh and relevant, it’s tricked out in a new name: “critical thinking.”To think critically is a useful, often necessary tool; “critical thinking” is a noble concept that’s lost its dignity after a mauling by ed-school theorizers. Like a gullible servant thrust onto the emperor’s throne by manipulative handlers, it’s become a figurehead: a catchphrase for deconstructing old received truths to replace them with new received truths. No child is to be left behind: Roger Kimball recalls a parent orienta- tion meeting at his 5-year-old’s school, where the virtues of critical thinking were eagerly promoted for the crayon set.

If old standards are overthrown, what will take their place? The recom- mended substitute is “creativity”— no one noticing, apparently, that “creative critical thinking” is an oxymo- ron. Critical thinking is essentially destructive; it’s all about tearing down. To tear down false presuppositions is good and necessary but not complete; in education, the only valid purpose for destruction is to rebuild. That’s where creativity is supposed to come in. But creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum—like skepticism, it’s a means, not an end. It cries out for a theme. To treat creativity as an end in itself is to assume godlike character for humans, as though they could somehow create ex nihilo.

Of the many consequences of the critical- thinking fad, two stand out. One, if the destruction is allowed to stand, educated humans will be in the same situation as the man from whom one demon was cast out only to have seven others take its place. Declaring the great truths to be purely subjective (and therefore, ultimately, untrue) is not progress. Instead, it returns us to paganism, where moral authority belongs to the elites and the masses fall prey to superstition. As the saying goes, “He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”

Two, skepticism about major premises leads to over-reliance on minor ones. When the international website Wikileaks posted thousands of classified documents regarding the war in Afghanistan, it did so with the purpose of exposing American malfeasance. Wikileaks had the facts—lots of them. But focusing on isolated incidents obscures the larger issue of what we’re fighting about. Is the aim of one side—to destroy or neutralize an enemy that threatens world order— superior to the aim of the other side, which is to impose its radical agenda on an everlarger slice of the globe?

Facts can be marshaled or manipulated to support any contention, but without a common commitment to such basic ideas as freedom, order, and individual responsibility, they won’t prove anything. Foundational principles can’t be proved; they must simply be believed. Critical thinking can be useful in helping a student determine the truth. But it isn’t truth, and it won’t give him anyplace to stand.

Used by permission | © World Magazine, all rights reserved | www.worldmag.com

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly impersonal. The daily interactions we have barely scratch the surface to get to heart of the individuals we encounter. We greet coworkers in the hallways, we nod, we smile and we’re polite. We shake hands on Sunday with our church family members but for the most part, we never seem to penetrate or reach to find the important things that make us who we are.

Facebook boasts more than 400 million users communicating via its social media. The average user has 130 “friends.” These friends receive up-to-the-minute details of life experiences. It’s reported that 28% of users check their Facebook page on their smart phones before getting out of bed. Yet even with this constant source of connectivity, we seem to say less and less to each other. Facebook posts tend to take the form a few sentences of exasperation when we can’t seem to get the kids to go to bed, or posts bragging about the wonderful time we had at an amazing party. There is no real connectedness there. We encounter the same people repeatedly and really never get to know who they are.

When it comes building friendships and communicating on a deep level, men are by far at a disadvantage over women.We have been conditioned to believe that a true male bonding experience is a couple of guys hanging out drinking beer, making ridiculous and lewd comments about women while watching and reacting to a televised ballgame as if our lives depended on its outcome. Most manly conversations never get past the “look at my new toy” stage. We spend our time talking about the latest computer gadgets, boats or cars. Despite how most of us enjoy watching a good competition between two well prepared and disciplined teams, football is of little significance when compared to the order and dominion of God’s kingdom.

Like those around us, homeschool dads fall short of the duty of strengthening, challenging and refining one another. In fact, the mindless banter of most so called manly conversations today would make men of a few generations back shake their heads in disbelief.

Is it time to put aside careless exchanges and anonymity which we find in today’s conversations? Is it time to invest ourselves in the challenge, accountability and hard work it takes to lay aside childish banter and build up one another up so we can lead our families, friends, neighbors and coworkers in the paths of truth?

In the book Angel in the Whirlwind, Benson Bobrick tells of a time in America, when average men would meet in the taverns and discuss the important issues of life:

The inevitable talk was of politics, religion and trade. Some of the denizens talked ‘tolerably well,’ remarked one visitor who made the rounds of such establishments in 1744, and displayed “that curiosity which was characteristic of the American rustic everywhere.” In one New Jersey tavern, he overheard a discussion about physics, in another, an argument about sacred history between two Irishmen, a Scot and a French Jew. At Saybrook Ferry, Connecticut, some “country rabble” came in and to his surprise, began talking theology “so pointedly, in fact, about justification, sanctification, adoption, regeneration, repentance, free grace, original sin and a thousand other such pretty chimerical knick-knacks one would have thought they had done nothing but study divinity all their lives.”

Now the man quoted by Bobrick surely is wrong about the value of the Christian doctrines that he derides as mirage-like. But Bobrick’s account of our colonial forebears marks the difference between the conversations men have today and those of earlier times.

If you have a group of men in your life that mentors you, challenges you and forces you to think through tough issues, opinions and worldviews, you are indeed blessed! If you don’t, pray that God would bring such men in your path — men who won’t let you get by with the simple surface analysis and unexamined plodding of the average citizen.