Posted in Smith New Year letter

Here is our latest news:


At the end of 2003, Barbara went in for a hip replacement operation. She was awake for most of it and was surprised at the noise and commotion going on: hammering and sawing and drilling and plenty of conversation. One of the operating team kept her up with the progress for she couldn’t actually see the action. Nurses later told us a hip replacement is one of the messiest with the largest set of tools that look for all the world like a carpenter’s kit.

The recuperation took a long time. But there was a lot more movement. Then in 2004, October, she went in for the second hip replacement.

After that first op and a bit of rest, we got straight into doing home education seminars. Bill and Diana Waring, veteran speakers to home education conferences all over the USA, Canada and more recently in the UK, East Europe and Thailand, visited NZ again. We accompanied them to conferences in Auckland, Rotorua, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch. This was all in the 16 days between 23 January and 7 February, so we still haven’t learned the trick of doing things leisurely. By the time we reached April, we’d done a total of 10 such conferences, including Whangarei and Kaitaia in the Far North.

Wytse de Vries, a process engineer, and his wife Helen joined David & Jenny Waldron and us as trustees of the Home Education Foundation. When Wytse saw the cramped little 3 x 5 meter shed we were working from (publishing Keystone Journal and TEACH Bulletin, doing research and correspondence), he started looking for ways to get us into proper office space. The owner of the warehouse and empty surgery next door was approached. When he heard we were a charitable Christian organisation, he said we could have the surgery! It is of solid Rimu (native New Zealand timber) construction with stucco exterior and clay tile roof from around 1944 and measures 6 x 10 meters. On 16 April we had it shifted onto our property, and it has been pretty much all-consuming since then. We basically gutted it then installed many meters of power and data and phone cables, networked the lot and rebuilt some walls, removed others, installed beams to keep the ceiling up, new wall linings and ceiling and carpet and paint and wallpaper and some new Rimu trim around the place. The original had lovely tongue and groove Rimu panelling in every room for the first meter up from the floor….but painted white! Our son Alanson managed to pull most of it off without shattering it, ran it across a planer to get the paint off and reconstructed it. Charmagne then oiled it and the Rimu cabinet she stripped of paint and the other Rimu trim here and there. She also papered the whole place. One wall has a huge National Geographic world map for wall paper, so the whole place looks really professional now with three private offices plus a reception/office and a meeting space.

Renton Maclachlan is a man with a vision: he has set up on a shoestring budget 24-hour-a-day FM radio stations that run top-quality creation science programmes. We helped him get one started here in Palmerston North, Genesis FM 88.7, and he helped us greatly by plastering the ceilings and putting up the covings in the office.

The Ministry of Education wanted to change the wording to the exemption application form parents need to fill in to keep their children out of schools. Their consultation process with the stake-holders - us home educators -  was next to non-existent. When a copy of the proposed changes was “leaked” to me, I consulted with a few key people up and down the country then called for an email deluge on the Ministry asking what they were up to. They aren’t used to such attention: some home educators even contacted the media and others contacted their MPs saying how unfair it was the Ministry was asking all this extra, very personal information, most of which was clearly outside of what the Education Act called for. The Ministry re-wrote their proposed changes and gave us home educators five months in which to make submissions on it. Though not working together, but communicating among ourselves, home education support groups all over NZ seemed to come to a reasonable consensus of what we’d like to see in an exemption form. The ball in now in the Ministry’s court, and we’re just waiting to see what they’ll come up with.

Barbara has been a full-time mother and tutor to seven children now, 24-hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for the past 24 years. We have never farmed the job out to any play centre, kindy or school and only rarely resorted to a baby sitter. We have been keen observers of our children and know, I reckon, far more than any professional could work out, since the pro only sees the children for a couple of hours. We and the other long-term home educators around have by now accumulated a vast storehouse of observational and experiential knowledge of children that is quite unique and different from what social scientists encounter. We are convinced that much of what such professionals advise about young people is based on what they see in these wee snapshots they get, and that is almost always of children who are schooled, that is, separated from their parents and siblings for large chunks of time each day and consequently placed under different authority structures, structures which sometime not only contradict each other, but are sometimes positively hostile to one another. We submit that home educated children’s worldviews are very different as a result. This growing stock of home educated youngsters are re-writing the “norms” if the pros would care to talk to those who know: full time parents.

We’ve owned the house next door and rented it out for about nine years. The last few have been terrible with tenants who don’t pay their rent and cause damage. Wytse said we could sell it easy. Yeah, right. So when the first and only family who looked at it made a starting offer way above what we thought we’d get, and when the sale and transfer were completed within the week, we were more than a little surprised and extremely pleased! It is so good to be out of the landlord business...and we retired the mortgage and paid off all we owed our four eldest children as well.

Genevieve (24) has taken over the shopping and planning and cooking and is making herself indispensable in the house and in running the Home Education Foundation. She and I went to a conference in Wellington in June that was to promote the repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act. Such repeal would expose to prosecution for assault all parents who utilise the ancient Biblical institution of spanking their children as a means of training and correction. We were scared at the way they twist the language, use highly emotive irrational links to real abuse cases and are blatantly selective in the statistics and studies they choose to quote. 150 of them vs. the two of us. Over the two days we certainly prevented it from being a social engineering talk-fest and we passed out a lot of printed matter we’d designed for the occasion giving the totally neglected other side of the issue: the Christian origins, motivations, methodologies, aims, objectives and outcomes of spanking plus parental responsibility and liberty issues.

Zach (23) has been working in the USA for four years for Rainbow Resource Center, Toulon, Illinois, one of the largest suppliers of educational resources to home educators in the world. He recently announced his engagement to Megan Schneider, daughter of Bob & Linda Schneider, founders and owners of Rainbow. A few days later he flew out here to NZ for a last time with the gathered Smith clan. Megan is flying out to join us for a few days over New Years, so we are excited looking forward to that!

Alanson (20) joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force as an Avionics Technician. Without any school-leaving certificate to show what time he’d done in school (because he’d done no time!), his acceptance depended on his entrance exam score. Wouldn’t you know it: technically he failed the exam by missing one of the 10 “must know” questions among all the rest. However, his over all score was so high they let him in. Then at the end of his basic training, he won the trophy for academic excellence!

Charmagne (17) is still doing Highland Dancing and will start taking in her own students soon. She also has instruction in piano and voice, and she has taught Alanson and I the bass parts to some hymns...in fact, we went busking in the Square singing Christmas hymns and did reasonably well financially!

Jeremiah (12) took on the lawn-mowing this year and continues to do well with his trumpet lessons. He has also started writing a book, and is up to chapter 9.

Jedediah (7) still hasn’t lost any teeth, but is learning to read and write well.

Kaitlyn (4) is the J boys’ full sibling and joined us in February this year. She and Jedediah are great play mates, and Kaitlyn loves to sing the hymns (her favourite is Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”!) and memorising Scripture.

The wicked leaders of the present Labour Government of NZ are destroying as much of society’s Christian institutions built up over the centuries as their legislation can. But we know that Jesus Christ is Lord and sovereign over all. He will use the disasters these people are causing for His good purposes: refining those who are His and punishing those who are His enemies.

Yours in Christ's service,
Craig & Barbara Smith