Posted in The Principle Approach: A Summary

 love the outlines and guidelines, but now what?

            This is where Christian Scholarship comes in.  The outline merely acts as a roadmap or as guideposts of where you want to go.  You do not have to cover every point.  Again, this is where freedom in education comes into play, which allows you to cover items reflected in your study.  Of course, we cannot expect our children to practice Christian Scholarship until we do so ourselves, which is a lot of what the Self-Directed Study encompasses. 

            Among other aspects, Christian Scholarship includes Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, the Word Study Format, 4R-ing and Notebooking.  Bear with me as I go through these items, and then we’ll take a hands-on approach with the first week of the history outlines in my K-4 outlines… “Introduction to History as Christ, His Story”. 

Christian Scholarship

            Back to philosophy…just briefly… 

“American Christian scholarship has its seedbed in the colonial period which began with the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 and produced the highest rate of literacy in America the world has ever enjoyed!  Several Pilgrim fathers were Cambridge-educated.  However, William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Plantation for nearly four decades, was a self-taught man who learned several languages including Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures.  He brought his library with him on the “Mayflower”, and when he died it was a collection of many volumes.

            The average colonial was a man or woman of ennobled Christian character who could reason Biblically and apply those principles to all areas of life to such a degree that when the Europeans read the American State Papers, Moses Coit Tyler, historian of American literature, indicates that ‘they were found to contain nearly every quality indicative of personal and national greatness.  The colonists’ familiarity with history, extensive legal learning…and lucid exposition of Constitutional principles, showed, indeed, that somehow, out into the American wilderness had been carried, the very accent of cosmopolitan thought and speech.’  Parents, pastors, and patriots alike played a great role in the education of our distinguished forefathers and all without state-of-the-art computer labs!  Such is the urgent need of modern America!”

The Noah Plan History & Geography Curriculum Guide, pg. 99

            What should our goal be in education as Homeschool parents…the same as for the average colonial…that our children will be men and women “of ennobled Christian character who could reason Biblically and apply those principles to all areas of life”.   

Christian Scholarship includes:

¨      Effectively articulating and implementing knowledge in the family, workplace, and civil government

¨      Reason from “cause to effect” with the revelation of Scripture

¨      Personal research from primary sources, reflection, and lucid writing

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Staying faithful,

Karen