Spunky Homeschool

The Voice of Experience

May. 2, 2006 at 10:19 AM

Homeschooling

This comment was left by Bill, a middle school principal, under my post, Can the Public Schools be fixed? It's too good to leave in just a comment box so I bumped it up.

Hi Spunky. I've read your blog occasionally with interest and this is my first response. Can public education be fixed? It has become the venue of the pagan and the sanctuary of the loathsome. It is primarily the place where students learn first their "socialized status" and its implications in the pecking order of peers. Academics come only after a sense of "social survival" occurs in the being of the child. Innocence is diminished and another culture develops in the mind of the child separate to the culture fostered at home. It is a culture of survival. Students respond differently, whether with power or prowess amongst their peers, or hiding in a sub-group that provides protection from the unwanted.

Can a system that forces this to happen to the child be fixed? Should it? How often, I don't know, a parent has told me that the child I described to them is not their own, until confronted with irrefutable evidence, followed by disbelief, tears, and cries for help.

The system as it exists forces a separation in the family whose multi-faceted wounds are difficult, if not impossible, to heal. What the system needs is fixing, like you do to an animal that you don't want to reproduce.

These thoughts of mine are from the inside of the system. I'm a middle school principal, but not for much longer. I'm making a life change and with my wife and 5 kids headed for seminary. If I can, by God's grace, help families recover from this system's inflictions and better yet, help families to avoid this system altogether, well, I believe their lives, again by God's grace, will be better for it. Someday, maybe, I'll start a blog. For now, well, I'll encourage anyone I can to avoid public education and seek God's grace to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

I wonder what our Baptist minister might say to this principal? On second thought, I don't really care. Bill, you've inspired me to continue seeking the Lord and obey HIS truth. May God continue to bless you and your family.

2 Comments and Trackbacks

posted by gabalot on May. 2, 2006 at 6:31 PM

What a fantastic post, too bad it couldn't make the evening news. I often wonder why all my Christian friends who are part of the public education system can't be honest about what really is taking place in them. I can't help but feel as though the public system is beyond help, oh I am sure that there are a few schools out there that could rise above, but on the whole I have to say no way. Maybe it is all part of what must be, and what will be before we are gathered together around the throne of God. This isn't a do nothing attitude I have but until the schools are no longer in the hands of the government real change will not be possible.

posted by creativehsmom on May. 3, 2006 at 8:48 AM

What an awesome, thoughtful and heartfelt post! It takes a person who "TRULY", truly cares about the well being of childen to come forth and say what this man has said. What he has stated is so true and may God bless him in a wonderful way for having the boldness to say what some who "should" know better wont even come close to admitting. My hat's off to you sir!
God bless,
Cathy

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