Aerie Views
Please e-mail your responses to: johair@desertchristian.org
AERIE VIEW ARCHIVES March 7 - Why get an education? (Part 1) March 14 - Why get an education? (Part 2) March 21 - Why get an education? (Part 3) April 4 - What is the real problem with people? (Part 2) May 19 - Grading Aug 27 - True Competition in Education Sept 8 - Rights and Responsibilities in Educating Children
December 2008
March 28 - What is the real problem with people? (Part 1)
God's truth in our inmost parts
At Desert Christian, we speak about three great ideas that we want to focus on and develop in each child: truth, beauty, and goodness. Our desire is that each child would learn practically and experientially what each means; that they would learn to identify truth, beauty and goodness and at the same time be able to identify what is not true, beautiful, or good. Like Hebrews 5:14 says, “… that they would learn to distinguish good from evil.”
This month I would like to address the topic of truth. I want to address one part of the topic and its application to our lives. In Psalm 51:6, David declares something about what God wants of us, “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” God wants us to be honest with ourselves. He wants us to see clearly and precisely what we are thinking and what we think about. He wants our ideas to match reality.
Each of us daily lives through and interprets events. We try to make sense of the things happening to and around us. These thoughts about reality are what make up our worldview of events. Our interpretations though can be either true or false. We can lie to ourselves about the meaning of an event and we can firmly believe that lie. In Jeremiah 17:9 God says that the human heart is deceitful. We can and do lie to ourselves. We can also be lied to and deceived by someone outside ourselves. Satan is the father of lies and he lies to us. Our sinful behaviors are really rooted in the lies we believe and so vigorously cling to. As Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
I recently read a quote, “The first step to bringing about change is to be brutally honest with yourself.” This is a Biblical idea. Romans 12:1,2; Ephesians 4:22-24 both proclaim the idea that one is to change life behaviors by stopping the behavior then working to change ones thinking (mind) and then begin to behave in an appropriate way. To change means we must be willing to evaluate what we tell ourselves and see if it passes the truth test. Remember that the feeling of something being true does not mean that it is true. God and His word are truth! So what God says and declares is what is true.
Turning from a lie involves two actions--repentance and faith! Repentance is the action of affirming what I believe is a lie and choosing to turn 180 degrees from that idea. Faith is the other side of the coin, it is the choice to believe what is true. For example, I might have failed in a subject as a child. I might have interpreted that event to mean that I am not smart. I do not feel smart! Yet what is true? Might I have misinterpreted the meaning behind my failure? What does God say about me? God wants truth in the inmost being!
Job says, in Job 12:11, "Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food”? So we need to learn what ideas taste good and are good for us and what ones are not. I want our children to taste ideas in a loving place and learn to be discerning on what to take in what is good and true.
November 3, 2008
Great Expectations: The government's interest vs. our responsibility
I was listening to Barack Obama speak the other night on the news. He said that government should do what people cannot do for themselves. He then went on to identify those areas by saying protection, education and so on. I stopped listening at the mention of education. He was saying, education is something we cannot do for ourselves, that we need government to provide education.
This is an example about what I told you before in my writings, that it is good to listen to the candidates on the issue of education. Here is where I disagree with Mr. Obama on education. Education of ones children is not the same as building a highway or raising an army (both things Government should do). Home schooling is an example of doing education without the government.
I agree that there are individuals with special needs that a family cannot educate. There is a need for special assistance. Yet that assistance can be provided through private means without the government doing it.
The problem for education when you bring government into the equation is that you politicize education. Politicians have to appear to be doing something for education. The political solutions are almost always either throwing money at the problem or providing oversight over the actions of those doing something. They do not have much power to affect what is going on in the classroom or at home.
It is a bit like what we see in our current economic situation, government was part of the problem for the housing finance markets. In the same way, government becomes part of the problem in education. It is a noble sounding aim to want all people to be able to afford a house, but the economic realities do not make the governments aims reachable. The same is true in education. To claim that a government school will have every child at a certain level is a wonderful aim; it is just so difficult since people get in the way.
Government also begins to change education when they get involved. They start having the school do things it is not good at doing. Schools become day care centers, medical centers, feeding programs, community centers. These are all good necessary things but not what a school is about first and foremost. Education suffers when the school is used for things and to do things not related to education.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 stated that government has an interest in education. They do! The Northwest Ordinance set out things the government could do to foster education, to encourage education, to promote education and to pay for education. It did not put education into the realm of those things government needed to do. This is where we have changed from our ancestors, where I would disagree with Mr. Obama. Government has an interest in promoting education, not the expectation that they provide it.
The Politics of Educational Choice
October 14, 2008
Here is the continuation of my discussion on education issues in this political cycle.
In the last article I began to speak about what should be the governments’ role in education. Related to the issue of responsibility in education is the notion of compulsory education. It was not until the rise and spread of public education (early in the last century) that the idea of compulsory education was added to the equation. Education for years had been a family decision and was completely voluntary. Involvement in education was changed from voluntary to compulsory with the arrival of large scale public education.
Students quickly figure out that education must not be too valuable if you have to make it compulsory. Does an education have value in and of itself? If so why do we force people to do it? College is not compulsory and people are free to go or not. Colleges seem to have a great many people choosing to attend and pay a lot to do so. They make the choice without it being compulsory. It should be the same for a HS education. I would do away with compulsory education after 8th grade. If you want to go to HS go, if not live with the consequences. I do not see this happening at all. It is too burned into our psyche that education K-12 has to be compulsory.
The results of making HS education voluntary would be seen in students and families attitudes toward education. In
Why is the government willing to take the responsibility of education away from parents? It seems the message is, ‘making educational decisions is hard, so we, the government, will take that responsibility for you.’ You do not have to make your child go to school, we will! You do not have to decide what goes on at school, we will! You do not have to figure out how to pay for school, we will! By surrendering these responsibilities each family loses the freedom to decide what they want. This way the government gets to control the money and content of the education instead of parents. This is what is behind all the disputes between schools and parents on sex education, creation – evolution, literature choices. If parents had real control these would not be issues, parents would vote with their feet and schools would be responsive to parents choices.
Any candidate that wants to give parents greater voice and control over educational choices for their children is someone I would support. Are you aware where each candidate stands on the issue of educational choice?
September 8, 2008
Rights and Responsibilities in Educating Children
Every four years I make it a point to watch the speeches of the Presidential and VP nominees of both parties at their respective conventions. I like to do this since it is the longest speech I will hear of either parties candidates all election. The media gives me three-second sound bites from that point on! J I like to hear each candidate explain their vision for the US and rationale for their seeking the office.
Being in the education field, I listen carefully to the candidates comments on education. This election both candidates acknowledge that US education is in trouble. McCain said we are operating with an old model, a 1950’s model. He stated that the US needs to change our approach to a model that addresses the issues and relevance of the new millennium. Obama on the other hand said the problem was a lack of funding and that increased funding would produce better results.
I see the problems in education going deeper than either of these explanations. Funding and models of education are problem areas, but not the root. If we want to change education we have to address the root issues. Then we can deal with the details.
First root problem in education I see is that we have taken educational decisions away from the people who should be responsible for the decision. Biblically and in principle, parents have the primary responsibility for their children’s education. They have the relationship and motivation to see their children grow and develop and learn. You will notice that at the college level we have none of the hand-wringing and complaints about education that we do in the primary and secondary levels. I believe this is because the decision of whether, where, and why to go to school is in the hands of the people responsible for that decision.
When I taught government I used to point out that rights are tied to responsibilities. A right to life has with it the responsibility to protect that right for other people. Parents have a right to decide their children’s’ education. When you take away peoples responsibilities you take away their rights. We have forfeited our rights related to education and that is at the core of the problem in US education.
Why would a government want to take on your responsibility? My cynical side believes it is so the government gets to decide what to teach and they get to control the purse strings. Look at the anger over tax credits and the false claim of the loss of money in education. The education establishment does not want anyone else getting money to educate. You can also look at the battles being played out related to sex education and who decides what to teach. Again, at the college level this is not a problem. People decide what they will pay and if they do not like what the college is teaching they do not go and go where what is taught is in keeping with their values and beliefs.
More to come on this…
August 27, 2008
True Competition in Education
Welcome to the start of the 2008-2009 school year. I look forward to sharing with you this coming year on the topics related to education. The year has gotten off with a bang. I do not know if you saw the recent editorial in the Tucson Citizen about Public schools and vouchers and tax credits. The editorial called for an end to tax credits because now that desegregation has been set aside the public schools are now truly competitive. You can read the editorial at this site: http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/opinion/93504.php
Besides the interesting idea that it was desegregation law that made public schools less than competitive the disturbing point they made was that tax credits are taking money away from public education. This is flatly wrong! It is disingenuous and misleading. As you can tell it made me mad! The tax credit law has not taken a cent away from state spending on education. State education spending has grown each year under the tax credit law. To imply that public school students are somehow being deprived because of this program is dishonest. In truth thousands of
In fact tax credits are actually helping public education in
Here at Desert more than 1/2 of our families benefit from the tax credit legislation. Many of these families would not be able to send their children to this school without the presence of this scholarship money. Tax credits have increased the economic diversity of our school family by allowing lower income families to attend DCS.
It was interesting that the editorial also said tax credits were in violation of the state constitution. That is completely untrue! The tax credit law has twice been ruled constitutional by the State Supreme Court and once by the US Supreme Court. The judiciary says it is in line with the state and federal constitution. One can be of the opinion that it should not be constitutional but that is different than saying it is unconstitutional.
There is a battle brewing over education. The state monopoly continues to try to remove any competitors in the arena of education. Let us all continue to expose the untruths being used to attach educational choice. Here, by the way, is an interesting article to read on the history of US education: http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v30n4/cpr30n4-1.pdf
You will not hear these things in the discussion on public education!