Zen and the Art of Home-Education (or why we do what we do and don't hate everyone else!)

There is a stereotype home-educating family from the United States that seems to also exist here in the UK - the creationist parents of socially maladjusted children afraid of contamination by “the world”. In actual fact most home educating families in the UK are not church-goers.

However, we are Christians and that is part of our motivation for home educating, but not in the way people assume.

To make it quite clear at the beginning - whilst I believe that our decision is the right one for our children, I would never presume to expect others to make the same choice, and my wife and I would support our friends in whatever decision they choose to make for their children. In the same way, we would expect the same support for our decisions.

I believe that education is one of the great liberating opportunities in our society, and want to see children from all backgrounds given exposure to education that inspires then and also encourages intellectual aspiration. I don't see any one educational system or pedagogy as offering the solution - and as such I welcome innovations - whether from the political left or right - that force society to think outside of the current received wisdom on education.

My wife and I chose to home educate for many reasons (some of which I explain below), but we have never condemned anyone or suggested that they were wrong for not making the same decisions we have. However, I am amazed at just how negative some people are when they find out we home educate our children. These have included:

• that we are somehow undermining the validity of teachers, especially Christians who believe they are called into teaching
• that we are hurting local mission by not being ‘witnesses’ at the local school
• that we see our children as ‘too good’ for the state school system
• that we want to isolate our children from the world around them
• that we are making it difficult and awkward for other parents when their children ask questions

More than anything you so often get the feeling that people wish we would just ‘fit in’ - that by choosing to home educate we make everyone’s life difficult. 

It is this need for uniformity that probably concerns me more than anything else - as if Church should be a place where we all strive to be as normal as possible so we don’t put anyone from outside off. I have posted from the amazing book called ‘Colossians Remixed’ by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat before, but I want to return to that again as what they say in their platonic style question and answer section is still so important:

Q: Won't they end up being social misfits?
A: We hope so. Yes, social misfits, that's what we long for. May it be that we raise up a generation of social misfits, because to "fit into" this culture, to find your place of comfort in it, is to be accommodated to the empire. we have argued that this is precisely what this subversive little tract called Colossians is arguing against.

No matter how awkward and difficult it is, I am afraid that I don’t want to ‘fit in’ - if that means accommodating those things in our culture that stand in opposition to the foundational values of the gospel. I want my children to grow up questioning the very foundation and structure of of our culture - to see the false promises of the zeitgeist for what they are.

The attraction of the message of Jesus is not in its normality, in how much like other people we are, but in its difference - in the chance to offer an alternative way of living. The gospel should break the stupor and stultifying effects of both the consumer society and of statist passivity. The Gospel isn’t politically left or right - it is some entirely other.

So in the end, my wife and I chose to home educate because we believe it is the best way to help our children achieve their full potential. By that I don’t mean that they will get the best paid jobs or fulfil middle-class aspirations, but that they will find out who they are,  discover their innate gifts and talent and then use them for the good of other people in the world around them. I want them to grow up to be dissidents and trouble-makers, not good little consumers or passive subjects of an authoritative state.

Raising dazed out, stupefied kids

I have been thinking a lot about why we made the decision to home educate recently. My wife and I have been reviewing our family mission statement and vision, I had a good and very provoking conversation with an old friend about this subject, and one of my current roles is the national media spokesperson for Education Otherwise.

We are both convinced that, in the end, the educational decision a family make for their kids is their own decision, and that it isn't right for anyone - an individual, a church, pressure groups or the state - to compel educational conformity upon people (the problem of neglect, abuse or similar problems notwithstanding). Actually, I think the ideal would be small, community-based educational cooperatives run through a blend of parental involvement and employed teachers, where parents are intimately involved in the philosophy and overall direction, as well as the pastoral things.

However, one of the books that came up when my wife and I were discussing these things was the excellent Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. In that they discuss their decision to home education in a question and answer format. Here are some of their thoughts:

Q: So what's the alternative? Are you saying that we all have to send out children to Christian schools?

A: Actually, we believe we need to rethink the whole notion of schooling - Christian or otherwise. Our question is this: if it is true that schooling is an institution of the modernist progress myth and is preoccupied with quantification, testing, standardization, passivity, docility and consumption resulting in a dazed, numbed-out, stupefied, disinterested, disempowered and unmotivated population of unthinking consumers, then why are Christians playing this educational game of schooling at all?

...

And insofar as Christian schools are applauded in our society for producing fine, middle class, hardworking and hard-consuming citizens, we are not sure they are providing much of an alternative.

Q: Won't they end up being social misfits?

A: We hope so. Yes, social misfits, that's what we long for. May it be that we raise up a generation of social misfits, because to "fit into" this culture, to find your place of comfort in it, is to be accommodated to the empire. we have argued that this is precisely what this subversive little tract called Colossians is arguing against.

But no, it is not a matter of isolationism. The issue here is not to isolate our children from the world, but to expose them to the world through the liberating vision of a biblical worldview. Precisely where the powers that be don't want children to make connections, don't want them to really see, we want our children's eyes to be opened. We want our kids to see through the targeted advertising of McDonalds toys, games and playlands and recognize the manipulative come-ons that they are. We want them to see through the packaging and grease in order to see that the stuff being served is not food. We want our little girls to be offended, not enamoured, by Barbie's figure. We want them to know that while the news of war that they are constantly hearing on the radio and on the street makes them worry, there are other little girls in places like Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Colombia, Guatemala, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe who have to live with the daily fear of war in their neighbourhoods. We want them to think about the little girls who work in the fields producing cash crops or who slave in sweatshops producing cute clothes for little girls.

Provoking stuff.

Martin Smith interview

Just posted the second part of my interview with Martin Smith on Everything Christian. I realy enjoyed it - he has some interesting things to say about worshipping in front of thousands of people, consumerism and the value of worship:

When we worship God we find out who we are. You find yourself looking in a mirror on a regular basis, “Is this the person I am? I need to change this. I need a redesign. I need salvation. I need forgiveness.” Worshipping God is amazing because you connect with someone extraordinary, someone eternal and you see yourself in that light.

Click here.

Part 1 is also available here.

Allotment heaven!

I am now the proud tenant of a half-plot in the local allotment site just near my house. Dreams of endless potatoes, carrots, parsnips, shallots, beans, peas etc now fill my imagination ...


Of course the reality will probably be far from this, especially in the beginning. For now, we are sharing the site with our neighbours (who are now also on the waiting list), making it more manageable - essential when you look at how the plot was when we started out.




So we have spent the last week turning this into something usable, and trying to do it without resorting to chemicals. Of course, child labour helped!

The chance to run an allotment is one I have wanted for quite a while. As well as a tiny step towards self-sufficiency, it offers good vegetables and fruit at a good price, fresh air, exercise, space for the kids to discover things of nature and opportunity to connect with other people in my community.

I am sure I will post here on how things are going!

Following Jesus Doesn't Work

Greg Boyd is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. His book last year, Myth of a Christian Nation was one of the surprise successes over here in the UK (for a book so focused on the US). In this article he starts by recounting the story of a woman he encountered:

I met a middle aged woman one day who told me she had given up on Christianity. “It just didn’t work for me,” she said. My response was: “What on earth made you think Jesus was supposed to work for you? The truth is that you were supposed to work for him.”

The language we use so often betrays us, as it did here. He continues:

It seems that many assume Jesus is supposed to be our personal magical genie who grants our wishes, at least some of the time. Such a magical view of faith is catastrophic, for people abandon what they thought was the Christian faith when it doesn’t work. And worse, people think they’re embracing the Christian faith when it does.

OUCH!

How often have I silently thought this. If I pray enough, give enough, do enough good works etc then life will be okay. If I care about the poor enough I will always have a home for my children. In the end, Jesus does not promise these things - at least when you look at the experience of those who follow God in Scripture. Greg points out the experiences of Mary, the mother of Jesus (who despite being 'favoured' had to watch her son crucified and die a painful death) and John the Baptist, left to languish in prison and suffer some serious doubts.

We, here in the western church, seem to expect an easy life as a 'right', conveniently forgetting scriptures such as,

But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that (1 Tim 6:8)

Greg expresses it this way:

To follow Jesus authentically is to die to everything the flesh-self holds dear, whether we actually lose them or not. We must die to the quest to avoid of pain and inconvenience; die to the quest for pleasure, power and fame; die to the security of our homes, family, friends and nation; and even die to the certainty of our opinions. Every attempt to gain a personal sense of worth, significance and security by what we do, what we accomplish, what we acquire and who we impress must die.

In the end, to follow Jesus is to lose my life. I would like to do that - I just sometimes wonder if I can.

Jesus commands this much, not because he is mean, but because he is more profoundly in love with us than we could possibly ever imagine. And he knows that it is this false, self-centered way of living that is keeping us from true life. When we have truly died, we discover this. To be free from the self that is addicted to the question: What’s in it for me? is to be truly ALIVE and free.

It is to enter into the kingdom of God.

But, as Jesus always taught, you can only find this life if you complete loose your life.
If you’re focusing on this life, here and now, following Jesus doesn’t “work” and we should stop telling people that it does. But if we’ll die to the attempt to make things “work” for us, we’ll discover a deeper LIFE that no longer cares about what does and doesn’t work for us. We’ll discover the LIFE of the Kingdom.

I couldn't say it any better myself - I only hope I can live it!

Modern Life is Rubbish

I have spent most of my adult life feeling removed form the world around me. I looked at the messages and expectations of the dominant society within United Kingdom and I just said to myself, “no thanks”. Apart from a very sad period of about 2 years when I was seduced by the idea of wealth and success (and failed fairly spectacularly!), I found the whole way of living in the modern world so removed from what I see in the gospels.

The thing is, I don’t want to make peace with the world because, as Damon Albarn so eloquently put it, Modern Life is Rubbish. If my life is based around the concept of get a job, get a house, get married/live together, get a bigger house, get a conservatory, get a new kitchen, remortgage to pay off the credit cards, get a pension, retire, die, then kill me now – I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THAT. I have tried to reason through some of this and find a balance, but in the last four years it has got even more clear that balance can be enemy of change, that balance can just be a synonym for accommodation – I do not want to accommodate the corrupt, selfish, blinkered, shallow and debauched value system that I see around me. So – here are the things I am working through:

What’s the big deal with property and consumerism?

Because of a whole series of circumstances, we do not own a house. This used to freak me out – I bought into the idea that I needed to own property (or actually rent it from a bank until I hoped my endowment could pay it off in my 50’s), and that I was in trouble because I didn’t. About 2 years ago (just as house prices were going through the roof), my bank begged me to take out a £220,000 mortgage – they even sat me down and offered it to me without me asking them. Looking back, the payments and house value would have left us in a terrible situation, adn I am thankful I didn't take up their offer. I would have been working to pay the mortgage and bound to it – not free to make the right decision for my family. Everything would have been coloured by the need to pay the mortgage.

The problem is that our economy is based upon the need for continual consumer spending, and the main driver of wealth creation for the last 16 years has been property. People would find equity in their house and either see it as a pension and put less into a plan, or release it to enable spending directly. Either way, our economy is now seizing up because of the lack of house sales.

I do not accept the premise of the consumer economy. If our society needs retail spending to grow then the system is wrong. I’ll repeat that – THE SYSTEM IS WRONG. I do not want to accommodate the consumer society – I want to change it. I want to live differently, and to raise my children to live differently as well. I will not conform to this. I will find a better way to live – one more in harmony with the teaching of Jesus – principles of justice, mercy, righteousness, truthfulness, generosity, sacrifice and mutuality.

But won’t you look a bit weird if you try and not live like the rest of society?

Yes.

End of paragraph.

But seriously – SO WHAT. Since when has ‘fitting in’ ever convinced anybody that there is a better way to live. If I can learn from others who are exploring this, and if I can start to live in a way that embraces the value above, I have to. I feel an imperative not to let these feelings drift until I get to my old age and regret living in-between worlds, feeling the tension of rejecting one set of values but not fully embracing another.

I know that the logical end of what I am suggesting looks very different from the individualistic way that we live now, and that it challenges the roots of our society. That both repels and attracts me in equal measure.


So what does it look like?

I don’t know. I look at some of the excellent examples that have found a different way to live, such as The Simple Way in Philadelphia, USA and the Northumbria Community in the UK and rejoice in what they do. But I want something that works here and now in Shrewsbury, Shopshire, with the people I know. I want something that I can do now.


This is just the start of my conversation, but I will continue to blog and work this out.

The New Conspirators - a book review

A new Tom Sine book is one of those publishing events that, even with working in the industry, I find myself getting excited by. Tom is perhaps best known for his books The Mustard Seed Conspiracy and Mustard Seed versus McWorld.

With The New Conspirators Tom wanted to chart the rise of a number of new Christian movements, as well as try and plot some of the future direction (his speciality). He identifies four main new streams:

• Emerging church
• Mosaic, multicultural church
• Missional church
• Contemporary monastic movement

The book is divided into five ‘conversations’

• Taking the New Conspirators Seriously
• Taking the Culture Seriously
• Taking the Future of God Seriously
• Taking the Turbulent Times Seriously
• Taking our Imaginations Seriously
  
  

The first section is a superb overview of what is happening – mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom, but also including some interesting stuff in other commonwealth countries, from inner city churches, social action projects to new forms of community. The stories are inspiring and really practical – a refreshing change from what you often see (heavy on theory, lacking on how to actually do it!).

The next three sections are all analysis of where we actually are as western culture – from religion through to commerce and society. The sections on the global village, the global mall (a phrase I first heard in the wonderful Colossians Remixed) and the imbalanced lifestyle of the west are helpful and provoking. After this, when discussing global poverty it starts to get a bit bogged down in detail and loses some of the inspirational impact.

The final section, Taking our Imaginations seriously, is far better, and much more engaging. It allowed me to feel the breadth of opportunity and possibility that exists when the messages of our culture are no longer limiting the way we might live and the impact we can have.

Overall a great book that is a useful addition to the whole discussion of where the church is going and what it can do.

Resisting the Empire

There is an interesting tradition within Jewish biblical interpretation call the Targum. This phrase, originally taken from the Aramaic translations of the Jewish scriptures and still used in this way, came to mean the blending of interpretation, translation and application of scripture.

In their book Colossians Remixed Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat apply this principle to various passages of the book of Colossians. Their main thesis in the book is that Paul wrote this letter to encourage believers to not be seduced by the values of the Roman empire and all it stood for, and that we should also do the same now with whatever worldly 'empire' dominates the ideas and practices today.

Their argument is that the empire we live under is that of global consumerism, and that the imperial nature can be seen through the oppression, commodotization and brutalization of people and the world. From this starting point they create a targum from Colossians 2:8 – 3:4. Here is a selection from that, bearing in mind that this is a blend of translation, interpretation and application:

Make sure that no one takes your imaginations captive through a vacuous vision of life rooted in an oppresive regime of truth that parades itself as something other than mere human tradition, as if it somehow had access to final and universal truth about the world apart from Christ.

...

In him you find your legitimacy, your entrance into the covenantal community, because in relation to himyour real problem – a deeply rooted sinfulness manifest in violence and self-protective exclusion – is addressed and healed.

...

Don't forget that you were once dead too – dead in the dead-end way of life that characterizes our cannibalistic and predatory culture. But now you are dead to that way of life, and God has made you alive with Christ by dealing with the real problem through radical forgiveness. You see, when the idolatrous power structures that bolster this oppressive regime nailed Jesus to the cross and poured out their fury on him, all of your debts were nailed there too. All of the ways the empire of death held you captive and robbed you of life – the exhausting and insatiable imperative to consume, the bewildering cacophony of voices calling out to us in the post-modern carnival ... the masturbatory self-indulgence of linguistic and societal games .. all of this is nailed to the cross.

Let's not beat around the bush here. What is at stake in this conflict at the cross is indeed a power struggle. And Jesus takes precisely the principalities and powers that placed him on the cross – the idols of militarism, nationalism, racism, technicism, economism – and on that very cross disarms, dethrones, conquers, and makes public example of them.

...

If all of this is true then, don't allow the front-men of these vanquished powers to tell you what to eat and drink. Don't buy into the simulated grocery stores made to remind shoppers of an era when shopping was more integral to community life. Don't be duped by advertising that tells you that various products are indispensable to constructing certain images and personas. This is all crap. They are still trying to captivate your imagination, to suck you into a globalistic regime of homogeneous consumption. Resist this McWorld nightmare with all the strength you have! Avoid the Disneyization of your consciousness. This stuff has no substance to it, no being ... but in Christ we find substance

...

If with Christ you died in your baptism to the principles of autonomous consumerism that still hold the world captive, then why do you live in a way that suggests that you are still in iron grip of its ideological vision? Why do you submit yourselves to its regulations to consume as if there were no tomorrow, to live as if community were an impediment to personal fulfillment, to live as if everything were disposable, including relationships, the unborn and the environment? ... Don't you know that copulating with the idols of this culture is like climbing into bed with a corpse that is already decomposing?