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.

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.

What does it mean to be Christian in the UK?

This post was partly inspired by Phil's comments on the recent debates on embryology and abortion in parliament this week - see here for more info.

It got me thinking - I always feel really uncomfortable by much of the Christian response at times like this - especially the alienating, strident and above all, apocalyptic tone adopted by Churches and Christian pressure groups - something is always the 'thin end of the wedge'.

I have to be honest, I cannot help but think that these issues are more nuanced and subtle than we give them credit for. I am naturally a non-scientific person. I distrust the grand claims of science to solve the ills of the world, and also for it to be free from moral control as if it were beyond morality (think Hitler). However, I do find myself out of step with the loudest Christian voices on many issues:

Abortion

Abortion is always a terrible thing. In most cases it is an absolute wrong with no grey areas (there may be some exceptions to this). However, we do not live in a world where everyone will think like this. The experience of women who were forced by familial pressure (or their own desperation) to seek an illegal abortion is enough to persuade me we want to avoid that. So - I guess I do support limited early termination - not because it is right at all - it is very wrong - but as a very unsatisfactory sticking plaster to prevent two evils being commit ed instead of one. This really pains me - legislation the ending of a life is something I find repulsive, but it may be the lesser of all the evils.

Homosexuality

Hmm - I am pretty sure the bible condemns homosexual practice - the greek word is pretty specific but I blush to describe it here!. It does not condemn homosexual orientation (whatever that is), homosexual feelings, or being in a loving (non-sexual) life-long same-sex relationship. As far as I can see. However, the Church should have the right to hold this position. It does not have the right to dictate how the rest of society behave, and nor should it. It this country decides to allow gay marriage then that is up to that society. Why is Gay marriage making a country that has done so much harm to so many people during the last two centuries LESS Christian? Also, is a life-long gay relationship really as sinful as a serially monogamous heterosexual one? Is it not hypocritical to allow married divorcees full membership in the church and not those in a gay partnership? I'm not sure but I do wonder.


Embryology

This is an emotive issue - and I do worry that we have a situational ethical approach here - "anything is ok if it can one day help someone" sort of thing. That frees science from moral accountability which leads to what C S Lewis called 'scientism' where the scientist becomes the dictator of behaviours within society. However, research on embryos that are only a few days old is a moral, but not a practical, wrong. The ten day old embryo has no nervous system, cannot feel pain, is not suffering. In that sense it is very different from mid to late term abortion. But if we accept life already exists then it is a moral wrong. BUT - it is not in the same league as mid-to-late-term abortion, where there is real suffering, and we weaken the argument on that by equating them

Anyway - my rant over - I am just trying to sort through these issues.