Monthly Archives: August 2014

Unschooling

Gary North and the Unschooled Disciple

Like him or hate him (and there would not be many who had an ambivalent opinion), all must agree that Gary North’s life has been an amazing string of accomplishments.  At age 18 he was converted to Christ, and soon after his conversion he realized that he only had one life to live, at the end of which he was to give an account of it before the Great White Throne of Judgment.

Gary believed he was called to write a theory of economics that was consistently based on the Bible, but in scanning the economic literature over the centuries from the time of Christ, he could not find any serious writing on the issue of Biblical Christian economics.  So, he set about writing an economic commentary on the whole Bible.  He allocated 10 hours each week, 50 weeks a year, and in just over 39 years he completed a 31-volume economic commentary on the whole Bible.  Gary North has read, studied and commented on every verse in the Bible that has something to do with economics.

Having completed that task, and having written a plethora of books on other subjects that caught his attention along the way, Gary North, in his early 70s, is now embarking on a task of writing a consistently Biblical Christian theory of economics with accompanying multi-media teaching material, using his own work as an authority to do so.

Gary North has critiqued every other economic theory that is in existence.  He would have to be the world’s, and perhaps history’s, most eminent expert on economics.

Imagine what could be achieved by Christian unschoolers who are encouraged to pursue their passion–their vocation and call of God upon their lives–with Gary North’s accomplishments held up as an example of what can be done by someone with a long-term vision, and freedom to become an expert in one field.

As I think of the possibilities of unschooling, and reflect upon the accomplishments of one man, Gary North, I imagine the day when thousands upon thousands of Biblical Christian unschoolers  release their lives’ works to the world, and there is a radical shift in how life is lived on the basis of thoroughly researched, expert Biblical Christian scholarship.  In that day the Scripture shall be fulfilled which says:

“It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations will come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob, and he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’  For out of Zion shall go forth the law (teaching), and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Micah 4:1-2).

http://www.garynorth.com/

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Discipleship, Unschooling

Maturity is the goal of education, not just accumulated information

Amongst my research data, one of my respondents said, “Education is about growing a child into maturity.”  Maturity is a recurrent theme throughout the Bible, and lack of maturity is a cause for discipline, or even judgment.

Jesus commanded, in Matthew 5:48, “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  The word translated perfect could just as well be translated as ‘mature,’ and in fact, in the Amplified Bible, the passage is translated to read, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect [that is, grow into complete maturity of godliness in mind and character, having reached the proper height of virtue and integrity].”

The Apostle Paul picked up this theme when he wrote: “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.  For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.  You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.  But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.  Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity … and this we will do if God permits (Hebrews 5:11-6:3).

The commandments of Jesus, as they apply to every area of life, are the words of righteousness that Paul is referring to.  Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).  In fact, it is impossible to please God without such obedience, through the help of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:7-8).  It is through regularly putting these words into practice that spiritual growth takes place.  It is through regularly putting these words into practice that a sense of good and evil is developed.

This is why the great education passage in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 says, “… You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, …”.  Not just as information to be committed to short-term memory for a test, and then forgotten; No! No! No!  Children are to have these commandments demonstrated by willingly obedient parents, who gently, but firmly discipline their children into a life-style of obedience, not as a duty, but as a heart-felt expression of love towards God, and appreciation for all the benefits He has bestowed upon us through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The reward for maturity is an inheritance, and the promised inheritance is the earth.  Jesus was given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18) when he completed His obedient duty to His heavenly Father.  This was the fulfillment of God’s promise that He made to His Son, recorded in Psalm 2: “I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.'”  This same reward is given to those who are mature in Christ: “In Him we have obtained an inheritance, … And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things TO THE CHURCH, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:11, 22).  “… made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved–and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, …” (Ephesians 2:5-6).  “… to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that THROUGH THE CHURCH the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities …” (Ephesians 3:8-10).  “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).  “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world …” (Romans 4:13).  “… the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring–not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, …” (Romans 4:16).

If all we do is help children to accumulate information, coaching them to commit it to memory so that they can pass tests, and examinations, then we fail them miserably.  Doing will always precede knowing.  You do not know, if you are not doing.  A head full of information, without corresponding doing only fills with pride; “puffeth up”.

Unschooling children, through a discipleship emphasis, should be a process of maturation, so that the children will become suitable recipients of the inheritance that Christ has reserved for them: cities (Luke 19:17), nations (Psalm 2:8), and the earth (Matthew 5:5).

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Home Schools, Home-Based Education

Defining the Terms

George Orwell, in his book, 1984, illustrated the power that comes from defining terms.  New Speak had the capacity to make anything to mean whatever the controllers of a society wanted it to mean.  People with a radically different agenda have been redefining terms for political advantage forever.  My wife cannot use her middle name in public places, because what once meant a happy, fun-loving disposition now refers to a life-style choice that my wife has no desire to have anything to do with.

Since the early 1960s, when Rev Dr Rousas J Rushdoony acted as an expert witness in support of parents who were taken to court because they chose to educate their children at home, the terms home school or homeschool have been widely used to describe such education.  I have chosen to use this term in my dissertation, and throughout this blog site, in a more precise way.  When I use the term home school, I am meaning the setting up of a school-like environment and conducting schooling in the home.

I am now proposing a different term to be used as the coordinating term that describes the education of children out of a home as the base for such an education.  The term I propose to be used is: ‘home-based education’.  Home-based education includes home schooling (as I have defined it) as one of the modes of home-based educational delivery, but home-based education also includes unschooling and radical unschooling as alternative modes of home-based education.

Home-based education is conducted in the context of living life in the company of others; particularly in the company of other family members.  Every part of life is an opportunity to learn something.  This could include learning from formal academic studies, household chores, engaging in communication events with other members of the family, and having foundation skills and ideas developed in young impressionable minds.  The Fabian Socialists and Marxists understand the importance of capturing the young mind, before it is shaped by the family, the church, and other local community sources of skills and knowledge.  This is why they are so adamant about having children sent to school to be socialized (i.e. be indoctrinated into the mindset of socialism).

Home-based education is not home-bound.  The home is an important base, from which the members of the family move in and out.  Amongst the Australian Central Desert First Nations People, the Warlpiri, they have a kinship system (‘skin system’ – has nothing to do with skin colour, it is merely a corruption of the term kinship), and the Jangala/Jampijinpa Nangala/Nampijinpa clan have a concept of complementary states of water.  One state is static water, and the other state is moving water.  Both are critically important.  Static water, such as a billabong, provides a sanctuary for fish and birds to feed and breed in and around.  However, if the water remains static for too long, then the billabong either dries up, or goes stagnant.  In the cycles of the seasons, moving water must flow in and out of the billabong to provide fresh water, to aerate and oxygenate, to flush out accumulated rubbish, and to enable fish and birds from other areas to mix with the fish and birds of the billabong, to strengthen the gene pool.

Home-based education needs to have a safe sanctuary to withdraw to, but it must not become a stagnant pool, so insular and protective, that it becomes stale and stagnant.  This highlights the difference between home-based education and home schooling.  Home schooling is so home focused, that there is no (or very little) interaction with the broader community, and there is no trust that other members of the community can have a positive input into the lives of the young family members.

God has ordained that the home, the church and the market place have a role to play in the development of an educational environment for the younger members of the family.  Certainly, the parents have the primary role of being the gate-keepers of the family, and they need to be discerning as to who they expose their children to.  The church has a very important role in helping parents to develop a godly sense of discernment, and should work with the family to set up safety barriers and limits as to who, in the market place, has educational access to the children.  However, no sets of parents are able to supply everything that each member of the family needs to have a rich and meaningful education.

 

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Schooling

What are the characteristics of schooling that make schools schools?

In my research, one of my respondents made the comment:

“On the other hand [in contrast to good education], schooling means: classrooms, no learning and knowledge; when things are learned it has nothing to do with information, it is not interesting and not cool.”

From her perspective there were certain characteristics of schooling that make schools schools.  She held those characteristics up as being anti-educational.

The first of the characteristics is that schooling is done in a classroom.  The great Athenian educator, Socrates, avoided classrooms.  He chose to conduct his lessons in the midst of life being lived.  Cole, in her book, A History of Education: Socrates to Montessori, wrote that:

“… Socrates taught, but not in a school. It was in the marketplace, in the gymnasiums, and in the streets that Socrates carried on his life work of teaching young and old Athenians to know themselves, to know what was good, and to know what conditions influenced the development of virtue. He did not withdraw from life in order to study it under carefully controlled laboratory conditions but rather went joyfully out to meet it where it was whirling along at its busiest” (Cole, 1966, p. 10).

This is of course where Jesus did most of his teaching as well.

When my respondent said that in schools there was no knowledge and that when things were learned they had nothing to do with information, I interpreted that to mean that there was a disconnect between the information being communicated through the classroom lessons, and her everyday experience of life.  How much of school work is relevant to how many of the students?  Sure, a very small minority of the students will go on to higher education, and will spend the rest of their lives contemplating the esoteric and the ethereal, disconnected from the challenges and frustrations of living in a fallen world that requires practical wisdom to survive.  And much of school and schooling prepares those few for such a life.  But what about the rest?  Are they being equipped with entrepreneurial skills so that they are not dependent upon finding a job? Don’t have to depend upon government support?  Can they be productive and get paid for their initiative and industry?  Are they being taught how to be useful through mastery of practical, hands-on skills?  Are they interacting with a range of people, outside their peer group, and being challenged to develop communication skills in a range of circumstances, through a range of registers?

During the beginnings of the Global Financial Crisis nearly 53% of new university graduates in the United States of America were either unemployed or underemployed, and they had upayable study debts of between US$30,000 and US$300,000 at the end of their schooling experience; no employable skills, and no entrepreneurial skills (Weissmann, 2012).  At the very same time, young unschooled teenagers were earning between US$200,00 and US$1.5M annually from internet-based businesses [completely without schooling, but because of relevent unschooling, very entrepreneurial and productive – during a world-wide depression] (Investopedia, 2012).

I would suggest that in the majority of schools, the answer to all the questions above is, “No!”  Children are corralled into age-segregated classrooms, they are given mountains of busy work, required to memorize information for tests, but not shown how the information applies to developing healthy relationships, how to solve complex ethical challenges, or how to be productive and useful in life.

When my respondent said that school and school work was “not interesting and not cool”, she was indicating that the information being communicated is standardized.  Each of the attendees in a school classroom is uniquely created by God.  Their learning styles, passions, interests, and call of God upon their lives are unique.  But how can one teacher cater to the uniqueness of all the students in the classroom.  It is not possible.  I tried for 26 years, and was a complete and utter failure.  And it was not because I am a poor teacher.  I am a good teacher, and I have many one-on-one successes to demonstrate that I am a good teacher.  However, the classroom with one teacher taking care of nearly 30 children (and many more in non-western classrooms) is not an environment that can facilitate individuality.  Montesorri classrooms come close, but not as close as the unschooling environment.

Of course, there are many more characteristics of schooling that can be discussed.  However, these were the characteristics that came to mind from the response of one of my respondents.

Cole, L. (1966). A History of Education: Socrates to Montessori. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Investopedia. (2012). 10 Successful Young Entrepreneurs.   Retrieved 31/05/2014 12:30 AM, 2014, from http://www.investopedia.com/slide-show/young-entrepreneurs/?article=1

Weissmann, J. (2012). 53% of Recent College Grads are Jobless or Underemployed — How?   , from http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/53-of-recent-college-grads-are-jobless-or-underemployed-how/256237/

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Funding

Government involvement in education in Australia

In my dissertation I argue strongly that education is part of the God-defined jurisdiction of the family, the church and the marketplace, but the state has no God-given or God-defined mandate to be involved in education (except maybe military academies, because defense is part of the state’s jurisdiction).

In Australia, because the early colonists were mostly state-dependent prisoners, there were insufficient tithe-paying members of the church to generate the funds for the church to get on with the business that God had called her to be engaged in (which included the business of training fathers to teach their children).  Public funds were distributed to the church from the beginning (particularly for education), so that there has arisen a mindset of dependence upon the state in the church — Anglicare, Baptistcare, Salvation Army, Frontier Services, etc., all receive government funding to enable their organizations to go about the business that God has called the church to be involved in.  Try preaching the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as part of these state-funded services, and you will see how little these church organizations really are ministries of the church.  They are state functionaries in practice, church ministries in name only.

When Christians have no concern about government involvement in welfare, infact, when many Christians are on the cutting edge of advocacy for increased government involvement in the church’s affairs, there is no pang of conscience about government involvement in education.  How many Christian schools receive government funding?  It has come to the point that Christians in every state and territory, in Australia, (except for South Australia), are not permitted to set up their own education facilities without them being registered by a government agency.  The costs of setting up static, purpose-built schools is beyond the financial reach of most Christian parents, so state-funding is called upon to subsidize.  He who pays the piper calls the tune.

The Safe Schools* initiative being rolled out in Victoria, and being planned to be rolled out to all schools across Australia that receive government funding, is a demonstration of how much political correctness is attached to accountability for the use of public funds in education.

The Homeschool Regulations in New South Wales are an illustration of how boldly intrusive governments in Australia have become, demanding that home-based education look like schools, in the home**.  This is one reason why we need to help home-based educators make a shift from using the term home school, when they are unschooling.  Home schools can be registered.  An unschooling life style (i.e. living as if schools do not exist) is outside the state definition.

We have a long way to go in helping the church in Australia to take on the mind of Christ in the realm of education.  But we must begin the journey, and we must commence the task of trialling different things until we get something that works.  If we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we have always got.

* https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/unease-over-safe-schools-coalition-let-boys-be-boys-and-girls-be-girls

** http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/parents/pdf_doc/home-edu-info-pack-13.pdf

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Schools

Schools as Total Institutions

Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2011). Research Methods in Education. London: Routledge, make mention of Goffman’s 1968 work on Total Institutions.  Goffman’s study was centred on a mental institution, but the findings could equally apply to other institutions, such as the military, a prison, and such like.  The following is a list of the qualities that make an institution a total institution, according to Goffman:

  • The institution is convened for a specific purpose
  • All aspects of life take place in the same place and under the same single authority
  • Every part of the member’s normal daily activities takes place in the company of many others
  • All members are treated the same and are required to do the same things together
  • The daily activities are precisely and tightly scheduled by a controlling authority and officials, and through formal rules that are tightly enforced
  • The sever activities are part of a single, overall plan that is intended to fulfil the aims of the organization
  • There is a division between the managers and the managed (e.g. the inmates and the hospital staff; the teachers and the students)
  • The inmates have limited or no contact with the outside world but the officials do have contact with the outside world
  • Access to the outside world for inmates may be physically or institutionally restricted, controlled or forbidden
  • There is some antagonism between the two groups, who hold hostile stereotypes of each other and act on the basis of those stereotypes, often based on inequalities of power
  • Officials tend to feel superior and powerful whilst inmates tend to feel inferior and powerless
  • The cultures and cultural worlds of the officials and inmates are separate
  • The two worlds – of officials and inmates – have limited penetration of each other
  • There is a considerable social distance between the two groups
  • Inmates tend to be excluded from knowledge of decisions made about them
  • Incentives (for work, behaviour) and privileges have greater significance with the institution than they would in the outside world
  • There are limited and formal channels of communication between the members of the two worlds
  • Release from the institutions is often part of the privilege system (Cohen, Manion, Morrison, 2011, p. 581)

Cohen, Manion and Morrison also add, “It can be seen that these features can apply to several different total institutions, of which schools are an example” (2011, p. 581).

No wonder many students rebel against the prison-like feel of schools.  Would they respond differently if education was delivered in a different way?

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deschooling, Ivan Illich, Unschooling

Some thought provoking quotes from Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich published Deschooling Society in 1970.  The concept of deschooling has moved on from Illich’s definition.  However, many of the ideas in his book are worth revisiting.

Illich, I. (1970). Deschooling Society. Cuernavaca, Mexico: CIDOC.  Downloadable from: http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html

p. xix  “Universal education through schooling is not feasible.  It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools.  Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education.  The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.”

p. 4  “Everywhere not only education but society as a whole needs ‘deschooling’.”

p. 13  “A … major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching.  Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of leaning under certain circumstances.  But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, … has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.”

pp. 13-14  “There are very few skills that cannot be mastered by intensive drill over a relatively short time at a cost far less than the cost of 12 years of schooling.”

p. 16  “Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value of licenses.  Certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind.”

p. 17  “… discrimination in favour of schools which dominates … discussion on refinancing education could discredit one of the most critically needed principles for educational reform: the return of initiative and accountability for learning to the learner or his most immediate tutor.”

pp. 17-18  “… (the) two-faced nature of learning: drill and an education.  School does both tasks badly, partly because it does not distinguish between them.”

p. 20  “The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.”

p. 23  “A deschooled society implies a new approach to incidental or informal education.”

pp. 26-27  “… I shall define ‘school’ as the age-specific, teacher-related process requiring full-time attendance at an obligatory curriculum.”

p. 28  “The school system is a modern phenomenon, as is the childhood it produces.”

p. 29  “If there were no age-specific and obligatory learning institutions, ‘childhood’ would go out of production.”

p. 31  ” The most important role of schools is to create jobs for accredited teachers, no matter what their pupils learn from them.”

p. 32  “The school teacher is a ‘secular priest’.”

p 39  “We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling.”

p. 40  “Once we have learned to need school, all our activities tend to take the shape of client relationships to other specialized institutions.  Once the self-taught man or woman has been discredited, all nonprofessional activity is rendered suspect.  In school we are taught that valuable learning is the result of attendance; that the value of learning increases with the amount of input; and, finally, that this value can be measured and documented by grades and certificates.”

p. 40  “Most learning is not the result of instruction.  It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.”

p. 48  “School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught.  Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition.”

p. 48  “School either keeps people for life or makes sure that they will fit into some institution.”

p. 75  “Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent.”

p. 76  “A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.  Such a system would require the application of constitutional guarantees to education.  Learners should not be forced to submit to an obligatory curriculum, or to discrimination based on whether they possess a certificate or a diploma.  Nor should the public be forced to support, through a regressive taxation, a huge professional apparatus of educators and buildings which in fact restricts the public’s chances for learning to the services the profession is willing to put on the market.  It should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational.”

p. 91  “To guarantee access to effective exchange of skills, we need legislation which generalizes academic freedom.  The right to teach any skill should come under the protection of freedom of speech.  Once restrictions on teaching are removed, they will quickly be removed from learning as well.”

p. 92  “At their worst, schools gather classmates into the same room and subject them to the same sequence of treatment in math, citizenship and spelling.  At their best, they permit each student to choose one of a limited number of courses.  In any case, groups of peers form around the goals of teachers.  A desirable educational system would let each person specify the activity for which they sought a peer.”

p. 93  “The inverse of school would be an institution which increased the chances that persons who at a given moment shared the same specific interest could meet–no matter what else they had in common.”

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Bursts of Inspiration in Other Directions

The Power of the Sub-conscious

I have just realized that this web site is predominantly black and white.  This colour scheme was not chosen consciously, it just took my fancy at the time.  However, as I have thought upon this phenomenon, from deep within my sub-conscious awareness, a song arose:

Good old Collingwood forever, we know how to play the game

Side by side we stick together, to uphold the Magpies’ name

Hear the barrackers a shouting, as all barrackers should

Oh the premiership’s a cake-walk, for the good old Collingwood

More info

For those who have no idea what this is all about, then don’t worry about the ramblings of an old man.  Continue on in your blissful ignorance.

For those who do  know what I am writing about:

“Carn the Pies!”

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Accelerated Christian Education (ACE)

Some Comments on my Involvement with Accelerated Christian Education (ACE)

My experience with Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) stretches all the way back to 1981, when, on our honeymoon, my wife and I visited the Christian Life Community Centre in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.  We were introduced, at that time, to the school that was associated with the church, and which was using the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum and mode of educational delivery (the school is now called Toowoomba Christian College (TCC), and has not used the ACE material for a long time).  We were told that the program enabled Christian parents to provide a Christian education for their children.  The program had been brought to Toowoomba from Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, where it had been introduced into Australia in late 1976, and was being used by Mountains Christian Academy.  My wife and I joined Christian Life Community in 1982, shortly after I was discharged from the Army on 11th May, of that year.

From early 1984 to late 1986 I studied at the Darling Downs Institute of Advance Education (in Toowoomba) the units that led to my obtaining a Diploma of Teaching (Primary).  I did very well in my studies, achieving 17 Distinctions (A’s), 10 Credits (B’s), 2 Pass (C’s) and 1 Ungraded Pass (P).  I then went, in 1987, to Bible College in the Blue Mountains and obtained a Diploma of Biblical Studies with Honours (subsequently I have obtained a Bachelor of Education, a Master of Education (Leadership,) a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, and am in the latter stages of a Doctor of Philosophy (Education) degree).  It was my hope that I would be employed by the Christian Life Community Centre School.  However, I was not.  So, I never got to work in an ACE School, but I did get to see, at close hand, how an ACE school functioned.  I read through many of the PACEs, witnessed the children seated in their cubicles with star charts, flags, no communication, waiting, independent scoring (after getting permission), and everything else that characterized an ACE school in those days.

Whilst working on my Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology and Teaching Methodology units for my Diploma of Teaching (Primary) I came across the work of B. F. Skinner and his Behaviourism School.  I was particularly interested in his teaching machines, which reminded me so much of the ACE way of educational delivery.

My first teaching appointment was at the Christian Outreach College (COC) in Toowoomba, which also started as an ACE school, but which very early on in its history dropped the ACE curriculum and embraced the Queensland state curriculum.  By the time I was teaching at COC Toowoomba, it was like a regular school, with age-segregated classes, using traditional didactic approaches to educational delivery.  TCC was still an ACE school at that time.

As I taught at COC it became clearer and clearer to me that the ACE system, delivered in a school context (as originally conceived) was a defective mode of educational delivery.  Sentences are important in the development of complete thought.  Writing sentences is an important part of the process of creating a multi-sensory connection between the knowledge that is to be engaged, learning, long-term memory, and the practical usefulness of the knowledge.  By getting children to simply fill in spaces with words was getting them to focus on isolated incidents in the text, and not drawing them into the complete thoughts being communicated.  I came to the conclusion that ACE was not teaching children to think, it was indoctrinating them and brainwashing them into a set worldview.  The set worldview was Dispensational Fundamentalism.  It became my opinion that ACE PACEs could only be useful, if after filling in the spaces, the children were required to engage with the text by writing summaries in full sentences, or at the least, copying some of the sentences completely in another exercise book, so that the thoughts in the sentences could be considered in their entirety, not just key words being memorization so that they can be written into the spaces of the tests.

I went to Canberra in 1998 and worked with Light Educational Ministries.  In Canberra I was trained in Intensive Phonics, both in Spalding Phonics and LEM Phonics.  It was that training that convinced me that a multi-sensory, multi-modal approach to education was essential for solid learning (this was explored in my Master of Education (Leadership) final dissertation**).  ACE was neither multi-sensory, nor was it multi-modal.  By this time, also, I had become a Biblical Christian, rather than a New Testament Christian (as exemplified in Dispensational, Fundamentalism).  ACE was now further down in my consideration of educational approaches: it was defective in its pedagogy, in its curriculum content and in the worldview that it was seeking to imbed into young minds.  I wanted to be generous, so I thought that it might be a useful way for Christian parents to bridge into homeschooling.  ACE, by 1993, was the largest provider of resources for Christian homeschoolers in Australia*.  However, whenever I spoke to parents who were considering the use of ACE material, I always advised them to get the children to interact with other materials outside of the ACE provided PACEs, and to get the children to summarize the PACEs into a separate notebook, or at least copy some of the sentences in their entirety into the notebook, so that the children were engaging in complete thoughts.

Amongst my research respondents, I received a range of comments, in regards to the ACE program.  They ranged from: “It was done very badly, … fruitloops were using ACE … ACE was a crappy progam; it was childish … We cheated all the way through our home schooling … focused on academics more than the social elements of education … I was so lonely … I hated schooling” through to: “It (ACE) is a brilliant curriculum … a curriculum that builds on itself … the curriculum enables the child to take pauses, and when they are ready again, to continue their progression through the curriculum. … there are no gaps, and there is no wasted time having to go back over things–minimize gaps”.  One respondent reported that the ACE material was: “boring material … there were entire books of time tables, and I had to work for 45 minutes at a time through the books … I remember there were sentences and I had to fill in gaps with words.  It was all writing stuff.  There was not much talking. … I was mostly expected to finish a certain number of pages.”

The family that reported the worst experiences with ACE material, was a family that employed the material in a home school context that followed the ACE Procedures Manual implicitly.  By bringing an ACE School into the home, the worst elements of ACE were concentrated and the result was a hatred for education and learning, which spilled over into fractured family relationships.

The family that reported the best experiences with ACE material threw the Procedures Manual out the window (metaphorically), and used the PACEs as resources to explore ideas,rather than as an end in themselves.  They were used as a jump-off point to pursue other lines of thought, and there were many other educational aspects to their home-based education than simply being schooled by the Manual.

I am still of the opinion that an ACE education is defective pedagogically, in academic content, and in its brand of Christian world and life view.  However, I do concede that some people may be able to use the ACE resources to good effect, if they use the PACEs as a jumping-off point to then go and do lots of other pedagogically sound activities.  I would never try to stop families using ACE material, but I would always counsel them to use the material interactively and creatively, and never use it as a tool to keep their children in isolation from others.  At its best, this is cruel, and at its worst it is abusive.  Children need socialization – not in schools, but in the context of learning alongside significant others with a range of ages and life experiences.  ACE, as it was originally conceived, militates against this.

For a more detailed critique of Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), refer to: http://leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com/

 

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Socialization

Is it true that kids can only be socialized in a school environment?

Now, this is a question that can be very frustrating, because the answer is both yes and no.  It all depends upon what is meant by the word ‘socialize’.

One of my research respondents said, “The definition of socialization is essential in understanding this question.”  And they were dead right.  How we define the process of socialization will determine where and how the socialization process needs to take place.

Socialists of many stripes, including so-called Christian socialists, dominate the schooling system at all levels.  A former Education Minister in the Federal Government (who became a Prime Minister) is a self-proclaimed Fabian Socialist*, and has advanced the socialist cause in schools from her elevated positions of civil authority (think Australian Curriculum).  Teachers’ Unions are socialist fronts and text books are written from a socialist perspective.  Karl Marx, the father of modern socialist thinking, in Part II of his Communist Manifesto advocated, amongst other things, “Free education for all children in public schools.”

Socialization, therefore, is the process whereby children are indoctrinated into the mindset of socialism.  Socialism is a condition of helpless dependence upon the state.  The more dependent people are upon the state, the stronger the socialist hold will be upon a society.  The ultimate end of socialism is the total control, by the state, over every minute aspect of the lives of the members of the state (think the book, 1984**).

Given this definition and context for socialization, the answer of course is, school is the most efficient institution to facilitate the socialization of a large number of children.

However, socialization can be defined in a different way, and it is usually the way that unsuspecting parents have been taught to think about the word when confronted by teachers and others advocating that their children need to go to school to be properly socialized.  One of my respondents defined the term in this way: “Socialization is about learning to communicate to many people in many contexts, with the parent being the role-model of how to communicate.”

Another of my respondents said, “We learned (to socialize) by getting along with our family.”  Another said, “We interacted with people of a range of ages, not just children of our own age.”  Another said, “As home educated children, we have mixed with a large number of people, including Christian people.”

These comments indicate that the second understanding of the word socialize requires a much more diverse interaction between children and others than is provided by schools.  Schools lock children away in age-segregated classrooms and gets them to play in age-segregated playgrounds, thus limiting their socialization opportunities — a very good environment for brainwashing and indoctrination into a socialist mindset.  On the other hand, home-based educators, especially those who unschool, (and not home school), provide opportunities for their children to mix with a very broad range of people, but in a safe context.

From this perspective, then, children can only truly be socialized when they are unschooled, under the care and protection of loving parents and siblings.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Fabian_Society#Notable_members

** http://www.penguin.com/static/pdf/teachersguides/1984.pdf

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