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I'm not generally one to go crazy over 'vintage' styles. I have an appreciation for some but I can't pull off the fashions and don't care much for the 'modernism' of the 40's-70's... When I think of 'turn of the century' (the 19th century) that's when I really start to smile. Go back further than that and I almost get giddy. You know, Beaver Cleaver's mom baking cake in a tight wasted, fluffy dress & high heals... not so much. Little House on the Prairie with Ma pulling homemade bread out of the old wood burning oven... now we're talkin'! There was something so comfortable about the simplicity of it all. When they did get fancy, they really went all out. THOSE dresses were AMAZING!
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What about education though? Don't we usually think of education in the USA as improving through the years? After all, bigger books, colored pictures & computers make things all the more real and accessible. ...Right?
Statistics don't show all the 'improvements' to education to be better at all. As a matter of a fact, true literacy is sadly lacking. I won't debate the woes of public education here but to say no matter what the outlet, parental involvement is so very, very important. No good, Christian teacher today will debate that.
What am I talking about then? Old fashioned learning. We ALL need it! The point of childhood education is for the children to learn how to learn and even better, learn to LOVE to learn. How does that happen? Balance, order & consistency.
Balance, Order, and Consistency give the Old Fashioned Learning experience that will truly last a lifetime. If you can't take time to bring your children along side you and teach them about what is going on every day around them, you need to reevaluate some things. It's not easy. It's messy. It's even frustrating. It is soooo worth it.
Statistics don't show all the 'improvements' to education to be better at all. As a matter of a fact, true literacy is sadly lacking. I won't debate the woes of public education here but to say no matter what the outlet, parental involvement is so very, very important. No good, Christian teacher today will debate that.
What am I talking about then? Old fashioned learning. We ALL need it! The point of childhood education is for the children to learn how to learn and even better, learn to LOVE to learn. How does that happen? Balance, order & consistency.
- Balance - When I talk about balance, I'm not saying we have to be 'supermom' keeping everything perfect & 'under control'. You can't. Stop trying! Balance here means taking life as it comes and balancing it all into life so that there is time to learn as much about every situation. A local event presents opportunity to learn about local history. A broken arm presents the opportunity to learn about anatomy & the skeletal system. There is so much in life to learn from.
- Order - Yep, we need books. At least the Bible. You can't get any more old fashioned than the Bible and you CAN learn everything you need to carry on a full & productive life from it. Add the library, wikipedia & above mentioned 'Balance' of life and you've got a recipe for an excellent, life long educational plan. Ordering things according to chronological history is the best way to help children tie it all in so that they really understand why things happened as they did and how events & decisions influence each other. Of course Math lends itself to an automatic order.
- Consistency - This is hard. There are so many things to interrupt and distract. How do you decide if something is a God ordained interruption (direction) or a distraction of the enemy? Prayer & The Word. You must be consistent in the most important things in order to teach & train consistently. Once you get used to pointing out the educational things in life to your children, it's easier to be consistent. Actually, it becomes second nature. Ask my children! Many of the homeschooled children we know have an inside joke about how their mother's can make ANYTHING educational. I can't think of anything at the moment that doesn't become educational from some angle... Again, keeping order & balancing all this with life as it happens.
Balance, Order, and Consistency give the Old Fashioned Learning experience that will truly last a lifetime. If you can't take time to bring your children along side you and teach them about what is going on every day around them, you need to reevaluate some things. It's not easy. It's messy. It's even frustrating. It is soooo worth it.
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