Splintering our Education System based on FAITH

Not QUITE what I said as I recall. Not that it's a violation of church-state issues as you put it, but that public education is anti-Christian overall, being secular and pluralistic, and can't be anything else, and that forcing any of that, but evolutionism in particular, on the children of Christian parents is the same kind of violation of their rights as forcing creationism would be on those who object to it. The education Christian children are increasingly getting at home and in the newer Christian schools is better than public education in every way you would approve, as it is far more rigorous and has much higher standards. There is a movement getting started in some Christian churches to return to a classical education, that seems to have been inspired a great deal by this wonderful essay by Dorothy Sayers in 1947: The Lost Tools of LearningI'm sure I didn't say such a thing, Holmes. I haven't really given much thought to the overall problem of the public schools, simply to the need for Christians to find an alternative. I'd venture the opinion now, however, that a nation that is dedicated to liberty ought to support liberty in educational matters too. I really doubt it would lead to any of the dire consequences you seem to be imagining, but quite the opposite. The educational level has been only too obviously declining in this country for decades under the public school system, and the kind Christian children are starting to get with these new more rigorous guidelines can only be an immense improvement. Educating some children BETTER than the public schools do can't possibly promote anything but an improvement in the overall quality of education in the nation.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-31-2005 01:24 PM

I've ONLY mentioned Christian children, Holmes, no others, and homeschooling is one option, but the better option is really good Christian schools, some of which may be just now getting started. Most Christian schools are really no better than the public schools in all the areas that matter to Christian life, so my hope is these new ones will be truly Christian. In case you are unaware of it, the fact is that homeschooled children generally do MUCH better overall than public schooled children. Existing religious schools have no problem with accreditation so I don't know what you are worried about. Are you at all aware that the first universities in Europe and America were founded by Christians for the purpose of giving a specifically Christian education, that in fact they aimed to give future pastors a solid liberal education, that prayer and chapel service were part of the curriculum, that Bible was foundational? I'm talking Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Holmes. Are you aware of any of that? What kind of strange idea do you have about a Christian education anyway? You are laboring under a false imagination of your own. Poppycock. The students I hope Christian schools will start turning out could ace any exam on any subject and think better than the examiners. There are not NOW any divisions as homeschoolers go on to college and succeed beautifully, and there won't be any more to come. I, however, would be in favor of Christians starting a whole new rigorously Christian university system the way the originally Christian universities were conceived, and do whatever is possible to ensure that it remain Christian and not deteriorate into secularism as the ivy league schools have done. Don't know if that's possible because the level of education in such a school would start attracting secularists anyway.

How about reading the essay by Dorothy Sayers I linked. Nothing you said is worth responding to. Invincible ignorance seems to be the standard of most posters at this website.

Your ignorance of the success of homeschoolers is remarkable considering that it is well known. There may be better articles than the following on the subject, I don't know. I did only a cursory search.http://www.findarticles.com/..._m1282/is_n17_v50/ai_21129273Homegrown success - Washington Times 404: Page Not Found This message has been edited by Faith, 03-31-2005 02:04 PM

Oh my, you don't even know what she means, do you? You just had a knee-jerk reaction to the word, didn't you? We certainly DO need a "return to the Middle Ages" in the sense she means it, by the look of the nonsense that is offered up on this site as rational thought. Good grief.

The link was given in my post to holmes above, #5, but here it is again. The Lost Tools of LearningThe whole essay was intended to give a view of education that is completely different from whatever holmes is imagining, a picture of rigor in academic disciplines. The medieval curriculum of the Trivium and the Quadrivium is what she proposes, the Trivium being designed to give young children the tools for thinking and solving problems and communicating well, such as Latin, foreign languages, Logic, Grammar, Debate, upon which the Quadrivium later builds, which is particular subject matter. She covers a great deal of territory rather briefly, and the whole thing is relevant, I believe, to the subject of education in general, and it's a fun essay to read anyway.

I'm sure you're right that parental involvement is a very large factor, but the point was to answer the idea Holmes seems to have that Christian schooling, including homeschooling, can only lead children in an anti-intellectual direction, and the fact is that it does not. They are more likely to go to college and do well there.

Again, I'm not pursuing the topic of homeschooling as such. I only brought it up to answer Holmes' suspicion that all forms of Christian schooling would put children at odds with the mainstream. He is wrong. They are taught the same subjects, only so far a better job is being done with them -- for whatever reason. The important thing is that they are WELL fitted educationally by the best standards of education, and Holmes' fears can be put to rest.In any event, the movement among Christians now seems to be away from homeschooling to establishing more Christian schools, where I hope they will more and more incorporate the methods and objectives sketched out in the essay by Dorothy Sayers
The Lost Tools of Learning
because I believe it will equip children to be excellent thinkers, quite the opposite of what Holmes seems to be imagining, some kind of backwater teaching of nothing but idiosyncratic superstitions? EVERYTHING I posted to him was to show him that his idea of Christian education is wrong, that in all its forms it tends toward excellent education, period.

Can you give evidence of such anti-science homeschooling curricula? That is VERY VERY far from my observation of what is taught in Christian homeschooling. Science is very well taught.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-31-2005 02:58 PM

The Trivium is Elementary School, the Quadrivium roughly Jr. High to High School.I'd love to see a new Harvard or Yale established along the lines of the originals. I hope it comes about. But it would be Christian down to the prayers and chapel services and mandatory Bible study, and not terribly comfortable for a secularist professor.

Well, I've been here long enough to have been "treated" to this "asking" in forms that are better described as demanding or commanding, and often about things that I do think should be common knowledge or trivial claims not central to the topic. It gets to be more like a method of gleeful torture than an attempt to understand anything.

Thanks for the link. I'll want to study it more later. I'd say offhand, however, that it looks like they teach science quite well. You are simply bothered by the creationist philosophy, but that doesn't affect the teaching of actual scientific content, observation and methodology at all.But as I say, I'll have to check again later. I have to park this website for a while and get some other things done.

OK, this keeps getting repeated so I have to ask: What exactly is wrong with "splintering" the system? I've answered that Holmes' expectations are unwarranted, that everybody would be going off in some completely different direction from everybody else, but what exactly ARE you all worried about if different schooling systems are made available? Isn't that the American way? There's nothing particularly commendable about homogenized education and it tends to the lowest common denominator.I HAVE to leave for a while so I won't see answers until later.

That is simply not the case. This is the biggest fallacy to be found among evolutionists. NEITHER evolutionism NOR creationism affects the content of science in the slightest. All the work that is done in laboratories and in the field is exactly the same work whether you are a creationist or an evolutionist. Knowledge of how the universe works, how genes work, the physical laws, the entire natural world, what kinds of rocks there are and how they are formed and where you find them, and fossils too, and where dinosaurs are found buried and what they looked like and so on -- ALL THAT IS THE SAME no matter which theory you believe. It is simply NOT true that you have to believe the universe is any particular age, that the layers in the geologic column were formed 4500 years ago or bazillions, that dinosaurs lived 5000 years ago or some millions of years ago, or that we were created in Eden or all evolved from the primordial swamps, in order to do excellent science.HOWEVER, my own personal vision is that Christian schools would teach evolution AND all the arguments against it to perfection, that graduates would know more about it all and be better at arguing every aspect of it than any product of the public schools. Eventually the ToE would go the way of the dinosaurs if that were to happen.

Evolution is a false model whether or not it generates scientific projects. You can't have science that's science with a false model.