Communication on Education

This post was written at least five years ago as an email exchange.  I
have omitted a few paragraphs and sentences, and added one substitution
for omitted material.  Ellipses indicate the sentence omissions and the
paragraph omissions are not indicated.  The omitted material contains
personal references that were relevant to the exchange but are not
relevant to the basic premises of the material. 

Dear Brother Brubaker,

I just read your article in the FB newsletter and thoroughly enjoyed
it. . . . With some personal experience and observations interspersed,
I would like to comment primarily on two things your article suggested
to me.  One has to do with identifying a worthy model for our educational
efforts, and the other concerns the preschool baseline you referred to.
This is long.  I apologize in advance.

Our oldest child will graduate from college this spring and our youngest
is finishing high school. The oldest was homeschooled through high
school and the others through grade school.  I am 54 years old.

One of the insights that has guided my classroom teaching at Pilgrim is
the realization that the best Bible model for teaching children is the
parenting model, and the best environment for teaching children is a
home that is actively involved in the life of the church and community. 
When I talk to people immersed in the work of Christian classroom
schools I'm always compelled to add quickly that this is not to say that
every child ought to stay home to acquire their education.  But, in the
absence of school models in Scripture, we ought to pay close attention
to the models that are there and extrapolate from those rather than do
the easy thing, which, as you have noted, is to copy what the people
around us are doing and try to force our schools into a shape that does
not compromise our Christian and Anabaptist sensibilities.

In practical terms, this means to me that our schools ought to be as
home-like as possible, and teacher-student relationships ought to be
patterned after parent-child relationships.  What may be less obvious to
people who are passionate about teaching is that "institution building"
is not the first priority of having classroom schools--however noble the
aspirations of those involved may be. Rather, people involved in
classroom schools ought to profoundly respect and honor the Biblical 
institutions under whose mandates and funding they operate.  Teachers
ought to constantly be giving their students and their accomplishments
back to their parents and to their church and community.   While regular
attendance is necessary if students are enrolled in classroom schools,
school obligations ought not to reach too far into home-time or
church-time outside of school hours.

I know that in our school we have not mastered this balancing act.  I
have been a parent of a high school student during the entire time that
I have also been a teacher at the high school.  I have grieved at seeing
our son's heart turn from home to school when his attendance at school
and his homework in the evening dominated all his waking hours.  The
energy and vision he used to invest in making our home a place he wanted
to be was missing after he enrolled in high school away from home.  This
is not a family-friendly way to be training the future fathers and
mothers in our churches--with the sense that all the fun and important
things happen away from home.  I don't see "school-building" as a
Scriptural mandate as is "family-building" and "church-building."

One of the guidelines that seems reasonable to me is to require of
students about 40 hours a week on their "job"--school.  While there's no
magic in this number, this ratio of work to home, church, and community
life is a standard that can be maintained as a goal throughout one's
active life.

**********************

In your section on developing a base-line for student readiness, you
refer to the problem of having widely divergent abilities in students
who show up for first grade.  I am of the opinion that the most useful
baseline standard would be this one:  Classroom schools accept only
students who already know how to read.  Before you choke on this radical
idea, consider how many problems this would solve.  (I should probably
also insert here that we have three sons who learned to read at the
ages, of 3, 7, and 5--oldest to youngest.  The one who learned to read
at the age of 5--the most proper age--was the only one who did not
become a voracious reader early on.  We did not discover until he was in
high school and struggling for the first time in his school work that he
had a significant vision problem that made reading very difficult and
tiresome for him.)

Back to the problems this would solve--1)  Every parent would be
genuinely grateful for the work any of their child's future teachers do
because they have done enough of it themselves to "feel the pain."  2) 
No child would go through the experience of feeling "dumb" in the
presence of more capable students--at least not until they have
experienced a measure of academic success and have acquired a sense of
satisfaction from having acquired a significant skill.  Also, no
extra-capable child would have an inflated idea of their abilities
because the real world of the home tends to call for a more balanced set
of skills, i. e. not all one's responsibilities are in academic areas,
and not all tasks can be done well even if academics come easily.  3) 
No classroom teacher would have to scramble to find busy work for
non-reading students to do while she/he works with other individual
students who need help  4)  Parents would not have to compete with a
child's peers or teacher for loyalty--at an age when that loyalty is
easy to maintain, but less easy to regain, once lost.  5) Each child
could be taught by whatever method is most productive for him or her
without concerns about partiality or neglect of other needy students. 
6)  Classroom procedures could be learned when a child's physical and
neurological development is more suited to some of the necessities of
learning in groups.  7)  Children would have more time to be children,
and more time to learn to love to learn.  In my opinion, the latter is
the most important "lesson" of education.

Backtracking now, if schools would accept only students who already know
how to read, I think someone would have to stand ready to assist parents
who need help in knowing how to teach their children.  This could be
someone who does not have a classroom teaching job . . . [--preferably a mother
with some experience both in the classroom and homeschooling.   The goal
would be to have expectations will suited for a home environment where
other young children are often present.] Parents who try to do "school
at home" rather than to have a 'home that includes school" sometimes
get very frustrated in the attempt.  I can understand why.  Learning
should be the goal, above learning to fit into a conventional classroom.

This kind of assistance to parents who do not wish to delegate to others
their child training responsibility ought to be incorporated into the
Christian school effort of every local church, in my opinion.  I have
found no Scriptural support for the idea that delegation is the default
value where child training is concerned.  The teaching ministry of the
church, where it is mentioned in the Bible seems always to be referring
to the teaching of people of accountable age.  Equipping parents to teach
well fits beautifully into this Biblical model.  Jesus Himself, when he
interacted with children, received them, touched them, blessed them, and
TAUGHT the disciples.

Thank you for articulating a vision for education and for doing some of
the hard work it takes to keep the issues before the eyes and hearts of
people who need to think about them.  I have been praying for many years
about some of the concerns your article presents, and I am deeply
grateful that these ideas are not mine alone.  You are blessed to have a
venue for publicizing and promoting these concepts, and I am blessed to
see you using it well.

Sincerely,
Miriam Iwashige

Here is most of the reply:

What an incredible response! . . . I will seriously consider the ideas
you have so thoroughly developed and probably work them over with my
Foundations of Education students this Spring.  I most certainly agree
with your assessment of the school as a spin-off of home-church rather
than a life of its own - more of a positive virus than an organism. 
Your case for a starting threshold is also very compelling - it would
take considerable effort to cast vision and equip some parents - but
the problems it might solve would be worth considerable effort.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write.