What can Mary teach us about the purpose of education?

Barna Group president David Kinnaman wrote a new book titled You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith. They're not just leaving church; they are abandoning their already shallow Evangelical values.

70 percent of them now believe fornication is morally ok. In fact, they are as sexually active as non-Christians. Over 60 percent suport same-sex marriage (thanks to the "values clarification" process taught in American schools since the early 1980s. A good book on the subject is Child Abuse in the Classroom from 1985).

"They value the sense of community provided by their church, but are tired of being told how they should live their life," writes Kinnaman.

Oh, it's way more than that, my friend. They've been indoctrinated in values clarification since elementary school. It's like a dormant bomb designed to explode with their hormones. An example from Laura Stepp, the CNN editorialist who also opines on the book:

Brittany, a 24-year-old veterinary technician, is an example of the newly disaffected. In high school, she attended a conservative Episcopal church in northern Virginia. She enrolled in college thinking of herself as a conservative and not wanting to have sex until she was married. Her views changed when she met her boyfriend. She began to question the theology of her home church on a number of social issues.

This anectode leaves a lot out. Let's give it some flesh.

Brittany said she believed in biblical values until she got alone with her boyfriend for the first time, got passionately aroused, had no accountability, and had sex. Then she needed a new values system to justify her desire to continue premarital sex and help her not feel guilty.

How's that sound? Read the last sentence again because that's the crux of the matter.

This is why we homeschool. Not because we parents are the better teachers, but because the public school system has let us down. In fact, it has become the most powerful indoctrination tool bent on reshaping the values of the masses from a very early age, when it's easier to mold their worldview. As humanist Charles Francis Potter wrote in 1930:

Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?

Exactly. Humanist have mastered the art of having parents finance the spiritual destruction of their own children, in the name of education.

But what is education, anyway? And what does Mary, the mother of Jesus, have to do with it?

Everything.

Education (from the Latin "e ducere" to lead out) is a holistic process meant to mold the formation of the child as a whole: a sort of Jedi knight, a soldier of the body, of the mind, and of the spirit. A person trained in the classics, yes, but also on compassion, self-sacrifice, and spiritual warfare against the principalities that rule this groaning world.

Children belong not to the state, as Hegel believed, and not to the parents, as some Christians believe. Children belong to God, who entrusts the parents with their education.

This is true today, as was true at the time of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Her parents could also have entrusted her education to the "state," the scholarly doctrines of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, and of the Romans. How cool would she have been when reciting the verses of Catullus in the Synagogue.

Odi et amo; quare id faciam fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.

Alas, her parents knew better.

They forgot to fill her head with the humanistic knowledge of the time, and taught her the Scriptures instead; and when she was chosen by God to give birth to the Savior, upon being praised by her cousin Elizabeth for her faith, responded by singing the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), a song that quotes 17 Old Testament passages and puts praise Where it belongs. Not a small feast, considering she she did it on the spot, with no concordance, and was only 13 to 17 years old.

Notice the maturity, the humility, the knowledge of her traditions, the memorization skills, all combined in a stunning whole that would make every parent proud.

Now, this is education.

More Starfall, a great learning web site for chrildren

More Starfall is the premium version of the free Starfall.com web site. While the free version is a great resource for children 3 to 6 years old to learn their ABC and first reading lessons, More Starfall adds much more and is definitely worth the $35 a year they charge for it.

What do you get for $35 a year? A lot; you get a whole math section, with math songs, numbers, geometry and measurements, as well as lessons on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

You also get the full phonics and reading section available on the free version of Starfall, plus lessons on vowels, colors, more phonics lessons, word machines, a talking library with a great selection of books read by an adult while the books highlights the words being read.

For the older children who already know how to read, there's an "I'm Reading" section with a selection of books with rich graphics with reading exercises and hearing aid tools to confirm your reading skills.

Finally there's a Songs and Rhymes section with popular and richly-animated songs like "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes,""If you are happy and you know it," and many others that blend fun and learning in a smart way.

The beauty of the site is that it does not sacrifice education for fun. It does not distract the child with overly entertaining material (unlike the Sesame Street web site), but keeps her focused on the lesson at hand.

Once you purchase the premium version, you can authorize it on up to three computers.

Highly recommended.

If you want your kids to excel

Talent is overrated. What you need is hard work and dedication. At least this is the conclusion reached by Geoff Colvin in Talent is Overrated and by Malcom Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success. Both authors reach the counter-cultural conclusion that success, even for über-talents like Mozart or Tiger Woods was not just the result of genetic lottery or divine inspiration, but hard work for many, many years. Most people that master their field started at a very young age, between 3 and 6 years old.

If you want your kids to excel at a subject they like, dabbling with it is just not enough. They have to practice hard.

Signing Time: A great learning tool for toddlers

The Signing Time DVDs are great for children of any age; even our six-year old enjoys them; they are especially good for toddlers, however, because they don't go over their head and are fun to follow as toddlers learn to communicate what food they want or what toy they want to play with, and they do so by using simple signs in American Sign Language. These DVDs are very well done, with music, fun, adults and kids alike showing the signs in a way that makes them fun and easy to learn. Highly recommended.

Signinig Time