Why
Latter-Day Saints Should Homeschool . . . . and how to do it!
#2:
Homeschooling Will Help You Grow
I
know, I've heard it many, many times: I
can't homeschool; I haven't got the patience!
Did
you leave the pre-existence without patience? Do you
want to leave this earth without it? Of course not, and
here is your opportunity. Sign up for Patience 101.
After that you can enroll in Parental Leadership, Service in the
Family, Organization Skills, Teaching by the Spirit, Learning by the
Spirit, and every other Celestial skill you ever wanted to develop.
Your major is Godhood.
Sound
overwhelming? It's not, unless you picture yourself
moving a school classroom into your home and see yourself standing before
a small classroom delivering lessons you stayed up late to prepare to an
uninterested, uncooperative child. It can be done that
way and lots of homeschoolers try it, but the Lord's way of teaching is
much different. Elder Dallin Oaks tells us, "The
most basic example of differences between the Lord's way and man's way
concerns how we learn" (The Lord's Way, p. 16).
Man's
ways are usually burdensome, usually involve force, and seldom bring
satisfying results. Man's yoke is heavy and stressful.
The Lord's way is certainly less popular, and it may seem more
difficult, but in the end it is the "easier" and more satisfying
way. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, For my yoke is easy, and
my burden is light." (Matthew 11:29-30) The
"easy" yoke is one that fits well, that makes the burden not
just bearable, but joyful.
We
live in an historic moment of time in the preparation of a Zion people.
The Church is trying now to move us to a new way of learning, by
the spirit. We are encouraged to ask questions and find
answers by study and by revelation, and to teach each other the gospel
through a higher level of discussion. President Packer,
Elder Holland, Elder Bednar, Elder Bateman, and Elder Roger Merrill seem
to be leading the way. Since the gospel encompasses all knowledge,
homeschooling fits right into this; in fact home is the perfect place to
learn how to learn by following inspired questions and being led to truth
by both study and revelation. We are told that we live below our
privileges. As children of god, shouldn't it be our privilege to
learn from on high?
When
we Saints sing "I am a child of God" we really mean it. We
recognize that we are created in His image, and we are most fortunate to
know something of what God looks like. In the Conference Center
in Salt Lake there is a small statue of the Father and
the Son appearing to Joseph in the sacred grove. Which
is the father, and which is the Son? You can only tell
because the Father is gesturing with His left hand. Then,
when you look at the back of the statue you see the Father's right arm
placed tenderly around the back of his son. A real
father and a real son. This is no small matter.
Most of our Christian friends think they are created in the image
of a God who has no image and loved by a God who has no passions.
We
understand the meaning of a "divine nature and destiny." We are
gods in embryo. We know something of what we will be
like when we grow up. Our destiny is to rejoin our
heavenly family as adult children, having matured in our earth-school
experience, and then to keep on growing until we too are "gods."
What
is a god? A perfected being. What do
gods do? As I've pondered the Divine Nature, everything
seems to fall into two categories: they Create and they
Bless. Sometimes they cry (Moses 7), but they certainly
must also feel great joy.
What
we need to do to develop our divine
nature is to practice creating and blessing until we
get very good at it. We are allowed to cry along the
way, and we are expected to experience joy. Our
laboratory is our home. Our texts are written by
apostles and prophets who are also the professors. We
read the texts and listen to our Professors to
find out how children should be raised and what they should be taught in
the Kingdom of God. We are coached by our personal
tutor and mentor, the Holy Ghost, who whispers to our seeking hearts.
We try out what we learn in our family laboratory. Our
"lab experiments" are our children. They are
like precious, tender plants, and we learn to serve and bless them as we
become experienced gardeners in our own little family garden plot.
I
don't know how we got to be the children of Heavenly Parents in the first
place. I don't know what we were when they found us, or
chose us, or harvested us. Intelligences? Points
of light, perhaps? Whatever we were then, we are theirs
now. They gave us spiritual bodies and loved us and
taught us. They prepared a "school" for
us, individualized to provide just the circumstances we would need for our
personal growth. Then at the right time, when they knew
we were ready, they sent us off. There was no
compulsion, no force, no threat, no competition; we wanted to go.
We all committed to help each other get back. Surely
there was a final good-bye, a long embrace, and we were on our way.
Now
we are complaining and fighting the experience, looking for ways to avoid
the hard work and the growth opportunities, looking for short cuts and
easy outs. Why would we skip the core part of our earth
school? How can we say, "Naw, I'll pass on this
one. I'm not smart enough. I need my
free time. I have other things to do. The
mall is calling me. Let the state do it. I
pay taxes. And I haven't got the patience."
Here
we are with this great opportunity to work right in our homes to develop
our own godhood, to learn to bless and create, and we turn down the
opportunity because we haven't got the patience?
We
are blessed to have the gift of a teaching nature to help us fulfill our
teaching duty. We are further blessed when we have a
child or two or six or twelve to give us hands-on opportunities to develop
patience -- and obedience, and self-reliance, and creativity, and the use
of agency, and many other traits of our Divine Nature. If
our "homeschool" must be just a 15 minute mini-discussion over
dinner to start with, and if it requires a soul-stretching, patience
building effort on our part to make it happen, so be it; but we can't opt out.
The
second reason for homeschooling is to take advantage of a great
opportunity for our own personal growth and happiness -- to learn
patience.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our
first estate featured learning of a cognitive type, and it was surely a
much longer span than that of our second estate, and the tutoring so much
better and more direct. The second estate, however, is
one that emphasizes experiential learning through applying,
proving, and testing. We learn
cognitively here too, just as a good university examination also teaches
even as it tests us. . . We have moved, as it were,
from first-estate theory to second-estate laboratory.
- The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book, p. 198
Reading
aloud is my favorite part of homeschooling. How many others have had this
experience: I am sitting on the couch (a chair would never do) reading a
good book, such as Men of Iron by Howard Pyle. One child sits on my right,
and one child sits on my left, and one child sits on the back of the couch
behind my neck, and one child sits on my lap. The fifth child has to make
do. Everyone must be situated, just so, in order to see all of the
pictures - which must be examined minutely before the page is turned. This
is one of the ways God taught me patience. . . . If I could have just an
hour of that time again, right now, I would gladly read Corduroy fifteen
times in a row and not complain.
- Lauri Bluedorn, "Ten Things to Do with Your Child Before Age Ten,
Teaching the Trivium," 1998 www.triviumpursuit.com
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©
2007 Joyce Kinmont |