I am passionate about educating children.
There are two reasons for this: I want my children and any that I teach to have what I had, and also to have what I didn’t have.
What I had was stability, time to think, an expectation that I would contribute to the family by doing chores, and church every Sunday without question. We had all of our physical needs met, I had the privilege of taking piano lessons, and we went on family camping vacations every summer. My family always ate dinner at the dinner table, with my father saying a blessing each time, and we also ate breakfast together each morning before we all went our separate ways. Prayer for each other was a given, and I never once doubted the faith of my parents.
My passion for education did not grow out of this, however; it grew out of the disorientation and confusion that arose from events outside my control or the control of my parents, events which pointed to the fact that simply having the stability and routine I described is not adequate in the face of opposing forces and philosophies.
I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. I watched my parents go through the ordeal of a daughter’s rebellion, rejecting everything my parents represented and that I had grown up cherishing. This created in me a determination to know what I believed and why I believed it, and then to carefully instruct my own children in what is true and good and beautiful. I did not want anyone to have to go through what my sister went through for lack of a firm grounding in the truth, nor did I want to experience the pain I watched my parents endure from an assumption that their values would be absorbed by their children.
As part and parcel of this determination, I wanted to understand the things that had led to the social and political upheaval we had experienced. I wanted to be able to read and understand the books and articles and philosophies that had been written by the people who had most influenced and shaped our thinking.
I was on my own in this endeavor; not knowing even where to begin, I tried to read what I could about politics, and about my own faith. How wonderful it would have been to have a school and teachers committed to helping me understand these things!
As an educator, my greatest concern for my students and all students is that their parents will make the same error mine did in assuming that the things they hold most dear will be absorbed and embraced by their children; even more frightening is the thought that parents, by living in the default setting, will demonstrate to their children a greater commitment to comfort and security, or to physical fitness, or to success as defined by the world, than to the true, intentional education of their own children. I believe very strongly that classical Christian education is absolutely the best means for the careful instructing of students, and of shaping their lives to love what is true and good and beautiful.
