Yesterday I came across a hilarious (painfully so) look at what we mean in our culture by the term socialization.
Pondering this gave me a real moment of clarity about school, not school, and parenting.
It is parents, specifically in their vocation as ministers of the grace of God for their kids, that are the linchpin for whether kids thrive as kids or not.
A quick bunch of obligatory qualifying statements: Yes, children have free will and can reject the good; no, people who had a lousy experience being parented are not beyond complete redemption and transformation; yes, parents are sometimes absent without fault and therefore other adults can fill this role. No, parents never single-handedly provide everything their children need (though ideally they are at least a conduit). Yes, grace changes everything.
Children are innocent -- that's the whole point behind our needing parents. They are designed to soak up what surrounds them. And you know what? I believe that kids enrolled in school, even from what I feel to be a ridiculously young age, who have parents who are committed to their (child's and their own) destiny in Christ are pretty darn likely to thrive and embrace their destiny and continue on into life, stumbling through all their own mistakes just as we all must. Neither is homeschooling (and therefore missing out on some of the socialized deformations illustrated in the blog post) a guarantee that children will thrive and pursue their destiny! I would far prefer that children have their parents (picture here the fullest possible sense of the word "have") than have them just learn at home. Prefer is actually way too weak of a word. It is crucial that children have their parents, period. It is a sick lie to hide behind a social structure (in this case, homeschooling) in order to broadcast "We are a close family" while not putting the work into being that. It is also an evil to deposit one's offspring into the local school, public or private, and take a K-12 vacation from your child's formation. Probably not too many families fall into either extreme as a lifestyle, but the subtle shades of temptation are real.
2 comments:
You go, girl! But the kicker is that the parents are children, too. They (we) need to be embraced and formed and loved by the arms and life of the community, which is Christ working in our midst. To be a parent, we need to allow ourselves to be parented. To be an educator, we need to allow ourselves to be educated. And the Christian community, when it recognizes this needs, then has to reach out in patience and love to parents and educators (not just Christian parents and educators, but ALL of them), just as a loving parent does. This is our double call as parent/educators AND members of the Christian community.
On one level, yes, it is important to note that parents on their journey to their destiny cannot travel alone, and that our education (in the sense of formation and journeying toward destiny) is life-long. But indeed maturity vs. immaturity is a distinction the writer to the Hebrews makes for folks still on this side of the pearly gates!
Our needs are vital to our growth, no matter what our age or stage. Perhaps one of the facets of maturity is the ability to both minister to the needs of others AND have our own needs met (if indeed one can separate out these two things).
I think in Protestantese this concept of "parenting in Christ" would be called discipling. This is brewing a whole 'nother pot of thoughts now...
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