Education vs. Conditioning

Common Core is an interesting topic.  My husband asks me why I care since I homeschool, not out of any apathy on his part, but out of genuine interest in my motive.

Quite simply: it is because the way the youth are educated determines the future of a nation.

 

I have been a little wary of the extreme sensationalism and fanaticism I have seen opposing Common Core.  While I respect fiery determination to right the wrongs of this world, as found in Samual Adams and Patrick Henry, I am also mindful of the mindless passion that led many of the people of France to bring friends and family to the guillotine. I am also mindful of how easily "facts" can be misrepresented and fabricated.

And yet, I have also been a little puzzled at the relatively silent and steady (even secretive?) movement forward of the implementation of Common Core and the fear that I sense that seems to be enabling it.  For instance, the other day at Pack Meeting, a dear friend shared with me some of her concerns.  She has all of her children in mainstream public school for she felt that is the right path for her children.  (I heartily believe in and support the right of the parent to know what is best for their child!)  However, as she shared just two examples of her concern and her feelings that went along with it, I became alarmed.

Example 1: One of the test questions given to one of her children went to the effect of "In which of the following situations would you steal?"  Six options were given and not one was "I would not steal" or "none of the above."  Think of what is happening with this one simple question: you have a trusting, impressionable young student who has been taught culturally and in his home that tests are meant to be passed.  They are presented with only options that violate his core beliefs.  His "only option" to "succeed" in this question is to rationalize each of these situations in his mind, justifying the response of stealing to feel if any of them would be acceptable.

In six different ways he tries to feel out if he could justify stealing, all with the idea in his head that one of the answers must be right.  What if none of them are?  What is this doing to the moral foundation in this child?  Depending upon the home, it could be starting beliefs that run completely counter to the parents' core belief.  Regardless of the parent's belief or lack thereof, it could be running against God's eternal truths, indoctrinating them in the "religion" of moral relativism and secular humanism.

Another follow-up question in this example was raised in one of her children's classrooms: "Who knows what is best for you, the government or your family?"  What child understands that question?  What child  understands even what government means?  True government in the democratic republic our Founding Fathers created is a representation of the people, in which case the question is irrelevant.  Who is even asking this question? And more importantly, why?

Example 2:  In some testing situations, children have headphones put on their heads.  If they respond "incorrectly" to an answer, they hear a buzzing in their ear to let them know they were wrong.  This is conditioning-- creating instinctive, automatic responses to certain questions.  Pavlov did it with rats.  It has also been performed on people.

Do we know what is on these tests that are being used to create generated responses?  Answers I have received from teachers and parents alike is that none of them are permitted to know what is on these tests.  The potential for wide-spread conditioning to specific ideas is huge.  And what if those questions they are being "conditioned to" are the ones I mentioned above?  And what if, morally and religiously, I am completely opposed to the "correct response?

I bring up all this from a first-hand account of my dear friend in the public school system.  She is trying to make it work, because she feels that is where they need to be. However, as she considers "opting out" of the testing, she hears from another friend who experienced first hand the negative effects on her top-scholar son's academic record: he was labeled as a "non-performing" student. My friend fears the negative repercussions that could come from refusing to have this testing done.

Another lady I met yesterday who recently went through this process of "opting out" experienced the same things for her sons,...in fact, the principal at first refused to even take her "opt-out" papers, assuring her of the negative impact it would have on her sons' academic records. Her friends in her community, who actually inspired her to do it in response to their own outrage over Common Core, all feared to do the same and opt their children out, and she ended up being the only one to opt out.

My purpose in bringing this up is not to incite fear, but rather to provoke questions.
*Do we know what our children are learning, both ours and their peers?
*Are we, as parents, truly mindful that we are primarily responsible for the education--spirtual, moral and secular--of our children?

*If we have a system that is steeped in secrecy and generates fear, what is our role in identifying what is happening?
*How can we find the facts amidst the sensational?
*Are we allowing our fears to govern our actions, rather than our sense of right and wrong?
*How can we rise above our fears of "what will this do to the social standing of my child" and do what we feel is morally right?

Those last couple questions are what bother me the most right now, I think.  I see so many people feeling and knowing that they need to do something different, but are being immobilized by fear: fear of academic labels of their children, fear of peer exclusion, fear of "what might happen"?  That is what scares me the most.  Does it truly matter more how the mysterious entity of "the government" labels our children than how they and we stand in doing the right thing before God?  Are we so frightened of peer pressure that we are allowing tyranny to spread in our midst?

Historically, I saw these same fears paralyze Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Mao Ze Dong's China.  It is horrible,...it is horrific.  We must start today to stand for what we believe is not only "the best" for our families and our country. More importantly, we must simply stand for what is right.

If people geniunely feel Common Core is right for their child, I respect their right to choose that for their education.  However, I feel that if a parent feels it is wrong, that, too, needs to be respected and honored, and neither the parent nor the students should be made to fear or shunned, as if it was morally wrong to opt out of a government-generated educational program.

Conditioning scares me.  It creates responses based upon systems of belief that may be false and may have the same results we saw in Germany, Russia, and China. May we learn from history so we will not be doomed to repeat it.  It all starts with one person doing the right thing and others being inspired to do the same.  May we each be the one to make a stand and our influence will be great!

A Colossal Halt

This past season has been very interesting:
-I discover I am pregnant when I thought the last baby was, well, the last :).
-I feel prompted to transition out of choir and acting responsibilities
-I feel stupors of thought whenever I am presented with new opportunities to serve, even ones I have sought out in the past and were not then available.

The most monumental and mentally disconcerting change, though, has been to feel that our little Vanguard group was done.  I felt the inklings coming but was not sure how that was going to happen, feeling the responsibility of taking on leadership of a group that was supposed to finish out an academic year.  I took it to the Lord so many times, seeking for ways around it, confirmation, and, finally, for peace for everyone involved.  I felt that we were done each week in class. I felt it as one family and then another informed me of different situations that led them to need to stop participating with us.  We already started smaller (only 16 youth) but by this last month we were down to nine youth.   Typically with youth groups like this, we have had waiting lists, etc. but none of that was happening.

Finally, I went to everyone and presented my concerns about continuing with fewer parents to help mentor.  As we tossed about different solutions for continuing on a smaller scale, I felt uneasy.  This was not the answer.

I sent an email out before our meeting to "finalize" for the next semester, expressing my feelings of doubt as to the rightness of our continuing.  Within a few hours, the remaining parents had emailed back with similar feelings of uneasiness and their feelings of peace with stopping our group. 

Despite all this, I still am left to doubt, left to wonder.  Was it something I did wrong?  Was I going in the wrong direction?  Did I just mess up too many times?  Is Heavenly Father displeased with me?  I know that to continue to try and mentor, help, reach out and serve when I feel a stupor of thought about doing so would be doing nothing.  Of course, I have plenty of opportunities within my family to serve, but before it has always felt right to include others in those efforts--a way to strengthen my family, my community--and knew it was where God wanted me.

Now, I am left with a lot of time for reflection.  I found the book by James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh" at the DI and have been reading it.  It is a treasure trove of thoughts, but one caught my eye: "Man is made or unmade by himself, in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace."

My thoughts have always had so many different directions to go, but now there is nothing but self-reflection, meditation and immediate needs of my family wholly unconnected with any other youth in my groups.  It has been one of those what I call "bell-ringing Walden moments" where, as Thoreau put it, I let the bells ring and observe what the real needs are around me. 

The situation reminds me of the blind French Revolutionary Jacques Lusseyran who wrote a book, "Against the Pollution of I," a book that addresses the need of us to quiet the world around us to discover who we are and what is within us.  Perhaps it is time to really evaluate my life and re-focus or re-direct as needed.  Perhaps this is what God is telling me to do.

Now, I am mindful of the trap of becoming self-centered in this process: "He who shall seek his life shall lose it and he who shall lose his life for my sake shall find it." I have seen this in friends who have started a "voyage of self-discovery," only to come home and reveal to spouse and children that their paths no longer included them and abandoned family responsibilities to "find themselves." That is not what I am seeking. I am seeking to know God's will for me and at present feel so much confusion and doubt, so much uncertainty and wonder.

In the meanwhile, I find myself drastically adapting what I have done for homeschooling expectations in the home, listening more to the kids, responding more to their immediate cravings for knowledge and guidance, rather than putting them off until I can come up with a "grand project" or "special class" to completely cover everything in the area that they mentioned interest in.  I have a lot to shift in my mentality and it is not very comfortable.

The colossal halt in my involvement in the world around me still puzzles me and leaves me to wonder what and if I did something wrong.  I know we are supposed to reach out to others, to share, bless and serve. I miss my friends and the youth.  I feel very lonely.  I feel surrounded by kids who keep "hearing from mom" but never really care to listen, unless it is something immediately connected to what they want to hear.  Maybe it is time for me to be quiet...be still.  I guess I will still keep praying for the peace that accompanies doing God's will and seek to keep doing...nothing?  Perhaps I am addicted to busy-ness and need to slow-down, either for myself or for my children.  In the meanwhile, I do enjoy the novelty of not having pressing emails or upcoming classes that I need to push kids' needs aside to prepare for, preparing for "the greater good."  I will choose to seek joy despite the lump in my breast. 

Positive self-talk is easier to blog about than to actually do, I have found, but it is a start.