As school ramps up again, discussions regarding how to improve our schools also get going. No matter if you love public education or not, I think everyone agrees that the system could be better. Be it entire schools that are failing, the emphasis on test scores over actual learning, or the elimination of arts – there are vital aspects of education that are leaving our nation’s children wanting.

I’ve been intrigued by the campaign at Rethink Learning Now to encourage our government to support schools where actual learning takes place and where all children have access to a good education. They have recently released a series of public service announcements to promote their cause. The videos are a bit extreme, but make some very good points. I enjoyed the one below about a “teacher’s draft.” It asks – what if all schools had fair and equal access to the best teachers?

So what’s your response? Do you agree with the goals of the Rethink Learning Now campaign? How else do you think we should rethink education?

By Bill Shiell

My greatest hopes, fears, etc. for the school year are related to the uninformed Christian parents who pull children out of public schools on faulty logic and reasoning. We are public school people, and we’re committed to the program here. We have a good school and a good school system. It’s not perfect, and no school is. Just as the private school I attended as a child seemed perfect but wasn’t worth the cost in reality. In my world today, our problem is not whether a denomination pronounces that it’s time for an “exodus” or that homeschooling is somehow morally superior. We really don’t have very many homeschoolers. We do, however, deal with laziness. We would accept the word of an email or an innuendo in the neighborhood rather than to rigorously engage faculty, discuss issues with principals, and volunteer to help out in the classroom. We would rather drive across town to a Catholic parish to avoid perceived dangers of a middle school. I know that my son will do well this year, and I’m quite confident we’ll make sure of it. And even if he struggles, that’s good for him too. But I really hope that in a few years, we’ll have some other people with us in the school system who want to roll up their sleeves and go to work too.

Bill Shiell and his wife Kelly have two sons, a 3rd grader at Rocky Hill Elementary named Parker and a 2 year old named Drake. He is the senior pastor of First Baptist Knoxville and the author of 2 books.

By Jim Vining

It is pretty easy to collect theology.
It is a bit more difficult to apply it.

Tuesday was one of those days when I had to remember what I say I believe. Tuesday was my son’s first day of school. Sure, he has been in pre-school for a dozen hours a week, but this is big time: Kindergarten for 35 hours a week! I was looking forward to this day, until I Monday when a few thoughts sobered my excitement.

“We will not be able to see him as often as we have in the past.” “He will be under the nurture and teaching of other people for much of his time. What if it is wrong?” “What if other kids are mean to him and I can’t protect him?”

I spent a lot of time expressing my emotions and concerns to God.

I also spent time thinking about the situation through the general Christian worldview. Here are some of my thoughts on the first day of school in light of the biblical themes of creation, fall, and redemption.

Creation: (Genesis 1 & 2) God created everything. God called it good, and excellent in every way. Education is about observing the world that God created. All truth that is expressed there is God’s truth. There is no topic that will be covered that God did not create. It is good to explore God’s world. Beyond the content, God’s presence will be there.

Fall: (Genesis 3, continuing today) Human rebellion disrupted the peace and harmony of creation. Things are not as they were intended to be. There is still goodness, but it is not excellent in every way. This brokenness will display itself at school. There will be pain, conflict, and untruth. We need to be prepared for that. However, this brokenness has had an impact on every area of life, not just his neighborhood school.

Redemption: (The rest of history. Highlights: Resurection of Jesus, Today, Rev 21&22) God continues to love creation. God is in the process of healing all things in this fallen world. He invites humanity in this journey. Education then has a goal of being equipped to join the work of healing the broken world. My son is in preparing for that in his vocational life. He also gets to do that in the present. He can be a force for good in his school.

Remembering these truths helped me to relax more, and regain some excitement and even a sense of worship about the first day of school. Of course, seeing my son beaming with excitement also helped!

Jim and Robyn and there two children live in Wauwatosa, WI. Jim is an associate pastor at Elmbrook with a focus on emerging adults.
Jim’s Blog: http://jimvining.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jimvining
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimvining

Since the birth of our daughter, maybe even before, I’ve been thinking about homeschooling.

A little background to give you perspective is that I’m a trained public school teacher. And having worked with some extremely educated, creative, and indefatigable people, I have nothing but respect for the profession. At first I wasn’t sure why I wanted to homeschool, or what it was that I felt had to change. It was just something at the back of my mind that felt “off”. So, I started reading, regurgitating what I read to my husband, and then reading some more. At first I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I picked up everything that had homeschooling in the subject. I read about Maria Montessori, the Waldorf method, Unschooling, Charlotte Mason, and Classical education. Trying to sift and filter what I thought was valuable, what I agreed with, what I disagreed with and trying to come up with my own philosophy of education.

And the question kept coming up in my mind, why? Why with so many choices out there now (i.e. charter schools, magnet schools, etc…) was I doing this. Why was I committing our family to a lot of work and hassle when there are highly trained professional out there who we’re already paying with our taxes to do this important job?

To answer this for myself I had to look at our life and the changes we’d been progressively making since our marriage in 2000. Seven years ago, my spirituality manifested itself in reading my Bible, praying (when I could figure out what to say), going to church, and treating others nice. Now obviously that was all good, but there was a void a big void. If that was all that my faith called me to, then Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t worth much. There had to be more, and more in a big way! We had to be alternative beings, we had to live alternative lives, lives that when against the flow, not a ‘niceified’ version of mainstream culture. It said so right there in the Bible I’d been reading. So as a couple we read and talked. We talked about simplicity, about community, about solidarity with the poor, about spiritual consequences of ecological practices and made decisions based on what we came to believe. And the point of all this is we are still searching and refining, tossing and tweaking and our children are an integral part of this process.

So, to get back to education, if our family believes in living alternatively, and being alternative beings in this current consumer, me-driven culture, and passing that on to our children, then these years of our children’s initial formation are important. If we chose to send our children to public school at the age of five, for six to seven hours a day 180 days a year the struggle, I feel, would be an uphill one.

Now, I’m reading this and realizing that it’s sounding a bit holier-than-thou, and that’s not how I feel at all. So let me say just a bit more. I wrote this to share our story, our path, one that we think meets the unique needs our daughter. This is not our call to abandon the world at large, isolate ourselves in our home, and ‘fill’ our children with what we believe. It’s one way of giving them a chance to see that there is another way to live. We want to teach our daughter, and later our son, to think for themselves. To be an active participant in their own education, not passive receptacles for society to ‘fill up’. Part of the process may be to later send them to public school, I honestly don’t know and I’m not worried about it. We’re making this up as we go along.