Who Decides?
by Joyce Kinmont
from A Call to Closeness, LDS
Home Educators Assn. Newsletter,issue #35, August 2001
It’s late summer.
The world’s a-buzz with anticipation, directed at your five-year-old.
Adult eyes sparkle when they talk to your little one about going to that
magical place called kindergarten. Stores shelves bulge with colorful
lunch boxes. Neighborhood friends can’t play because, “Mom’s taking me
shopping for school clothes.” There’s an excitement in the air — but not
for your child; he isn’t going to school. What a crisis!
Actually, with a little imagination, parents of
kindergarten-age children can compete with the hoopla because
five-year-olds are so malleable. Anyone who has access has influence (as
Satan well knows). You can start early with your own campaign — taking
your own bus trips, planning field trips, setting up a schoolroom,
arranging spectacular first-day activities, feeling sorry for children who
have to leave their mothers (yes, we play the emotional cards too).
As the children get older, though, it becomes more and
more difficult to compete with the enticings of the peer group. The social
life is alluring. And that is the whole allurement — the social
life. Ask any young child what he likes best about school and he’ll tell
you: RECESS! The last one I asked went on to say the
rest of the day was “dumb.”
And it’s no different in high school. Your teen will
seldom be coaxed by his peers to come experiment in the cool science lab
or to come listen to a great English teacher recite Shakespeare. It’s
still about RECESS!
Little children are being fooled; they long to go to
school not knowing that RECESS! is the punctuation between
endless hours of tedium. Older students know full well; they’re just
willing to pay a terrific price — boredom, fear, humiliation — for the
thrill of RECESS! The more social the child, the deeper the
longing may be.
So what’s a parent to do? Force him to stay
home? Let him go? Who decides?
Who decides? Gayle suggested that it would be more appropriate for the
parents to make the decision and for the daughter to pray for
confirmation. I couldn’t agree more.
The Kingdom operates on the principle of
stewardship. Parents are stewards over their children and over the
family resources. They have authority to set family behavior
standards and to decide how family resources will be spent and/or
used.
Parents are responsible for the education of their
children. School is not an entitlement, but an expenditure of family
resources. Parents pay the tuition (or the taxes), provide the
clothing, transportation, school supplies, etc. So, the decision must be
made by the parents.
Children should not be told to pray for direction in
things that are not in their stewardships. How can they get a proper
answer to a prayer outside of their stewardships? This is the
same principle we teach in Sunday School lessons: only the Prophet
can receive revelation for the Church. Members don’t dictate to the
Prophet, the Stake President, the Bishop.
Often I’ve heard parents lament that they must give in to
return-to-school pressure because their children “have their free
agency.” Only within its proper sphere! Children have
agency to obey or not to obey; they do not have agency to control what is
outside of their stewardship — again, family resources, family rules.
(The Father did not grant us agency because life is an
amusement park and He wanted us to “do it all.” It’s much more
serious than that. He gave us agency because He had to, so we could
willingly choose to follow him, or not. The danger of agency is that
we might miss its purpose and see is as “license.” “My agency is
God’s permission to do whatever I want” instead of “My agency is
God’s recognition of the eternal truth that I must be free to willingly
obey.” President McKay, quoting someone else, said, “Even God could
not make men like himself without making them free.”)
The TV news did a back-to-school report featuring
mothers shopping with their teenage daughters. The issue was bare
midriff styles, with which the stores were well stocked and which the
teenage sub-culture is demanding. Daughters were dictating to
mothers what the family dress standards would be and how the family
resources would be spent, and the mothers were caving, because they were
misunderstanding their responsibility.
When parents choose not to expend resources on a
particular activity, such as enrollment in the government welfare school
program, a child’s agency allows him to decide how to respond. He
may choose to honor his parents and be willingly obedient; he may choose
to be rebellious, refusing to learn; or if he thinks his parents are in
error, he may go “upline” to his grandparents, the bishop, or even
directly to the Lord.
Certainly good parents are going to listen to their
children’s feelings and act in kindness and love. Certainly parents
are obligated to make the same decision the Lord would make and confirm it
through prayer, but they must make the decision. “Rule gently, but
rule.”
The cart before the horse? Our oldest daughter was the first dual-enrolled student
in the state, and the four behind her also attended the high school, some
a little, some a lot. The three youngest wouldn’t have any part of
it. Now that my children are all grown (my “baby” is 18) I see that
those who spent their teenage years at home with an “ignorant but
pure-minded teacher” were, in the long run, so much better off.
There will be exceptions, of course, and we don’t argue
with anyone else’s personal revelation. But in principle, I believe
our children don’t belong in public schools. In the next issue I
will attempt to persuade you with a dozen reasons why your children
shouldn’t go back to public school or be dual-enrolled in high
school. For now, please think in terms of what you would do now to
prepare for a future decision not to send your children to school -- just
in case.
Some suggestions: 1. The family comes first. In his book, The Holy Temple, President Boyd K. Packer
told of a young man who asked him to perform a double temple marriage
ceremony for himself and his best friend. President Packer
declined. What if they had the sealings separately, one right after
the other? Still no. President Packer wrote, “I pointed out
that, while they were very close now, in the years ahead the two young men
would find their separate ways as they went to seek their fortunes.
They would keep in touch for the first few years, but as the children came
and they became turned to normal life activities it was quite likely that
their lives would find separate paths. I told them that in looking
back on their wedding day they would want to remember it as a very
personal and a very private matter. It should be shared only by the
intimate family members and friends.”
After the family is securely bonded, then
we might look for outside social activities. Home school support
groups may help. Also important are friendships with people of
different ages, interests, and backgrounds.
I do have a hope for the near future: In the church
we have many “empty nesters” who may not yet have reached retirement age
but whose children have gone. Some of these people could mentor
small groups of teens, meeting together a few times a week to share wisdom
with them, to introduce them to other people of wisdom, and to hold book
discussions.
2. Have a family mission — In Elder Condie’s excellent article in the August 2001
ENSIGN, he talks about spending time on more worthy pursuits. There
is a time to sit down together to a good movie and a bowl of popcorn;
there is also a time to be busily engaged in a unifying cause.
Noting how adversity can unite a family, someone said,
“If you don’t have a wolf at the door, hire one.” But why let
adversity act upon you? Why not find your own adventures in the
spirit of Alma 32:14-15?
Home-schooled children are mature. When they’re
still too young for college and employment, they nevertheless need
activities of substance for mind, heart, and hands. The family
can’t always all go in the same direction, but maybe we can do better than
we’ve done.
3. Know The Lord’s Plan When Brother Benson talked at our LDS-HEA conference
about his wife’s reading the Lord’s Library at 17, and then Sister Packer
talked that Sunday at our Area Conference about going to the teachings of
the prophets for help in rearing her children, I saw a standard of gospel
scholarship we should strive for. Our children need far more “meat”
than they’ve been given. They need to know how the Church fits into
history, what their own personal mission is, and what it means to be a
peculiar people. Then they’ll have no desire for less.
In the same book mentioned earlier, President Packer
tells about explaining to a military chaplain about our temple
garments. He spoke of how the man’s clerical robes identify him and
set him apart as a servant of the Lord. He explained that since we
are a lay church, the man who leads the congregation on Sunday as the
bishop must go to work on Monday. “By our standard he is as much an
ordained minister as you are by your standard. He is recognized as
such by most governments. We draw something of the same benefits
from this special clothing as you would draw from your clerical
vestments. The difference is that we wear ours under our clothing
instead of outside, for we are employed in various occupations in addition
to our service in the Church.”
Our children must learn to think of themselves as a
set–apart generation, as clergy/missionaries, not mall rats.
4. Know Satan’s plan Did you ever wonder what the angel said to Alma the
Younger? He could not have taken away his agency, so he must have
taught him something. Perhaps he said, “Alma, this is what the Lord
has done, what he is doing now, and what he will be doing in the
future. This is what Satan is doing to destroy the work. This
is your part.” Would Alma need to know more?
Stay strong My daughter, Millie, pleads, “Tell them not to take
chances with their children, especially when they are just young.”
When President Packer spoke at our Area Conference, he
said “We’re losing a lot. . .” Then he stopped and started over. “[Our
children] can’t wait to look like the world.” I thought that was a strange
way to put things until I happened to read D&C 1:16 and compared it
with Alma 5:14&19.
What a blessing to be homeschooling and to be able to
build strong, bonded families!
Recently I was a guest on the
radio show of my good friend, Gayle Ruzicka, who is president of Utah’s
Eagle Forum. A caller said her home-schooled 8-year-old wanted to go
to school to have more friends. The mother told the daughter to pray
about it and make her own decision.
In writing this
essay, I am assuming that you do not want your child to attend the
anti-God, a-moral, government welfare school system; but I realize this is
not always the case. Many parents look forward to their children
being involved in school sports, cheerleading, drama, dating, and other
RECESS! activities. I certainly did. But I am older and wiser
now, and the schools are so much worse.
Here are four ways in which
we might beautify the family garden so our “flowers” will not want to
leave for greener pastures fraught with danger.
We have
a mistaken cultural assumption that children need the peer group for
proper socialization. This notion is so strong that people — even
parents — will actually be fearful if children do not have many
opportunities for peer association or if they spend too much time with
each other. Yet, God has organized the entire world into families,
not peer groups. We need to look to the family first for friendship
and social activities.
something in
which you are engaged together: a service project, a family business, a
political cause, a remodel-the-house project, a worthy hobby.
and teach it to
your children. At the April 2001 Primary Open House, President
Coleen Menlove said, “Within the Church, only a minority of active
families hold daily family prayer, scripture study, and weekly home
evening.” How sobering.
and teach it to your
children. If they understand who Satan’s leaders are and what their
game plan is, they will understand why he wants them under his control and
what will happen to them there. Read THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF
AMERICAN EDUCATION by John Taylor Gatto and share it with your children,
even just in bits and pieces over the years, so they can see plainly what
is going on.
Don’t settle for the easy solution,
the quick fix. Don’t “wimp out” and think the government school is
the answer just because it’s there. Wishing something is so does not
make it so. Your child’s hunger for a social life is not necessarily going
to be well satisfied there, and much harm may be done. If you
compromise to satisfy social needs, what have you really taught?