Deserts and Jungles

 “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.” (C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man) 

I have to admit not a little bit of guilt in removing such a stirring string of words from Papa Lewis' context, but please be patient, as I intend of replacing said string promptly to its proper place. 

I am writing this blog, beginning today, as a Home Educator. 

I choose carefully the term "Home Educator" for several reasons, the first being that I am a dad who has, with the help and support of his loving wife, decided to home school his son. Any cursory examination of the online home school landscape reveals, among other riches, an abundance of blogs, vlogs, websites, and YouTube channels worth spending (I'll do my best to pass along my favorites as I discover them). However, I find my particular voice — a trained, male educator — absent from the virtual conversation. 

So, to be forthright and to illuminate my biases and perspectives as brightly as possible, I'll list my credentials, lacking as they may be: I hold a BA in History from UCI with and emphasis in the philosophical underpinnings of the American Revolution; I hold a Master’s of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary with an emphasis in Pastoral Theology; and I hold a California Single Subject Teaching Credential in English and Language arts.

But most importantly, I am the father of an 8 year old boy named Elijah and the husband of Software Engineer named Jen. 

Beginning in March of 2020, along with the fraternity of American parents, Jen and I undertook the monumental task of working our regular jobs from our condominium in Southern California — Jen as an engineer and I as a high school History and English teacher — while attempting to manage our son's education alongside the loving hands of his first grade teacher who capably landed the year's plane safely on the tarmac of Summer 2020. 

Our little family spent the Summer flinching at our nation's schools' obviously underprepared response to the COVID pandemic, wondering what my career would look like and how that would interface with Elijah's education. When my school opened its doors at the beginning of the year, first with smaller "cohorts" and eventually with the entire student population, I was forced to question my willingness to put myself and my family — both of whom are at substantial risk for complications with COVID — in an position of increased likelihood of contracting COVID. 

Initially, we had decided to enroll Elijah into a virtual academy which was provided as an option by our local school district, but it became quickly evident that the curriculum was designed to keep students occupied autonomously for 3-4 hours a day while parents worked from the next room or across the table. This option has afforded us very little time for the things we value in education: intellectual exploration, creative thought, and faith integration. Instead, this option turned learning into a chore and, for the first time in his 4 years of school (2 years of pre-school, 1 year of kindergarten, and 1 year of First Grade) Elijah began to complete tasks for the sole purpose of completing them. 

Prayerfully, Jen and I decided to take Elijah out of his virtual academy and begin educating him at home. 

I am, thus, a Home Educator. 

However, once we decided to educate Elijah at home and began to research the process, it became increasingly evident that I was in the minority as a father managing my child's education. This fact has implications and nuances that I am sure that I will need to mine and analyze over the the next years of Elijah's home education, but at the very least I acknowledge that for most families, fathers interact with their children differently than mothers. 

Before I find myself assigning gender roles, I want to be clear: the term I choose to describe my new role in my family is gender neutral. 

This choice is largely a product of the proliferation of Home School Mom blogs, in concert with the search results for the term "Home School Dad", which usually assigns roles such as "Principle" or "disciplinarian" to the fathers of home school children. One well-meaning blogger pleads with his fellow home school dads, "I could simply delegate all the tasks of training my children to my wife. Some homeschool fathers do...We fathers need to be seriously committed and involved in our homeschooling to truly fulfill our responsibility before God, adequately demonstrate love to our children, and unconditionally love our wife." He then prescribes some possible roles for fathers in Home Schooling: "Be the Principal in your Homeschool"; "Administer Discipline when you are at Home"; "Control Your Time on the Job"; etc. 

I'll allow this gentleman to remain anonymous to avoid any appearance of attack. I fully understand that I'm in the minority as a stay-at-home father, but I cannot ignore the underlying and pervasive assumption that home schooling is (and maybe ought to be?) in large part administered lovingly by mothers while fathers supplement education from the sidelines with Bible studies and spiritual formation, provide respite for beleaguered wives, and are the heavy hands, wielding the rod of God's law on their children. 

I choose the term Home Educator because of my conviction that the education of a child is a family affair which ought to include both parents, older siblings, grandparents, and church and community members. In other words, I am writing from the perspective that, while there might be necessary roles within a family, the education of a child belongs to the whole family. 

There. Now you know at least some of my biases. Hopefully I've remained just ambiguous enough to deny having offended anyone. 

Now, back to Papa Lewis. 

The above quote is found in the opening lines of C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man", in which Lewis argues that the modern (post-modern, post-post-modern) world has so advanced as to eradicate foundational virtues of humanity. Education, in an attempt to attain objective, empirical knowledge, has created a race of what Lewis calls, "men without chests", by which he means human beings who have abandoned adherence to virtue in exchange for dominance over knowledge. Knowledge has morphed from the formative essence of education into something like coins to be collected in a video game, and education has facilitated this transformation. 

If you disagree with the content of this argument I direct you to Lewis himself and bid you good luck. 

If you disagree with my summary of Lewis' argument, well, I admit that its lacking, but it serves my purpose and is therefore good for something. 

Lewis asserts that the purpose of education ought to be according to Aristotle: "to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought," thus avoiding this chestlessness. Virtue must precede reason because reason is subservient to virtue. We can only say the words, "Reason is good," or, even better (and perhaps even more accurate), "Reason is beautiful", provided that we have categories for "good" and "beautiful". 

Education, then, is participative training in virtue. We teach our children to love what they ought to love by loving it ourselves and inviting them to enjoy it with us. 

Lewis calls this irrigating deserts and contrasts it to the still common practice of cutting down jungles, or destroying the loves and virtues that currently exist in children's hearts and minds. 

This can best be illustrated by a practice common in Elijah's 2nd grade classroom: "identifying key details" in a text. A child is assigned to read and understand a story — say, "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" — and is then asked to identify the key details of the story. Lewis would argue, I think, that this approach to a text removes the chest of the reader in exchange for the reader's attention to reason. 

The term "Key Details" has that sort of antiseptic feel of empirical knowledge, doesn't it? If you can list the key details, you might own the text. 

But how did the text impact the person reading it? As long as we keep the conversation in the realm of objective knowledge, we think we can avoid being affected by the text at all. Instead we can know the text, a result which is more desirable because (I expand upon Lewis here) it can be measured and tested in a standardized way. Ask a student for key details and there can be quantifiable correct answer; ask a student to discuss how the text has affected her and the burden on the educational system is increased to an unmanageable maximum. 

In home education we are afforded the time and care to teach with, through, and in virtue. We can intentionally chose texts that generate in our children a love for the Lord's creation. From there, we can ignite the spark of curiosity about the world that reveals the glory of its creator. We can spend the time our children need to examine beautiful things — the veins on the back of a sycamore leaf and William Blake's "The Lamb"; the cellular structure of a plant and Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" — so that they can appreciate the value of reason when they are confronted with it, or when they are confronted with its absence. 

The aim of education is to produce in a student the right kinds of love for the right kinds of things.

I am, thus, a Home Educator. 

In this blog I hope to offer my unique perspective on being a Home Educator. I hope to document my triumphs and failures. I hope to extend support to other Home Educators attempting to decipher the complex landscape of the education of a child. And I hope to add to a larger conversation that began long before I decided to Home School Elijah and, the Lord willing, will continue well after he has a family of his own. 

In short, I hope to use this blog as another means by which I can irrigate deserts.