I've been reading a lot about education lately, so bear with me on this tangent. I've been trying to sort out where we have been and where we are going. I have found that often some off hand remark by someone during a conversation may bring a bit of wisdom I need in that moment. Maybe something along this thread will be helpful to someone out there.
I have been thinking about my own education and what it has given me. My youngest comes home from school every single day and sets up her own mini-classroom in the basement. She teaches her invisible class right up until dinner time. Each student has their work stacked neatly on their desk. My older girls tell me that she lectures the class and even tells Tim not to touch the girls next him. She is the one that might find home schooling a bit disturbing. I remember dreaming of being a teacher when I was her age. Then I realized that what I really loved about the idea of teaching was decorating the classroom. So I explored interior design. I went through a phase of sitting with my Better Homes and Gardens magazines and designing my dream homes. Then I played office for hours on end. Scheduling appointments and filing every scrap of paper in the house. Then I hit high school and quit dreaming of careers and starting living for the weekend.
I grew up thinking that WSU was where everyone went they graduated from high school, unless they wanted to work at the lumber mill, yuck! Both my parents went to WSU and my dad worked for them. My mom did try to convince me to be a Husky, but it was too late, and I knew I was a small town girl. I was fortunate enough to complete my college education without going into any debt. I had saved enough from my 4-H projects and working in the summers to pay for the first year and a half, and my parents helped me with portion that I couldn't pay for on my own.
There were a couple of things that happened in my early twenties that caused me to doubt the value of my education. I really wanted to pursue exercise science. I loved working out, and spent a lot of time at the gym. I loved studying the body and how it worked, and how exercise improved a person's total well being. Everyone told me it was a dumb major and that I would never make any money doing it. So I decided to get a degree in human nutrition. It was a broader field and I did find that eating right was also important to a person's well being. When Rick and I got engaged he was graduating in the spring and I had one more year. He had been accepted to the University of Minnesota and I looked at what it would take for me to transfer and finish there. They sneered at my classes and informed me that nutrition was a pre-med degree at U of M (I'm pretty sure everything is a pre-med degreee at U of M) and they wanted me to take two more years of classes. With out-of-state tuition there was no way I could afford to transfer, so we sat down and talked about what to do. The options were wait another year to get married, while Rick started at Minnesota and I finished at Washington State. Neither of us was excited about this option, and I think we both suspected that we would not end up married to each other. The other option was for Rick to defer his acceptance for one year and wait for me to finish my degree. We ended up staying at WSU, getting married, and Rick was able to finish a Master's degree while I finished my Bachelors. It was a good choice, but my experience with Minnesota had caused me to doubt the worth of my degree. Within two years Rick finished his Master's and we had Madison. One of the first books I read on parenting was called Children at Risk, by Larry Dobson. It was a critique of the public education system, and it frankly rocked my world. I realized by the end of the book that my education was pretty much worthless in my mind. Looking back I think it really sucked a lot of wind out of my sails. I had felt like a reasonably well educated person, but after reading that I realized how much I didn't know. Maybe I needed to have that humbling experience, but it really changed my view of my entire education. I was not going to let my children waste their time the way I had.
Fast forward to today. My oldest is about to graduate from a very reputable Christian high school. She has been accepted to several very good schools. She is interested in being a personal trainer, and I am fully supporting her in that. I am not going to tell her any of her dreams are dumb, except the one about marrying a professional basketball player. It's not totally dumb, just very limiting. Am I satisfied with her education this far? Honestly I think I could have done better. She is a bright young lady, and I think she will have a solid worldview to analyze life with. I'm not afraid of someone convincing her that their philosophy makes her God look silly. I wish I would have prepared her better for college, mostly by helping her learn to study better. I think time management is a weakness, but I guess that is common for eighteen year olds. I wish I would have pursued more dual credit classes for her. There are so many ways to get college credit in high school it seems silly not to do that. I haven't been as frugal as my dad was, so she doesn't have the same savings cushion that I had. I have let her travel more than I did, and I think that was worth every penny. I think she will take some time before she heads into college full time. She could start classes in the fall, and is all set to do that, but I really think taking a little time to live somewhere else and work or volunteer will give her a change of perspective that will make her college career more meaningful. If she comes back and still wants to be a personal trainer, then I will be right her to feed and her and make sure she gets to the gym. If she decides that she has found another passion, then great, we will pursue that.
Providentially, this weekend we were visiting the church that Rick grew up going to. The message was on missions. Every single on of my kids was engaged in that sermon. He talked about all of the reasons people will tell you not to pursue Christian ministry work, and he was right on. He talked about the rewards of following God into careers that don't pay well, that take you far from home, that mean getting down and dirty with people that don't have anything to give back, that mean sacrificing all of your potential to do something that looks meaningless. My kids ate it up. They got it. I am so excited to see where God takes them. They are ready to go, and following hard down that road. The thought of Madie living somewhere else next year makes me want to follow her around every minute until she goes. I am trying to fight the urge to make her feel guilty for leaving us. I know it is what God has, and that there is no more danger in her being in Africa than here if that is where God wants her. I look around at the families in town that have generations of people all right here and I wish I had that. I have always wanted to live in the same town as my grandparents. God in his abundant kindness has always provided a family to take the place of the one that is not here. I know this, and I know he will do this for my children as well. I have raised my children to have their own lives in Christ. They are his, not mine. I just hope that he lets me visit them wherever they are.
I want my children to value education, not just the one they will "finish" in the first eighteen years of their lives. I want them to love learning and to pursue it until they wake up in Heaven. I don't ever want them to doubt the value of knowing God and loving their neighbor. I don't want them to get their diploma and think that is the end of the road. I want them to see that diploma as the ticket to the rest of their lives. The temptation right now is to focus on June 1st, which is the day Madie will get her high school diploma. I want her to finish strong, but I also want her to run through the finish and start hard on the next lap. It must be my slave driver instincts coming out. My hope is that I am not taking too much of my sense of loss in my own education and using it to drive my kids too hard. There is so much potential in them, but their path is God's. As my very wise father told me just this weekend, "when you get to the fork in the road, take it." Sometime I will have to blog on my redneck education in the sticks. It really explains a lot about me.
I am thankful for...
Antibiotics
Dentists, and the fact that I didn't need a filling
Whoever assigned the topic of angels to Brook
Madie wrestling with her senior thesis, deepening her view of the sovereignty of God
Joe and the hours he has spent helping Madie hone her arguments
Books, shelve full of them
Clear blue skies, lovely no matter what the temperature
Life in a small town with a large family. Trying to put God on display.
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