So I read a blog this morning by the title “Teach Your Children…Or Someone Else Will” by Michelle Horstman.
The basic idea is that most Professors are crazy-liberal in their thinking, with an agenda to promote their radical causes. Well, the author is right, but I think we often go in the wrong directions. We act like the cure for the threat of brainwashing in college is to brainwash them while they are at home. Honestly, it is little wonder so many look at us Christians (and homeschoolers like me to boot) as a little quacky. I’m not ducking the issue (sorry), rather I think there is a better way to go: LET’S TEACH OUR KIDS TO THINK!
It took me back to why we originally got into homeschooling our kids, and why I helped found Midland Classical Academy. I have never worried much about what ‘they’ teach in schools— but I have worried about the nature of the education. We homeschooled our kids all the way to college for PURELY ACADEMIC reasons. Moreover, I believe an education is a greater defense against brainwashing than ‘counter-brainwashing’ is.
Well, I mean, can’t we face the fact as ‘homeschoolers’—we are often trying to brainwash our kids to not be given over to ‘their’ brainwashing of our kids? This is the kind of ditch-to-ditch mistake we make when fear tells us what to do and we obey it. Just brainwashing our kids to the ‘right belief’ (says us) is simply to commit the same kind of crime.
Here’s an alternative: TEACH THEM TO THINK.
How do you do that? Expose them to LOTS of IDEAS and debrief them all. Discuss them. Debate them. Try to agree with them. Try to defeat them. I suppose this is the greatest gift my dad gave me (he was a trial attorney)…he would often say, “Fred, here’s the issue (and name one, like capital punishment). Which side do you want?”
Which side do I want? Yep…dad would just take the other side and we were off to the races…it was learning at its finest. Honestly, education all about learning to read carefully, write well, and get the essentials of mathematics (math teaches that there are absolutes!). But then all this data has to be reshaped and played with.
Is capitalism predatory? I think it probably is, which goes against my christian sensibilities. Yet, on the other hand, doesn’t capitalism honor freedom and work with the essential self-interest of human nature? Yep there too.
Please, learn to have your kids argue (think through) both sides…then they will know both what and why they believe. And, it makes them much more gracious in their interactions with others. The truth really has nothing to fear…and when it is contrasted against a lie, then the truth glares all the more. This is essentially how I wrote my most recent book (GLAEN)…but considering the truth vs lies in love, romance, dating, and marriage.
Teach you children well…good. Cause them to learn…better!
Blessings,
Fred Lybrand
P.S. If you’d like a short-course in logic around a biblical / theological issue…chapter two of Back to Faith is just that (more logic, simply explained, than most professors ever encounter).
