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Deuteronomy 6, Scholé, and Homeschooling Through Affliction

When my older children were still toddlers I discovered the Charlotte Mason homeschooling method. I was delighted. I was homeschooled myself and was looking forward to the day when my babies would be old enough for school. I had been praying for guidance in how I should teach them and I was thrilled with how God had answered. (I still am.)

teachingfromrest

Being a researcher, I spent many happy hours devouring articles, books and blogs on Charlotte Mason education. I loved how these practical, gentle – yet powerful – methods and philosophies merged perfectly into daily family life. I could do this.

However.

Nine years ago, my two eldest were finally old enough to “do school” and I was eagerly looking forward to our first real school year. God had other plans for us though. I had been struggling with my health more and more and and in August 2007 it plummeted to rock bottom and I hit a crisis point from which I have never fully recovered.

Instead of cuddling on the couch reading books or heading off on adventurous nature walks of delight and discovery I was focusing on things like breathing, trying to find my own pulse and staring at the ceiling. The most effort I was able to put into anything was playing Tetris on my phone since I only had to move my thumb – and that was on a good day.  (I did get really good at Tetris.)

School was put on the back burner for awhile (and thankfully the children were still young enough that this really was OK – Charlotte Mason would have approved) and focused on survival. I slowly improved and didn’t feel like I was on my death bed anymore, but for two years I was still sick enough that my sister lived with us. I was only able to be up – very carefully – for about half of the day and was still extremely limited in what I was able to do.

Since then, I have had years where my health has been better and years where it has been worse, but every year has been a struggle. God has been so faithful though. The children have continued to learn and grow in spite of this and I am so thankful. Yet, one of my greatest sorrows is not that they are not learning – it’s that I have not been able to implement all the ideals I hold so dearly in all the ways I so desperately want to. My best laid plans have had to be set aside again and again. As a slowly reforming perfectionist, that’s been hard to swallow.

God has been teaching me lots of lessons on trusting Him in all this, and He keeps directing me back to Deuteronomy 6:

And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Deuteronomy 6:6,7

These verses have encouraged me over and over. I tend to like to make things hard for myself, getting bogged down in the perfect “way” to do everything and then browbeating myself when I fall short. But God’s commandments are not burdensome. His yoke really is easy and His burden is light. He gives us a basic outline with plenty of options in what the nuts and bolts of education can look like. He doesn’t say “Teach your children between these particular hours with this particular curriculum, in this exact way. At a desk.”  Nope. Life is learning and learning is life. We can teach them as we live, whatever that happens to look like.

When I really take hold of this I realize that in spite of all the struggle and days that feel like a total failure, I actually am equipped to teach my children. Maybe not in the exact way my perfectionistic little mind would prefer, but capable none the less. What is even more encouraging is that even on the “liest down” days where spelling and Latin and nature walks and history all fall by the way side I can still teach them the most vital, life giving, crucial lesson of all: how to love God.

As much as I love Charlotte Mason education, and as much as I believe that it actually intertwine with and flows from Deuteronomy 6 (something I’ve been doing lots of thinking and reading on and hope to write more about), I can’t always logistically implement the practical out workings of it all in the nitty gritty day to day. I so love that I can, however, still apply the absolute foundational, simple principles, given to us by our Almighty God Himself.

Over the past two years as I have been learning much about scholé and teaching from rest. Mystie Winckler gives an excellent definition of scholé that has great application to what I have been pondering along these lines:

To the ancient mind, scholé was about pursuing truth and losing oneself in the process. The category was broken down less along productive/unproductive lines, but along self-oriented and truth-oriented. To be out working in the world was to be pushing your own goals forward; to be seeking scholé was to set your own agendas and goals aside for the sake of seeing, experiencing, and seeking truth. Scholé means seeking Truth, Goodness, and Beauty first and foremost, laying aside personal agendas, prideful goals, and desires to control so that we can be open and able to embrace Truth, Goodness, and Beauty when we see it.

And we should be seeing it all over the place. God is True, Good, and Beautiful, and we are reflections of Him, called to increase our reflection of Him more and more as we mature and grow all our lives.

So is our focus in our day-to-day homeschools about achieving our own ends or about encountering Truth, Goodness, and Beauty? It might look exactly the same in method, but it is the motives and the priorities – the heart – that is different.

The more I realize this, the more my burden is lifted. The very lessons I have been learning myself – to trust God, to relinquish my own ideas of what our days should look like, to seek Him above all things – are actually a fundamental part of what it means to truly educate. Eureka. It all comes full circle. This is really living out in the day to day what it practically means to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and might and to teach His ways to our children.

I may do a lot more sitting and lying down than rising up and walking, but I can teach my children just the same. Fellow weary mothers, we can do this. As Charlotte Mason says so succinctly:

Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.

We can provide an atmosphere and a life permeated with a love for learning. We can cultivate discipline and good habits. We can give our children a love for Truth, Goodness and Beauty.  We can help them grow in Wisdom and Virtue. We can do this as we just live life together, pointing them to Christ on the hard days and on the happy ones.

This has been such an encouragement to me as I face another school year that will be a challenge and will not fit neatly into all the lovely charts, book lists, schedules and detailed plans I still insist for some reason on making. Education can, and does, happen in all the nooks and crannies, twists and turns and ebb and flow of life.

I am learning (“learning” being the keyword there) to loosen my death grip on my plans. Not that I don’t still do the best I can in whatever our current circumstances are, but that I accept that this is my best and then leave it with the Lord. I am finally beginning to rest in the fact that school for our family needs to fit our family, our circumstances and our season – and that although it might not remotely resemble perfect – which doesn’t exist, after all – it is good. 

If you are in a difficult season of life that makes educating your children at home a challenge, I hope you will be encouraged. Take heart and a deep breath. Remember,”Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” (1 Thess. 5:24) Hang in there. Or rather, stop hanging and let go. Rest in Him (And, oh, how I am writing this to myself too). Underneath are the everlasting arms, we and our children are in His hands and His strength is made perfect in weakness.

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Filed Under: Be Not Weary, Home Education 4 Comments

« When Thou Liest Down…
How We Use Kindle Fire Tablets in Our Home School (for All 8 of Our Children). »

Comments

  1. Joanna Rammell says

    September 2, 2016 at 9:35 pm

    Thank you my dear Sister for writing about this journey I share with you. The Lord has been so good to me as I have faced many similar challenges. He continually teaches me using this broken body to teach me lessons I’m not sure I, in my stubbornness and perfectionism, could learn any other way! The continued surrender it requires also makes an impact on my children. They are definitely learning and learning a lot! But you are right…it isn’t what I in my detailed oriented mathematical thinking envisioned. I was also homeschooled…I was extremely successful in academics, and it was all very easy (even a degree in mathematics). I have really struggled with my children not being like me–they all are very right brained, dyslexic, and sensory challenged in different ways. And the Lord has used all this to TEACH me. It is humbling when I deal with my children’s obvious intelligence that doesn’t fit into any of my known boxes. It has been a wonderful opportunity to really get to know them and to get small glimpses into how they look at the world, very different than my neat and tidy rows and lists. But their ways are no less valid, I think we need to thank God for the people who think so far out of the box. They get things done!
    It was really encouraging to read your words that so eloquently speaks to schooling even from the sick bed. And how though not all of our schooling can look like our Charlotte Mason ideals, what we are doing is still beautiful and right. Thank you for sharing. I must be so careful in what I choose to do…so I can continue steady instead of having a great setback. Sometimes it can get a bit lonely, when every one else seems to have such energy and ability to get up and do! I’ve coined the phrase turtle tsunami to describe my attempts at a steady pace. And I’ve learned to be deeply grateful for every breath and every moment God gives us together. I have started telling the children, we are going to have a great day even if mommy isn’t feeling good. Because yes…even that teaches. And I’ve noticed my four ‘special’ children’s preparation for life is so much more than my academic success ever was! May God bless you will all the strength you need to accomplish His purposes, and may you and your dear family be bathed in contentment.

    Reply
  2. Jessica Fahy says

    September 29, 2016 at 6:31 pm

    Thank YOU. I so needed this right now as I’m going through a rough first trimester of pregnancy. Yes – relinquishing YOUR daily plans and what YOU feel is the ideal way is SO difficult and I’ve struggled with it, although know what God is asking of me right now. All I can say is that I realize more and more that I’m capable of nothing but what God’s grace allows, directs, and gives me and that is very humbling. Thank you for being honest and sharing and encouraging. My prayers are with you.

    Reply
  3. Tracy Born says

    November 27, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    I just discovered you on Instagram today, and I am thankful that I did! Thank you for writing this dear lady! I have been mulling some of these same things over in my heart and it was very reassuring to me today. God is so good! God bless you! Tracy

    Reply
    • jmcbride says

      December 24, 2017 at 10:21 pm

      Somehow I missed this earlier! Thank you for the kind words. God bless!

      Reply

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When I first wrote this post 6 years ago, our fami When I first wrote this post 6 years ago, our family had already been through some hard years, but I had no idea what was still ahead for us: 

“This tree is teaching me a good lesson today. It had some intense pruning a few months ago and was cut back to just a few stumps. All its branches were gone and it looked dry and dead. But today, this beautiful little shoot is bursting forth with blooms and life. In my own season of pruning - where I have felt like there is not much of me left, and I can really identify with these stumps - I love the hopeful reminder this picture gives. I can still bloom where I am planted if my roots are buried where they belong.

“His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither..."”

The tree in this picture is gone now, along with our house, most of our belonging and a long list of other deeply painful losses. We have been in an exhausting season of storms, pruning and uprooting. We are feeling lost, beaten down and broken - and can really identify with these stumps. 

But God is still faithful, and while this tree might be gone, the lesson it left behind still holds true.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman... Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

The storms may rage and the pruning shears may cut deep, but “who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... NOTHING “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I love the hopeful reminder this picture gives. We can still bear fruit and bloom where we are planted, - even when we have been cut down and our earthly roots have been pulled up - because we are safely held by and rooted in the True, Life-giving, Unwavering, Unfailing Vine.
“There are many important aspects of home-life f “There are many important aspects of home-life from first training to highest education; but there is nothing in the way of direct teaching that will ever have so wide and lasting an effect as the atmosphere of home. And the gravest thought concerning this is that in this instance there is nothing to learn and nothing to teach: the atmosphere emanates from ourselves—literally is ourselves; our children live in it and breathe it, and what we are is thus incorporated into them. 

There is no pretence here or possibility of evasion; we may deceive ourselves: in the long run, we never deceive our children. The spirit of home lives, and, what is more, is accentuated in them.

Atmosphere is much more than teaching, and infinitely more than talk. I doubt if we could live a week even with a very reserved person without being able to say what is his aim in life, what is the thing he values supremely.

That after all is the kernel of life: to make up our minds what it is that we want, what is worth striving for; and it is this central aim which makes the atmosphere of our lives, which stamps itself inevitably on our ways and words, so that we are for-ever declaring it, though it may be unconsciously and involuntarily.”

~ The Atmosphere of Home by M. F. Jerrold, The Parents Review

Swipe through the slides for more snippets from this convicting and insightful Parents Review article.
“We believe that the first article of our P.N.E. “We believe that the first article of our P.N.E.U. educational creed—“children are born persons”—is of a revolutionary character; for what is a revolution but a complete reversal of attitude? And by the time, say, in another decade or two, that we have taken in this single idea, we shall find that we have turned round, reversed our attitude towards children not only in a few particulars, but completely."

~ Charlotte Mason, “The Parents Review”: 1911 - Vol. 22, Page 420
“It was the gradual infiltration of Miss Mason’s ideas, viz.: that children are born persons; that that precious individuality which marks off one child from another must not be crushed out, but made to operate in his grasp of the universe; that it was the parents’ high responsibility, while preserving his individuality, at the same time to nourish his mind, train his will and instruct his conscience, and so equip him with the means of giving and receiving to the utmost of his capacity...”

~ Henrietta Franklin,
“Miss Mason’s Contribution to Educational Thought”:
Parents’ Review, 1926
“In this time of extraordinary pressure, educati “In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it, for the most part, spent out in the fresh air.”

~ Charlotte Mason, Home Education
“Charlotte Mason believed that every child is bo “Charlotte Mason believed that every child is born a person, that many are handicapped because we do not recognise that every child has affinities with all the knowledge due to him (to God, to man, to the universe around him); that he has natural powers to deal with it, and that his education must be planned to secure due and continuous supplies for body, mind and spirit, and that ‘every school should educate every scholar in the three sorts of knowledge.’ The P.N.E.U. has a great contribution to offer; the time is ripe and our need is great.” 

~ Elsie Kitching, The Parents Review: 1941 - Vol. 52, Page 329
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