I guess before I start this article, I should tell a little more about introverts. Introverts do not like drawing attention to themselves, they pretty much want to be and do things that keep them in the background. They have a hard time getting over bad situations and really do not like to be reminded of those bad situations. In other words, do not like to talk about it. So, on with this writing.
I recently got an invitation to join update my information to the high school I graduated from forty-nine years ago. Now, just why would I want to give any information to the place I left and was extremely glad to get away from so long ago. Did you people not get on with your lives? Sure, I know, they are wanting to get donations for the booster club for sports. It pretty much sickens me to think about probably the worst four years of my life. Why would I want to give honor to that? During those years I was ignored, passed over, made fun of, and humiliated. Not necessarily in that order.
In today’s forum, society would say that I was bullied. That was not the case. Kids will be kids. When you throw a group of three or four hundred adolescents together, infighting will always take place. That is true with all of society. It is nature taking it’s course. The bigger, and or smarter of the group are going to kick and claw their way to the top of the social heap. That is what happens in a pack of wolves, and it is also what happens in a public school forum.
Now, did I say you should not send your kids to school? I did not! What is the alternative if you are a Christian parent and do not want to throw your children in the arena of the public school? Your first thought would be a good Christian school if you can afford it. Good luck if you can find one. Christian schools today are a place where good administrators with good intentions accept children that have been expelled from public schools for things that wouldn’t even be tolerated in public schools (horrors to think about this) are placed in with children of Christian parents that did not want theirs in public schools. These administrators do this with the hopes of changing or getting these children to turn over a new leaf. What happens when you put a bad apple in with a barrel of good apples? That bad apple usually only serves to corrupt several of the good apples. That same principle will apply to your children.
Schools, public or private, are a gathering pot for all. Anyone can go and jump into the stew. Stews are not all that appetizing sometimes. It has to have all the right ingredients to actually come out with a good taste. Most of the time it is no better than mediocre. If you are going to put something in a stew you have to watch over that stew closely. You have to keep adding this spice or that. YOU have to watch it closely. Again, here is a principle involved – YOU, as a parent have to watch your kids education closely. You cannot just throw them in and leave them. Public schools will throw garbage in. It is YOUR job as a parent to take a sieve and strain out the garbage that the world tries to put in to your child. Do not let the training you put into your children in their first five or six years be covered up by worldly philosophies and popular culture. Keep stirring the stew.
Is there any other alternative? Yes, but it is the scariest one of all. The thing that the public school system does not think you are capable of. That alternative is homeschooling. “Can I do that?”, you say. On your own you are right – you are probably not capable. Here is where prayer, or rather much prayer, and faith, or, much faith come in! We, as a family chose to home school before it was popular. There were not even any home school groups to get together with for sports or such. We were asked all sorts of questions. People questioned our sanity; why would we do such a thing; the most asked and we were looked down upon because of it was the ever popular – “what about socialization?” I would have you to refer back up to the second paragraph of this article about my situation in public school forty something years ago. If it was that bad forty years ago, just think how bad it had gotten twenty-five years ago, and how much worse it would be today.
As a result of a Christian home school experiment twenty years ago we were able to raise three Christian mothers who now have Christian homes and are now running Christian home schools. It does work. All it takes is love, and faith, and it does take money, but somehow that seemed to come in with the faith.
Take this thought away with you – the lawmakers that we have in Washington, DC, today – the senators, the congressmen and women, the president, vice-president (well, all of them), are the result of a public and or private school education. My father-in-law would have said that these people were educated beyond their intelligence.
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6
AE
Voice of the Introverts 