Last night we attended Missoula Children’s Theater performance at a local school; Daniel was the Assistant Director.
It never ceases to amaze me how little government schools have changed over the years. It’s like stepping into a time machine back to the 70′s. How nostalgic, eh?
Last night, I thought about how I’d sit staring at the clock in Mrs. Luther’s English class bored beyond belief. Of the smell of the scented kitty litter they’d throw down on the floor if a kid barfed in the hallways. (That thought alone is enough to make me ill.) Or remembering, very clearly sitting in Mr. Smith’s 6th grade geography class thinking, “Thank God, I’m at the halfway mark.”
I graduated a year early from high school, at the age of 16, so enthralled I was with the whole process. And thus began the beginning of a long, drawn out process of ambiguous college hopping. John Denver’s music would comfort me; evidently I wasn’t the only person on the planet seeking to “find myself.”
There is a crisis of irrelevancy in how we school kids. It was there in the 70s and it’s still there now. Only now I think it’s even more of a crisis because times have changed, the work place has changed, technology has changed and voila—schools have…..remained the same.
For those of you who remember the late Keith Green, a Christian songwriter/singer, he wrote about a vision he once had years ago. I think it was him, anyway. Forgive me if my source is wrong but the picture was powerful and very apropos.
He described an island where God’s people were busy making daisy chains and adorning themselves and each other with them. In the meanwhile, people were being cast in to hell, neglected because the believers were busy with their daisy chains manufacture.
I love this analogy for church life; oh the busy silly programs we occupy ourselves with. But I see it’s apropos to describe institutionalized school.
Instead of allowing kids to explore and discover, they’re penned up the majority of their day made to memorize facts and regurgitate information on tests. And let’s not forget Daisy Chain Making 101.
By the time they’ve escaped, most have no clue what they want to do with their lives…much like I did nearly 30 years ago.
Instead of considering alternatives to high school such as apprenticeships or community service, the politicians insist of imposing more of the same ole same ole with bigger and bigger price tags attached. (Brings to mind the meaning of “insanity”- doing the same thing and expecting different results.)
And yes…there are some that come through the system just fine. But the majority don’t. They will walk through life, disconnected from their God-given identity until a mid-life crisis jars them to revisit questions and passions quelled long ago.
The love for learning is destroyed through death by a thousand cuts…or in keeping with my analogy…the ongoing creation of irrelevant daisy chains.
Oh, for a generation of youths fully alive to the purposes and callings God has placed in them!
Filed under: homeschooling, Individuality Tagged: | daisy chains, schooling, self-identity
