Pastor Reb Bradley on ‘formulaic parenting’ and ‘relationship’

If you’ve missed been past two posts — here and here — on Pastor Reb Bradley’s article on homeschooling ‘Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling: Exposing the 7 Major Blindspots of Homeschoolers’, I hope that you will have time to read it in full.

In this concluding part, he discusses ‘formulaic parenting’ and ‘relationship’. This also concerns the way husbands treat wives.

We seem to have a growing trend in conservative — not necessarily orthodox — churches with men objectifying not only children but also women. Some of these men are new to the faith, others are returning from a sojourn away from the Church and others have been lifetime believers steeped in outward holiness. Some laymen’s groups are church book clubs where the latest in family and ‘godly’ advice are dutifully read and digested. The erroneous notion of ‘federal headship’ — relatively recent — is gaining currency among men who, despite their muscular physiques, feel bewildered and displaced in 21st century society. The idea that they command their families like ‘high priests of the home’, the way a fundamentalist Muslim does, has some appeal. At least there is one realm which these men can control in any way they see fit. When ‘Christian’ books and videos reinforce these notions, men can hide behind the word ‘godly’ and say, ‘Honey, I’m only making our home more acceptable to the Lord. Now, just do what I tell you and we won’t have any problems.’

In the final part of his article, Bradley warns us about objectifying family members. Emphases mine below, except in the heading and italicised words.

7. Formulaic parenting breaks down relationship

An over-dependence on authority and control, along with an over-reliance upon sheltering are often part of a “formulaic” approach to parenting. We, as homeschool parents, are committed to achieving results with our children so we look for and rely upon formulas and self-working principles to insure our success. One of the reasons we go to homeschooling conventions and read numerous books is to learn the guaranteed “how to’s” and steps from the successful veterans. Our desire for results with our family compels us to discover all the ingredients in the ultimate “family-life recipe.”

Formulas for success after all, have become the American way – impatience and love of expedience characterize our outlook on life. That is why millions of self-help books are sold every year in bookstores, both secular and Christian. By its very definition, a formula is a reliable process of producing a specified result. In life, we want the ultimate formula for weight loss, the quickest scheme to get rich, and the surefire prescription for finding true love. In the church we want the proven method for church growth, the sure techniques for evangelism, and the most effective system for raising up leaders. And with our children we want the tried and true approach for producing results. The process doesn’t need to be quick or simple, but it must be reliable, and it certainly must be biblical. To our delight, we know the Bible is full of the wisdom and promises of God. We therefore look to it for its self-working principles and promised methods.

Yes, it seems that everyone in the church these days wants to find the biblical formulas for success, but there’s a problem with trusting in formulas – we are directed, no, commanded to trust in God – not in formulas (John 14:1; Ps 37:5; 62:8). There is a monumental difference.

A formulaic perspective says, “If I am faithful to implement this principle or carry out this procedure properly, I am certain to arrive at a specific result. And If I do not do the procedure exactly right I will achieve bad results.” In this state of mind we are trusting not just in the “method,” but in our efforts to carry it out. Trust in formulas is really dependence upon ourselves. In our hearts we know this and that’s why those who feel their efforts have produced great results are tempted to take pride in their adult children – they credit themselves for doing it all right (and condescend to those who haven’t). And that’s why those unhappy with the results of their efforts feel so much like failures – they conclude they must have used the wrong approach.

Anyone who really understands the grace of the gospel knows that we cannot take personal credit for any spiritual accomplishments. We are totally God’s workmanship (Eph 2:10; Phil 2:13; 1:6) and everything good in our lives is a gift from Him (James 1:17). We can do absolutely nothing by ourselves for which we can take credit (Eph 2:8-9; Gal 6:14; Rom 4:2; 1 Cor 1:28-31; 2 Cor 11:30).   Yes, when we face God on Judgment Day he will affirm us for what we have done here on Earth (1 Cor 3:6-15; Mat 25:21), but we know He is the power behind our lives (Acts 17:28), so we rightly give all glory to Him (Rom 11:36). So many of us lean toward a formulaic mentality, because our fallen natures are drawn toward self-reliance.  We want to feel that by our own efforts (works) we have achieved something that will make us acceptable to God – by nature we are legalistic. (The reason that “human effort” forms the basis for all false religions of the world is, because our fallen natures strive toward “high self-esteem” through self-effort. In contrast, grace gives credit to God for all that is good.)  

It is critical to understand that God wants us to trust not in principles, methods, or formulas, no matter how “biblical” they seem. God wants us to trust in HIM!  As I emphasized earlier on in this series of articles, our responsibility is to obey – God’s job is to produce results (1 Cor 3:6). Our success in raising children to be lovers of God and others, is not going to be contingent upon achieving perfect sheltering or using the best Bible curriculum. It is going to be based on doing what we must as parents, but trusting God for the outcome. We absolutely mustn’t trust in our ability to intimidate and control, or in the path upon which we lead our family.

If Christians can consistently achieve seemingly spiritual results by human efforts, I ask – where is God in the equation? After studying how God dealt with Israel and how Christ conducted himself on Earth, I contend that God will not reduce Himself to being an ingredient in a formula or method … In the church is it possible that we are trying to gain spiritual results by fleshly means? Yes, biblical principles of discipline, when used by believers or unbelievers, will help develop good behavior in children, but good behavior is only skin-deep.  Fruitful parenting is about affecting our children’s hearts, not just their behavior.  To influence their hearts, it won’t be by our control – the heart belongs to the individual and must be touched by God.

I have observed that the best and most lasting fruit is born in families in which the gospel is genuinely believed and lived. Parents who daily depend upon God, and not their methods and self-working principles, are most likely to pass on their faith. I am convinced that the most contagious parenting is living a heartfelt faith before your children.

Children as people

There’s a problem with approaching our relationships in a formulaic fashion. Can you guess what it is?

People, as self-willed individuals, cannot be successfully subjected to methods of manipulation. Our children are people – they are not soulless animals to be trained. Neither are they chemicals in a formula, which can be processed for guaranteed results. It is critical that we realize our children are people whose hearts, as they mature, are influenced more by relationship than by external controls. In all our intensity we can sometimes treat them not as fellow humans, but as dehumanized ingredients in a cake we are baking.

If we think we have total control over how our children respond to our training, we will relate to them not so much as people, but more as animals. Dogs are behavior-driven and can be trained to respond to a stimulus exactly the same way, time after time. Children however are people and as they mature they will eventually decide if they will continue to respond as trained. If we do not understand this we will fail to develop the relationship they deserve as our children, and as our younger brothers and sisters in Christ – which, incidentally, will give us greater influence over their adolescent hearts.

My own recipe called for great amounts of parental control, daily doses of Scripture indoctrination, plenty of edifying music, modest apparel, and safe entertainment, all combined in the oversized mixing bowl of sheltering, and cooked in the oven of homeschooling. The timer was set and I knew that when they reached their 18^th birthday, “DING” the timer would go off I would have a perfect angel food kid. I was certain of it. I had yet to learn that fruitful parenting is more about people than process.

At homeschool conventions across the country I have seen in parents a tendency to treat children as non-persons. I cannot count the times I have stood at my booth in the exhibit hall and been approached by a mom or dad, accompanied by one of their older teenage children. The parents ask me about a problem they are having with one of their children, and as they talk, I realize that the child to whom they refer is the one standing there with them. It is as though these parents are oblivious that their young adult has feelings. As I look into the eyes of that embarrassed young person I often see a detached or despairing look that hints they can’t wait to get out of the home. Other parents who approach me may not have a teen present to embarrass, but they will ask me for a method to change their problem-teenager at home. In the last few years I have tried to explain to these parents that fruitful interaction is not about what they do to their young people, but who they are with them. It’s about having a real faith in God, and expressing it in a real relationship with a real person.

Breakdown of relationship

A number of years ago, it finally dawned on Bev and I that as we had focused on parenting ”methods,” our children were eventually relegated to being ingredients in a formula. We related with them as if they were “projects.”  The more we focused on formulas and principles to which we would subject our children, the more they became “things.” The more they became things the less we had significant relationship. The less we had relationship the more we lost their hearts. Without their hearts the less we were able to influence them or their values. We regularly spent hours coaching and admonishing them during their teen tears, not realizing that all our brilliant lectures were falling on deaf ears. Without their hearts, the best we could do was make more rules and devise new consequences, which affected the outside, but not the inside.

I want to restate the points of this last paragraph one at a time, so you can see the progression again:

1. The more we focus on formulas and principles, the more children become “things.”

2. The more they become things the less we have significant relationship.

3. The less we have relationship the more we lose their hearts. 

4. Without their hearts the less we are able to influence their values. 

5. Without their hearts, the best we can do is control the outside (for a while).

Is it clear yet?   I know that some of you don’t get it, because right now you are hoping I will lay out a step-by-step plan for winning your children’s hearts.  Ouch!  The formulaic mentality, unfortunately, is like a filter that we wear over our eyes – it is a way of viewing the Christian life that must be identified and forsaken.

Perhaps it will become clearer if I illustrate the point using the husband-wife relationship.

Let’s say that the situation involves a man and his wife. He goes off for a day to the ACME School for Husbands and returns home to put into practice all that he learns. Upon arising the first morning he pulls out a cue card, looks at his wife lying in bed and awkwardly reads, “Honey… don’t you look ….. beautiful today!” She might be flattered, and does want to believe he is sincere, but she knows that with her mask of face cream she looks awful. Besides, although his words are nice, his need to read his “heart felt” love lines smacks of insincerity, and she doesn’t trust his motives. Her hopes are up, after all, he is trying; but as the day progresses and he does one “good husband” deed after the other, it is obvious that he has merely learned some tricks for manipulating women. He cluelessly insults her cooking for the 17^th time that month, then reaches into a box and pulls out a bouquet of plastic flowers to “fix it”; when his wife confronts him after he starts his daily tirade against his mother-in-law, he suddenly stops and begins reciting a contrived script about how wonderful his mother-in-law actually is; before responding to anything his wife says he first refers to list of tips he carries in his pocket, etc.

Some women would be thrilled that their husband was at least trying, but most would prefer that he not simply act loving, but that he actually love them. She desires her husband not to act like he is listening to her, but to actually care enough to listen. A woman rightly desires a real relationship with her husband, and doesn’t want to feel like she’s another problem in his life to be dealt with. She wants him – not the cliché phrases or manipulative ploys he learned from an ACME instructor. Such a woman will not easily draw close to her husband – she may even be tempted to back away out of self-protection.

But what if a husband came home from the training and instead of trying to woo his wife, he treated her degradingly, seeking to force changes in her, ie: he threatened to take away all access to money if the house were not kept neater; he took away her car keys and cut off the phone to control how she spent her time; if she cried for any reason he would scream at her and accuse her of “classic female manipulation,” etc. My guess is that most women would have great difficulty submitting to such demeaning treatment.

A woman’s struggle with such harsh conduct is understandable, since as the Scriptures teach, a wife is to be sacrificially loved and tenderly cherished (Eph 5:25, 28-29). And she mustn’t be treated roughly (Col 3:19), but regarded with special consideration and respect (1 Pet 3:7). It is a foolish man who disregards God’s shrewd admonishments – any wife with self‑respect will be tempted to keep herself at a safe emotional distance.

In these two scenarios the husband approached his wife with a formulaic mentality. He related to her like she was a project, subjecting her to various techniques and ploys to achieve a certain result. What he really needed to do was love his wife and relate to her genuinely on the basis of that love. In the same way that a wife needs to be esteemed as a woman and fellow adult, our children, particularly our teens, need to be respected. When we relate with them like they are projects they subconsciously see it in our eyes and sense it in our manner. They respond best to genuine interaction – respectful of them, as if they were intelligent beings with thoughts and opinions worth listening to. If we relate with them as if they are projects, rather than persons, they will likely remain emotionally distant from us. Yes, we are still responsible to protect them, exercise authority over them, and groom them toward full adulthood, but they must have opportunities to share their thoughts and know they have been heard. (I will address this with more specifics in a future article.)

It all goes back to my admonition in Section 5 – it is who you are not just what you do. A formulaic mentality is chiefly concerned with doing the right thing to produce the right result. Our children need us not merely to act like Christians, but to be genuine Christians. As I look back in my own life, I see that with my first three children I was too concerned with how they were perceived by others. I saw their behavior as a reflection on me, and I wanted to look good. They, therefore, sensed in me a measure of pretentiousness – not the genuineness of faith that would have drawn them to me or to the Jesus I spoke about. My sincere concern for their character was overshadowed by my concern for my reputation. I have discovered that, like me, multitudes of parents want their children’s hearts, but live a faith that fails to completely attract them.

Influencing the heart

… If we want to influence our children’s hearts and not just their behavior, it will happen because of who we are, not what we do. We cannot simply implement loving actions in our homes – we must truly love (1 Cor 13:3). We cannot merely recite Scripture to our families – we must be those who look to the Word because it points to our wonderful Savior (John 5:39). And we especially cannot treat a spiritual activity such as prayer as a “discipline” or “principle” – it must be the natural response of dearly loved children of God pouring their hearts out to their Father in Heaven.

Turning hearts of children to parents

…

It is possible that the pure gospel of Jesus, which first led us to him, has become clouded for us. We may believe in the grace of the gospel, but we have unconsciously supplemented the finished work of Christ with our own efforts to implement our preferred formula. We may have muddied the gospel with our preoccupation with outward appearances and external controls.

It could also be that we don’t enjoy the fruit of the gospel in our families, because we have never understood the grace of the gospel at all. Either way, I pray that the eyes of our hearts be opened to see Jesus (John 12:21; 20:29). Those who see him, most easily drop those things that hamper them in their pursuit of him (Heb 12:1-3). And those who really see him find they more naturally become like him (1 John 3:2). And it is those who are genuinely like him that have the greatest impact on those around them.

Seeing Jesus

Jesus was the greatest preacher of holiness the world has ever known, yet he attracted to himself common sinners and the dregs of society. Jesus had high standards – he was the epitome of righteousness and purity, but somehow he was incredibly attractive. He exposed sin, but he accepted sinners. He hated evil, but evildoers saw in him a wealth of mercy. Jewish society was intimidated by the standards of the Pharisees, but few were drawn to their religion of avoidance, control, and form. Is it possible that when our children look at us they see more of the Pharisees in us than Jesus? Might it be that the Jesus we represent to our children is not the real Jesus at all?

…

The Savior is near you and calls you to leave behind the life of empty, lifeless religion, and come to the One who embodies God’s mercy. He is righteous – he abhors evil and despises pompous religion. He hates it exceedingly, but he loves us so much, he allowed himself be nailed to a cross, so that the wrath of God would pour down upon him instead of us. He now extends to us his scarred hands, so that we would see them and declare in our hearts, he is a wonderful Savior worth following!

Loving him isn’t about our children – it is about HIM! God intends that the side effect of loving Jesus, and enjoying the grace of the gospel, will be that all people, including our children, will be touched by the Savior in us. I pray in Jesus name that as you read these words you will experience the grace of God in a fresh and new way. Cry out for it!  And may it rain down upon you with power from on high! May today be the day that you grasp the love of God and find in Him what you’ve been searching for all along.

AMEN!

I personally know only one large family whom I consider godly, healthy and ‘successful’, for lack of a better word. Both parents held graduate degrees and had met at university. The husband converted to Catholicism from a Protestant denomination. His wife had always been a devout Catholic, despite a tragic episode during her childhood. The couple had a lifelong interest and activity in local and state education, primarily at secondary and university level.

They had five children, each of whom was an individual, and developed their lives in different ways. The whole family has a very lively faith, which is still evident today. The eldest son became a priest, a daughter pursued a fast-paced consulting career, a son forged his way in photography then as a small business manager, another son became a successful businessman and another daughter became a full-time teacher after a long debilitating illness. Four attended state secondary school and one a Catholic girls’ school. All earned at least a Bachelors degree at university; the eldest son has advanced degrees from seminary. In their spare time, some of them played sports, others pursued a more intellectual path, but all trusted in the promise of Christ which, in turn, deepened their love for each other and those whose lives they touched.

Their home was elegant and orderly but always felt calm and peaceful. I don’t know how the parents managed it; each had a busy schedule, often through to late evenings. However, they showed an excellent example to their children by exhibiting a true love of Christ. The children saw that example and wanted to follow it. I can’t explain it, because whilst the couple were in the public eye and well-respected, they were self-effacing and modest people who treated each other as equals. However, they did live their faith and respected their children as people whilst giving them sound guidance and providing them with structure.

A heartfelt Christianity, deep humility and a quiet spirit helped this couple raise five talented, thinking, believing children, now in middle age, two of whom have their own families.

So, it is possible, but it takes a genuine faith in and individual relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ.

End of series

Pastor Reb Bradley’s advice for homeschooling parents

Yesterday, I featured excerpts from an article by a pastor, homeschool advocate and father of six — Reb Bradley.  Bradley’s article ‘Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling: Exposing the 7 Major Blindspots of Homeschoolers’ makes several excellent observations about the potentially isolating and outwardly pious distinctions of some homeschooling families.

He sees a crisis looming which has the potential for overly-controlled children to turn away from their parents, the Church and God.

Today’s post provides Bradley’s advice. Bradley would want you read his article in its entirety, as he requested on another website, to get the full import of what he is saying. I agree and would recommend it to every Christian adult — parent or not — as they examine their own family relationships.

Emphases below are mine, except for title headings and italicised words.

6. Over-reliance upon sheltering

…  

I took nothing for granted and evaluated the effects of everything that had contact with my family. I got rid of the TV antennae when my older children were little and allowed them to watch only approved videos, ie: ones with no boy/girl relationships or occult powers — Popeye and Mary Poppins were therefore out. They would attend birthday parties for children from church, but I would instruct them that if the birthday boy or girl’s mother tried to show a video on my “no-watch” list, they were to go to a back bedroom and entertain themselves until the video was over. We carefully screened the music they heard and watched them cautiously when they were with friends.

My children could not play with most children in the neighborhood and were even kept away from some children in “like-minded” families. They were sheltered from secular publications, let alone any Christian books or magazines that promoted values that didn’t match our own. Youth groups or Scouting were unheard of. Santa Claus, Halloween, and Harvest parties, as well as Superheroes and Barbies, were anathema. I hardly wanted them to go into Wal-Mart or grocery stores lest they be exposed to images of immodestly dressed women …

Protecting from temptations and corrupting influences is part of raising children. Every parent shelters to one degree or another. We all set standards for diet, for relationships, for reading and entertainment. One permits the children to watch network television, but prohibits cable movie stations; another forbids network TV, but allows parent-approved videos; still another tolerates only parent-approved Christian videos; and another permits only books. All parents shelter – they just draw their lines in different places.

Protecting our children is not only a natural response of paternal love, but fulfills the commands of God. The Scriptures are clear that we are to make no provision for our flesh (Rom 13:14) and are to avoid all corrupting influences (2 Cor 6:17-7:1). It warns us that bad company corrupts good morals (1 Cor 15:33) and that those who spend too much time with bad people may learn their ways (Prov 22:24-25) and suffer for it (Prov 13:20). Just as our Father in heaven will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear (1 Cor 10:13), we rightly keep our children out of situations they will lack the moral strength to handle. Young children are weak and we are to protect the weak (1 Thes 5:12) …

Sheltering our families from bad influences is critical for their safety, but it is possible to become imbalanced and rely too heavily upon sheltering. We do this in a couple of ways.

1. We are imbalanced when sheltering from harm is the predominant expression of our parenting. Are we more concerned with protecting our kids from that which is bad or with putting into them that which is good?  I want to ask that again: Are we more concerned with protecting our kids from that which is bad or with putting into them that which is good? …  We must certainly protect them from harmful influences, but more than that, we must give them that which strengthens them spiritually and morally.

In my case I protected my oldest children from harm more than I invested into them health. I certainly taught my children a great deal about God and Kingdom living – we saturated them with the Word and Kingdom stories. Their lives were full of outreach and ministry, but comparatively, I was most intense about sheltering. I was continually analyzing the effects of every aspect of life, and my children never knew what thing Dad would declare off-limits next. Those parents who aren’t analyzers like me just wait for their favorite teacher to expose for them the next unseen danger to their family. In imbalanced homes parents are most passionate about protecting children from harmful influences, and the children see that passion, then come to view Christianity as mostly about “avoiding bad stuff” …

Please note that the operative word in my assessment is passion. Our children learn what’s important to us not by what we verbally emphasize, but by what they see us passionate about. It is the intensity of our reaction to potential corruption that elevates to our children our priorities. If they see a greater intensity in us for their sheltering than they do for their equipping, we shouldn’t be surprised if they come to view Christianity negatively as a “religion of avoidance.” (In fact, our intensity may actually create a mystique and raise curiosity toward that which is forbidden.) …

Yes, it is right to value and protect our children’s moral innocence, and it is natural for us to react with intensity or anger to anyone or anything that might rob them of that innocence. However, when we treat every minor issue as a threat deserving of our outrage, it is possible we are defining Christianity for our children in a negative way.

After watching multitudes of highly sheltered children grow up and chase after the very things from which their parents sought to keep them, and seeing less-sheltered children grow up and walk strong, I am more selective about which hill I want to die on. I now pick my battles more carefully. I have concluded that fruitful parenting is more about what we put into our children than what we protect them from.

2. Sheltering is a critical part of parenting, but if parents keep it their primary focus, the children will grow up ill equipped to handle the temptations in the world.

When we enter the world as infants we arrive with immune systems still in development. Because we have had no contact with germs or disease while in the womb, our bodies need to come in contact with them, so that we can develop immunities. Babies who are isolated and kept in germfree environments fail to develop sufficient resistance, so succumb more easily to diseases when they grow older and encounter them. Medical inoculations only succeed because God has designed the body with the capacity to develop antibodies against disease. A child isolated from disease may appear to be of the greatest health to his parents, but the health of the human body is only proven by how it withstands an attack. A weak constitution succumbs to every germ and virus – a strong one fights them off. Our spiritual and moral health is developed and proved in the same way. 

If we isolate our kids from the world until they are adults they may appear to us to be spiritually minded and strong in character. However, it is how they ultimately engage the world that proves their spiritual resilience. This is because sheltering does not transform the human heart – it merely preserves it, temporarily. Sheltering is nothing more than keeping something flammable away from a fire ...

If we want to prepare them to thrive in the world we must take them into it and teach them how to engage it. As part of that preparation I have several recommendations:

a. Take time to teach them about God and living in His kingdom. I emphasize this particularly for dads who are careful to shelter, but rarely get around to actually instructing their children in the faith. Too many fathers are quick to forbid all TV and youth groups, but never take the time to sit down and acquaint their children with the Word and how it points us to God. Preparing children to face the world requires more than keeping them away from its corruptions – parents must put into them Truth that will draw them to God. It is those children who have found God irresistible who will be faithful to Him.

It is important at this point to emphasize that true Christianity is not merely a system of religious beliefs that can be embraced or forsaken – it is a relationship between individuals and God. Therefore, Christians are not strengthened simply by massive doses of indoctrination. Our faith is strengthened as we discover God in the Word, and as we walk with Him we find Him to be trustworthy. If we want our children to remain faithful to God we must do all we can to lead them to Him, not just to a “system of faith.”

Keep in mind that Bible instruction by itself is not some magic ingredient in a “parenting formula.” Many homeschool prodigals were heavily groomed in the Scriptures. We do best when we faithfully use the Scriptures to reveal to children the Lord himself. Remember Jesus’ words in John 5:39, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me.”  It is faith in Christ that carries us – not faith in Christianity.

b. Pass on a pure faith. It has been said that faith is caught and not taught, and I would agree. As I pointed out at the beginning of this article, I have seen young married people who grew up in the public schools, but who walked in purity and close to Christ through their teen years, and are still close to their parents. What their parents gave them was not the gift of extreme sheltering, but the gift of a sincere faith in Christ. Homeschool parents must give the same gift to their children (1 Tim 1:5; 2 Tim 1:5). The problem is that we cannot give what we do not have. If we want to give our children a lasting and sincere faith in Christ, then we must first have it ourselves.

What is the faith in us that our children see? As I have sought to show in the first six points of this series of articles, the purity of our faith is degraded by our missteps in parenting:

1. If the dreams we have for our children are really about us, might not they feel undue pressure to make us a success? In other words, is the faith they see in us a self-centered one?

2. If we have regarded them as a trophy, do they feel our intensity about not making the family look bad in public? In other words, is the simplicity of our faith polluted by our pride?

3. If we have emphasized outward form to our children, might not they equate holiness with external appearances? In other words, has the grace of our relationship with Christ been slowly traded for a phariseeistic concern for externals?

4. If they hear us pronounce judgments of others, might they not learn from us self-righteousness or fear of judgment? In other words, is it possible they see in us a faith that is both shallow and proud? 

5. If our homes are controlled chiefly by intimidation and fear, might not our children feel like they are inconsequential, non-persons? In other words, are we losing the very relationship with our teens we need to attract them to our Lord?

6. If we over-elevate sheltering as an ingredient in our parenting formula, is it possible our children might come to believe that Christianity is mostly about avoiding bad stuff? In other words, although our Lord never told people to shelter themselves from anything except self-righteous religious leaders, do we present an inaccurate (and unattractive) picture of him? …

c. Expose them to the world a little at a time, so that they will not be overwhelmed by its attraction when they finally face it. Just as babies raised in germfree environments more easily contract diseases, so also do Christians who have not encountered the world …

The root of lust is self-centeredness, so the more selfless and loving our children are, the less they will be impacted by lust. I therefore encourage parents to concentrate on raising children who selflessly love others. I have found that praying for those who tempt us accomplishes two things – the recipient receives prayer and we see them through the eyes of God. Those who see others from God’s perspective will tend to have compassion on them as lost souls …

d. Take them into the world on the offense, not defense. A major reason many parents choose to homeschool their children is that they are concerned about negative socialization in the classroom setting. They want control over when and how their children are faced with outside influences. When the children are confronted by the world the parents want to be there as guides. I understand this perspective, but such a view is inadequate. I want to be with my children when they encounter the world, but not merely so that they will survive it. Survival has to do with self-preservation, and is concerned with self, not others …

My 12-year-old son has been playing little league baseball every spring for the last 4 years, and I help out as an assistant coach. On occasion, when word of my son’s involvement leaks out, I will be approached by a concerned homeschool parent and questioned about the risks of such contact with unbelievers. They remind me that my son may hear bad words, vulgar jokes, and bad attitudes. Boys may even swear at him. I tell them that that is exactly what I was anticipating.

I want my son to know how to respond when unkind people express themselves (Luke 6:27-28), and I want to be with him when it happens. I want him to know he can survive quite well when others verbally abuse him, but more importantly, I want to witness it so I can coach him through it. I especially want to be there so I can help him see the world through eyes of compassion – not fear. I believe that those homeschoolers, who don’t just survive but thrive in the world, do so because they have a “kingdom” view of it. They see it as the place inhabited by the blind (2 Cor 4:4) who are potential members of God’s kingdom. 

e. Cultivate a loving relationship with them, which will allow you to speak into their lives and influence their values. I will deal with this issue at length later in this series of articles, so suffice it to say that it is the key area of need I have discovered among my own and many other homeschool families. It has been my observation that in “control-oriented” homes, relationships between parents and teens are often weakest. For us to have influence over our teen’s hearts, especially when they are engaging the world, our love relationships with them must be strong …

If our children grow up motivated only by fear of consequence, they will eventually get away with what they can whenever we are not around (Eph 6:6). If we have their hearts they will seek to honor us whether we are present or not, and their hearts will remain open to our influence. I refer you to the apostle Paul who modeled this approach to leadership perfectly, “Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love…” (Phile 1:8-9a). Paul’s pattern with the churches suggests he understood that appeals to love were more powerful than commands and threats. As an apostle, he could have issued personal commands many times, yet in his letters to the churches he plead with them 25 different times to do what was right, while he personally commanded them only twice (2 Th 3:6,12).

Many intense parents mistakenly think they have their children’s hearts, and therefore do not seek to cultivate better relationships. Beverly and I were such parents. We were certain that because we shared so much affection with our children that we had their hearts. However, when we gave them instructions, it was never our children’s love for us that we appealed to, it was their fear of our authority. This meant that our first three children were far more vulnerable to outside influences than they needed to be ...

f. Help them find security in their relationship with you. When my oldest son was almost 16 we let him get his first job washing dishes at a restaurant managed by a Christian friend of ours. As diehard shelterers we wrestled with whether or not our son was ready to enter the world’s workforce. We knew we couldn’t shelter him forever, and so finally concluded that he should be old enough to send into the world two nights a week. What we didn’t realize was that he would be working with drug-using, tattooed, partiers, and our Christian friend was never scheduled to work our son’s shift …

Of course, my wife and I immediately began to evaluate whether we had made a mistake by letting him take the job. After an intense discussion we decided to coach him more carefully and let him keep his job … 

I would never have guessed that his values could change so quickly or so severely. What took me over the edge was not just that he suddenly had outrageous values, but that he thought I might go along with him! It immediately became obvious that he was not ready to handle the world. To our relief, he volunteered to quit the job.

One day, several years later, I was looking back and evaluating our approach to sheltering. Something my son said shortly after he started his job kept coming back to me. When I picked him up the second night of work, he got in the car with a big smile on his face and said “They like me!”  As I dwelt on that comment, it suddenly came clear to me – my son had finally met someone who liked him for who he was. Few others in his entire life had shown him much acceptance, especially not his mother and I. It is no exaggeration – in our efforts to shape and improve him, all we did was find fault with everything he did. We loved him dearly, but he constantly heard from us that what he did (who he was) wasn’t good enough. He craved our approval, but we couldn’t be pleased. Years later, I realized he had given up trying to please us when he was 14, and from then on he was just patronizing us.

The reason our son wanted to adorn himself like his work associates, was because they accepted him for who he was. He wanted to fit in with those who made him feel significant. He wanted to be like those who gave him a sense of identity. The problem wasn’t one that could be solved by extended sheltering – he could have been sheltered until he was 30 and he still would have been vulnerable. The problem was that we had sent our son into the world insecure in who he was. He went into the world with a hole in his heart that God had wanted to fill through his parents. 

I have since observed that what best equips children to handle the pressures of the world is security in who they are. Whether believer or unbeliever, those young people who are least tempted to follow the crowd are those who are secure in themselves and don’t need the approval of others. The Bible calls insecurity the fear of man – it is allowing other’s opinions of us to affect our values and choices. At the very least, if we want to prepare our children to stand tall in the world we need to help them find security in their relationship with us, and more importantly, with God …

I believe that a primary reason we can over-rely on sheltering is because it is the easiest part of parenting to do. It requires no planning, little preparation, or expenditure of energy. It takes minimal immediate brainpower. We simply assess something might be harmful and say to our children, “NO.”  It’s an aspect of parenting that is effortless to do, yet seems to promise an extreme impact. I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it lazy parenting, but I will say that investing into our children does take a lot more work and much more time.

Before we leave this topic, we must consider the possibility that we are drawn to an over-dependence on sheltering because it appeals to the Pharisee in us. Maintaining a righteous appearance and avoiding uncleanness characterized the most religious people of Christ’s day, and he didn’t tolerate it (Luke 7:39-47; 15:2; Mark 7:15; Mat 15:17-20). Avoiding anything that seemed to defile made them feel “holy” and it does the same for us. The more we fixate on keeping our families away from corruption the prouder we can become of our higher standards. It may even get to the place that we can’t wait for opportunities to boast or “share” with others the standards we hold, ie: an invitation for our children to watch a movie, attend a Bible club, or accept a questionable gift, etc.). Pride is a dangerous sin because it blinds us to itself – it is the filter through which we see. Spiritual pride is even more dangerous because it involves what we think is righteousness (Luke 18:11-12). May God open our eyes that we might see why we are so prone to imbalance in this area.

Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.  Col 2:20-23 

Lest this article be taken wrong, and some readers misinterpret my intentions, I want to emphasize that I am still a strong proponent of sheltering our children. My goal has been to alert parents to the problem of over‑reliance on sheltering. If you have finished this lengthy article, and are under the impression that I no longer believe in it, I would encourage you to go back and reread it.

I do wonder if this over-sheltering and outward piety has some bearing on the growing numbers of militant atheists in the United States. I know of some scoffers who were raised in small, harsh, controlling church and home environments who broke away from it as soon as they left home in their late teens. This is a natural outcome for some in an effort to break free from rules and rigidity associated with today’s extreme fundamentalism.

Although these people are somehow able to marry well and sustain healthy relationships, often they have no children. It is as if they lack enough positive experiences, parental trust and personal confidence to enable them to have a family.

This is a matter which the more conservative — not necessarily orthodox — churches should want to address.  Worryingly, the issues of control over children are now progressing to wives, objectifying and diminishing them in a similar way. It’s a sure recipe for disaster. More on that tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Conclusion — Bradley on formulaic parenting and relationship

Pastor Reb Bradley on the homeschooling ‘crisis’

The Revd Reb Bradley — pastor, father of six, homeschooling champion and founder of Family Ministries — has an article on his ministry site, ‘Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling: Exposing the 7 Major Blindspots of Homeschoolers’.

My thanks to Abby Kautt — a pastor‘s daughter and homeschooler — who blogged on excerpts of the article which she found on Josh Harris’s website. Bradley asked Harris’s readers to read the article in full.

Although it is a long article, it is a fascinating one, and I would recommend it not only to homeschoolers but to all adult Christians and parents. He has powerful insights, which I’ll also cover in the next two posts. This is one of the best précis of parenthood and homeschooling that you’re likely to read in a long time.

Emphases in the excerpts below are mine, except in headings and italicised words:

When my three married children were young, I was overly-confident in my approach to parenting. I was convinced that my children would grow up godly, and that they would avoid significant struggles with sin because of my parenting.  I was absolutely certain that since I was training them ”in the way they should go”, and I was doing most everything I had written in my book, I would be a success as a parent. However, I had yet to discover it wasn’t all about ME and MY success.  In fact, I had yet to learn that the parent who thinks it’s all about THEIR success is often contributing to their children’s struggles. (Revelation #1 – proper parenting is about the children not the parent. I’ll explain in point 1.)

As each of my three oldest children reached adulthood I was shocked to discover that they did not conform exactly to the values I had sought to give them. They had retained much of what I had given, but not everything. Instead of being perfect reflections of my training, they each turned out to be individuals who had their own values and opinions. I had wrongly thought them to be exactly like wet clay, me being the potter with total control over what they would become. I was not prepared for their individuality, nor was I ready to see them as fleshly beings. As I watched them each face off with the Lord and have their own struggles with the flesh, like I had when I was their age, my homeschool dreams crashed royally.

…

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS

1. Self-centered dreams

…

When my oldest son was 18 he developed habits of disrespectful communication and I had to ask him to leave my home for a season. (In Israel the most severe discipline for lawbreakers was execution – next to that, it was setting someone outside the camp.) Needless to say, my wife and I were devastated by the discipline we imposed. In the first month he was gone we wept each day for him.  We were grieved that he was now unprotected from the junk from which we had worked so hard to shelter him, but more than that, I was heartbroken that my dreams for him and our family would no longer come true.  I remember speaking the words to him – “Son, you’ve ruined my dreams.”  You see, I had a dream for my family and it involved adult children who lived at home humbly under parental authority, and who would one day leave home to marry, after following my carefully orchestrated courtship process.  But now, my son had gone and “messed up” my perfect dream.  Nothing is wrong with dreaming of good things for your children, but the truth was, my dream for my son was mostly about me.

In hindsight, what was particularly grievous was that I was more worried about the failure of my dream of  “success” than the fact that my son and I had a broken relationship. Although he did come back and was restored to us 4 months later, it still took me years to realize that I had contributed to the damaged relationship. (More on that later.)

One of the reasons parents homeschool is because they want to accomplish something good in their children. Success in homeschooling requires that academic, moral, and spiritual goals be set. It is only natural for parents to have high hopes and dreams for their children. However, when we begin to see our children as a reflection or validation of us, we become the center of our dreams, and the children become our source of significance.  When that happens in our home it affects the way we relate with our children, and subtly breaks down relationship.

2. Family as an idol

We dream for results, but preoccupation with results can turn the family into a measurement of success. For those who feel successful, family becomes a badge of honor or trophy to be admired by others or God. When we allow the success of our family to determine our security or sense of wellbeing we are seeking from it something God intends us to receive from Him. I am describing idolatry. If homeschoolers are not careful, family can easily become an idol …

A great problem with idolatry is that idols require sacrifice, and we end up sacrificing relationship with our children for the idol of the family.  When we elevate the image of the family, we effectively trade our children’s hearts for our reputation. 

Craving a reputation for success puts great pressure on us, and then on our children – we feel quite constrained to succeed with them. If they turn out okay, then we can credit ourselves with success, but if they struggle or fail, then we may live with guilt, embarrassment, and bitterness towards them. Many homeschool parents look at the choices made by their teen and adult children and live under a cloud of failure or resentment ...

It was a rude awakening for me when I saw that even the best parenting could not exempt a person from making the wrong choice when faced with temptation. I do believe that by our influence we can greatly increase the likelihood our children will love and follow Christ, but I see nothing in Scripture that guarantees well-trained children will never succumb to temptation …

3. Emphasis on outward form

Preoccupation with results often leads to emphasis on outward form. When we are preoccupied with achieving results it is natural to admire the results others seem to have achieved with their children. We like the way the pastor’s kids sit reverently in the front pew and take notes of their father’s sermon, so we go home and begin to teach our children to sit reverently and to take notes. What we don’t know is that the pastor’s kids conduct themselves with reverence and attentiveness not because he “cleaned the outside of the cup” and simply drilled them to do so — he lived a genuine love for Jesus that was contagious, and watched as the fruit was born (Matt 23:26). Parents are destined for disappointment when they admire fruit in others and seek to emulate merely that expression of fruit in their own children. Fruit is born from the inside — not applied to the outside …

In the homeschool community I have observed that there can be a great emphasis on outward appearance, whether it is dressing for excellence, modesty, grooming, respectful manners, music style, or an attitude of sober reverence in worship. Some even take their children down a country path of humble fashions, raising food, and making bread. Nothing is wrong with any of these things, but we must be careful – we can model for our children outward changes and easily fall into molding their behavior and/or appearance, while missing their hearts. In some circles emphasis on the outward is epidemic ...

Let us not forget that Jesus came against the Pharisees for their preoccupation with what they felt were legitimate expressions of spirituality. They measured holiness by what was avoided and by what would be seen by others (Mat 6:1-2, 5, 16; 23:5-6, 23-28; John 7:24). The Pharisees were earnest in their religion, but they were preoccupied with outward expressions of holiness rather than hearts of humility and love (Micah 6:8) that would bear genuine fruit. I find it fascinating that in the gospels there is not one mention of Jesus coming against immodesty, even though among his followers were prostitutes and the like. Jesus emphasized cleaning up the inside while the Pharisees were the ones preoccupied with cleaning up the outside. We must ask ourselves: Which are we more like – Jesus or the Pharisees? Even now do we justify ourselves, insisting we emphasize cleaning up both the inside and the outside?

I know that some react strongly to these assertions, so let me emphasize that I do want my wife and daughters to adorn themselves modestly. God did address it once in the New Testament (1Tim 2:9), but we must ask ourselves, is it possible that we have elevated modesty, or other issues of outward form, higher than Jesus did? … Concurrently, let us also be careful of measuring everyone else’s enlightenment by what we have decided is modest, spiritual, or holy. 

4. Tendency to judge

… It is a fair assumption that if we make preeminent for our families issues of outward appearance (such as humble fashions, modesty, and grooming) we will likely condescend to those who don’t hold to our standards. If we are proud of our children’s public etiquette and conduct, it will be easy to belittle those who don’t measure up. If we condemn everything but our preferred music style, we may avoid all those who hold to a different standard in music.  Standards in these areas are subjectively derived and based largely on personal opinion, yet if we are convinced our opinion is God’s opinion, we may count those who don’t hold to them as being in error or at the very least misguided.

It is easy to miss this area of pride because we may not express our judgments “arrogantly”. We may not say something condemning like, “My goodness, I couldn’t believe it when I heard the Smiths say they were putting their oldest children into school next year! They’re sacrificing their children for convenience. Seems to me they’re either compromising or giving up. I was afraid this would happen when they began attending that new church!”  Instead, we may wrap our judgments in compassionate sounding words, “I’m so grieved to hear about the Smiths’ decision. How far they have fallen — it’s so sad. We’ll pray that they see the light again! I hate it when the devil deceives God’s people!”  Arrogance wrapped in compassionate tones can be especially deceiving …

It is important to note that when pride is working its work in us, we sincerely believe our personal opinions reflect God’s utmost priorities and standards. We validate ourselves since we know we keep those standards, and by the same standards others are validated or invalidated in our eyes, as well. For example, if we are self-validating, we may decide that since we have chosen to homeschool, anyone who won’t homeschool doesn’t love their children enough to sacrifice for them. If we are self-validating, it means that since we think we understand the true definition of modesty, anyone who doesn’t dress according to our standard is carnal, unenlightened, or has fallen away.  A self-validating person is justified in their own eyes and in the eyes of those with whom they fellowship …

I want to suggest that this area of pride and judgment is a difficult one to identify and renounce. By its very nature, pride acts as a filter for our thinking and therefore, our perceptions. We feel self‑justified. So I pray, even at this moment, that God will open our blind eyes and bring freedom to us all. If we are able to leave a judgmental outlook behind we increase the likelihood of our children finding in us the beauty of our Savior, Jesus.

5. Over-dependence on authority and control

When we are preoccupied with outward form our focus tends to become shallow and behavior oriented. We look upon our children as if they are roses that can be trained to grow a certain direction by constant pruning and binding. Subsequently, we rely heavily upon our authority in an attempt to bring our children under our total control. We assume if we give them the Word of God, shelter them from harmful influences, discipline them consistently, and maintain high standards for their outside, that their inside will inevitably be shaped.

I recall that when I first started teaching on parenting many years ago, I actually used the illustration of training roses to describe proper rearing of children. I was mistaken to do so – not because it is an incorrect example of training, but because it is an inadequate one. To successfully train roses requires a goal, a plan, and diligence in labor. Fruitful training of children requires the same. However, the difference is that roses have no mind of their own and only grow as they are allowed. Children are people – self-determining individuals – and they ultimately choose how they will respond to parental influence.

If we think we have total control over how our children respond to our training, we will relate to them not so much as people, but more as soulless animals. Dogs are behavior-driven and can be trained to respond to a stimulus time after time, exactly the same way. Children however, are people and as they mature they will eventually decide if they will continue to respond as trained. If we fail to understand this we will be tempted to intensely control our children up into their adult years. We will hold them tightly in the mold of our choice up until the day we release them from the home, thinking that they will maintain the shape of our mold as they venture into their married lives. Sometimes as parents we give ourselves way too much credit for the power we have in our children’s lives. Such a perspective insures we will develop a dominating style of parenting that will likely damage our relationship with our children and hinder our ability to truly influence their values …

In Proverbs 22:6 we receive encouragement towards diligent training of our children, but we must remember that they are neither animals to be dominated nor mindless plants to be pruned and bound. They are self-determining individuals who are processing their upbringing and will one day have their own time of reckoning with God.

… significant family bonds are created by not by external controls and steps along a path, but are a fruit of love in a home. Our goal should chiefly be the cultivation of Christ’s love – first in our own hearts (Eph 3:17-19) and then in our families.

6. Over-reliance upon sheltering

An over-dependence on control in a family is often accompanied by an over-reliance on sheltering of children. It is not uncommon for homeschool parents to feel that since they filter whatever their children see and hear, they will control the results in their lives. That was me for many years. I remember saying to people, “I am controlling the influences in my children’s lives, so I am going to control the outcome.”  I was absolutely certain that my children would be exempted from significant temptation and from developing particular bad habits because I was controlling what touched their lives …

In the last five years I have heard countless reports of highly sheltered homeschool children who grew up and abandoned their parents’ values. Some of these children were never allowed out of their parents’ sight and were not permitted to be in any kind of group setting, even with other “like-minded” kids, yet they still managed to develop an appetite for the world’s pleasures. While I’ve seen sheltered children grow up and turn away from their parents’ standards, conversely, I’ve known some Christian young people who went to public school, watched TV, attended youth groups, and dated, yet they walk in purity, have respectful, loving relationships with their parents, and now enjoy good marriages. Their parents broke the all the “rules of sheltering,” yet these kids grew up close to their families and resilient in their walks with Christ. Super-strict sheltering was obviously not the ultimate answer for them … 

When protection from the world becomes the defining characteristic of Christianity, we shouldn’t be surprised if our kids grow up and forsake the lifeless “religion of avoidance” they learned from us. As I stated in the December issue, point c of section 4, that is not a faith most children are drawn to; in fact, it is one that will likely repel them …

If we isolate our kids from the world until they are adults they may appear to us to be spiritually minded and strong in character. However, it is how they ultimately engage the world that proves their spiritual resilience. This is because sheltering does not transform the human heart – it merely preserves it, temporarily. Sheltering is nothing more than keeping something flammable away from a fire.

Tomorrow’s post presents Bradley’s solutions for parents in a homeschooling context.

In the meantime, how many of us read through these excerpts thinking, ‘Yes, those were my parents’ or ‘That’s my style of parenting’?

Bradley brings out all the points which form my objections to holiness movements and pietism. Recall from my pietism posts (available on the Christianity / Apologetics page) about the appeal of appearing more holy to the outside world. What can we do? Isolate ourselves. How can we dress? Not as others. How do we live? By a strict code of rules and regulations — a manmade code of laws wrapped in a few out-of-context references to Scripture to make it credible.

As far as Protestants are concerned, we have lack of fellowship all over the map. The further one goes into pietist and holiness doctrines (e.g. Spener for the Lutherans, Wesley for the Methodists and Holiness offshoots) the greater the importance of outward ‘piety’. Calvinists also fall prey to this mode of thinking; the Puritan Board’s family section often has concerned mothers discussing the evils of Hallowe’en or denouncing children’s sleepovers even with someone from church. However, some Catholics do this, too; even today, a number of them will not fellowship with other Catholics whom they believe are less ‘holy’ in their devotions.

By doing this, are we not succumbing to manmade piety? Are we not belonging to the Church of Everything Forbidden? Where’s the Good News of Jesus Christ? Where is the freedom which He purchased for us with His blood on the Cross?

I read through the comments on Josh Harris’s website. Most supported Bradley’s article, but some readers did go on the defensive. The best comment in response to them was the last one, by Matt J:

Great article and I am slightly amused as I refer back to the section where R[e]b says “Typically, when we belittle others who don’t measure up to our standards, we will also imagine others are judging us. Consequently, we will find ourselves frequently being defensive”.

As I’ve read some of the comments from people who disagree with R[e]b, I see many of them are very defensive even though R[e]b has taken a very humble approach in addressing these sensitive issues. One old evangelist used to say “just fire into a pack of dogs and the one who is hit will howl!” I hear some ‘howling’ going on in these comments as the truth is hitting close to home!

Tomorrow: Bradley’s advice for parents who homeschool

Synthetic dope: just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s safe

A marijuana substitute known as K2 is on sale legally in the United States.

On January 10, 2012, the Daily Mail reported that a promising high school football player drowned after taking this synthetic drug:

Logan Matthew Kushner had bought K2 with a friend legally from a neighbourhood gas station before smoking the synthetic product and jumping into a park creek early on Sunday morning in Clearwater, Florida.

According to reports, Kushner’s friend whom police did not name, persuaded the 19-year-old to get out of the water and told him they needed to leave.

But when Kushner opted to stay, the friend left him behind at the park.

The Palm Harbor University High School student, who also played football for the school’s team, The Hurricanes, did not answer calls to his phone after being left alone.

It would be unfair to speculate on why his friend left him at such a crucial time, but several scenarios come to mind.  The drug might have provoked any number of unexpected reactions from both young men.

Some, especially those who support the legalisation of dope, would say that this is a scaremongering item, however, anyone who has smoked natural dope and the modern (and cheaper) variant — skunk — will tell you there is a big difference between the two.  Skunk is not your grandparents’ favourite from the 1960s.  Nor is K2.

The Mail shows a photo of a K2 packet, which looks much like many factory-made products. In fact, it is branded as incense and, frankly, does not look like dope. However:

K2 and similar substances are known to be synthetic cannabinoids significantly more powerful than marijuana, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Normally sold by the gram in brightly-coloured packaging, the substances are known to induce dizziness and hallucinations.

Users can also experience paranoia, anxiety and agitation, as well as physical side-effects such as high blood pressure and heart rate, panic attacks and seizures.

… synthetic marijuana – produced by spraying dried plant material with a chemical compound – has only been around for the last few years …

symptoms can last for days …

One patient told a doctor at the Carolinas Poison Center it was ‘like being on cocaine, but ten times worse’.

Astute American readers may well point out that the DEA has banned many of these substances. Whilst that is true:

various manufacturers began advertising other fake marijuana products, many of which are sold online.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, a gas station near Clearwater was selling a substance called Scooby Snax Potpourri on Sunday.

Despite its name, the product warned it was not meant for human consumption.

The company’s website asserted that the product does not contain any of the compounds banned under synthetic cannabinoids legislation.

An Australian reader wrote in to say (edited for punctuation):

This stuff is terrible. The synthetic cannabinoids are sprayed on it in large quantities, meaning you never know how much has been sprayed into the leaf in your packet. I smoked this stuff for 6 months and out of nowhere had a panic attack because my heart rate had tripled and I couldn’t count or remember my name. It is horrible stuff. You NEVER know what you’re gonna get …

My sympathies to the Kushner family and my hopes that filling stations and smaller shops will stop selling these products.

It’s bad enough that the effects can be prolonged. As this article shows, results for users can be unexpected, dramatic and fatal.

The outcome of cultural relativism

Over Christmas, the other site where I blog — Orphans of Liberty — featured a post entitled ‘What Political Correctness Is Leading To …’

In it, JuliaM wonders if the British could soon begin reacting in the same relativistic way as Canadian students do to honour maimings.

The post refers to an article by Dr Stephen L Anderson, ‘Moments of Startling Clarity: Moral Education Programming in Ontario Today’ (p. 26 of PDF and here on Scribd).  It appeared in the Fall 2011 edition of the OSSTF/FEESO Education Forum magazine.

Anderson teaches in a secondary school in Ontario. In 2010, he completed his thesis on the Character Education movement. He describes his class’s reaction to a photo of a young Afghani bride, Bibi Aisha, whose family cut off her nose and ears. The distressing photo is on page 26. Before going into this in more detail, readers will be relieved to know that a Jewish surgeon has since reconstructed Aisha’s nose.

I recall reading the horrifying story whilst on the way home from work one evening several years ago.   Anderson takes it up in more detail (emphases mine):

Aisha was the Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who abused her and kept her with his animals. When she attempted to flee, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains. After crawling to her grandfather’s house, she was saved by a nearby American hospital. I felt quite sure that my students, seeing the suffering of this poor girl of their own age, would have a clear ethical reaction, from which we could build toward more difficult cases.

However, such was not to be the case in Anderson’s ‘Character Development’ class. Students’ reactions included the following:

Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.

It’s just wrong to judge other cultures.

And this one, which is the worst of all:

I don’t feel anything at all; I see lots of this kind of stuff.

Really? In Ontario? In magazines? Shocking.

Anderson adds:

My class was “character developed” and had all the “traits” in place. They were honest — very frank in their views. They had empathy — extending it in equal measure to Aisha and to the demented subculture that sliced her up. They were accepting — even of child mutilation. And they persevered — no matter how I prodded they did not leave their nonjudgmental position. I left that class shaking my head. It seemed clear to me that for some students — clearly not all — the lesson of character education initiatives is acceptance of all things at all costs. While we may hope some are capable of bridging the gap between principled morality and this ethically vacuous relativism, it is evident that a good many are not. For them, the overriding message is “never judge, never criticize, never take a position.”

That’s a frightening reality. Would those students care if that occurred next door to them? Or would they say, ‘Well, it’s their culture. That’s what they do’?

On the other hand, as Anderson acknowledges, the same students would be pushing for various rights of Western groups of people. Yet, this girl’s mutilation, which happened half a world away, is merely excused.

Anderson writes:

The problem with “Character Development” programs is that they are really lists of verbs masquerading as nouns. For example, “tolerance” only looks like a noun: but really has no meaning until we add an object to it — we have to ask, “Tolerate what?” Likewise, “courage” can take various referents: one can be a courageous rescuer or a courageous liar — but nothing substantive is taught by the general directive to be “courageous.” Again, “honesty” looks universally good: but only until you consider how hurtful a direct answer can sometimes be, or how excessive forthrightness can expose innocent others to danger or foment rumours, when indirectness or silence might not.

Nothing in the package passed down to the schools by the Ministry, Finding Common Ground: Character Development in Ontario Schools, K-12, addresses these sorts of worries. It comes with no means for assessing the real results it claims to produce. Consider your own school: has there been any attempt at all to measure the outcomes? How many “bad” kids have been made “good?” How much violence has been curbed? How many incidents of prejudice have been prevented? Do we know for certain that the activities promoted by our character clubs have any verifiable impact on their fellow students, or are we just hoping some good is being done? …

From what I read in the papers, it seems that our youth are more violent than ever before. Unthinkable things occur every day in primary and secondary schools in Western countries: stabbings, shootings and martial arts kicks which are often fatal.  Yet, hardly anyone — including teachers — condemns it. Often we read in a newspaper report statements such as, ‘He’s a good kid, really’ or ‘He was a victim of his environment’.  That old canard: ‘Society’s to blame’. Clergy also participate in this, as we have seen in the Church of England’s justification of the London Riots.

Having taught and studied the Character Development movement, Anderson concludes:

I don’t believe that character education is the panacea that they claim it is. The more you know about the history of the program, and the more you understand how irrational its sponsoring theories are, the more reason you have to be skeptical. It is simply a bizarre mix of Neo-Aristotelian virtue language, Kolbergian developmentalism and American-style Character Education ideology. It has no internal logic.

I’m not saying that character education is itself destructive, just blandly ineffective. Yet there are some situations in which something benign becomes malignant through the expectations that are placed on it …

The danger appears when we expect it to be some sort of remedy to real-world social dysfunction and we begin to think that schools are addressing that. In truth, we might not be strengthening the moral integrity of our students; in fact, we could be weakening it— particularly in respect to their ability to form and hold moral convictions ...

Today, character education is the darling of moral educators in Ontario; but tomorrow we will see if this “emperor” has any clothes. At present, we are trying to create character without reference to moral substance. If our current programs ultimately leave students incapable of sustaining principled ethical commitments, then we will have prepared a new public with greater empathy with moral relativism, an instinctive respect for unjust cultures and regimes, and perhaps even a high tolerance for cruelty. But then we will have to add “moral education” to our list of oxymorons.

I took an ethics class in secondary school. Had this happened then, the teacher would have asked if there was ever any moral justification for such an act. I expect we would have replied that it was barbaric and horrifying.  It would be hard to imagine anyone saying that it was all right given the culture.

But then, that was Catholic school in the 1970s and not a secular one of the 21st century where, as Anderson states, a moral code is lacking.

We can come up with any number of excuses for actions which deprive people of their imago Dei and personal freedom.  If the State passes a health law such as the smoking ban or minimum-priced drink, we rationalise it as being ‘for our protection’.  If we go through intensive body scans at airports, it’s ‘for everyone’s security’. If a husband or father maims or kills his wife or offspring, it’s because the ‘honour of the family is at stake’. And so it goes.

The salami slicer and boiling frog metaphors come to mind. Whatever next?

Tomorrow: Cultural relativism in the UK

 

What upper-middle class teens get up to in the UK

A few days ago I ran across this item on the FamilyGP site in the UK highlighting a recent survey done by the Children’s Society.

The article says, in part:

Children aged between eight and 15 were quizzed about the ‘essentials’ of life for someone their age.

A list of the ten ‘must-have’ possessions was then drawn up – including iPod, pocket money, family holidays, a satellite TV, garden and “the right kind of clothes”.

After surveying 5,500 boys and girls, researchers found that those children lacking two or more of the items were “significantly more likely to be unhappy” than those given everything they wanted.

And those without five or more of the ‘must-haves’ were five times more likely to have “low levels of wellbeing”.

It is the first time children themselves have been polled about what they see as deprivation.

The mind boggles. Let us hope that this definition of ‘deprivation’ does not become a legitimate measure of ‘poverty’. Most kids in the UK, even those living under the poverty level, have access to a TV, a telephone, a council flat, hot water and heat — as well as the latest trainers and, often as not, some sort of electronic gadget.

Another recent survey in the December issue of Tatler, the British high-society magazine, profiled 250 students from public (private boarding) schools.  Not available online, it can be found on pages 125-130 of the print copy.  It’s a fascinating read.

I’ll largely skip the sections on what I considered to be commonplace in the US when I was growing up — e.g. alcohol consumption, drug experimentation — and give you a few excerpts about the sexual aspect of the lives these students lead.

Before I get to the findings, though, this post is not a comment on class as much as it is on today’s mentality, no doubt fostered by parents and other authority figures who still follow — and promulgate — the 1960s maxim, ‘If it feels good, do it’.  We know now that such ideology comes to us courtesy of the Frankfurt School, whose influence helped give rise to youthful rebellions around Europe and the US in 1968.

Having said that, there is an element of ‘class’ to this.  Those who have studied class behaviour — among them Vance Packard, Paul Fussell and Jilly Cooper — have noted that the upper and lower strata of society adopt the same mores and attitudes. The more middle classes concern themselves with propriety, reputation and closer family cohesion.  Yet, the extreme mores of the upper and lower classes eventually trickle down to most of the population: ‘Everyone’s doing it’.

Without further ado, this is what Tatler found among the nearly 250 students they interviewed:

- ‘Nearly half had had their stomachs pumped, or knew someone who had’ (p. 125)

- Eighty-eight per cent approve of homosexuality (p. 125)

- Two-thirds have had a same-sex encounter (p. 125)

- Over 75% said they had hoped to have children someday, yet ‘over 50% had taken the morning-after pill or knew someone who had’.  Furthermore, nearly a third had ‘had an abortion or knew someone else who had’. (p. 125)

- Nearly two-thirds were sexually active and more than a third of them were under the age of consent (p. 125)

- Eighteen per cent have had more than four sexual partners.  An additional five per cent have had more than 10.  (p.125)

- Everyone received a monthly allowance, yet 31% admitted to shoplifting. (p. 128)

So, these will be our national — perhaps international — leaders of tomorrow.

Additionally — sad though it is — these are likely to be our social attitudes of tomorrow.

Americana: Education from the 19th century to the present

Another day of reading — and what insights to share over the next few days!

Today’s post comes from a PJ Media reader, Art Chance, in a discussion about a Victor Davis Hanson article tying together today’s American university education and the Occupy movement, ‘Rage on and on and on‘.

Art Chance gives an historical and a family view of education, which rings true, from what my grandparents (during the Great War) and parents experienced (during the Depression).  Emphases mine below:

Trouble is, it now takes sixteen years to get less education that one got in eight or ten years less than a century ago. And to make it worse, those with the sixteen or more years of “education” have no practical skills because [teachers] have resisted all attempts to give [students] any unless you consider a vast knowlege of pop culture and the ability to use all sorts of electronic entertainment devices a practical skill.

My grandmother had 10 years of what passed for public education in rural Georgia in the late 19th Century and she had two years of “Normal School,” a teaching “college.” She could rattle off great long passages of Caesar’s Gallic Wars in Latin, she could read Greek somewhat, she knew great long passages of Shakespeare and the KJV by heart and could rattle off from memory the proofs to those Geometry theor[e]ms that drove me nuts. Admittedly, she had a very limited knowlege of physical science, but, frankly, as a “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” Christian, she wouldn’t accept much of what she did know of “science.”

I had the best of both worlds, the rigorous old-fashioned academics of the Southern Jim Crow schools and the beginnings of federal aid to education that enabled us to have books that didn’t promise that someday railroads would span the continent. I grew up in a poor, rural Southern community. If many of my schoolmates’ parents weren’t illiterate, certainly their grandparents had been, but failure was not accepted and there were desks in rows, kids in them, and teachers were addressed as “Mam” or “Sir.” A public education was a rising tide that raised all boats and that was true of the segregated Black schools as well, though I’ll make no pretense that the separate schools were anything like equal …

I’ve experienced three iterations of public education: in the ’50s and well into the ’60s a public education was a rising tide that raised all boats. School for my bio[logical] daughter in the ’70s and ’80s was much less rigorous but not yet the enemy of the family. School for my step-kids in the ’90s and ’00s was simply the enemy; no failure or excuse went unrewarded. They were bombarded by propaganda in the form of teaching them to avoid and report abuse that was patently intended to undermine parental influence; the school taught them that parents were stupid and abusive and they were to report anything they didn’t “like” at home. There was nothing resembling academic rigor, little homework, and the only way to get a bad grade was to not be there at all. We did what we could at home, but when the school is pounding them with your stupidity and awfulness, it is hard to get and keep a kid’s attention. They’re all doing OK today, though the two younger ones are doing no more than OK; it’s hard to get ahead when nobody buys your excuses any more.

I see no solutions other than a gray, depressed socialist society with a youth culture out of “A Clockwork Orange” unless and until something can be done to restore discipline and academic rigor in schools and we stop encouraging and subsidizing ill[e]gitimacy. Traditional Black family structure and culture has been destroyed, destruction of traditional Hispanic family structure and culture isn’t far behind, and Whites are trying as hard as they can to catch up with the Blacks and Hispanics on the sleigh ride to Hell.

On the last point about family structure, in the late 1960s my dad was shocked to return to his home town periodically and find so many black teenage girls with children out of wedlock living with their mothers, who were divorced or separated.  I had been taught at school — already — that this was a black ‘norm’.  He said, ‘No, it isn’t. I played basketball after school with a group of friends nearly every afternoon.  Several of these guys were black and they all came from two-parent homes.’

The Revd James David Manning from Harlem preaches about the breakdown of the black family structure.  He often says that there will be no hope for black people until they resume living a more biblically-oriented life.  He has his local ministry in Harlem and, understandably, has strong feelings on the matter. He came from a two-parent family, by the way, and is married with children.

I agree with Revd Manning and would echo Art Chance’s warnings to whites and Hispanics.  Our Western culture has moved too far away from Judeo-Christian morality. For those who object to my use of ‘Judeo-Christian’, I am acknowledging the influences of the Old and New Testaments on our society.

To conclude on education — by the time I had finished high school, I became aware that I knew less than my mother did.  She had also had what Americans call a ‘college prep’ secondary school education. (My dad’s was more business-oriented.)

Over 15 years ago, I spoke with a longtime history professor, an American, and asked him how he compared students he had in class in the 1950s, 1970s and the present day.  He told me that the students from the 1950s were the best educated and that standards had started to slip noticeably by the 1970s (less memorisation in primary school, therefore, less aptitude for remembering dates and facts).

By far, the worst were his students in the 1990s, his last decade teaching.  ‘I always give my freshman students a general knowledge test on current affairs at the beginning of my introductory course.  Keep in mind that many come into my course expressing a wish to become history majors.  In the last test I gave, nearly half of these freshmen could not tell me who the President of the United States is!’  Frustrating?  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘because I can see our educational standards slipping about every five to 10 years.  I hold onto the tests and look through them every so often.’

I read an online comment on another blog last year.  One commenter wrote, ‘I’m impressed! For someone with only [sic] a Bachelor’s degree, you can really write well!’  That should not be the case.  By the time they’re halfway through secondary school, a university-bound student should be able to write competently and show evidence of persuasive — not emotional — argument.

I shall leave you with another comment on the PJ Media post, this time from Tex Taylor.  I agree with him, although I had to chuckle, as this was how many middle-aged people viewed our generation. I say ‘our’ because Tex and I are probably not much different in age. Swings and roundabouts:

My kids will play no part of this stoner, slacker, tatted and pierced, free love, free spirit, bang the drum OWS movement (one in med school, one planned to be there), and I agree with most of the comments here. Lord knows we spent a small fortune on K-12 private education to group with parents of like mind. Apparently, it worked.

From what I have observed now for the better part of a decade, you can kiss a a large part of this 18-29 generation goodbye. Taken as a collective, I have never met a more amoral, debased bunch of imbeciles in my life – and the blame rests at the foot of their parents – those who are my age (45-60). Not only do their kids have the morals of alley cats, they couldn’t put a drill bit in a keyless chuck or jump start a car. Helpless.

These parents are the 40 year result of liberal policies and Woodstock mindset. Parents who wanted to be friends with their kids, who believed in innate self esteemed and tolerance, freedom from religion, more concerned with bullying in schools than their kid learning sciences. Hard to imagine it will get worse, but with OWS as parents, it will.

A shame, because there are legitimate grievances against Wall St. that need to be addressed – corruption and cronyism being two. But not by this bunch of bleating sheep, and certainly not by this feckless, lying, hypocrite and community activist for President.

I fear for the country I am leaving my future grandchildren, and I am feeling much overwhelmed in number. I come to PJM to make sure I’m not the only one concerned, and I thank you for providing a small degree of hope.

I, too, fear not only for the United States but for Western society as a whole. A number of parents have an increasingly hands-off attitude towards supervising their children’s schooling.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of them never even glance at their textbooks or what they receive as homework assignments.

Parents’ constant pandering to children’s pleas for gadgetry of one form or another along with the latest sports gear is also absurd:  ‘I could look sooooo cool!’

Yes. And you would still know absolutely nothing. Get a paper round and buy your own stuff.

Future serfs, pure and simple.

Marriage preparation film from 1950 – true then, true now

Perhaps some of you had educational films in secondary school.  These dealt with youth-oriented issues such as adolescence and marriage.  They offered sensible advice on subjects which teachers felt embarrassed about or unqualified to discuss.

Below is a short film from 1950 — 15 minutes in toto — about marriage.  Coronet Instructional Films’ Are You Ready for Marriage? concerns a young couple wishing to tie the knot.  They approach a local minister, Mr Hall, who presents good points to consider, among them Cupid’s Checklist (3:20):

Mr Hall gives the young couple several ideas to reflect on, read about and discuss with their parents. His non-preachy and even tone make this a pleasure to watch.  In part two, we see how the situation unfolds in a balanced, yet positive way:

It’s a shame these films no longer make the rounds in schools.  On the other hand, it’s great to see them revived on YouTube and available to a wider audience.

Perhaps your children are considering marriage before you think it’s appropriate.  If so, have them view this as an objective and realistic perspective on Holy Matrimony.  Don’t be put off by the creaky music or the set-up scenario prior to Mr Hall’s appearance in the film.  This is 15 minutes well spent and proof that what was true 60 years ago still holds true today.

Enjoy this blast from the past!

Economic collapse: Karl Denninger proves pyramid scheme with primary school maths

More on mathematics, what we in the UK refer to as ‘maths’, and the economy.

Have you ever wondered when you bought a pension how they arrived at rather large sums to be paid out with relatively little input on your part?  Yes, of course, these companies have set calculations, but, surely, why couldn’t I arrive at the same numbers projected over 30 – 40 years? ‘Is it just me?’ I used to wonder.

No, it’s not just me — or you — who can’t figure this out.  Karl Denninger at Market Ticker has used primary school — ‘third grade’ (i.e. a class of 8 and 9 year old pupils) — mathematics to prove these projections wrong.  You can see what calculations he uses in the first part of ‘Proving Up The Fraud Using 3rd Grade Math’.  Denninger addresses pension funds, health care and housing values for an American audience, but anyone contemplating the future will find what he says of interest.

I don’t agree with everything Denninger says, particularly on Obama and on the OWS movement, but he does give me pause for thought when discussing the economy. Emphases below are his in the original.

Pension funds

Now let’s take the claimed 8% annual return that pension funds like to use in their public statements.  The average working stiff labors from age 20 to 65, or 45 years.  At 8% if we wish to determine how many years it takes to double by divide into 72 and get 9.  The average working stiff’s employment lasts for five of these periods (9 x 5 = 45 years.)

We therefore look at the above table [see his post] and determine that the fund alleges that it can turn $1 into $32 in the same 45 years.  This is what you were sold in your “pension fund.”

But is this reasonable? 

Well, let’s think this through.  To make 32 times someone has to have 32 times, right?  That is, a pension fund must get the money it presumes to pay your pension with from somewhere.  Since you do not pay in 32 times what you draw out of the fund during your working life (you intend, for example, to work for 45 years and then retire at 65 and live for 20 more; that is, you will work for only about twice as long as you are retired) you would have to put one half of your salary into the fund in order to actually pay for your retirement.   Yet the common “contribution” to a pension fund is about 1/10th that much money!

So where’s the rest come from?  Well, from “earnings” we are told.  But what are “earnings” to a corporation?  Earnings are simply the amount of money the company has left after it pays all its costs in delivering goods and/or services to consumers.

In other words, “earnings” are economic surplus.

Now certainly productivity has improved over time.  Indeed, it is the growth in productivity that has improved the standard of living through the ages.  But this belies the question: If 1/32nd of the alleged “growth” in that fund is your contributions to it, can you reasonably expect that the funds will grow by a factor of 31 over a 45 year time period?

In a word: No.

Health care

Health care costs are growing about 9% annually … Republicans claim that nobody over 50 will lose their Medicare as it is today.  That’s a promise to keep the cost escalator going, since that’s “what medical care today” is.

Ok, how reasonable is this?

Well, 9% doubles in 8 years.  A person who is 50 expects to live to approximately 85, or 35 years.  That’s 4.37 doublings.

From the table above [see his post] we see that this is somewhere between 16 and 32 times today’s value.  Again, confining our math to that learned in 3rd grade and estimating between the numbers, we’ll call it 20 times.

Today, a single person health insurance policy for a person of about 50 years without any serious chronic conditions in good health is likely to cost $1,000 a month or more.  We’ll use that figure, even though many people will cost much more (especially if you’re obese, have Type II diabetes or indications of heart disease.)  That’s $12,000 a year.

What you’re being sold is that by the time you’re 85 the government will be able to provide you with a $240,000 a year health benefit. 

One quarter of a million dollars!

Do you believe that?  I hope not, because you’re not going to get it.  Note that for you to get that $240,000 in health benefits someone has to pay $240,000 in taxes – one-for-one – and this assumes no waste inside the government itself!

Housing industry

Now let’s look at the “10% a year price appreciation” claim of the housing industry in the 2000s.  Again, the rule of 72 says that this results in a double in about 7 years.  The 30 year mortgage, of course, is for 30 years, which is 4 doublings (and a bit.)

This means your $150,000 house would have been “worth” $2.4 million in 30 years.

Do you really believe that?  More to the point, did the person who sold you that dream believe it or did they know it was a lie – that there was no possible way there would be enough money in the economy in 30 years for anyone to pay you $2.4 million?

He proves that these projections are ‘pyramid schemes’ — his words — and that they are ‘mathematically impossible’.

The government is lying

In another post, ‘OWS (And Everyone Else): Pay Attention to Greece’, he explains:

In the case at hand in the United States we have a government on both sides of the aisle that has made promises that are mathematically impossible to keep.  That same government conspired with The Fed and with Wall Street to blow a series of bubbles that led you to believe, over the space of 30 years, that you could have more than you can actually pay for with your work output.  This claim was a lie and it infested virtually every area of our nation.  Housing, education, medical care – all were used as a means to blow up the bubble to larger and larger dimension[s] whenever it threatened to collapse and expose the frauds.

These claims were active frauds as anyone who examined them with any sort of critical eye toward the mathematical realities of the claims knew they … could never happen. 

As just one example of dozens the claim that “house prices are expected to increase 10% a year for the foreseeable future” was interpreted by many as “it’s safe to finance the purchase of a house and then withdraw the claimed increase in value as this will go on forever” (see the foreseeable future words for justification in the common man’s reliance.) 

The lie is the mathematical impossibility of this.  A $150,000 house that appreciated at that rate for 10 years would be worth $389,000.  But over 30 years that same $150,000 house would be “worth” $2,617,410.  Nobody ever asked the obvious question: Exactly how was a “middle class” person going to afford to buy a $389,000 house, say much less a $2,617,410 one?

They couldn’t, of course, but this was the lie that was run.

I’ve often contemplated this and wondered how it could be so.

University tuition

Denninger adds that another ongoing bubble surrounds university tuition costs, which have increased tenfold from what they were when I graduated at the end of the 1970s.  They are so astronomical as to be scary.  My fellow Britons, unless something is done, we could experience the same, thanks to Tony Blair who made our universities fee-paying institutions. He took the lid off what was a sensible system in which the taxpayer invested in our nation’s future.

Denninger writes of the current American situation:

In College education land the same lie was run.  It led to an outrageous increase in college costs that dramatically outstripped earnings for degree-holding graduates.  This in turn made college a bad deal nearly across-the-board and as it occurred colleges and lenders lobbied Congress to change the law so that when your kid got rooked by this scam they couldn’t file bankruptcy and force those who blew the bubble to eat the loss.

More on Medicare

In the same post, Denninger has more to say on health care costs:

We did the same thing with Medical Care.  By providing “free” (or nearly so) care to Seniors and illegal immigrants, with the former being told “they paid for it” through Medicare taxes (a bald lie as on average they only put in 1/3rd in inflation-adjusted dollars as to what is spent on them) and the latter being simply told “you deserve it” the increase in medical insurance costs has run approximately 9% annually and will continue until and unless policies are changed.  This means that the $700 a month insurance policy for the reasonably-healthy 50 year old ($8,400 a year) who has been promised “no reduction in his Medicare” will cost $171,477 a year by the time he’s 85 with no adjustment for the higher expense that comes with age.  That is, today’s 15 year old will be forced to pay $171,477 a year for his medical insurance when he reaches 50.  Obviously, he won’t as that amount is more than three times today’s median family income and even if we allow a 3% inflation rate (which we should not) it will be more than 100% of the median family income in inflated dollars!  Since you can’t pay more for something than you earn in total, what the politicians are telling you they will do cannot happen.

This is just astounding, and you, too, might have come to the same conclusion, whilst scratching your head, thinking, ‘How will we and future generations manage to live? And why isn’t anyone in power putting a stop to it?’

Denninger on bankruptcy

Unfortunately, the notion of bankruptcy might loom large for many.  For some, it is already a sad reality. Certainly, anyone contemplating it is well advised to discuss his circumstances with a financial advisor and/or an attorney before doing anything.

Denninger (under his pseudonym ‘Genesis’) warns Americans about using part of their retirement funds in a potential bankruptcy scenario:

NEVER EVER TOUCH RETIREMENT MONEY FOR THIS PURPOSE!

EVER EVER EVER!

It’s EXEMPT from being seized in bankruptcy. You invade it, you lose that protection.

DO NOT DO IT.

So, try to get some reasonably-priced, eminently sensible advice to map out a way forward.

These are roller-coaster times. We have little reason to feel complacent. Salaries in many fields have not appreciated that much since I finished university. Furthermore, jobs are hard to find, especially for graduates and those over the age of 45. (Only 10 years ago, my mother retired when she was 80, overshadowing those 60+ years younger than she in an office job!)

Not to mention offshoring jobs, which wasn’t even a consideration 30-odd years ago.

Back then, it really was true in most Western countries that you made your own future: if you worked hard, you would succeed.  I had a conversation with an Englishman who told me that in the 1980s he and a couple of his schoolmates would clean offices on weekends at age 14.  He made a number of useful contacts that way, enabling him to become self-employed full time when he finished secondary school.

He said, ‘The problem today is that kids don’t want to work.’

I replied, ‘That’s not the problem.  Think of all the regulations in place — some good, some petty — which have been written into law since you were 14 years old.  A child that age couldn’t now clean offices or do any of the enterprising work you and your friends did 30 years ago. Plus, we have immigrants who do that now at knock-down salaries, as provided by an agency. So, there’s no market for an English person these days, teen or adult.’

‘Oh, yeah …  I never thought of it that way.’

So, to me, it would be untruthful for us to insist that everyone will have a chance — or the individual freedom — to achieve his career dreams in the world today.  We hope they will. However, I would first point out the many obstacles and the stiff competition our youth will have to face.

But, then, that’s a topic for another day.

Huzzah for the school uniform!

A Catholic school – Sainte-Catherine de Villeneuve-sur-Lot (Lot-et-Garonne) — made the news in France for mandating a simple uniform for all of its infant school students.  The school hopes to gradually roll out the new mandatory red shirt to all of its students through high-school age, including boarders, over the course of the next few years.

RMC (Radio Monte Carlo) asked whether school uniforms were a good idea.  Most readers agreed that they would equalise the students:

‘Too many dress provocatively and seek attention, as if they’re on a reality television show.’

‘It would stop the bullying of kids whose parents can’t afford the latest in trainers or designer gear.’

‘It will make them less materialistic.’

‘Uniforms take away the hassle and expense of what to wear.’

School uniforms do make one less materialistic.  My style in clothes is pretty classic; I’m not a trend-setter (or follower).  Two or three outfits per season are fine for me.

Uniforms are also a great equaliser for students.  Some parents will always be able to buy their children more expensive or trend-setting clothes than others.  Today’s children are increasingly materialistic and, as such, clothes serve more than ever as a social indicator.  Copies of Nike shoes which cost far less can result in a student’s ostracisation.  Sounds stupid, but it’s true.

In England, most schools require a uniform.  Many supermarkets sell basic items at knock-down prices, which makes them more economical for parents.  Of course, some schools have distinctive uniforms which must be purchased via mail order or in a particular shop.

The world’s most distinctive uniform must be that of Christ’s Hospital in Horsham, West Sussex.  Latest Homes magazine relates the history and ethos of this day and boarding school (as well as providing a spectacular photo):

Christ’s Hospital offers an independent boarding education of the highest calibre to children from all backgrounds, many of whom would not otherwise have such an opportunity. This unique school welcomes boys and girls from a range of different cultural, racial and religious roots, and teaches pupils to live and work successfully with others.

A genuine microcosm of modern society, the ambience here is very inclusive, and distinct from all other boarding schools. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, and built on 450 years of tradition, Christ’s Hospital is set in 1200 acres of rolling countryside near Horsham.

Currently one fifth of parents pay no fees and, in this school of 830 children, under 3 per cent pay full fees. Places are subsidised by the Christ’s Hospital Charitable Foundation, which is one of the largest education charities in the UK. Christ’s Hospital is adventurous and forward-thinking, gaining excellent academic results, whilst also nurturing other talents which cannot be learned in the classroom or laboratory, extending educational and social horizons. Pupils gain the confidence and determination to progress in every department of life, and the initiative to succeed in the modern world. Academic departments, from sciences through to humanities and arts, enjoy first class facilities backed by well-stocked libraries and extensive research resources.

The school supplies the 450-year old uniform free of charge. Whilst it might look archaic in today’s world, last December the students voted overwhelmingly to retain it.  A local paper, The Argus, reported (emphases mine below):

Almost all of the 800 pupils at Christ’s Hospital School near Horsham wanted to keep their 450-year-old Tudor-style uniform of long dark blue belted coat with knee breeches, yellow socks and white neck bands.

The results were revealed after a poll of all seven year groups.

Only five per cent were in favour of ditching the uniform for a new, more modern design.

The majority declared the uniform was the most important part of the school’s history, heritage and traditions, saying they felt “united” by a “unique” uniform immediately recognisable.

One pupil commented in the poll: “Pupils have worn it for nearly 500 years so we should be proud to wear it today. We should definitely keep it for ever.”

Headmaster John Franklin said: “It is clear that, like past generations of pupils, today’s pupils regard the uniform with a sense of pride and see it as a positive element for unity and identity.

“We were delighted that there is continuing support for our unique uniform and long-standing traditions.”

Long may it continue!  And may the French continue to reinstate school uniforms, most of which disappeared after the leftist reforms resulting from the May 1968 university revolts.