Education

This essay is on the development of a curriculum for school age children grades one through eight.

Introduction

It is important that the educator is free to develop their own curriculum. How and on what this rests is the argument of this essay. It is solely derived by and for the values and principles of a young educator who finds himself outside an institution of learning, avowedly dedicated to the improvement of instruction, and the development of a pedagogy that is both developmentally appropriate and true to his values and beliefs about human nature. It is intended to accommidate the general course of time, and changing circumstances in society.

For my views on technology in the classroom, see my essay Linux Classroom.

Homeschool

One changing circumstance in society is the growth of homeschooling as a practical option of alternative education. This essay is meant to be suitable to a wide variety of contexts including the homeschool classroom. Although I have seen numerous problems while working in public schools that lead me to pursue training in alternative education, I do not think homeschooling is an all-encompassing solution to these. Simply put, not everyone can homeschool. Nonetheless, if your family has the fortune to do so, then they may find many of the ideas in this essay helpful.

Waldorf Education

This essay was first written as a graduation requirement for Waldorf Teaching Certification at Waldorf Teacher Education Eugene. However, I have since broadened its relevance and application to the educator who finds themselves outside of the Waldorf ’ecosystem.’ Nonetheless, the Waldorf curriculum will be used to illustrate certain curriculum decisions in a general way, with anecdotes from Waldorf teachers as examples.

The Plan of the Essay

Some Words of Advice to the Educator

Teaching children is admirable and encouraged for its own sake. Whatever insufficiency or self-doubt overshadows the educator, no personal flaw may degrade their work more than outright abandonment. Their disbelief in themselves will be shaken by the truth when it gradually becomes known to him and his students, as the primary aim of their efforts. This essay may serve as a spring from which the young educator may draw inspiration and some dose of vitality.

Part 1: Freedom is the Basis for Education

The development of a curriculum for grades one through eight is carried out by either:

  1. the parents/caregivers of the child
  2. the educator the parents/caregivers grant authority over their child’s education.

The educator developing a curriculum should foremost consider:

  1. What the most relevant subjects are for understanding
    • the world
    • country of origin
    • national heritage
  2. at which developmental stages these subjects should be taught.

The Free Educator

How to understand relevance and plan a course of study around it is the sole project of the educator. No curriculum author or pedagogical theorist is more acquainted with the students and families and their place, time, and values. The educator must therefore be free to make decisions according to what is relevant.

Illustrations of this kind of freedoom and teaching are clearly and succinctly depicted in the life of Jesus Christ, the ‘Teacher’ who was free in the highest sense of the word.

Jesus Taught in a Relevant Way to His Followers

There are few subjects that are more abstruse and removed from everyday life than immortality, yet that is precisely what he makes relevant to his followers in parables.

And he spoke to them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the birds came and ate them up. And other seeds fell upon the rocky ground, where they had not much earth; and they sprang up at once, because they had no depth of earth; but when the sun rose they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And other seeds fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked them. And other seeds fell upon good ground, and yielded fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Matthew 13:3).

The parable of the sower is immediately relevant to his audience, since many were ‘sowers’ themselves. Those who “have ears to hear” relate in some way to what is taught, and are capable of understanding the more universal meaning. When his disciples inquired afterwards why he teaches in parables, he explains saying, “He who has shall be given […] but from him who does not have, even that which he has shall be taken away” (Matthew 13:10-13). If a student has no ground to stand on in the curriculum, if it is not relevant, then he can gain nothing, and the instruction only takes away.

Jesus Taught by a Higher Authority than Himself.

Jesus reveals by what authority the free educator teaches. When he is questioned, he is honest that the authority is not his own.

When the feast [of the tabernacle] was already half over, Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach. And the Jews marvelled, saying, “How does this man come by learning, since he has not studied? Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not my own, but his who sent me. If anyone desire to do his will, he will know of the teaching whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own authority. He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory. But he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is truthful, and there is no injustice in him (John 7:14-18).

Moreover:

“When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that of myself I do nothing: but that I preach only what the Father has taught me. And he who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, because I do always the things that are pleasing to him.” When he was speaking these things, many believed in him (John 8:28-30).

In his freedom from authority of men, and the proscribed ‘curriculum’ of the jews, he is directed by an authority that is not his own.

Freedom in the Word

Lastly, Jesus promises that the sure path towards freedom is his word.

Jesus therefore said to the jews who had come to believe in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. […] everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. But the slave does not abide in the house forever; the son abides there forever. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:31-37).

What is his “word”? John describes this at the beginning of his Gospel.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. […] In [the Word] was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness grasped it not (John 1:1-5).

Later Jesus says of himself,

I am the light of the world. He who follows me does not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12-13).

If we wish to teach according to “the light of men,” or the “light of life,” then we should abide by his word and become free. All plans of the educator, all lessons, extra-curriculars, field-trips, community events, holiday celebrations, should be worked out in the total freedom which obedience to the Word of God provides, and with an eye toward relevance as to what students, parents, and the community, themselves have.

Therefore The freedom of the educator is a matter of principle rather than privilege. In such circumstances as there is little freedom, then especially should this be fought for and cultivated in whatever areas of the curriculum and daily routines the educator can.1

A Free Education is Devoted to the Community

Furthermore, the educator is free to take stock of the general wisdom and intelligence accessable within the community. Many teachers have found great success doing this.

One teacher, on taking his class into the mountains to pan for gold for a geology lesson, asked after some locals where they were best suited to find some, who promptly invited the teacher and students onto their property of some private acreage with woods and river, whereat they panned for several hours, and were permitted to keep what was collected, some $7-8 worth.

Another teacher, not the homeroom teacher but a different one, offered to give a special lesson for a 7th grade History block on the Reformation, on the the setting and operation of a moveable type printing press, and facilitated students’ operation of it; the teacher’s experience stemmed from a family member who had a printing press.

A field trip with the same 7th grade class to a woodshop of a local craftsman that shared techniques, advice, products, demonstrated hand-made tools, and even asked students’ help solving a design problem.

The benefit of such real world experience is to promote the activity of the community, families, the town, the regional industry, or simply the interests and hobbies of adults around them, that are worth promoting for their own sake. Accordingly, the educator is not the “single source” from which students derive their values and beliefs. They are instead a point of connection between the school and the greater community, town or region, and responsible for these channels by which values and beliefs enter in.

The effective educator is free. All the wisdom that is required to become free is documented with love and clarity in the New Testament. Freedom in the Word of God, and the social nature of wisdom in the community, is the foundation for selecting relevant academic subjects.

Developmental Readiness

Once the educator is aware of their relative freedom, community, and place, next he should consider what are the identifying factors that suggest a student is ready or able to participate in acedemic subjects. Some of the visible factors are age, maturity, and obvious willingness to learn. On the whole however, human development is complex and deeply mystifying to science, to such a degree that developmental readiness, especially for the individual subjects, is largely invisible to the educator.

The Waldorf Method as a whole has endeavored to rectify this in their curriculum by seeking a balance between acedemics and health and wellness. Waldorf teachers aim to meet the developmental needs of students by appealing to their feelings of love and participation with stories, music, painting, and other aesthetically motivated activities. Many such educators claim that imposing too knowledge-heavy a workload stunts physiological development. I think there is some foundation to this. For instance, music lessons improve group cohesiveness and watercolor lessons bring a calm over the classroom that cannot be overlooked. A student’s sense of color-balance in painting, or their hand-eye coordination on an instrument, are all developmentally relevant to the child. They reveal how the student interacts with their impulses and feelings, and allow them to rally their instincts toward something outside of ‘acedemic achievement’. It seems probable that this plays a role in their physical development also. Reconciling acedemics with aesthetic subjects such as music and art should form the basis a “wholistic education,” as it works to develop not just the mind but the heart and the hands.

There are many institutions of learning that look past this aspect of human development, urgently preparing young people for a “knowledge-heavy” workforce. For example, if a pedagogical theorist thinks every student should complete Calculus by the end of High School, then they break it into it’s requisite components and determine what concepts must be introduced in Kindergarten to achieve their goal. This does not take into account the needs of the child–let alone that of the high school graduate. I aim to echo this cautious introduction of conceptually dense subjects. From the perspective of “health and nourishment,” we may think of the introduction of concepts to children like introducing a disease to a host: both must be sufficiently resistant in their entire immune system (which is, effectively, their entire body) before they can handle it when it comes their way in the world.2

One teacher met with the parents of a child who was precocious and analytical, desiring to promote this early talent by advance in mathematics. The teacher responded warmly asking whether the child was yet proficient on the ‘balance beam.’

This view of conceptual knowledge should help justify the relatively late introduction of “conceptually dense” subjects in the Waldorf curriculum, as will be seen in the tables for the History and Science curriculum below.

The developmental stages should be considered as distinct from the stages of conceptual introduction required for technical subjects. Like the pedagogical theorist set on his Calculus, the educator may easily slip into the same pattern when planning the sequence of his lessons for what subjects he is to teach next. Human development, on the other hand, which arises out of a genetic history that far outspans our modern way of life and classroom organization, serves as a developmental basis for determining relevance with greater precedence than conceptual content.

Developmental Stages

Many facts of child development are evident to common sense: for example, the young child of four or five should not be taught complex arithmetic, or study tables and formulas. Such a child should play mostly outside and in nature. Likewise should the seven year old avoid documentary films about historical events, but rather listen to or read fairy-tales, fables, and legends, either told by their mother or caregiver, or written by some good children’s author, imbued with wonder and a deep reverence for the heritage from which these stories spring. Unfortunately, common sense is rare these days. Scientific literature, such as in social psychology, has often taken it’s place. While this can help us mend gaps in our own experience, it is better to gain knolwedge about children from our experience giving successful and unsuccessful lessons, taking notes on what helps or hinders, and meeting with the families of students. There are many books by teachers collecting these experiences and drawing from them, which also include relevant scientific facts as evidence of their testimony. These are filled with wisdom that is worthwhile.

I have included the developmental stages referred to in the relevant Waldorf literature below. They may be considered the result of a synthesis of common sense, or more credibly, ‘folk-wisdom’, and scientific observation. It is notable that they emphasize the social qualities of children at the different stages of development. Anyone who has worked with children will have undoubtedly recognized distinct patterns with children at ages 7, 8, 9, etc. One of the achievements of the Waldorf Method is to ground these in a sympathetic recognition of the child’s inner worldview, in contrast to the wholly impersonal abstractions of a scientific theory (such as Piaget’s). This is admirable, but not absolute; the changes described are generally observed by teachers in children generally at the ages given.

7 Year Change (Change of Teeth)

Heralded around the globe as the age at which a child is ready for school, children at 7 start to lose their milk teeth. This child shows other physiological signs of readiness, such as less baby fat, growth out of cradle-reflexes (include link), and a certain levity in their gate. A 7 year old may begin planning a play-date a day in advance.

A Kindergarten teacher was asked by a six year old, what she was knitting a pouch for, and when the teacher told her, the student responded with her own plan of such an improvement.

These are general signs of the child’s readiness for more organized instruction.

9 Year Change

After two years, the 9 year old becomes aware of something new in their environment: themselves. This self-awareness will be distinguished from self-consciousness more apparent at 12. Now self-aware, the 9 year old is independent to the degree that they are themselves, and not a cat or a knight or a wild animal, in other words, some sudden imagination that overtakes them. The 9 year old starts to question reality, where their parents come from, if there really are such things as angels and devils and Santa Claus. This reveals a new kind interest in the world beyond imaginative play.

12 Year Change

The ’tween’ is not only self-aware, but self-conscious. The 12 year old can see themselves for who they are, and form strong opinions of character. Often they express their approval or disapproval of people, rules, or society.

I recall hearing 7th graders referring to themselves in declarative statements such as “I look so (blank)” or “I’m such a (blank) person…

Fashion, music, and social status are significant to the 12 year old.

14 Year Change

The 14 year old is sexually mature, in other words, a young man or woman. The 14 year old has new ground to stand on in society, and as a result has a greater capacity to navigate the abstract values and practices therein.

Relevant Curriculum at the Various Developmental Stages

With the above stages as a rough template, the educator can begin to consider what kinds of activities would be most relevant to each age. For example, engaging in charity and sharing for the 7-9 year old, studying mythology for the 9-12 year old, and some form of community service for the 12-14 year old, to name a few.

Developing and/or implementing a general curriculum is an overwhelming prospect. However it is considerably more manageable with the developmental stages in mind. As I have already stated, it is not necessary to think of every grade as a fixed number of facts or concepts to be learned before progressing, but as an opportunity to develop a relationship with the various elements of life and society that the children participate in, each progressing toward more nuanced and involved perspectives.

Two subjects that illustrate this view of curriculum relevance are history and science. The Waldorf curriculum for these subjects will be given as a point of reference.

History

The subjects given below comprise a normal course of study in history in the Waldorf school.

GradeSubject
1.Fairy-tales
2.Saints and Fables
3.Old Testament
4.Norse Myth
5.Greek Myth and History
6.Rome
7.Renaissance and Reformation
8.Modern History

It will be noticed that a study of history ‘proper’ does not usually come into the Waldorf Curriculum until grade 5. The earlier subjects can be thought of as ‘folk-history.’ This need not be singularly ‘western folk-history’, as may be suggested by the above list.

For much of our time on Earth, humans of every race maintained their didactic history and pedagogical wisdom through legend, folklore, and myth. There is a vast store of wisdom and culture in these tales that are not only captivating and delightful to children, they are at times so embedded and interlaced with history and the way people lived, that it would be irresponsible to teach human history without them, in some form or another. It is the educator’s discretion whether he integrates figures like King Arthur or Beowulf into his “history” curriculum, or decides to use folklore as a supplement, or whether these comprise morality/folklore lessons exteraneous to the regular course of study (although I would argue history could never be taught as strictly distinct from morality/folklore). Or, if he would prefer, as the Waldorf schools often do, to utilize such stories as the basis for lessons in language arts and mathematics.

In the Waldorf school, It is customary to teach where the folklore lesson is copiously drawn from for inspiration in arithmetic problems, writing compositions, etc. One 2nd grade teacher customarily taught “The King of Ireland’s Son,” a traditional Irish folktale, in order to introduce mathematics.

I will not advocate one approach or the other, but will only emphasize their relevance. Since younger children (ages 7-9) are more compelled by imagination than society, they will benefit from its instruction (a fairy tale is, simply put, a structured fantasy). As students become more compelled by character, then those mythologies which exemplify this (most notably the Norse and Greek) become relevant, and when students are more obligated to develop a relationship with civic life, then the facts of civilizations such as the Romans and western Europeans become relevant.

This is a way of selecting a history curriculum that is relevant to the developmental stages, however this is not the only justification for selecting curriculum.

One 6th grade teacher taught a block on the history of ancient and medieval China, which is not strictly speaking a part of the Waldorf curriculum, nonetheless there were enough students who showed an interest and eagerness in this, that it was relevant.

I think the values and beliefs of families is an important factor of relevance. If very few or none of the families hold religious beliefs at home, then it does not seem reasonable to devote any great amount of time to covering the Old Testament. It is not to say that those stories are not relevant for the 9 year old for developmental reasons, however by promoting them as ideal, it may do more harm than good, creating a cultural barrier between home and the classroom. This should never be the motive of the educator. As I mentioned in the first part of this essay, the educator should be grounded within the wider community, to have the greatest effect in creating lessons that are relevant to the community, as well as to sieze opportunities for the benefit of their students.

Science

In the science curriculum, the educator is not primarily instructing the student about factual or conceptual knowledge (see Relevant Curriculum at the Various Developmental Stages). Broadly speaking, students are developing critical thinking about the natural world.

There are 3 aspects of critical thinking that are highly relevant to natural science, and to the scientific disciplines as a whole.

  1. Observation: observing and documenting phenomena and process.
  2. Reasoning: judging causes and factors to create a hypothesis that answers “why,” “how,” or “what” questions.
  3. Replicability: Developing experiments to replicate conditions wherein a specific observation or phenomena occurred.

Table: Natural Science in the Waldorf Curriculum

GradeLife SciencePhysical Science
3.Geography
4.Zoology
5.Botany
6."Astronomy
7.AnatomyPhysics
8.PhysiologyChemistry

In terms of relevance, critical thinking and observation begins as early as grade 1, when the teacher tells fairy tales and other stories that depict causality, and students reason about their motives and characters. Replicability is naturally involved in all routines and lesson reviews. Around grade 3 (9 years old), when students become more aware of their geographical environment, they can begin to organize their observations of place by drawing maps and studying local geography. In grade 4, they can begin organizing their knowledge of animals, and so on throughout the life sciences in subsequent grades. Physiology is obviously relevant to the maturing 14 year old.

It is Notable that the physical sciences are a focus in grades 6-8, while the life sciences, specifically plants and animals are covered grades 3-5. Observing the adaptation of plants and animals largely precludes physics. For example, little to no knowledge of physics is requisite for the student to recognize that beavers teeth are used to chew wood and build dams, or the venom of a snake or arachnid is used to subdue prey. Likewise in botany, if the main object of study is parts of plants and environmental adaptation. All of this is evident through observation and reasoning from sensible, or visible forms in nature. The physical sciences physics and chemistry, on the other hand, are entirely invisible, and the observations are those of change and transformation. Their causes are wholly abstract. A lever and pulley work by displacing weight and force to move objects heavier than a person would normally be able to lift. The factors involved, weight, force, tension, etc., are invisible. The same is true of salts and alkalines in Chemistry. They are abstract in nature.

This decision to cover the life sciences first emphasizes developmental readiness for the introduction of abstract concepts in physical science. The life sciences come to represent for the student a gradually developing understanding of the reciprocal relationship between species and environment. This is one degree of conceptual understanding, and relevant to all children who relate, in some mysterious way, to the animal kingdom. 3. In grades 6-8, concepts like transformation, which was previously learned in the context of organic adaptation, and polarity, which was previously demonstrated as predator and pray dynamics or shade and sunlight preference in plants, are now relevant to understanding the non-living world, in the context of temperature, moisture, density, and friction. This bridges the gap between scientific concepts and life in a developmentally consistent way. With the analogy of abstract concepts being like a disease, the student becomes more capable of tolerating conceptual relationships when they have first encountered them studying what is more relevant to their experience.

Wholistic Subjects

Besides the “hard acedemics” which are the primary focus of the educator, there are several other subjects that can fill out the student’s schedule to deepen their academics or grant them some reprise from them. “Wholistic subjects” are mostly hands on and relate directly to the student’s life or that of the community in some way. They also comprise the main subjects in which less “academically gifted” students (those who either struggle more than their peers, or gain little satisfaction from academics) can learn to be successful; which is a reward in its own right.

Practical Skills

Practical skills can begin essentially as early as 9 years old. This is the age at which most children take on some chores or responsibilities in their household, which can be thought of broadly as the beginning of an education in practical skills. The classroom is no different, there are many classroom chores and routines that keep things tidy and working efficiently. Students can also apply arithmetic in cooking and baking. Handwork including knitting, sowing, crocheting, and woodworking, are all activities where students make something with their hands that is useful, beautiful, and worthwhile.

Besides these, learning survival skills and building shelters or other simple structures can also be considered practical and part of a wholistic curriculum.

The 3rd grade at the Waldorf School do a block on structure-building, where students plan and erect a structure for some practical purpose on campus. The result is often wooden play structures that remain and are enjoyed by the rest of the school for subsequent years.

Students ages 12-14 can offer a service to younger students and families.

A 7th grade class prepared lunch for the lower grades twice a week, and hosted a bake sail to raise funds for their class trip.

Art

Art has a synthetic and compounding affect on the overall curriculum. Art lessons can be drawn from subjects such as history and science (for example, drawing plants or animals) to complement and enrich the curriculum. Students enjoy moments of calm where they can use their own imagination and sense of style to reflect what they are studying. The most universal of these is singing. Everyone can sing, no special talent is necessary. Next is of course music of any kind. Then visual arts, and finally drama. These subjects are rewarding in their own right, and when presented to the community.

This Selection is not Complete

I have not attempted to cover all areas of instruction, nor all subjects that are relevant to child development. The above subjects are glimpses of the horizon beyond the educator’s own circumstance and available materials.

Method of Instruction

Instructional method is informed by curriculum relevance in the following ways.

How these are organized regarding the lesson is relative to the style of the teacher and the needs of students. Some classes need much more structure in their routine, and only benefit from being introduced to very little new material each day. Others are very sure in their routines, and eager to learn new material, in which case review must be especially emphasized, and so on. The variations on this are nearly infinite.

How to Introduce a Subject

To illustrate how the educator can introduce a subject, imagine the educator is the host of a dinner to which all of the children are invited. He is eager to introduce the children to their guest: for instance, to Julius Caesar. But alas! How little they have in common! How will he be introduced? What must be given by way of introduction, description, and profile, before the guest of honor can walk through the door? How old is he? How is he dressed? What is is occupation? What are his achievements? Are the students at all familiar with those or similar achievements? Perhaps some of the students have cleared out a blackberry thicket of 10 square meters; can they imagine conquering over five hundred miles of untame wilderness peopled with lawless tribes and war-chiefs? Perhaps the students have worked in a group of three to complete some project they were all proud of. Then, the “First Triumvirate” with Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey is not unfamiliar to them.

For this to work well, there are two factors; the first is the teacher’s natural ability to make the content relevant to the student, but the second, equally as significant, is the imagination of the student. To further the example, if the student is not familiar with how to hold a polite dinner conversation with their guest, no matter how relevant the introduction is they are given, they will not be able to reap the benefits of sitting with so honored a guest. The importance of developing imagination is one that cannot be understated, and which the teacher has only a part in.

Methods of Review

Next to introduction is the review of material.

The art of review is subtle. There are many ways of handling it. Students may recall the previous days work with a partner, in groups, or as a class; they may represent part of a story through acting it out; they may be quizzed, briefly and ungraded, and so on. There are countless ways of doing this, and since there is no way to impose the image of the past to the students, so there is no strictly correct method of reviewing. Every student, and every day is different.

One of the most distinctive features of the Waldorf school is the use of the blackboard to create colorful, detailed drawings that depict key elements of the curriculum. In a 2nd grade class, I told the story of Saint Martin, and the following day before school started, drew the scene in which the centurion returns to the city in Winter, rends his cloak with a sword, and gives one half to the poor beggar in the street who is blue with cold. As I retold the story, the students looked up at the drawing to aid their memory. One girl in particular looked at it several times throughout the day, each for a prolonged period of time.

What is unique about review, and this is a unique aspect of human memory, is that any recall from the past, is in some way or another, a little review of what came before.

In a broader sense, review can also be looked at as a “warm-up.”

Everyday grades 2 and up in the Waldorf school begin their main lesson with arithmetic. This prepares student’s mental acumen and alertness irrespective of the subject being taught.

Routine

Routine in the most general sense is embodied review. Students know what to expect and how to prepare. Routine eliminates the need for the educator to review basic things. Students with a strong sense of the classroom routine will have the most success in handling new and reviewed material. Generally, the beginning part of the year is dedicated to the introduction of these routines.

It will be noted that, if the educator is not diligent about it, misbehavior will be assimilated by students as part of their ‘routine’ in the classroom.

APPENDIX

The final part of this essay will focus on the challenges I have seen and experienced in education, to which the educator should develop a tolerance and method for handling. Challenges that directly involve students and instruction are so dependent on circumstance, I believe they are on the whole inseperable from the general plan and curricular design of the teacher and their instruction, and therefore have ommitted from including such here.

The main adversaries to a free education are as follows:

Parents Who Disengage

It is very disconcerting to observe parents who make little to no effort to participate in their child’s education. I think this may have been more foregivable in a time when the local community was upheld by a homogenous worldview, however at a time such as ours, when this has all but deteriorated, I do not think there is any justifiable excuse for parents to send their children away to a school where they have no genuine connection to what kinds of things their children are learning or who is teaching them. I think the educator should be on the alert for this, and look for ways of bringing the parents to the table.

A Waldorf Kindergarten teacher would often call a meeting with parents as soon as they began to be absent, and often this meeting alone, a simple conversation, was enough for them to rekindle a relationship and re-engage with the school community and their child’s education.

Parents who Overreach

On the other hand, there are so-called “helecopter parents.” I think there are a few factors which result in this behavior. For one, such parents often desire a high degree of organization to stay on top of things. They are business people by nature, and want to make sure systems are working the way they are supposed to, so that their child gets a “fair-chance.” The result is, for the teacher, their endless inquiries comes across like an investigation. What should properly be a partnership devolves into an employer-employee dynamic.

The educator should not react to this situation like a disgruntled employee, neither because that is what they are, nor because that is what they feel the parent expects them to be. An employee is responsible for a certain return of value for their employer. However in education, the parent is not strictly outsourcing value to an employee, but something much more intrinsically redeeming; faith in their child. I suggest the educator evaluate what it is the parent really wants for their child, not what they want from the teacher. For instance, what are the values and duties of the household, that they expect their child to uphold? When the teacher has an idea of this, they can respond according to how those values are promoted in the class, as well as where the student is fulfilling these or falling short. The teacher expresses how he holds students to account, and rectifies the family values with those of the classroom. The teacher expresses their belief in the student, and demonstrates that he and the parents are on the same side. If the parent continues to ‘barage’ the teacher with curricular questions, policy questions, etc., then the teacher may politely refer them to the notes from a parent evening, or perhaps the weekly or biweekly email to parents, where he covers the current topics students are learning about. Otherwise I think the teacher should continue reinforcing the bottom line; how they are meeting and fulfilling the same values in the classroom. Only in this way the teacher upholds their basic duty to the family, while not playing the part of “employee,” which can only denegrate the teacher’s necessary freedom, and subsequently the children’s education.4

Institional Oversight and Restriction

‘Absolute freedom’ in curriculum development is not possible for the vast majority of teachers and institutions; nor is it necessarily preferred. To be honest, there are many students, especially in the upper grades, that feel a tremendous sense of empowerment from achieving assessment scores comparable to their peers in other institutions. Nevertheless I maintain that the values of a quality education are individual and entirely relative to students at the local and regional level; the most effective instruction an educator is capable of, comes from the total and absolute freedom laid out by Christian doctrine. When this is sought out and developed, wherever in the curriculum it can be, even in the smallest measure, I believe, it will have the most profound effect on the rest of instruction.

Insufficient Funding and Resources

In the section titled, “A Free Education is Devoted to the Community”, I describe several instances of the biblical phrase, “ask and you shall recieve” (cite). Here I will only add that learning is so widely promoted for its own sake, that when the teacher commits himself to the community, he will doubtless encounter those of likeminded charity in every corner.

One teacher was preparing for a Geology Block, and visited a local shop. The owner gave him several samples for his class and other materials.

In my essay, The Linux Classroom, I emphasize at the outset that, “genuine human connection is the most powerful tool the teacher has to effect change.” This is equally true in both instruction and preparation. The educator with real-world connections to what he teaches affects a warmth and enthusiasm to what he brings, that is more redeeming than any material posessions or field trip. For the love of knowledge not separate from life, but formed by the brotherhood of mankind, is itself the greatest tool education can afford.

Insufficient Time

It is all well and good to promote fraternity within the wider community, however for the teacher who is pressed for time, this advice seems disconsolate and harsh. After all, they have lesson plans to write, field trips to plan, staff meetings to attend, on and on. Perhaps there is nothing that eliminates the educator’s freedom more than the numerous minor duties that steadily compound into a whirling torrent that overwhelms their attention and focus. It seems at times all they can do to simply escape, preserving their own personal well-being, before plunging back in. Someone who spends their days in the midst of the social frenzy of classroom life may very well wish for nothing more than to shrink back into private solitude when the day is done, in order to recollect their dispersed energies and hazy memory. Yet to me there is something unwholesome about this. It smells of escape from duty, and not the improvement of future time, which is I think the proactive, long-term solution to what is commonly referred to as “burn-out.”

It is necessarily the teacher’s own personal commitment to mitigate this, however their adult friends and colleagues are no less in the same boat as they are. All I can say is, in my experience, a mere 20-30 minute meandering conversation with a close friend has more than once unexpectedly revealed to me how I have been spinning my wheels in one or another area in my life, and greatly renewed my spirits to take up the cause.

As to how the teacher is recieved in society, I can simply say that, while they may lack a ‘worldliness’ that is no doubt gained in other industries, they make up for this with an undeniable ‘wholesomeness’ that is a welcome perspective to people of any background or career.

The social priorities of teaching is relevant to the feeling of ’time constraint’, since, in a certain sense, ’time’ is a predetermined quantity: We all have the same amount of time in the day and we try and make the most of it how we see fit. But it is also an unaccountable adversary: we can never ‘hold time to account’ so that we get more of it. On the other hand, who we are with, and who we seek out, is entirely in our control. Our conversations with people shape how we reflect on our work, and subsequently how we plan for the future. If we are not broadly planning for the future, then every lesson begins to wilt; the teacher comes off like a broken record. Their ideas are faded, they have not renewed their perspectives through fresh discourse and personality. In short, their instruction lacks sufficient meaning, because the teacher remains disconnected from the underlying values that he commited to when he became a teacher; the community, the region, the world. In order for instruction to remain relevant, he himself must remain relevant.

  1. see Institional Oversight and Restriction in the appendix. ↩︎

  2. This view requires a broader philosophical argument which is too involved to lay out here, but underlying it is a personal value that says, effectively, it is not someone’s conceptual knowledge, but their wherewithal and character, that is more essential to how they handle adversity in life and society. ↩︎

  3. this is a fact that may be taken for granted by the adult, but is doubtless proven by observing children’s play, which almost always includes animals in some way. ↩︎

  4. I am not suggesting that the teacher “stonewall” parents whatsoever. Quite the opposite, since they are opening up to the parent about the most intimate aspect of their instruction.] ↩︎