Harsh, I know. But in all the talk about how important education is, what are we really talking about? Advanced degrees that we wield like a sword and lord over everyone else, or the refining and polishing of one’s innate skills and gifts?

Having grown up in the world of academe, I was sure I knew what education was. Then, becoming a homeschooler, I was positive.

But finding the definition of ‘educate’ and then implementing it? Completely different exercises.

And the concept of education that I grew up with is more interested in finding the definition and the word root, the history of the concept, and perhaps a cute anecdote here and there. But applying the definition and producing an outcome? Hush your mouth.

To educate is to draw out. To teach is to impart. Could these two activities be more different?

Here’s where the academic in me wants to stop and go research how education came to mean teaching. I will resist. That is irrelevant to this post.

No, this post is more interested in practicing the art of education.

When I talked about having finished reading The Art of Education with a friend, she started talking about unschooling. In unschooling, the child is encouraged to study what interests him, without parental or school interference. The parents’ job is to provide a rich environment for the child to draw from. The parent would be more curator than teacher in an unschooling scenario.

Patience and the environment are the key to unschooling success. What if the child doesn’t take an interest in anything? What if the child takes an interest in something dangerous or frivolous? Do you have the faith to let your child decide all by themselves what they will do with all their time?

Knowing that educating is drawing your child out, you don’t want to flip the script and swing to a complete external system, where you are choosing what the child will learn and how.

You know your children the best. Or if you don’t, you have the chance to get to know who they are. Observe them, make suggestions of possible fields of study, activities, and let them choose. It’s like training your toddler to pick out her clothes. Give her the choice between two or three different appropriate outfits, rather than give her free reign of her whole wardrobe. Sure, she could learn from her mistakes, but that could take a long time, and she could get sick in the process.

You as a parent can and should offer some guidance, while drawing wisdom and proficiency out of your children. Even as a piano teacher, I see my role more as pulling the skill out of my children, rather than opening up their heads and pouring fingerings and notes in.

This is a narrow path we walk as parents. That’s how you know you’re doing the right thing.

She pulls out a sheet of notebook paper and lists all the activities she’d like to do.

She casually asks her mother if she can make a snow globe.

She and her siblings gather the materials and make 4. By themselves.

Another project on the list is mystery soap. The children shave bars of soap, cook them, dye them, and hide army men inside each bar. The hardest part for them is waiting until the bars are hard enough to use as hand soap.

A few years ago, the same child had a science experiment where she checked the temperature of water in the sun and in the shade, using a large chemistry thermometer. Somewhere around the third reading, the thermometer breaks. The child can read and take temperatures, but does she remember anything else from this experiment? Will she ever forget how oil and water mix in her ocean/lava? That sugar may be a good substitute for glitter in a picture, but not in a snow globe?

These scenarios highlight the difference between education and schooling.

I just finished reading this book, The Art of Education. Author Linda Dobson, of Parent at the Helm and Home Education Magazine wrote this book in the 90s, and its message is just as potent today. She tackles weighty issues like cultivation, freedom, family, and society at large. Everything is filtered through the lens of education. What is education, really? Is it the political minefield that it has come to be known today? Is it the filling of empty heads with vital facts? Or is it the drawing out what is already there, to refine and polish until a whole person emerges? Not to try and lead you or anything…

I have read some interesting education books, not the least of which were written by James Herndon.

Rather than being narrative and anecdotal, or simply pointing out the problem and depressing you, The Art of Education paints a picture of what life could be. It is rather poetic. “Allow your children the freedom to handle responsibility, and the perfume of compassion fills the air,” Mrs. Dobson says.

You may read The Art of Education and not decide to homeschool your children. But you cannot read this book and come away thinking about education the same way. It is an empowering book. I highly recommend it.

Tonight I will stick to definitions.

It is difficult to define these two political extremes, because it’s so tempting to be biased. I think the differences come down to different belief systems, different premises. I will contrast the premises, and hopefully you can draw your own definitions.

Liberal premise: Man is destroying the world through his pollution and overpopulation.

Conservative premise: There is nothing man can do that will destroy the earth. There is enough room in the state of Texas for everyone in the world to live comfortably.

Liberal premise: There is not enough money in this country for the extremely wealthy to exist. They must share their money so there will be no poor people.

Conservative premise: Wealth is created. If you don’t like being poor, create wealth.

Liberal premise: Women should be protected from unplanned pregnancy, and free to have as many sexual partners as they like.

Conservative premise: Life begins at conception. If you don’t want an unplanned baby, don’t create it in the first place. There is no difference between abortion and infanticide.

Which premises do you accept? Why? Do you have any to add?

The gist of the article is that we should stop feeling guilty for our missteps in raising and educating our children, and get on about the business of discipling them.

This is not news to me. I know that I am the problem and the solution in many ways with my children. But it is very difficult to disciple your children when you get stuck on being the problem!

How many times have I cried out to God that I have made a mistake, that I am failing, that I’ve done so many things wrong! And He whispers the same answer every time.

Disciple your children.

But, wouldn’t they be better off if I just went away and stopped ruining them?

Disciple your children.

And I better watch myself. Remember what happened to Moses when he protested too much. If Zipporah hadn’t quickly responded to God’s wrath by circumcising her son, the Exodus story would have been different.

So, tonight, while I was sweeping the floor, going over the idea that I am too imperfect to possibly disciple my children, something clicked. Phillipians 3:14 comes to mind: I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. So what I disciple my children in is not perfection, but in the pursuit of perfection!

Everything fell into place! The reason for discipline, order, standards. If we don’t press toward the mark, if we don’t model our pursuit of perfection for our children, they will be overtaken by the weeds of our culture.

Talk about a high calling! But talk about vision. This is a vision to get me up in the morning, to hold my head up, straighten my back a bit more. And to never give up. God is awesome!

I just didn’t get it. It felt like I was allergic to the very air outdoors, and I preferred to be in the house watching TV.

Except…I played outside all day long throughout the summer. And I didn’t miss TV at all during my weeks at Girl Scout camp. So maybe my mother got through to me in spite of myself.

The outdoors beckoned to me in the summers after I’d had a baby. I remember strapping my first born to my back and walking outside with her blathering on incessantly about this type of tree, or that type of flower.

Something about the sunshine and the air outside that make me feel human again after days of lying around the house nursing a new baby.

When I read Charlotte Mason’s Home Education , the part about spending afternoons out of doors really resonated with me. I started taking the children on daily walks, where we explored the glorious Michigan spring (at last!)

This summer is no exception. There is life outside, deep in the dirt, bubbling forth out of every pore in the ground. Now we’re in the gasping season–every time I go outside I see another new blossom, and I check on plants who promise to bloom later in the season.

I weed my flower beds, shaking my head at the grass that refused to grow there until I wanted flowers to grow instead. My husband told me that grass is like people–when the ground is not right, they refuse to come around, but when the ground is broken up and receptive, the grass comes.

Outside, the children can stretch and run, shout and grow. It’s so confined in the house, by comparison.

Outside, our plants flourish and grow. My faith grows with each seed that brings forth leaves.

Outside is whispering to you, “Come outside. There’s life here.”

Like I’d eventually work out rhythm problems. I know that the rhythms I hear and try to reproduce are not nearly as complicated as I end up notating them. I assumed I’d be working through musical problems enough that I’d eventually never come across a rhythm that would stump me.

Wrong.

I’d assumed that I would always play the bass, therefore never have to worry about being overweight. The bass is so strenuous, and my bass and I were pretty inseparable once upon a time.

Now I must hide it from the children, who think it’s a fun science experiment to stick items inside the huge f holes.

I’d assumed that my days would be consumed with professional concerns. That my talent would be used for very important public events.

But my days are consumed with mopping and laundry problems, or figuring out when I’m going to have a second to myself to pray, think, or read.

My talent is best used finding ways to teach the children, in very individual private ways.

I never had any idea how many times I’d be asked for water in a day.

Or that children actually follow you to the bathroom, when you go outside to water the grass, mow the lawn. You name it, they follow you.

Until one day, when they don’t any more. I assumed I’d always be the center of their universe. That was dead wrong, too.

I better keep that in mind on days like today, when I was awakened in the 6 o’clock hour and tried to go and be by myself for a minute, only to be followed by Chanya, greeted by meows when I got downstairs, and soon joined by Xay, who got up early trying to be alone (with the xbox), and Esteban, who was awakened by Xay’s alarm clock.

These days will be over in the batting of an eye, and I will truly wonder why I was so overwhelmed. I better get the most out of every single minute.

But my mother was a feminist. She was ashamed of any domestic training she’d received, and sought to ‘liberate’ me from such vital skills.

*ahem*

So I have had to figure it out myself. But just in case I’m not alone, I’d like to share these hard won lessons.

1. Schedule is important. Make sure you have at least two hours to spare before try to go to the store. Allow for traffic and crowded stores. The earlier in the morning and the earlier in the week you can make it to the store, the better.

2. Make a menu for the week, and consult your menu when you write your list.

3. Write your list and check it twice. There are many distractions in the grocery store.

4. Check your list again.

5. Go to the store. Return your bottles first, if you brought them. Start shopping at the back of the store. Those shiny, flashy produce items can keep until the end of your shopping trip.

6. Check your list. Did you put yogurt, pudding, cottage cheese, ricotta, or mousse on your list? If not, don’t be tempted by all these choices. Focus. Go straight to the milk.

7. Read the signs on each aisle. Don’t even go down the aisle if it doesn’t contain something on your list. Flee temptation.

8. Check unit prices. Sometimes the pricier item is actually a bargain in the long run.

9. If you must buy something you didn’t originally list, add it to the list. You are going to consult this list again the next time you go shopping.

10. Use a calculator to stick to your budget.

11. Check your list before you go to check out. Did you remember everything? Do you care anymore?

12. After you pay for your groceries, be careful loading the car. If your hatch is like mine, it hurls certain items out of the car when you open it. Items like bottles of milk. Just to be safe, treat your milk, eggs, and bread like passengers. I sometimes carry the bread in the baby seat if I go to the store without the baby.

13. You’ll probably be exhausted by the time you get home. Have as many people as possible help you unload the car and put away the groceries. Don’t be a martyr.

What tips would you add?

The general consensus is that the one talent guy was wrong, the five and two talent guys were right. Simple, right?

So tell me why my father came over today giving an unapologetic picture of the one talent guy’s point of view?

This after Curtis opened up many things about that particular scripture to the whole family. How since the five talent guy immediately doubled his master’s money, how much money had he made in the interim, when his master was gone for a long time? How truly lazy the one talent guy must have been, wasting the long time his master was gone, and working on his story. About what outer darkness looked like…chilling.

Curtis nudged me when my father was talking to be sure I was paying attention.

My father said, “You only gave me one talent, and I was scared you were going to take it away, so I held onto it…” And when the master took it away, his reaction was, “See?”

How can you read the Bible all your life and hold steadfastly to wrong thinking? Fear, distrust, unbelief…the list goes on and on.

I pray that my father gets it. God has a way of bringing up the same mysteries over and over until they click for you. I pray He does the same for my father.

I used to agonize over the one talent person’s ability, wondering if he had worked with the one talent, would that make him the two talent guy by default. I worried about him. I pitied the one talent guy, alternately feeling superior to him and commiserating with him.

I missed the entire point taking these extremes. The one talent guy chose distrust and fear of the unknown over fear of his master. He chose laziness over productivity. The irony is that what he most feared came to pass. That is chilling. But the fact is, all the servants had a choice, even the servant with the least ability.

God couldn’t have chosen a better time for driving this point home.

It is a lot like the last one, the miscarriage that convinced me that I never wanted to get pregnant again. Then, due to a lot of fun and discovery with my husband, I found myself pregnant again, approximately a year after that miscarriage finally concluded.

In between the two miscarriages, I graduated my first born, became born again, and lost 30 pounds. It was quite a year of growth, and I was on the road to losing another 45 pounds to reach my goal weight. Yeah, I am much cuter at this weight than I was heavier, but it’s nothing compared to my goal weight.

Anyway, both of these pregnancies seemed to come at an inconvenient time, and caused undo angst. Then again, they also brought with them such hope and joy at the thought of having another baby boy to snuggle.

I know nothing is guaranteed in this life. I thought that God had told Curtis that He would bless him with two more boys around the time I was pregnant with Esteban. We’ve been looking for that other boy ever since then. We’ve had two girls since then, and now two miscarriages.

Now I’m wondering if God had promised two boys period, which we do have. I don’t know. But I do know that while I don’t seem to have too much trouble conceiving these days, I do seem to have trouble sustaining the pregnancy past the first trimester.

On that last miscarriage, I found out that there was no heartbeat, and that the baby had not progressed past 7 weeks development around week 12 or so. It took a few days after that for the bleeding to start, and it was four months before I had completed the miscarriage. My body was perfectly fine with carrying around a womb full of water for all that time. Then the final miscarriage felt like labor and birth, it was so intense. And I felt my hormones dying down for the whole four month period.

It was excruciating.

This time around, I started bleeding on Friday. Tuesday, I saw the midwife, and again, no heartbeat. I didn’t do ultrasound this time, so I don’t know how long the baby developed. It was again around 12 weeks in the pregnancy when I found out I won’t have a baby this year.

But the cramps and the nausea and the heavy bleeding began today. I think I may be done or close to done already. Which is cool with me. If you have to miscarry, you definitely don’t want it to take four months.

Is it ironic that these miscarriages make me think about my own mortality? I mean, it’s the baby’s mortality I’m dealing with. But here I am, so proud of my ability to conceive, but when I don’t get a baby out of the deal, I really feel old and defective. Why do I still have one ability and not the other?

How many kids did I want? The answer is as many as I could have. I guess that’s what I do have. I will never get Yasha back, as much as I try, and I think I’m done trying.

As much as I love babies, I never want to risk another miscarriage again.

That’s a pretty radical statement coming from the daughter of a black studies professor. I’ve read all the literature, heard all the hype. I’ve even been told that as a TRIPLE minority, (black woman bass player), I had it made. How I could have it made in the world of blind auditions, I never figured out. Does my bass playing sound like a black woman is producing it?

This comes to mind on the heels of the pageant. There were many (14) beautiful black girls in the pageant. There were also many beautiful white girls, (47) in the pageant. There were girls of both complexions who were very prepared for the competition, but unfortunately, most of the black girls were not as well prepared. Maybe their walks weren’t polished as some of the veteran models in the competition, or they hadn’t paid enough attention to their bodies.

Again, there were unprepared girls of both complexions, but the majority of the black girls were unprepared, and there were more white girls in the competition, so the percentage of unprepared white girls was smaller.

The result? One black girl in the top 16. All the brunettes looked similar, and the blondes looked similar. It was as if the judges had handpicked all the girls that looked just alike. It was shocking at first.

But I remembered the preliminary competition, and how some girls looked like they had just decided to do the pageant the week before. I’m not being fair, I know, but this was big competition, and if you didn’t distinguish yourself, you would just be overlooked.

Black parents used to tell their children that they had to be twice as good to get half the recognition. This attitude resulted in levels of excellence that changed the world. And. . . once the world was changed, the attitude also changed.

The world is not just black and white. And this is not a race issue. It is a culture issue. The culture of excellence vs the culture of getting over. Lest we think it is about just black and white, let us remember who every excellent white person has their eye on–an Asian person, who typically comes from a culture with even higher standards of excellence.

I remember doing piano competitions as a teenager, and hearing the frustrations of a girl in my piano studio. She practiced hard and generally did well in the competitions, but she usually lost to an Asian pianist. She would complain that if she put on a black wig she would do better. I should have told her that maybe the black wig would help if it accompanied a higher level of performance.

I watched a Korean friend’s little sister in a piano lesson once. Her mother sat in on the lesson with her, asking questions and taking notes. She made sure that her daughter practiced correctly, and her daughter always excelled in music, even though she had no intention of becoming a musician when she grew up. Her mother had high expectations on her in everything that she did, and the girl met her expectations.

That is the culture I want my children to grow up in.