Since our oldest is 17 and nearing the end of the 'high school' years, we are starting to get questions about where she'll go to college or what's planned after 'high school'. I believe you never 'finish school' and therefore never really 'graduate'. Everyone should be always learning and should be actively engaged in reading, writing, and developing skills.

Instead of graduation as a completion of schooling, I consider it the start of self-directed learning which should continue until death. So I plan to give our kids a list of books to read as they transition into a completely self-directed learning pattern. They will write about what they read and continue mathematics until they master integral calculus.

The details...

The unchallenged cultural assumption in modern America is that "you must go to college" or be forever lost as a second class citizen trapped in life long poverty. Let's put a pencil to this assumption and see if your typical college student is really better off...  You may be suprised to learn that an entry level worker could own a $125,000 home at age 22 free and clear with no mortgage while the typical student would need to borrow over $100,000 to buy the same home.  The young entrepreneur has 4 years work experience, owns his home outright, and is already saving for retirement while the new graduate ponders 30 years of mortgage payments [More...]

I read every issue of the Intercollegiate Review from cover to cover - sign up here for a FREE subscription. Golden opportunity, please consider it. Can't go wrong with "free".

I haven't read Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality yet, but just saw this review article at ISI. The review is compelling - here are a few excerpts:

Our educational romantics assume that everyone is equally teachable, that every child would succeed at equal, developmentally correct speed, if only there were more money, better teachers, a more demanding curriculum, and the like. But Murray objects, and persuasively so, pithily citing the requisite scientific studies to prove it.

Note the solution is, not-surprisingly, a balance of academics, love, and wisdom in a family setting. Exactly the homeschooling paradigm, which Murray even mentions directly.

So how are these changes to occur?... Neither the educational bureaucrats in charge of K-12 education nor the major stakeholders in higher education can be counted on. In both areas, he seems to rely on a return to an educational realism rooted in love—a love of mothers and fathers for their children on the one hand and a love of virtue and wisdom by larger souls on the other— to, little by little, take responsibility for education out of the hyper-democratically beaten path. For example, he counts on the expanding homeschooling movement to evolve into a universe of alternative schools.

So keep it up Mom and Dad - you're doing great work!

See more comments on Real Education at Amazon.com.

Teenager. The word can bring fear to any parent of younger children as they imagine their kids entering so-called "adolescence". Expectations seem universally low for modern teenagers. What can you as a parent and teacher reasonably expect from a 14 year old? Some see a modern culture in chaos and just hope to keep their kids off drugs and not pregnant. A look at past eras to get a sense of what is possible for a teenager...

The Chapman's have a good series going on their experiences with CLEP test preparation and taking at their blog. Ken and family have an active blog that is worth your time.

Three more bits of evidence supporting my contention that the typical modern college experience is harmful for Christians.

There is overwhelming political bias on campuses. Affirmative action is shamelessly practiced, the ROTC and military recruiters are banned, "heteronormativity" is rebuked, atheism and skepticism are the norm, Marxism and socialism are held in high regard, and males are outnumbered by females 58 to 42 percent.

For 40 years straight middle-class bourgeois households have been shipping their conservative, patriotic, church-going kids off to college and spending a fortune to turn them, four years later, into socialists, atheists, sexual libertines, drug users, and despisers of the United States and Western culture. All of this has been subsidized by the Federal government and enforced by the courts.

Reference: Michael Filozof, an adjunct professor at Niagara County Communiity College

More of today's students come to campus with dreadful study habits. Too few of them read for pleasure. Too many drink and smoke excessively. They are terribly ill-prepared for four years of hard work, and most dangerously, they do not think that college should be arduous. Instead they perceive college as an overnight recreation center in which they exercise, eat, and in between playing extracurricular sports, they carry books around. If a professor is lucky, the books are being skimmed hours before class.

How do I know that my concerns are not unique to my employer, or my classroom? My students are brutally honest – they tell me with candor and without shame that their peers think of college as a four year cruise without a destination.

Reference: "I'm Leaving"

And finally, Wendell Berry's magnificent essay "The Loss of the University". I could not find it online. It's in his essay collection - Home Economics . Mr. Berry reminds us that the word "educate" literally means "to lead forth". Into what does the modern college lead students? Students are indeed being lead. Evidence is mounting that the destination is not to a higher understanding of wisdom, but to a lower way of life.

I attended a workshop by Chris Schlect in which he present results of a recent survey of longtime teachers and administrators in the ACCS. As we homeschool, I'm not in the classical school movement directly. It was fascinating to hear the inside scoop on where educators see the movement as succeeding, making progress, or struggling. There were 114 respondents, all of which have been involved in the movement at least 5 years. 43 different schools were represented.

No real suprises were presented. Most interesting to me were the issues of Latin and teaching at the Rhetoric level (a.k.a. High School). Conclusion on Latin was that students knew it well enough to "cipher" or translate original classic texts, but not like a true second language. As homeschoolers, we've never studied Latin. This helped confirm that we really aren't missing much, compared to the Classical Schools. It would be great to have a "classical" mindset that would come from immersion in Latin/Greek studies, but if most of the best schools/teachers/student had not attained it, I don't expect we will. I'll leave the translation to the experts and focus on other areas.

For the high school teaching issues, opinions varied but consensus was a general uneasiness at the results. Many schools seem strong and confident at the Grammar (Elementary) and Logic (Middle School) levels, but that confidence doesn't hold for the final years of schooling. One idea was to move to a more elective approach, narrowing the subjects depending on a student's calling.

George Grant is a classical educator who has great success teaching at the Rhetoric level. He's a brilliant man able to combine knowledge in areas of history, aesthetics, literature, culture, and church history into a coherent 4 year series of lectures. These are the Gileskirk lectures. I've heard most of the 4th year of these and they are very impressive. Dr. Grant also spoke at the conference on how he integrates these various areas so that his Rhetoric level students get the big picture. He said that the typical student is overwhelmed by his approach during the 1st year (9th grade). About 2/3 of the way through their sophomore year "the lights come on" and the student begins to really "get it". This would be about age 16 for most students.

Combining Mr. Schlect's findings about the struggles of Rhetoric teachers, with Dr. Grant's observation, with my earlier article on Puritan education, I reach the following insight. What if education for students age 16+ is more appropriately considered "college"? This would more accurately match the historical norm where a student's "secondary" schooling was considered college. Early schooling is the grammar/logic stage of preparation. Grammar is for childhood. Logic is for the short transition between childhood and adulthood. Rhetoric is for students beginning their adult lives. This would be more like today's "college" where a student begins to work on their specific calling. A good student and teacher in a discipleship/mentoring relationship could complete "college" in a couple years so that by age 18 or 19, the student is fully equipped to begin work in their calling.

This fits our experience as homeschoolers, fits the historical norm, and I believe has support from evidence presented at the ACCS conference. No one at the conference proposed such a framework, but as a homeschooler able to think outside the K-12 box, it jumped out at me.

Typically, a college interview pertains to the prospective student answering questions of the college staff or faculty.  The student is eager to be accepted and wishes to excel in the interview.  However, a more important interview would actually be a series of interviews between the student's parents and each professor that will teach the student.  If the college is effective, as professors teach the student, "the student becomes like the teacher".  So parents should want to know what type of person their child will become, should the education be successful.  Of course, if the education is not successful, the student doesn't become like the professor and the parents have wasted precious time and money. 

Here's a wise and ancient perspective on higher education from St. Augustine, a man whose brilliance is generally uncontested.  He realized his education did nothing to change his character and behavior, as he had his "back to God's light".  Make sure your professors are facing fully into the light, or their great learning and eloquence will only lead you astray.

From Confessions book 4, chapter 16: 
And what did it profit me that I, the base slave of vile affections, read unaided, and understood, all the books that I could get of the so-called liberal arts? And I took delight in them, but knew not whence came whatever in them was true and certain. For my back then was to the light, and my face towards the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, was not itself enlightened. Whatever was written either on rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or arithmetic, did I, without any great difficulty, and without the teaching of any man, understand, as Thou knowest, O Lord my God, because both quickness of comprehension and acuteness of perception are Thy gifts. Yet did I not thereupon sacrifice to Thee. So, then, it served not to my use, but rather to my destruction, since I went about to get so good a portion of my substance into my own power; and I kept not my strength for Thee, but went away from Thee into a far country, to waste it upon harlotries. For what did good abilities profit me, if I did not employ them to good uses?

The annual event to welcome new international students to the University of Texas continued for a second weekend.  ISFM and other campus ministries hosted a Square Dance in the Texas Union ballroom.  Several hundred students from 27 countries experienced a true American tradition.  Our "square" included students from Spain, Germany, Japan, and Lithuania...