When I first began homeschooling, I studied out all the different philosophy's trying to find my niche. Were we Classical Educators or did we lean more toward Charlotte Mason or a Thomas Jefferson Education? What I found was that in each one there were desirable traits and aspects that I liked and wanted to incorporate. The same is true for an unschooling approach. The section of the book that I needed to read most was probably the chapter titled, “Giving Teens Wings So They Can Fly”. My oldest son is twelve and so the teen years are very near for our family. Unintentionally, three of the books that I have read this summer have discussed how the modern age group of ‘teenagers’ is really a new lifestyle/category. Before somewhere around the late 1930s you did not see ‘teenagers’ as a separate culture. Most often once a child reached that age he/ she began working or contributing to the family in some way. Popular culture today paints teens in a negative light and holds them to very low expectations. However, Julie Polanco shares how she provided her children with opportunities to be involved in real life and contribute. It is important that we have high expectations for our teenagers and give them the opportunity to succeed and do great things.

For two hundred years schooling in the United States has provided a formal education rooted in colonial knowledge—defining civic insiders and outsiders, framing right and wrong perspectives, promoting “facts” from geography and science—all with white settler identity at the core. Footnote 79 The Bible teaches us that having knowledge simply isn’t enough. Knowledge is knowing facts about things. But Wisdom is from God alone. Wisdom has three aspects: knowledge about God’s Truth, understanding God’s Truth, and How to Apply God’s Truth. Wisdom is more than just following “the rules.” Wisdom implies acting according to the spirit of God’s Commands and not just looking for a loophole. With wisdom comes a will and a courage to follow through with living by God’s wisdom. Calling schooling a white good is a small—and I hope, logical—step from the remarkable work that many historians, legal scholars, social scientists, and others have done in the last thirty years excavating and explaining the way in which schooling in the United States is a fundamentally racial project. It also accounts for and corrects racially naive political and economic framings that have been such powerful drivers of school policy. Finally, calling schooling a white good helps explain how it can be something that seems to be good for everyone while also doing the harm of recreating racial inequality. From the early seventeenth century to the early twentieth, Europeans conquered, commodified, and “developed” a vast swath of territory—some three million square miles of the earth's surface in what became the lower forty-eight states. Land was the cause of war, the basis of wealth, and the driver of politics and law. Footnote 47 Control of places became a key mechanism that white Americans have used to maintain their advantage over people they raced as others. God Schooling is focused and informed by the child’s passions and their natural bents and interestsMy analysis of the interview data revealed that many abiders, especially girls from middle-upper-class families, were less likely to consider selective colleges. In interviews, religious teens over and over mention life goals of parenthood, altruism and serving God – priorities that I argue make them less intent on attending as highly selective a college as they could. This aligns with previous research showing that conservative Protestant women attend colleges that less selective than other women do because they do not tend to view college’s main purpose as career advancement. Grades without God She also goes into experiential learning in that chapter. Children learn much better when they can experience that which they are trying to learn. She gives multiple examples from field trips and nature walks to living books and hands on crafts. These have been a vital part of our educational experience and I appreciated the encouragement to continue with this type of learning even as my children get older. The argument was scandalously naive in its bipolar account of private individuals and public society. “I assume no mystical collective mind that enjoys collective consumption goods,” Samuelson wrote. “Instead I assume each individual has a set of ordinal preferences with respect to his consumption of all goods (collective as well as private).” Footnote 11 Of course, whiteness was, and is, just such a “collective mind,” influenced by the collective utility of white goods to any white person. Whiteness ran through local, state, and federal law, social custom, residential and employment patterns, so-called public and so-called private activity alike at the very time that Samuelson wrote those words. Footnote 12 Resistance to whiteness and the collective identities formed by minoritized people were also neither public nor private. The mysticism was in Samuelson's theory. A third, critically important mechanism of schooling as a white good is the ability to control mobility, a process I have called hobbling. Footnote 94 Schooling in the United States is a nearly ideal example of a white good. Historically, the maintenance of white advantage has been a primary political goal of schooling, and until the 1970s, an overt one. Footnote 45 This was not accidental. Common schools developed in the nineteenth century were not for a public that happened to be white. White Americans designed common schools during a time when the United States was a diverse society that allocated different civic statuses to different people depending on the myth of race. When white-controlled governments regulated the education of other groups, they did so with the understanding that these regulations would reinforce the system that white people built for themselves.

Timothy 2:15 “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” Off and on, the Church provided a solid basis for a godly education. The Reformer John Calvin argued for universal education, saying that every child should learn to read and write, gain abilities in math and understand religion. Martin Luther taught that teaching the Bible and the way the world worked would allow a growing relationship with God. In the 1780s the modern Sunday School movement began as Robert Raikes began teaching overlooked and poor children. Many of the oldest and most revered universities were started by Christians, including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, and Cambridge. But one often overlooked demographic factor is religion. The U.S. is the most devout wealthy Western democracy. Does a religious upbringing influence teens’ academic outcomes? Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

The abider advantage

First, I analyzed survey data collected by the National Study of Youth and Religion, which followed 3,290 teens from 2003 to 2012. After grouping participants by religious intensity and analyzing their grades, I found that on average, abiders had about a 10 percentage-point advantage. The Stoics believed that the universe is a living being with no beginning or end, of which Paul said, “God, who made the world and everything in it…” among other notable points directed to the Stoics. The Epicurians believed that man had two primary fears, and that they should be eliminated. One was the fear of gods and the other the fear of death. Paul confronted them by saying “He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world…” and “He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” He confronted the Epicureans on several other notable points as well. Most modes of Greek philosophy ask the questions “Must there be an initial cause of all things? What is causing all things that are in existence? How can we know for sure?” And Paul repeatedly answers each of these questions when presenting the Gospel. Paul is an astute scholar, one who is extremely knowledgeable about his beliefs, his culture, and with the beliefs of other people in his culture. Timothy 3:15 “And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” People of any religion can demonstrate religious intensity. But the research in my book “ God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success” centers on Christian denominations because they are the most prevalent in the U.S., with about 63% of Americans identifying as Christian. Also, surveys about religion tend to reflect a Christian-centric view, such as by emphasizing prayer and faith over other kinds of religious observance. Therefore, Christian respondents are more likely to appear as highly religious, simply based on the wording of the questions.

Because whiteness is a category of social dominance (and not just a form of difference), a white “good” would be something that is useful to white people as the dominant racialized group in relation to other subordinated racialized groups. White goods are, by definition, non-white harms. That white goods are designed to benefit white people does not mean, of course, that they cannot be useful to non-whites. Obviously they can. But because a white good must advantage white people more than other people by definition, a white good will be less useful to non-whites than to whites. White goods are relative as well as absolute. In fact, when non-white people participate in a white good, their very participation reinforces an underlying system that favors white people. A progressive view, still popular among educational historians, suggests that images like this are exceptional. The public good has been the core goal of public schooling and, reciprocally, public schooling has been a foundational good for the United States. Schooling was imperfect, of course, and excluded particular groups, but things are getting better. In that sense, the mob is historically exceptional or regionally idiosyncratic. The kids are marching Arkansas into a better future, to the tune of the Fourteenth Amendment. Corinthians 1:25 “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” Julie realized after not too many years that it became a real chore trying to get the kids to do what she thought they should be doing. God Schooling

FINAL THOUGHTS

Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” This is an excerpt from the interview with Julie Polanco on God Schooling. Listen to this broadcast for the entire content. This book does a wonderful job of explaining and exploring the unschooling approach to education. While I do not think that unschooling is the approach that best suits our family, I enjoyed hearing about what works for her children and the research behind that methodology. I also gleaned a lot of great information and tips that will work well for our family. Scholars like sociologist Christian Smith have theorized that increased religiosity deters young people from risky behaviors, connects them to more adults and provides them more leadership opportunities. However, I found that including survey measures for these aspects of teens’ lives did not fully explain why abiders were earning better GPAs. Well, my friends, I will leave you with this important question. What is God’s will for your family?

Now, we do not unschool our children, nor did this book make me want to jump on the unschooling bandwagon. However, because I believe that as a mother I can receive personal revelation for what is best for my children, I firmly believe that God called this mother to unschool her children because that was what was best for them. And it's okay that it isn't what is best for us. Parents are very much involved and looking at how the child is using their time and making sure that the skills development happens.

Topics on School

Next, I wanted to know more about students’ college outcomes, starting with where they enrolled. I did this by matching the NSYR data to the National Student Clearinghouse to get detailed information about how many semesters of college respondents had completed, and where. She talks about how children, particularly children under eight, need a lot of free time and play. I wholeheartedly agree. They learn so much through play and exploration and if we are not careful we can fill up their days with school work and not allow them the time needed to play and explore. Today, schooling is a social practice that launders white social advantage (inherited and updated) in the name of merit. Yes, schooling can be beneficial for everyone, and yes, many non-whites can succeed brilliantly while many whites can fail. And also, non-white people have generated their own goods as acts of self-determination and resistance within the schools designed for the good of people who are white. But resistance adds cost and risk, and not having to resist is an advantage conferred on children who identify, and were allowed to identify, as white. Footnote 46 I received this book from the author. I did not receive any compensation for this review and I was not required to leave a review. I wanted to review this book to let other homeschooling families know about this wonderful book and how it might be able to help them in their journey and let God lead the way for their homeschool.