By Christine Smith

Seeing down the Generations

Introduction:

Why are you homeschooling? To give your children a good education?

Keep going…why?

To remove them from bullying or a dodgy curriculum?

Keep going…what’s the next why? To set your children on another path? Good, we’re getting somewhere.

Keep going…why are you homeschooling? What path? Why? What effect will your children have in the community? What about their children’s children?

Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere.

I’ve been mulling over what it means by “seeing down the generations”. Mostly, we concentrate on our children so they will be amazing adults. That’s good but short-sighted. It’s adequate but there’s so much more.

What difference will it make to how and what you teach, or opportunities given to your children, if you start to grasp that your homeschooling can affect your family down the generations? Does that make you sit up and take things more seriously?

We knew we were raising our children to be young adults who knew how to think not what to think. We assumed that they’d do the same thing. Maybe we’d get loving purposeful and strategic input into our grandchildren but my mind didn’t go beyond there. If I could start again, this is the one thing I’d change as my base line.

What does the system want? What do you see the school system training its young students for? See beyond to the Universities. Now see what is expected in careers. What is the system showing it wants? The general but obvious answer is to do the opposite. It’s general because you’re recognising it as the reaction to have. But what decisions are there to make to take it beyond being a general response?

Initially, for your children, educate them to think like an employer. Not to “follow your passion and the market will come to you”. You’ll be familiar with that rationale; we’ve been told that for a few decades now and the majority who believed that have been disappointed with the promise. Study the market and the unspoken market. What is needed? Now we need to solve the need. That takes a different way of thinking, but you can cultivate it. How do we do this? Finding others who are doing this is an important aspect.

Replicating school at home – that’s the trap. The history of modern schooling is designed to produce compliant workers.

No more cogs in the wheel. This is a good goal for homeschooling families. You are shaping your family’s future not the system.

Expect pushback from doing this. Go about it quietly but determinedly. Live peacefully and don’t go looking for trouble. The system doesn’t like too many people doing things differently. Remember what happened if you chose not to get vaxed!

Ripple this out to change other areas of life. We start with how we homeschool, then what? This way of thinking goes to business and how we do it and what we become: a single career or multiskilled career. Consider how this thinking can ripple out into your community and local government.

Home education is not just about book work.

A bit more of the how-to: Homeschooling is the portal to so much more. A school student is a number. You and your home educated children are so much more. You can pursue this life in a way that those in the system can’t. Your curriculum can change to meet your expanded way of purpose.

If your family is known for something or used to be, teach what your family is known for. The family history makes it worthwhile but consider how much knowledge and wisdom could be lost if it hasn’t already, for example with surnames. What did your family do? Passed on from father to son. To hold to something stubbornly is a different thing but seeing down the generations will help you to determine what needs to be retained and passed on and what new things are to be added. Adding to the wealth of knowledge is as important as adding to financial wealth. I don’t think you can have one without the other.

Fathers: what are you teaching and training your children in?

Businesses used to be “…and Son”

What skills haven’t you taught or weren’t taught yourself because, well, you can buy it now. That’s not the point. You can employ a builder or an electrician, but your sons still need to be taught the skills of the ages. To lose traditional skills is become a civilised barbarian.

The same thing applies to your daughters and their daughter’s daughters. They need to know what and how to do what their great-grandmothers did. Whether they use it is up to them but for the sake of the potential survival of their family, they need to know!

Pooling resources inside the family are a good idea.

If my grandfather who became wealthy in his business, had seen down the generations and found ways of investing in and teaching his grandchildren and unseen great grandchildren, we’d be living a different life with less financial pressure and more opportunities for influence in our immediate and wider community than we do now. He was a kind and generous soul, with a testimony of a changed man when he became a Christian, but people didn’t think that way in our working and business classes; he wasn’t to know and I’m not shaming him. We’re the same but we get the opportunity to change in this generation, if we have a changed understanding and learn how to do it. Generational wealth. How’s it done?

Because of our independent modern western thinking most families start from scratch with each marriage; new house, another mortgage, more things bought that could’ve been shared, etc

We shouldn’t just be raising men, but the grandfathers who will be the superstars a few generations hence. See the boy in front of you but look across time.

To be remembered after death is your ROI. It’s usually just a couple of generations we remember our forebears, then the ancestor is mostly forgotten except for a few good anecdotes.

Think like a noble – not a class-conscious snob but one who carefully guards, teaches and protects the place they hold. Their children are taught accordingly, and the influential place of nobility is kept to the betterment of the society they live in. The noble who truly knows his place will contribute to a strong society. The noble who is selfish brings about his family’s and potentially, society’s downfall.

It doesn’t mean you need to be wealthy to be a noble. It is an understanding of the importance of your place and role.

To see down the generations, you must fulfil your role. It’s more than being a biological parent; it’s an office. Example: priests are called Father; a nun is a Sister; they become Mother and the head nun is Mother Superior. It is an office. See your parental role as biological but more than that. If you can be in the role of the office of father and mother, you are seeing your parenting down the generations, not just the child in front of you.

I don’t know where I’ll end up with this line of thought but I’m willing to pursue it and let the experience of others help shape a way of thinking largely unknown to the working or business class who make up the bulk of our society. Has it ever occurred to you that this information is supposed to be kept from us and designed to keep us where we are? I’m beyond wondering that now.