Five Principles of Paideia Network
1) God-centered
2) Classical education oriented
3) Pro-nomian and Biblical worldview oriented
4) Self-government oriented
5) Future oriented
1) God-centered
Our education needs to be God-centered. We have to be accountable to God in educating our children.
We have to bring up our children in the nurture (paideia) and admonition of the Lord. (Eph. 6:4) Education needs to be based on the Christian epistemology. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10) Many Christian educational movements have failed because of the lack of Christian epistemology. There is no neutral zone between the Christian worldview and the non-Christian worldview. Neutrality is a myth. This affects the methodology of our home education.
Education must be carried out in the family. Parents are responsible for educating their children. The civil government has nothing to do with the education of children. In terms of home education we stress the importance of the role of fathers, who are the covenantal head of the homeschooling families.
2) Classical education oriented
Classical education is one of the basic ideas of home schooling. This was introduced by Dorothy Sayers, who was a novelist.
Dorothy Sayers's The Lost Tools of Learning is a well-known essay which contributes greatly to the methodology of home education. There she introduces the medieval model of education which consists of two parts; the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The Trivium is the basic academic discipline for the students. It consists of three stages: Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric. In the Grammar stage students learn and memorize tremendous amounts of data/material. When they reach the stage of Dialectic, they begin to learn how to connect the data/material logically, and finally in the Rhetoric stage they are able to organize what they have learned in the previous stage and teach others. When they reach the Rhetoric stage they are ready to go on to the Quadrivium, which is college level specialization in any area. In those days they finished the Quadrivium stage at the age of 15.
We also make an emphasis on learning from our fathers of our faith. The commandment of God Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.(Exodus 20:12) encourages us to learn from our fathers of our faith. They have left a wonderful legacy for us to inherit. This is the reason why we focus upon classical Christian music for children fs education.
Learning something classic is to learn something that has passed the test of time.
3) Pro-nomian and Biblical worldview-oriented
In our home education we have an absolute standard, which is the Scripture. We stress the significance of the third use of the law, which means that the law of God manifests His will to us in our everyday lives. We also focus on the Biblical worldview which gives us the understanding on what is going on in this world. With this Biblical worldview, our children can cope with the struggles they face when they graduate our homeschool with Biblical apologetics.
4) Self government-oriented
Our friend Kevin Swanson says in his book UPGRADE: 10 Secrets to the Best Education for Your Child,
In fact, character is the foundation and structure of education. If education were a house, character would be the concrete foundation, the structure c. Geography, geometry and geology would be nothing but wall paper(p.30).
The aim of home education is to raise children who can discipline themselves. Ethics always comes first.
5) Future-oriented
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
(Mark 8:36)
This is the starting point of our home education. Churches are losing the next generation by sending covenant children to public schools. Only parents are responsible and capable of training their children in terms of their education, especially in the area of character building. Schoolteachers cannot function in this area.
The book of Proverbs deals with the subject of education and shows us the basic principles of education.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.(Proverbs 22:6)
Our goal is to raise the next generations for the Kingdom of God. Our children need to be good, competent citizens of God fs kingdom. Our focus is always on the future. Our children must become parents who can bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is our primary goal.
Copyright © 2006 Shu Suzuki