In Harmony Educational Service’s’ Exceptional Scholar Program (Harmony ESP) mission statement it says, “Rising to the challenges of our day, we will elevate our vision, emulate principled men and women of the past and present, and do the hard work necessary to obtain an education that will fit us for our life missions.” That is something that we, as a school, and as a country, need to focus a little bit more on. To obtain an education that will fit us for our life missions. Unfortunately, a lot of the world is placing less of a priority on going to college or even getting a great education in high school. There are a few reasons that this might be happening. There aren’t high expectations, they don’t try to push themselves to do more than is required, and there are other distractions.
They don’t have high expectations being put on them, and they aren’t expecting great things from themselves. I know a lot of public schoolers who think that homeschoolers don’t know how to do anything. They have often asked me, “How on earth do you learn to do anything!? You don’t even do school!” or even the occasional, “OH! You’rehomeschooled! Well, don’t worry; we won’t give you anything difficult to do!” I have really had some teachers like that. They don’t have high expectations of us in our learning! They just think that because we’re homeschooled we obviously don’t do as well as those who are publicly schooled. I know a boy who, on every occasion possible, downgrades the education he thinks we’re getting, and talks about how he’s public schooled, and going to college at age 13. Yes that’s very impressive, but it’s not just because he’s public schooled. As homeschooled students, we have a choice on how fast we want to progress in our schooling! If any of us wanted to accomplish that, I’m sure we could. Easily! But often we don’t put very high expectations on ourselves. Sometimes we just let ourselves, “go with the flow of things” and we don’t see a reason to push ourselves to go higher. Expectations of others either help us, or hinder us in our quest to gain knowledge. Expectations do that with anything.
About a year ago I used to talk all of the time. I used to tell people everything that I was excited about! When I got excited about something, I tended to get kind of talkative and loud. Then just a few people who I would tell those things to started to comment or react negatively about what I was excited about, and a couple of them actually made rude remarks about how much I talked, and how loud I was. When I was in their presence and I would start to tell another friend something, they would comment, “Not again! Kill me now!” And so on and so forth. Their attitude about what I was excited about changed my attitude about it. I started being afraid to tell people anything, I started believing that what I was saying was dumb, and I got a lot quieter. It was only a couple people, but the opinions of those two changed my attitude about telling people things.
If those we associate with negatively respond to our potential, or don’t think we can do very much, we might begin to believe them. We usually believe what others think of us, and if they don’t expect us to achieve great things, then there will be nothing pushing us to try harder to achieve them. If we don’t expect ourselves to succeed in learning and education, then we will not. Our attitude towards it is what will change everything. I live in Sanpete County, and when I tell people that I come from Sanpete, sometimes they think that I don’t have any manners, and that I don’t use correct English, and that I’m just a country girl who doesn’t have a very good education. They are not putting very high expectations for me, just because I come from Sanpete. Even some of the teachers down where I live don’t have very high expectations, and neither do the parents.
Jennifer and I do another home school group called, “Camelot Commonwealth.” My mom went to a parent meeting before school started, and when she came home she was amazed at the lack of expectations some people put on their children. She said that one of the parents had expressed her opinion that the youth should not do any higher than 4thgrade math, explaining that they didn’t need much more math education than that as an adult. Maybe that’s because in Sanpete County a lot of the people here make their living off of farming, raising sheep, horses, cows, chickens, and other livestock. She rationalized that they didn’t need to know any higher math until college, if they even went to college, and if they did they could just take makeup classes to learn what, as my mom said, should have been taught to them when they were still in high school. I’ve seen this happen a lot in Sanpete County; the expectations of education aren’t as high as other places. The people there are a lot more laid back, and the youth there don’t understand how much an education will help them in their lives.
They don’t feel the need to more than required, which, even then, isn’t very much. One sure way to hate your school is to do ONLY what is required. NEVER do anything you want to do, only do the required learning. When you do what interests you, you’ll find yourselves enjoying what you’re doing! This happened to me when I was about 11. I play the piano, and when Jennifer and I were younger we were required to practice the piano. It was one of those things that we had to do before we could go play with friends, or do any other activity. It was my least favorite thing to do, and I had such a distain for it that my mom eventually stopped requiring it, so I stopped practicing. I don’t think I touched the piano for months, until last year when I found Jon Schmidt sheet music, and I could play it! And I would practice and practice and practice for hours until my mom had to make a rule that the piano was off limits during school time. See how much that changed around? At first it was required, and I hated it. Then, when I tried doing it of my own free will, I started loving it, so much so that my mom had to restrict my piano playing time!
If you apply this to schoolwork you can see that when something is required to be learned that you don’t feel interested in you usually detest it, whereas if you try to do it without feeling required, you will enjoy it a lot more! I have a friend named Rodney, and he is very willing to share his opinion on anything. When we were talking in a small group, the subject of what classes in school people hated, Rodney said, “I hate anything required!” and I have found that to be true! So much today is required, and when things are required we often do the minimum instead of trying to learn more, or learn what we want, and that makes it really hard to gain a great education.
There are so many other distractions: TV, phones, internet, friends, games, and the list goes on and on. Especially if you’re homeschooled, these can often distract you from getting schoolwork done; I know that has sometimes been the case with me! Distractions can lead to procrastinating your homework and to staying up really late to get things done on a deadline. Last year in school I had a strange fascination with writing. I LOVED to write anything, and if you gave me a pencil and something to write on, I would write something. A poem, a story, my thoughts, anything. I loved writing so much! And I would often find myself setting aside my schoolwork to write. I wouldn’t get very much done, and my mom would actually confiscate my journal because it was being too much of a distraction to me during my school time. I was focusing more on what was entertaining, in this case, writing on anything with a surface, than on my education which would help me succeed in life.
We all have something that might distract us from our schoolwork or our education. Whether it’s friends, reading, or even just sitting and thinking, it is a distraction, and it’s happening to much.
This is a problem because it is affecting the world, and the future leaders of the world.
The great leaders and others who changed the world all had great educations. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and many others had wonderful educations. Thomas Jefferson, at the age of nine, began studying Greek, Latin, and French, and at age 16 he was admitted into The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, graduating two years later with highest honors. He understood the value of an education, and he did whatever he could to obtain one. A quote that I once heard by Malcolm X said, “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” I believe that the youth today that will be the leaders of tomorrow will be those who are trying right now to receive the highest education possible to them, and who are continually finding ways to learn. All of the leaders had education. Good and bad leaders alike. Just as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were educated, Hitler and Stalin were as well, the only difference was that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington had values, and had been taught that way. It reminded me of a quote by C.S. Lewis which reads “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” Just because someone is educated, doesn’t mean that they are perfect. We need values in our education, and the United States need to incorporate the values more into the education system.
Not placing such an emphasis on schooling limits what we are able to understand. The vocabulary of the founding fathers time is so extended. I don’t know if any of you have read the Declaration of Independence, but one of the passages quotes, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.” It would be very surprising to meet someone and have them start using such an extensive vocabulary! The people back then had such an amazing vocabulary, and a lot of them had great educations. No wonder they had such amazing leaders back then, they were educating their youth, and setting high expectations for them! If the youth of today are settling for simply a mediocre education, doing only what is required, and not trying to see how far they can go in life, that will be the future of the country. Our country’s future depends on the youth of today.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” If the people in the United States are placing a very low value on education, how can we expect to have leaders who will be helping the country? We can’t be ignorant, and be free. Knowledge is essential to so many things, and unless we all try harder with our own, individual education, it will affect us and others around us.
Some ways that we could have more of a desire or motivation to get more of an education could be having support. Have you ever had a teacher, a friend, or even an adult who had such high expectations for you that you were motivated to try to reach them? I know that I have. I take a Mixed Martial Arts class down in Sanpete, and my teacher definitely has high expectations for me. Although he teases me about my non aggressiveness, and will go up to me and say, “Jessica, who’s being chicken!?” or even proceed to balk like a chicken at me, or tells me that I’m too shy to take this class, I can tell that he has very high expectations, and he often tells me that I catch on fast. He might say that I can’t hurt his grandma when I punch, but he is very supportive, and makes me want to succeed, not fail. That is the kind of person that will motivate you to succeed. One of my friend’s has a mom that has very high expectations for me, not only in learning, but also in optimism. She rarely calls me Jessica or Jessie, but usually calls me her little nickname for me, “Sunshine”. When she calls me Sunshine it makes me want to reach that opinion she has of me. It makes me want to try harder to have an optimistic attitude because she knows that I can do it, and it makes me want to try harder. And in my other school, Commonwealth, all of the teachers have very high expectations for the education that each student receives. When they set high expectations for us, it tends to make us want to do it. Henry Brooks said, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
It also really helps to have integrity and self control. Especially for homeschoolers, in order to get a good education you have to have integrity. I know families that home school and the parents aren’t always the taskmasters that make the kids do the school. When your education is up to you, you need to have the integrity to learn the things you can. Our education is one of the things that we can get now that will help us in the future. But it’s so easy to put it off for something that will benefit us right now. I know that has been a challenge for me sometimes. There is always something else that is trying hard to pull me away from learning. But if we have the self control and the integrity that we need to stay focused on learning we can all accomplish great things. Think about it. When was the last time you regretted gaining an education? I think that we need to strive to learn more and to become better; if we do that it will really help us in our future. It might not be as fun as other things, and it might be hard, but it is always worth it.
