Paradigm Shifts

A paradigm is a set of assumptions, concepts, values, beliefs, motivating convictions and practices. In a very real sense, our paradigms uphold our sense of self and under gird the expression of who we are. This is why it is scary to find one's paradigm, one's modus operandi, being challenged or shifted. For many people, fear and insecurity causes them to shut down and stop listening. In some cases this may be the right thing to do. However, the challenge remains to overcome fear; to trust in the faithfulness of God when He said He would lead and guide you, and to have confidence in your own capacity to discern and learn and grow throughout your life.

 

When I became a Christian, my paradigm underwent a global shift in both perspective and application. This was conversion - a strong word when you stop and think about it. Looking back, I can see how the way had been prepared. God had been at work. Aslan was on the move. The hounds of heaven had finally caught up with me, not a moment too soon. Reading John Holt's wonderful books caused a similar shift in perspective. Before I read them, I stood in one place, but now I found myself in a different place. My paradigm had shifted, and it was impossible to be again who I was before this happened. Like the words attributed to Martin Luther, I now found myself in a place where I too could say: 'Here I stand, I can do no other. May God have mercy on me'. Not that I mean to imply that I was passive in this process; not at all. Ideas are like a banqueting table, and I am at liberty to decide which foods to accept and which to reject as I see fit. However, an idea, once ingested, feeds my mind, and I come eventually to a place where I must either accept or reject the conclusions to which it comes.

 

The most important question in making decisions about education is expressed in just one simple word: Why? (I will never forget our dear friend and mentor Leendert Van Oostrum saying it in Afrikaans: Hoekom?) There are a lot of assumptions in education. And many unwritten expectations. If we want to protect our children in their process of expansion into their world, we must learn to ask why. Why should we do this? Why must we do that?

Many years ago now, I heard an anecdotal story about a woman who, whenever she cooked a roast, would cut the ends off each side of the meat before putting it in the roasting pan. One day her daughter asked: "Why do we cut the ends off the roast before we put it in the pan to cook?" The woman replied that this was the way she had always done it, but then realised that she didn't really know why she did it, just that this was the correct way. So the next time she saw her mother, she asked her: "Why do we cut the ends off the roast before we put it in the pan to cook?" Her mother replied that this was how she had been taught to do it by her mother, but that she didn't really know why. Puzzled now, mother and daughter contacted the grandmother to ask her: "Why do we cut the ends off the roast before we put it in the pan to cook?" The answer was amusing: "Well, my roasting pan wasn't very big, and I couldn't make the roast fit in it any other way". So all this time, three generations had blindly done what they had been taught to do, but they hadn't had the same problem or the same need.

True or not, the story serves to illustrate some thought-provoking points about education:
- What may have been needful and wise in one generation is not necessarily so for the next,
- Just because something has 'always' been done in a certain way does not mean there is not a better way now,
- It is important to know the reasons why something matters.

Ultimately, what we do is nowhere near as important as why we do it. When we dare to ask questions, we find that our thinking about education in general, and about our children’s education in particular, will be stimulated,  because it is in thinking about the why of what we are doing that we avoid stagnating and becoming bored and complacent about the way we live.

Paradigm shifts may be abrupt and disruptive, but they are not necessarily so. Looking back on our two and a half decades of home education, I see that our home education philosophy evolved bit by bit, and our methodology changed accordingly from year to year, and as the children developed. Most of the time there weren't drastic changes; rather, it was a little by little adjustment here and there; an ‘adding to’ and ‘building upon’ kind of process. Where we ended up was vastly different to where we stood when we started out. Paradigm shifts definitely took place, because I did have the freedom to ask why. I read and pondered and studied. Asked questions. Thought and talked, especially with my husband, but then also with other home educators, teachers and friends. Experimented, and observed results. Tried out things that didn’t work for us, discarded then, and substituted them with things that did. This process, of course, continues, even now. It is one of the reasons why I found home education so stimulating and so personally enriching. It was as much about my own leanring and growth as it was about my children's.