Outside of formal laws of exclusion and segregation, however, whiteness has been advanced through other means, from private organizations and agreements, popular culture, school curricula, and economic behavior, to outright defiance by legal authorities against those of other jurisdictions. Gaining access to white goods in one particular sphere of law and custom—say, when Mexican or Chinese children were classified as white to gain access to white schools by a court ruling—has never been a guarantee of access to white goods in other legal jurisdictions, in daily practice, or in the face of white vigilantism. Footnote 39 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?

She also encourages reading great literature while discussing the plot, conflict as well as any emotions the characters faced. Other advice includes getting a newspaper subscription and have the kids read it. Teach the kids how to use the library and go on field trips. Let the kids use their imaginations and encourage them to build things, solve problems and learn life skills. Another ah ha for me with this book is that the author points out that our plan may be different from what God has planned for us and for our children. We need to listen to Him and trust in Him. 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. 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. Most of the time, children were taught from home by their parents. Most of the education was from the mother but the father too participated when he was at home. This is because parents are the people who are responsible for their children, and will be judged for what children are being taught. We do see instances in Bible times of children being sent to a school, as in Daniel. Daniel was in the king’s court. In Bible times it was only the nobility that received a special education, this would be equivalent to going off to college.Proverbs 1:7 “Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” The takeaway from these findings is not meant to encourage people to become more religious or to promote religion in schools. Rather, they point to a particular set of mindsets and habits that help abiders succeed – and qualities that schools reward in their students. Religious landscape 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.

Within a short time, God revealed a need for something different. And at the time, Christian unschooling was a “dirty” word. Yet, Julie felt like the Lord was leading their family toward a Christian unschooling approach, in a sense, it is child-directed learning. 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 Over the past 30 years, sociologists and economists have conducted several studies that consistently show a positive relationship between religiosity and academic success. These studies show that more religious students earn better grades and complete more schooling than less religious peers. But researchers debate what these findings really mean, and whether the seeming effect of religiosity on students’ performance is really about religion, or a result of other underlying factors. Sometimes we hear people in culture say that education is the key to just about any of the ills that plague society. However, the Bible tells us that knowledge without the love of God leads to pride (1 Corinthians 8:1). Paul is a good example. He received a top-notch education from some of the greatest Jewish teachers of his day (Acts 22:3), but before he met Jesus he used that knowledge to fight against what God wanted. Once he met Jesus, he then used his education to be able to tell people from many cultures about the gospel (Acts 17:22–34; Titus 1:12; 1 Corinthians 9:19-23).The book begins with the author explaining how the Lord directed her to unschooling, why she feels it is biblical in nature, and dispelling some stereotypes surrounding the unschooling approach. 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. Ecclesiastes 1:16 “I said in my heart, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had a great experience of wisdom and knowledge.”

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. 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 Corinthians 1:25 “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” Scholars talk about schooling and the public good in two ways. The first is to engage the idea of “ the public good.” It is a conversation as old as philosophy. The second is the idea of a public good, in an economic sense, and is of recent vintage. Both are problematic for describing the history of schooling in the United States.

Daniel 1:5 “The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king’s choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king’s personal service.” In my book, I examined whether intensely religious teens had different academic outcomes, focusing on three measures: secondary school GPA; likelihood of completing college; and college selectivity. 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. God Schooling is focused and informed by the child’s passions and their natural bents and interests 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.