We have been busily preparing our year end goals and accomplishments for a celebration party the last day of the year.  In preparation, the children (and adults) have been filling in our reading lists for the year as a guideline to keep us on track.   In some of my reading in my preparation for guiding the children in their education, I’ve been enjoying some letters from John and Abigail Adams and their son, John Quincy Adams in which are inspiring bits of history which have reminded me of the great importance of home education. 

High on our list is rediscovering the lost art of journaling and requiring our children to learn the lost discipline.   We have much to learn in the area of self-discipline ourselves and have much to teach our children.  These letters from Mr. and Mrs. Adams and John Quincy Adams were a strong reminder of how soft and weak modern education is and why we must steer clear of pre-packaged, fast-food “schooling”!

Consider this sampling….a letter from young John Quincy Adams who, at the age of 10 years old, began the habit of writing to his father to review his character development and education and to ask for parental instruction:

Braintree, June 2, 1777

Dear Sir,

I love to receive letters very well, much better than I love to write them. I make but a poor figure at composition; my head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after birds’ eggs, play, and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. I have but just entered the third volume of Smollett, though I had designed to have got half through it by this time. I have determined this week to be more diligent, as Mr. Thaxter will be absent at court and I cannot pursue my other studies. I have set myself a stint, and determine to read the third volume half out. If I can but keep my resolution I will write again at the end of the week, and give a better account of myself. I wish, sir, you would give me some instructions with regard to my time, and advise me how to proportion my studies and my play, in writing, and I will keep them by me and endeavor to follow them. I am, dear sir, with a present determination of growing better,

Yours,

John Quincy Adams

P.S. Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me with a blank book, I will transcribe the most remarkable occurrences I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them upon my mind.

The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution. . . . I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. – Thomas Jefferson

Our small rural town paper published some funny advice from the local public school Kindergarteners about how to prepare your Thanksgiving turkey.  Not only did we enjoy a good laugh, but reading through the responses, we discovered something very interesting and telling.  See if you can guess…

The majority of the statements were like this…

Go to Walmart and get it. Put it in the oven on 2 for 2 minutes.  Get it out.  Eat it. 

Buy it at Walmart.  Put flour and flavor on it.  Cook it in the oven on 4 for 4 minutes.  Eat it. 

Get a turkey at the Dollar Store.  Color it red and black.  Wash it.  Put it in the oven for 2 minutes.  Take it out and eat it. 

Go to Walmart and get a turkey.  Cook it on the stove on low for four seconds.  Bring it to mom and put it in the freezer and save it for another day. 

Get a turkey at K-mart.  Cook it in the microwave on high for 6 minutes.  Eat it. 

Get a turkey at Walmart.  Kill it.  Cook it in the oven on 1 for 21 minutes.  Eat it. 

Go to Walmart and get a turkey.  Take it home.  Cook it in the microwave on high for 2 minutes.  Eat it. 

Get the turkey at Kroger’s.  Put him in a pot.  Cook him in the microwave on low for 2 minutes.  Eat him. 

Go to Walmart and buy it.  Bring it to school.  I’m gonna bake it in the cafeteria.  Put it in the microwave on medium for 8 hours.  Put some chicken on it.  Eat it. 

Then there were just few of these types of comments about Thanksgiving turkey …

Get it in the woods.  Hunt it down.  Put it in the oven on 10 for 2 minutes. 

Go to a farm and catch a turkey.  Pick off all the feathers.  Put him in the the middle of the oven and cook him on 60 for 40 minutes.  Eat him. 

Go to a farm.  Catch a turkey.  Bring him home.  Let him go in the grass.  Eat chicken. 

Go in the woods.  Shoot him with a gun.  Skin him.  Bring him home.  Put him in a pot.  Bake him on 12 for 13 minutes.  Eat him. 

Try asking your children about Thanksgiving turkey and see what they say….

That popular suffrage does not now really govern this country, that it is notoriously a marketable commodity, that the United States have really ceased already to be what they pretend, a federation of republican States, no clear sighted man doubts.  Under a thin veil of radical democracy, the government has already become an oligarchy.  Are not State conventions traded off by the magnets as openly as blocks of railroad bonds?  Are not legislatures bought as really and almost as openly as cargoes of corn?  Are not “corners” made in politics by which the weaker capitalists are sold out, as really as in the pork market?  It is Washington or Wall Street which really dictates what platforms shall be set forth, and what candidates elected and what appointments made, not the people of the States.

Obviously the government now ascendant in the country while “Republican” in name and ultra-democratic in theory, is an oligarchy in fact….

…But we do not forget that other people have had other forms of government, aristocratic or regal, and under them have had their share of domestic virtues, of patriotism, of civilization, of Christianity.  (But under the illicit and dirty oligarchy of which our present regime is a virtual specimen, no people has ever had or can have anything but corruption, ignominy, and vice)

Our best prayer for you is, that out of the present foul transition, a good providence may cause some new order to arise tolerable for honest men.

Dabney’s Discussions Volumn IV, The New South 1897 pages 13,14, & 16

I wish I could remember where I read this quote in regards to the upcoming election…. 

“Pray hard and plant a bigger garden….”

(this would not be a picture of our garden)

To serve …beside such a man would be the privilege of a lifetime. And it’s fitting that this trust has been given to me 88 years almost to the day after the women of America first gained the right to vote…. It was rightly noted in Denver this week that (there are) 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.

…no woman should have to choose between her career, education and her child.  I believe in the strength and the power of women…

So can you name the feminist who made these statements?  Was it the pictured Hillary?  Perhaps, it was Condoleezza Rice?  Or the beloved Margret Sanger?

If you said any of the feminist above, you’d be wrong.  The feminist that made these statements was in fact Governor Palin.  In fact, Governor Palin was speaking of exceeding Hillary Clinton in the speech where she mentioned the glass ceiling.  Since when should a Christian woman be seeking to follow after or over take the path taken by an anti-Christ Marxist?  I am amazed that so many of the normally sound conservative Christians are so quickly willing to give Ms. Palin a pass on how she has embraced the feminist agenda that conflicts so clearly with the teaching of the Bible she claims to follow. 

The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.  (Tit 2:3-5)

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.  (1Ti 2:12-15)

BTW – Scott Brown has noted here that when a glass ceiling is shattered there is going to be and indeed already has been a lot of bloodshed due to feminism.

The competitions of the State and the Church for the educating power have been so engrossing that we have almost forgotten the parent, as the third and the rightful competitor.  And now many look at his claim almost contemptuously.  Because the civic and the ecclesiastical spheres are so much wider and more populous than his, they are prone to regard it as every way inferior.  Have we not seen that the smaller circle is, in fact, the most original and best authorized of the three? …

…It is a maxim in political philosophy, as in mechanics, that when an organism is applied to a function for which it was not designed, it is injured and the function is ill done.  Here is a farmer who has a mill designed and well fitted to grind his meal.  He resolves that it shall also thresh his sheaves.  The consequence is that he has wretched threshing and a crippled mill.  I repeat, God designed the State to be the organ for securing secular justice.  When it turns to teaching or preaching it repeats the farmers’ experience.   The Chinese Government and people are an example in point.  The Government has been for a thousand years educating the people for it’s own ends.  The result is what we see.

Government powerfully affects national character by the mode in which it performs its proper functions, and if the administration is equitable, pure and free, it exalts the people.  But it is by the indirect influence.  This is all it can do well.  As for the other part of the national elevation (an object which every good man must desire), it must come from other agencies; from the dispensation of Almighty Providence; from fruitful ideas and heroic acts with which he inspires the great men whom he sovereignly gives to the nations he designs to bless; chiefly from the energy of divine Truth and the Christian virtues, first in individuals, next in families, and last in visible churches.

Let us suppose, then, that both State and Church recognize the parent as the educating power; that they assume towards him an ancillary instead of a dominating attitude; that the State shall encourage individual and voluntary efforts by holding the impartial shield of legal protection over all property which may be devoted to education; that it shall encourage all private efforts; and that in its eleemosynary [almsgiving] character it shall aid those whose poverty and misfortunes disable them from properly rearing their own children.  Thus the insoluble problems touching religion in State schools would be solved, because the State was not the responsible creator of the schools, but the parents.  Our educational system might present less mechanical symmetry, but it would be more flexible, more practical, and more useful.

Secularized Education, by Robert Lewis Dabney found in Discussions Volume IV

“Every experienced teacher knows that pupils educate each other more than he educates them.  The thousand nameless influences — literary, social, moral, — not only on the play ground but of the school room, the whispered conversation, the clandestine note, the sly grimace, the sly pinch, the good or bad recitation, mould the plastic character of children far more than the most faithful teacher’s hand. “  Dabney on The State Free School System” (Volume 111 of Discussions with Robert Lewis Dabney, 1892)

It is a strange notion in our world today to consider the majority of the homes across our land and in our great state of Tennessee starting each day with family prayer time or family devotions. Indeed growing up in a small town church in central Arkansas no one ever mentioned the notion at all. I never read one article on it, never heard one sermon on the topic, and certainly never saw it in practice.

In recent years, as we have begun to implement family devotion time in our house, we have discovered it was not as foreign to previous generations as it has been to this one. As I completed “Carry a Big Stick” earlier in the week, I came across a quote by President Roosevelt that is out of place today in our modern world. Yet at the same time, it served as a source of great encouragement to a father who is trying to train up his children.

Morning prayers were with my father. We use to stand at the bottom of the stairs, and when father came down we called out, “I speak for you and the cubby-hole too!” There were three of us young children, and we use to sit with father on the sofa while he conducted morning prayers. The place between father and the arm of the sofa we called the “cubby-hole”. The child who got that place we regarded as specially favored both in comfort and somehow in rank and title” pg 170

(more…)

“When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes; Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws.”

May those who name the name of Christ remember this in our public duty of electing our leaders.

“There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

–Autobiography page 349

In my post Theodore Roosevelt – Larger Than Life I completely underestimated the complexity of one of the greatest occupants of the American white house. Truly, I don’t think there could be a more complex person to write about. The oddest part of it all is that Teddy Roosevelt did not consider himself anything beyond average. In an assessment of his own ability he wrote:

In most things, I am just average; in some of them a little under, rather than over. I am only an ordinary walker. I can’t run. I am not a good swimmer, although I am a strong one. I probably ride better than anything else I do, but I’m certainly not a remarkably good rider. I am not a good shot. I never could be a good boxer, although I do keep at it, whenever I can. My eyesight prevents me from ever being a good tennis player, even if otherwise I could qualify. I am not a brilliant writer. I have written a great deal, but I always have to work and slave over everything I write. The things I have done are all, with the possible exception of the Panama Canal, just such things as any ordinary man could have done. There is nothing brilliant or outstanding in my record at all. page 125

Here is an average man with his average Rough Riders!

Not only was President Roosevelt an incredible leader as a statesman, he also excelled in many many other subjects. His son Archie said, “In one afternoon I have heard him speak to the foremost Bible student of the world, a prominent ornithologist, an Asian diplomat, and a French general, all of whom agreed that Father knew more about the subjects in which they had specialized than they did.” He was a ferocious reader, who on an average week, would read six volumes. On a better than average week he would read more. Lord Charnwood said of him, “No statesman for centuries has had his width of intellectual range”.

While finding time to read this wide range of subjects he also found time to write and share his knowledge with the rest of the world. He wrote 43 books in his lifetime ranging from his classic work “The Naval War of 1812″, to wild west adventure stories, to insightful biographies on such men as Gouverneur Morris, Oliver Cromwell, and of course his auto-biography. His volume on the Naval War of 1812 is still studied at the Naval Academy today and was published when he was 24 years old.

There are many other interesting facts and intricacies about the man who was Theodore Roosevelt, but my favorite aspect of his life is that of his family. While not a perfect father he was an active father and a very involved father. Dr. Grant tells of a visit to the white house by the Japanese Ambassador who was surprised to find the leader of the free world on his hands and knees chasing a “gaggle of children” down the hall outside the oval office! It was his home, that is his family household that was his source of strength. His family was not another item on his to-do list in another long day of details, but it was the very foundation that made him who he was. He said:

There is need to develop all the virtues that have the state for their sphere of action; but these virtues are as dust in a windy street unless back of them lie the strong and tender virtues of a family life based upon the love of the one man for the one woman and on their joyous and fearless acceptance of their common obligation to the children that are theirs.

If your looking for a good biography, I could not recommend one stronger than, Carry a Big Stick, The Uncommon Heroism of Theodore Roosevelt, by George Grant.