The Boneman

Against idealism. A meditation on parenting.

I am a self-professed ideologue.  I like big ideas, theories, systems, and meta-narratives.  As it relates to parenting, I like the thought of my kids learning Latin and Greek in elementary school, focusing on the great texts of western civilization, and having a curriculum that tracks with the "classical" Trivium.  All good stuff.  I like it and we're pursuing it by putting our kids in a local Classical Christian school. 

Problem is, raising and educating good kids is not about third declensions and Homer - or even about learning a certain catechism.

In "The Tipping Point," Malcom Gladwell points out several studies on parenting that show "peer groups" turn out to be the most significant contributor to behavior and attitudes in our development - over and against "nature" or "nurture."  He doesn't discount the role of genetics or of family environment, but points to studies of twins and non-twins that demonstrate that our peers are the biggest influence on our trajectory into adulthood.  I was fascinated to learn that kids in bad / broken homes but good neighborhoods did well into adulthood, and vice versa.  If you grow up in a strong family, but you fall into the wrong crowd and are surrounded by bad examples the risk of peril is much higher.

I don't think this is quite as simple as the "socialization" argument that anti-homeschoolers make.  The socialization argument seems to be more about protecting kids from geekdom.  Gladwell's point is bigger than that.  The point is that we are communal beings and we will adopt the standards of the community we find ourselves in - or want to be a part of.

At one level, this is not a big surprise.  We all know that "bad company corrupts good character."  And yet... for so many ideologues like myself, we need to think very hard about what lengths we go to pursue certain educational goals while potentially isolating our kids from the community they NEED to have with their own peers.  This is not easy, as many readers will readily acknowledge.  We can't let our kids roam the neighborhood anymore.  Public schools are overrun with children raised by the State.  Little leagues are used as incubators for professional atheletes.  Finding peer groups for our children is not an easy task at all.

As my children grow older, I know that I need to focus more on this "tipping point" in the lives of my boys.  I may have to sacrifice some of my educational / catechetical ideals to pursue what they need in a peer group.  After all, our kids are not ideas.

The little things are the big things...

As you may have noticed, I've been reading a couple of books by Malcolm Gladwell, specifically, "The Tipping Point" and "Blink."  His working thesis in both books is that the major movers in behavior and thought are not grand / macro schemes and theories, but small catalysts and subconscious reactions.  Both are fascinating reads that I commend to you all.

I have to confess that I tend to agree with him - and yet I find his project unsettling.  I've always been a big-picture / from 50,000 feet kind of guy.  I've always leaned towards Gestalt, but Gladwell is shattering that lens.  Instead of trying to see the totality of something to assess it, I need to look for smaller clues at a much lower level.

The implications of this are huge in business / marketing, theology, raising my kids, and pretty much every other area I operate.  Making the switch from the macro-strategic to the micro-tactical is going to take awhile - and it scares me because I have always found comfort in meta-narratives and integrative frameworks. 

Next post will be on how this is impacting my view of parenting.  Stay tuned...

My Existensial Moment

A little background - I was raised in liberal Presbyterianism, was awakened through Evangelicalism / Fundamentalism, and then trained-up by Reformed theology...  The first phase of my Reformed training was a result of imbibing anything published by Banner of Truth, or written by John Gerstner, RC Sproul, Francis Schaeffer, Lorraine Boettner, AW Pink, etc...  And then -

In my mid-twenties I was happily existing in a quasi-sectarian Reformed groove when the men's group at my church decided to memorize the Nicene Creed.  I immediately fell in love with its simplicity, depth, and biblical cadences.  Some months later I was earnestly reading my latest issue of Tabletalk - which was doing an extended critique of Eastern Orthodoxy.  One of the articles simultaneously acknowledged that the dogmatic foundation of EO theology is the Nicene Creed, yet went on to viciously criticize EO as an idolatrous sect.

WHAM!  All of a sudden my tidy conceptual universe was shaken.  It was the closest thing to an out-of-body experience I had ever had.  How could we call people who whole-heartedly affirm the Trinitarian Gospel according to the Nicene Creed (which is a short-hand summary of the teachings of Scripture) heretics simply because they weren't iconoclastic Protestants?  Even if I disagreed with much of EO theology (which I do) surely we must be loathe to dismiss them as crass idolaters!  And if that is true for EO's, how much more true is that for Christians of all orthodox / catholic traditions!

Now of course, I realize that you can affirm something and de facto strangle it and trample it with stupid and stubborn errors.  I get that.  I am not naive.  However, how could such a crassly idolatrous sect produce such a profound Christian as Fyodor Dostoevsky - or even Alexander Schmemann?  Where is the Fyodor Dostoevsky of Reformedom?  Why haven't we produced him?  And we are we so sectarian if we are the true defenders of GRACE?  I don't get that.  I have Reformed convictions, but surely these do not mix well with a sect spirit.  (Do they?)