When is the “Wrong” Answer the “Right” Answer?

When I was homeschooling my children, I always listened carefully to their answers, and no matter how outrageous they might seem on the surface, if the child could give me a good reason for coming to a particular conclusion, I would agree with him that the answer had merit and might even be the more correct answer, but I then explained why the textbook answer was the one the school wanted.

The following are some examples of situations from my homeschool that really made me think:

Example 1: When Christopher was six years old and in the third grade, the Calvert course introduced science. One of the first lessons showed pictures of a tiger, a tree, and a rock. The student was asked to identify which was an animal, which was a plant, and which was a mineral.

Christopher did this part of the assignment without difficulty, but then the book asked the student to identify the group to which people belong. Christopher immediately responded that people do not belong to any of those groups. I was surprised that he could miss something so obvious so I tried to steer him down a path that would help him come to the right conclusion.

I asked him to look again at the three different groups. I commented that both people and animals eat, and sleep, and have babies while plants and minerals don’t do any of those things. When I was certain that I had helped him see that people are part of the animal group, I asked the question again.

Immediately, Christopher answered that people do not belong to any of those groups. This was followed by more explaining on my part and more trying to help him see the obvious. Finally, after numerous attempts by me to help him come to the “right” conclusion, I told him that the answer was “animals. People are part of the group of animals.”

Christopher remained unconvinced. “No, they’re not,” he replied. "People are not any of these things. They are something different. They are in a group all by themselves.”

The light came on in my head! I realized that he was right. I had always held a strict Biblical Creationist Worldview, yet, I had been so indoctrinated by my own public education that, without hesitation, I had agreed that people are animals.

I told him that he was absolutely right. We talked about how people are God’s special creation and that they are in a group all by themselves. I then told him that they really just wanted to know which of these things people are most like, and he answered, “animals.”

Example 2: When Stefan was seven or eight years old, he had this geography question, “If the world were made of glass, and you could look straight down and see through it, do you know what you would see?” The point of the question was to help the student understand that China is on the opposite side of the globe, and he would see China.

The question was hardly out of my mouth when Stefan replied, “Of course.” I was certain that he did not know that in this scenario he would see China; therefore, I told him that I wanted him to think about his answer for a minute. I then asked the question again, and he instantly replied, “Of course.”

I realized that I was going to get nowhere with this line of questioning so I said, “Okay. What would you see?”

“Hell,” came the immediate response. “Oh, yes, you would,” I responded. I then told him that the point of the geography lesson was for him to understand that China was on the other side of the world. I then told him to imagine that we could move Hell out of the way so that he could look straight through to the other side. Then he would see China.

I want to encourage all homeschooling parents to take the time to find out not only what your children are thinking but why they are thinking it. It is easy to become impatient and provide a “correct” answer that is obvious to you. However, if you take the time to find out why your little student is coming to a different conclusion from that of the textbook, you may be pleased to discover that his answer is the right one after all.

Excerpted from Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother by Joyce Swann.

                                            

Don’t Wish Yourself Away

Christmas weekend we took our grandchildren to see the new Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In this story Lucy is fixated on being as beautiful and popular as her older sister Susan, and in one scene stands in front of a full-length mirror comparing her appearance to Susan’s. As she stares at her image, she sees herself morph into Susan. She then steps into the mirror and finds herself at an outing where she is the center of attention. As she basks in her new-found popularity, however, she discovers that when she became Susan, Lucy had ceased to exist, either in the past or the present. As a result, all of Lucy’s contributions to the family had disappeared along with her, and Narnia had never been discovered. Lucy is then pulled back through the mirror and Aslan appears beside her. When she asks what happened, he replies, “You wished yourself away.”

I believe that this may be the most important lesson in this latest theatrical release in the Narnia series.  It is a lesson that is especially appropriate for this time of year when many of us are preparing our New Year’s resolutions—most of which will be some version of losing weight and/or going to the gym regularly. As a society we long to be someone “better” than who we are. We are constantly exposed to people who are better looking, smarter, better educated, and more successful than we. As a result, we try to remake ourselves into their images. We begin to believe that if we were better looking, smarter, better educated, or more successful that other people would value us and we would lead more fulfilling lives. We end up wanting to be almost anyone other than who we are.

It is, of course, important to always look for ways to improve ourselves, but it is equally important to recognize that we already have value. God loves diversity and he made each of us unique. While it is true that you cannot become someone else, it is equally true that someone else cannot become you.  You have special work to be done in a special way that is unique to you. If you were suddenly to morph into that person whom you admire so much, who would do those things God entrusted to you? The truth is that God’s world would have a little hole in it shaped just like you.

I hope that as you prepare your New Year’s resolutions you will give serious thought to the things that need work in your life and make a genuine effort to improve in those areas. I also hope that you will remember that you are God’s unique creation. He made you exactly the way He wanted you to be, and no one else can take your place. Whatever else you do in the New Year, don’t wish yourself away.