TJEd – The Logan Way

Thomas Jefferson Education – The Logan Way

Rachel DeMille sent an email to me that struck me harder than expected. She declared, “Even if you don’t claim TJEd, it claims you.”

It has quite literally taken me years to admit to myself, let alone anyone else, that my family home schooled the TJEd way. We don’t. Not really. We do, of course. How can we live in the same town as the DeMilles, be close friends with them and see them several times each week, talk and counsel with the same people who associate with them without all that TJEd home schooling philosophy rubbing off, just a little.

Well, to be fair, we have been home schooling longer than the DeMilles have been adults. I started when my oldest was twelve months old in 1981. That is when the personal revelation hit that this was the path our family would go. And it has been perfect for us. We didn’t meet the DeMille family until 1992. So, I guess that gives us an eleven year head start leap that finally landed us in the TJEd camp. But, only if all will admit that we do it - The Logan Way.

In fact, I’d be so bold to say that if any of you do not do TJEd in YOUR way, you are missing something huge. Like - the key philosophy in a super compacted nutshell.

The Logan Way. First, it is that Mom has to last to the end. That means, quite simply, that you structure your home school around the needs, interests, and personality of the mother. Not the child. Protect the mom. If she burns out, school is done. Period. Mom is in charge. It is her job to get revelation as to what and how to create the educational environment, requirements and blessings of her home. Spiritually speaking, her job is to teach. Teach truth, teach love, teach what needs learning – and it isn’t always fun, appreciated, or easy. But, no matter how much you hate to wash dishes, if you didn’t . . . well, you can picture the result.

Giving a note here to the father, when I say that Mom is in charge of the schooling - she is. Really. Her divinely appointed role is to nurture and teach. She is the one at home with the children. (Of course, if this isn’t the case, then yes, the school should be geared to DAD.) You support her by teaching some things, but the reality in most home schooled families is that Mom is the one with her finger on the educational pulse. I believe that the biggest home schooling job the father has is to protect the mother. While she spends tremendous energy on being spiritually in tune, in charge, and giving of herself in unrelenting day-in and day-out ways, she needs somebody to watch out for her. And there is nobody better than the father at doing exactly that. Women who home school without the father have a far harder job. It can be done, but they must take extra care to put themselves first by strengthening themselves so they have everything they need to give to their children. It’s hard. It’s not impossible.

I have a large family. My oldest daughter turned 17 the year my youngest was born. I truly did start researching home schooling just before Chani’s first birthday. By the time Chrystal is an adult, I would have been home schooling for a full 35 years! I’m serious about building the home school around the mother! Then allow her to get the inspiration how to fully bless her children in what she teaches, in who she finds to mentor her children, in what she requires, in how things work.

Love of Learning. For us, that means, Let Them Play. I believe that play is the Grand Work of Childhood. We want to rush everything, hurry our children to academics in a big way. It proves to the world that this odd path we’ve chosen was right for us. Recognize this yearning, and then ignore it. Let them play. Read to them. Cuddle with them. Give them chores. Teach them basics such as reading and addition. But above all, let them play.

Eventually, Love of Learning means Let Them Read. Let Them Play the Piano. Let them . . . But remember your own ground rules. After chores - After math –In the family room instead of isolated in the bedroom- Whatever. Get those things out of the way early in the day that the child finds the least enjoyable. If your child is behind in something and you feel inspired that he needs it even if he’s not loving it (yes, I do believe in requirements) then be sure your balance is on target – meaning, we tend to want lots of time spent in weak areas to make them strong. I believe that is totally backwards. A child – anyone – should spend most of the time in their strengths and a much smaller portion of time in their weaknesses. This builds confidence in themselves, in their world, and with their God, and that is what will truly help them overcome their weaknesses! If they are weak in math but strong in music – instead of forcing an hour of math for the reward of a few minutes of music, spend 5-10 minutes in math and allow all the music they want. Remember, you don’t have to teach everything today. You are not a teacher who has the student for only one semester, or one year. You have his entire childhood and youth. Eventually, they will reach the point where the weakness isn’t so weak after all, and at the same time, their strength, their joy, is what has filled most of their childhood.

Pre-Scholar. One of the problems I see as I talk to people who are fascinated by and beginning to use the TJEd approach is that they think of the stages as stairs to success. You start on the level ground of Core, and then you put your food on the step of Love of Learning and hoist yourselfand your child upwards. You pause for a while, soaking in the delight of this step. Then, it is time for your child to move up to the Pre-Scholar step. But, don’t stay there too long! It is just a preparatory stair-step, after all. The really important one is the Scholar step. So, okay, we’ve paused on this after-childhood but before real-study long enough so PUSH – GRUNT – YEAH, we’ve finally got both feet firmly planted on the step of Scholar, now how quickly can you jump to Depth?

If I may be so blunt – WRONG! TJEd is not The Stairway to Success! The intent was never to suggest that we rush one step at a time by always leaving the previous step behind! Somewhere, the wrong idea has swept through the air and it is causing serious stress for moms, and weirdness among our youth.

Instead of acting like TJEd was a staircase, picture it as a dance floor. One of those beautiful, polished wooden dance floors. The kind with lots of room to do the romantic waltz, the exciting tango, the exhilarating swing, the group interactive country and line dances, the physically challenging moves demanded by fast-paced rock music. The floor is everything. Can you imagine doing those moves on gravel? On grass? On a carpet? Sure, it can be done, but on a real dance floor – there is simply no comparison!

TJEd as a dance floor means that you have the smooth corner pieces and fine outer edges of Core to strengthen the entire floor and then sections of Love of Learning, areas of Pre-Scholar, spotlights of Scholar, lines of Depth running through them all, with the final glorious center stage of Mission. And you dance, you move around the room touching each spot, spinning for several moments here, dipping a second there, gliding and soaring in another area. You dance through life, always having each style of TJEd firmly beneath you. Never really leaving one out, not really noticing the transition from one section of floor to the next. All you care about is the dance that life is playing for you and you improve your movements until they become delightfully natural to you and breathtakingly beautiful to those around you.

For me, that is the true beauty of TJEd. I teach my children a dance of life. Some difficult moves, some scary ones, most are just fun, some are showman quality. Don’t rush the Pre-Scholar phase to get to the Scholar phase so you can have a 16-year-old ready for the Depth phase. Remember that there is so much more to your youth’s life than Scholar and Depth. The dance and all the colors of the music require variety such as talent development, social development, spiritual development, free and fun time, service in family and then beyond family, work skills, time for what they love, time for what they need, and on and on. Do not focus on just one part of the dance floor. If you do, you and your child will never love the dance the way you could have.

Scholar, Depth, Mission. The Logan Way is to forget labeling these for our children. Instead, as our children move through those sections of the dance floor, our job is to keep a careful eye on them, to make sure they keep moving so that the Core, the Love of Learning, and the Pre-Scholar sections don’t get ignored. The problem with Scholar, Depth, and Mission is that it is too easy to get lost, to alter perception and forget that Life is for Living, that there is so much more in the incredible world the Lord has blessed us with than the small universe of pure focused learning. As parents, I believe our job is to help our youth keep perspective, to keep balance, to reach outward for life and upward to heaven at least as much as they reach inward in study.

There you have it. It isn’t that we are not a TJEd family. It is that we are The Logan Family and TJEd is used to help magnify that divinely blessed reality.

Heroes We Know Nothing About

In the Fall 2007 semester, Jalyn and I taught a class about the Civil War to some local youth. In the process, we watched Gettysburg and I was hit with an enormous case of hero worship for Lieutenant (eventually General) Joshua Chamberlain.

I'm 51 years old and had never heard of him. Or, if in my long past years of high school history he was mentioned, somehow I missed it. Being stricken with a character in a movie, a man supposedly real, awakened my unquenchable need for research. Being a genealogist, the first thing I did was go to the census records of the 1800s. Of course, it would have been easier to simply go to the Internet, but at the time, I really didn't think this man who impressed me was really all that famous. So, I went to what I do best, census records.

I found Joshua Chamberlain first living with his childhood family. Then I missed him. Then I found him in other census records as a professor at a college shortly before the war, as president of the college, as governor of Maine, and as a surveyor. Cool. An interesting life.

Then I started looking online. Oh my! What a wealth of information. Apparently, I'm not the only one taken with this Maine man. He was expert in several languages, which got him the professorship at the college in Literature and languages. Then he went to war. This man who specialized in things like poetry and words, suddenly at war.

The movie, Gettysburg, had a few important things wrong. One of those was that not only was Joshua there and in charge of his men, but one of those men was his younger brother. Yes, the film got that part right, but what it didn't get right, was during the battle, his OTHER brother, who was a medic, had also arrived on the battlefield and the three Chamberlain boys were all together. At one point, an explosion nearly took all three out, and one of the sons mentioned that it would have been a sad day for their mother.

Chamberlain wrote some excellent books on his life in the Civil War, on the battles, on the incredible Men from Maine. He was responsible for some very important things that allowed the South to surrender with dignity, one being that he required that absolutely no negative things be said or done while the Rebel army marched to surrender. And then he required that they be honored.

Joshua Chamberlain was the only man given a field promotion to the rank of General by U. S. Grant. After the war, Chamberlain went on to be president of the college, governor of Maine, a representative of the US overseas, and a surveyor.

I was so excited about this incredible man, that when my granddaughter, Faith Harsh, was blessed, and we were gathered in one of the Harsh's homes I mentioned him, saying that I had just learned of him, had bought all his books and some written about him. And the entire Harsh family started talking about what a hero he was to their family. I sat there thinking - "Everybody knows about this man but me - where have I been?"

Then the next semester we taught WWII. I do much better here. I know and have several heroes from WWII. I talked to the youth about the Kindertransport, about Denmark, about Sugihara, about Jalyn's Great Uncle who survived and wrote about the Bataan Death March, Chabannes, and so many others.

Then, this week, my daughter, Cheyanne, sat and talked with me one afternoon. Somehow we ended up talking about Vietnam, the boat people, the fall of Saigon, the ending of the draft and other things I had actually lived through as a teen and adult. Cheyanne listened to me talk about that sad time, and before I knew it, she had tears filling her eyes and spilling over onto her cheeks.

Then last night, Neil and I watched a 2006 movie called, Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale. In this incredible film (a very small amount of language, no nudity or sexual content, but obviously violence, still, the worst was changed for the viewer's sake), anyway, this incredible film was about a small part of the life of Dieter Dengler. A man, like Chamberlain, that I had no idea existed.

I couldn't let what I saw in the movie rest. I woke early and started researching on the Internet. I wanted to know what was true, and what was Hollywood about the film. I as stunned by the life of Dieter. A life of heroism and survival that began with his grandfather. Dieter was a German who immigrated to America so he could fly planes. His grandfather, was labeled an enemy of the Nazis because he was the only person in his village who refused to vote for Hitler. And no matter how life-threatening the attacks against him, he held his ground and refused. This had a tremendous influence on Dieter, who later refused to sign a paper presented to him by the North Vietnamese denouncing America.

Dieter survived five months in a Laos torture camp, orchestrating an escape of all prisoners, surviving in the jungle, and on the 22nd day following his escape he was finally rescued. Later, as a civilian test pilot, he survived four more airplane crashes, and near-drowning when his boat cabin filled with water. "Before being captured in Laos, he had attended the Navy survival school where he escaped from the mock-POW camp run by Marine guards three times. He had also set a record as the only student to actually gain weight during the course - from feasting on garbage!" Wikipedia

The movie was accurate in many ways. But the ending was a typical Hollywood ending. I think of it as meaning to show the hero's spirit rather than his actual physical condition. You can read more about him at the Wikipedia site, and at the Arlington Cemetery site.

Dieter wrote a book about his POW experience titled, "Escape from Laos." "People say it was a miracle," he said in a 1979 interview, "I came out because I was meant to come out. I cannot say it was my doing. It's beyond strength to do something like that. Something, someone has to help you." Quote found on the Arlington Cemetery site.

It makes me ponder the question, how many more Heroes are there, really, people I have no idea even existed. I know about my personal heroes, people, normal people, who have impacted my life. But there are innumerable others, who impact not only individual lives, but whose courage and faith have a power to reach beyond their earthly life and touch others throughout the ages. Who are they? And if I don't know about them, who will teach my children about them?

More importantly to my family is this thought. If I do not write about my life, how will they ever find the bits and pieces that will make me a hero to one of my descendants, giving them that little something they need in their daily life to continue the faith and win the race?