Today is the Sunday when a great many people identified Messiah correctly and it did them no good. Nobody knows if the same people that were lined up to greet Jesus Christ today and hail him as their king were the same people that cried “crucify him.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
But this we do know, their shouts of “Hosanna!” didn’t amount to much. Perhaps it kept the rocks from crying out and scaring the donkeys, but when the time came to save Jesus the crowd let the Romans crucify Him. They were good at shouting, but not so good at acting bravely.
Which brings me to a frequent and very odd question I am often asked, “How do we socialize our child while home schooling them?”
This strikes me as odd since most children have not gone to school for most of human history. It is even odder when we realize that the huge schools (thousands of students) where many Southern California students attend are even a greater innovation.
Perhaps, I am being asked how we “peer socialize” our children.
Now asking how we “peer socialize” our children is like asking how we teach them original sin. Unless you are foolish enough to keep your children from all peers (and I know nobody this wicked!), kids will want other kids to like them. Having been taught to be polite, listen to others, share, and other basic civil virtues inside the family, they will soon have the rough edges knocked off them by peers. The key will be not having all the interesting bits knocked off as well.
Peer socialization, like all mobs, doesn’t like anything outside the “norm.”
Now of course some of my children are shy by nature and others are not. When the shy children are feeling very shy and meet folk who do not home school one can almost hear them (their thoughts are so loud), “Shy. Around people. Home schooled. Makes sense.” When our boisterous children meet similar folk and are too “themselves” that day, the stares hide thoughts such as, “Can’t be still. Want all the attention. Makes sense. Home schooled.”
The point being that a home schooled child will have good and bad days as well as personality tendencies. Shy kids are quiet (and thank Heaven for them) and louder kids are louder (and college professors are glad for them as well).
Weird kids (and some people are nicely eccentric) will be weird in government schools or home schools, they will just get teased less in home school. Their parents, however, will have to take the blame for their child’s eccentricity . . . but can also go help collect the prize when their “weird kid” invents anti-gravity or something else the “normal kids” were too busy text-messaging other cool kids to invent.
It seems to me that interest in socialization came just about the same time as interest in socialism . . . and I don’t think it is just an accident of similar words. In a free market society where liberty is the key, difference is good and cultivated. What are needed are manners and virtue . . . with those a child will grow up to be neither a boor or a cad. Plenty of social folks end up being both . . . so socialization, which seems mostly the ability to go along with the crowd, doesn’t protect from the real problems.
The problem with free thinkers like G.K. Chesterton is that they refuse to worry about their girth and instead keep attacking the assumptions of the age. If only Chesterton had been socialized better, he could have been buff . . . and so much less interesting!
If the government is paying for everything, then we will need a very deep social consensus. We cannot have too many eccentrics (however polite and good) challenging the status quo. If our money is to be taken to do “good,” then we all must (must, must, must!) agree on the nature of that good.
We need cheerful workers who will fit in and do good by earning money that others will spend for their good . . .
Do I want to raise compliant workers for the state? I think not. Do I want people who will fit-in with the crowd?
They used to call socialization (in good Queen Victoria’s times) being part of the common herd or the mob.
No thank you. I want to raise a Daniel a person who can stand alone, but make friends in high places while doing so!
I want a Daniel . . . even if he goes to the government school and is not like all the other Jewish kids who were either afraid to go to the king’s school (astrology in the curriculum!), because they wouldn’t fit in with the other kids getting Hebrew education or went and ate the king’s food, because “when in Babylon you should just do whatever the Babylonians do.” The first group was irrelevant and the second became Babylonians.
Palm Sunday (you just knew we would get back to that!) is a good reason for doubting the goodness of socialization.
Along comes a home schooled child (and what a blessed set of teachers!), riding a donkey. He is very good and very kind. On other hand, (and you can hear the sniffing from the leaders) He is a bit too good and too kind. He has not learned to go ahead and stone women . . . and to suck up to the Romans just a bit for the good of everybody. He has not learned to fit in with his other rabbi peers and though he keeps getting asked to parties due to His (you can only call them) miraculous abilities . . . he refuses to loosen up at them and be a bit “naughty.”
Really this Jesus Christ was just insufferable.
But today, Palm Sunday, He has managed to be “cool.” Raising that friend of His from the dead caused a stir and made him the flavor of the week. . . and all the nicely socialized people (because even home schooled kids can become part of the mob) are cheering. If he lived today, he would have been a my-space AND a Parade magazine topic for discussion.
Of course, He refused to be anything less than the God-Man and that wore thin. He just went on being Good, True, and Beautiful and that can be annoying to the state, to the religious rulers, and to the crowd socialized to follow.
So in the end, all of us socialized folk killed him. Only a few women, especially his Mother, and his best friend had the courage to follow Him all the way to the cross. Somebody should have worked on Mary’s social skills . . . she took the whole Mother of God thing too far. . . and John was just a bit too passionate don’t you think? Now Peter, Peter was socialized well that day, he behaved just like everyone else.
May I never be socialized, and may I never socialize my kids, but may I be kind, polite, but fiercely good. God forgive me for my rudeness and my wickedness . . . and may I teach my children to follow Jesus to the cross. May my daughters be like Mary and my sons like John . . . and learn to love the God-Man more than the crowd.
