Where Should You Send Your Child To College?

I don't know, in 7 Takes

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BinghamtonUniversity_Campus19.JPG

Hello Friday my old Friend, let’s see about some Takes.

one

Apart from painting and stripping wall paper, this was kind of an exciting week because Matt got mentioned by Ally Beth Stuckey in her podcast on Baylor. The bit about Matt starts around the one hour mark. She thought his point about sending your kids to a secular university over a supposedly Christian one was profound and on point.

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I want to go on record, as a mother of six children, three of whom will be in college in the fall, one graduated, and two still in high school, one married, two dating—my life is too busy for me to be dishing out advice, is what I’m trying to say, but here it goes anyway…

I want to go on the record as not being ideologically bound to the choice between a secular academic institution over a Christian one. What happened to us was economics. We spend our little all—which isn’t much—to afford classes with Memoria Academy for the kids through high school such that when they go to college, we have nothing left. I do (did, I have no more young children) the best I can through the elementary years, in the spirit of not rendering unto Caesar that which belongs to God, and then when they go into middle school we gradually add online classes. Latin the first year, mostly so that the little prodigy (that’s just a little joke) can get used to the idea of being online and what that portends. Then, the second year, Latin and Classics. By the time they go into High School they take three or four classes with Memoria Academy and the rest by reading books and writing papers which I have to read. In this way, it turns out, they come to the question of college as thoughtful and reasoning lovers of beauty who possess some small measure of self-discipline.

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It would be really lovely, at this point, to send them to a nice Christian school where they could go deeper into all the subjects they love so much. But we don’t have any money left, and they aren’t so driven as people that they run around getting scholarships, and I’m not going to do it for them because I’ve just had to teach them to drive. In this way, when it is time for college I send them over to the local community college. And this is kind of a big shock to their systems, so far, because the lighting is really bad, and they have to take a class about how to study, which boils their onions. But apart from that, in that year they become independent adults who are able to navigate the town and the bank and life in general. After that first year, our first child was ready to stuff it and therefore transferred to Binghamton University to study Classics. BU is a highly rated SUNY and, though replete with ugly buildings, is full of excellent professors and other necessary elements one desires in higher education. Her younger brother is there now studying Political Science and Art. The younger boy is planning to go over there to do History after a second year in the Community option, or at least that’s what he says now. The fourth child, who is a girl, will likely rush to BU the minute she can, but what she will study we have no idea.

four

And here’s how our poverty has been to our benefit: the children of my heart, as if there is any other kind, are living at home when they encounter the World. They drive away to argue with professors, write papers, read books, go to weird, soul-crushing jobs, and in the evening, when they come home, we, their parents are there, stodgily by the fire, reading or scrolling around Twitter. They come in, incensed, shocked by the person who wanted them to declare their pronouns, irritated by a sub-par reading list, annoyed by having to choose their own grades. And in between they are brought along by some first rate professors who encourage them to write better, think deeper, and express themselves more clearly. On Sunday they go to church in the usual way with all the people who have known them since they were babies.

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And all the while, of course, my role is to be anxious and continually panic about how it will turn out. Because, how should I know what would be best? When I was young, fancy Christian Colleges sent recruiters all the way to my West African boarding school to try to get us to sign up. And I think many of my classmates went to fine Christian institutions. But I also know that many did not continue to believe in God when they repatriated. Some did, but not nearly as many as I would have expected. Indeed, some of the spiritual pillars of my high school experience, whom I looked up to, ended up wandering away from Jesus altogether.

As a young mother bringing forth a whole passel of Pastor’s Kids (PKs, if you’re not good at acronyms), I would lie awake at night, forgetting to pray, worrying that they would all decide not to be Christians. For that is the sword of Damocles that hangs over the head of all evangelicals. There is no guarantee. There’s no charm, no prayer, no amulet you can tie around your babe to make him into a Christian or prevent her from becoming an exvangelical. And then, the statistics show you that you will pour your heart and soul into them, teaching them to spell (cough), do math, think, write, and be decent people and then, as the crown of all your labors, you will send them to college where they will reject you and all you believe in.

Had I had the money, I would have sent them away to avoid such an outcome. And I have to believe that God, in his providence, would have cared for them had that been what happened. But I didn’t have the money. And there was this excellent state school seven minutes from my house. So we went with it.

And what we learned is that one of the worst things a young person can encounter is a professing Christian who lies about God. If a pagan says something untrue about God, no one is amazed. The Christian child blinks her eyes, solemnly fills out the student survey at the end of term, and moves on with her life. She goes to church and teaches Sunday school and makes the coffee for coffee hour and goes on believing in God. But if a Christian in authority lies about who God is, as happened to one of our children in an online class (not Memoria Academy), she is shaken to her core.

Which is to say, Christian institutions selling out to progressivism is a great and terrible evil to fall upon the heads of faithful Christians. And I hope that everyone at Baylor, Calvin College, and anywhere else that people claiming the name of Christ shill for the sexuality acronym have a voice and collect a pay check will lose their jobs and have to go try to fit in at a place like my local university. Because, guess what, they won’t succeed there. Their mediocre scholarship won’t cut it. They won’t be special. They won’t know how to be respectful to students “of faith” such as my children. My children are able to out themselves as conservative Christians in their classes and suffer no shame, because the professors—the majority of whom don’t believe in God—are decent people who aren’t trying to hide anything. But imagine having Kristin Kobes du Mez, or James KA Smith, or Beth Allison Barr as your history or theology teacher and trying to gin up the courage to say that two men having sex is a sin, or that a man can’t become a woman, or that the early church really didn’t consecrate a lot of women to be bishops. I mean, that kid would be amazing and should be elected the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. But my kids aren’t those kids. They are well read but meek. They are opinionated people pleasers. They loved Jesus. They are regular kids. They need a fight, but not a fight that destroys their souls. And weirdly enough, they have gotten that at the other BU which is not in Texas but is in Central New York.

six

And now for some links. Here is Matt having an interesting discussion with Jared Lovell about preaching. They basically agree, though not entirely, which makes it a nice listen. And here is a beautiful post that is well worth your while.

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And here’s your song for the week:

Read the Comments below the line. Have a lovely day!