It’s Summer Time!

Of course, it’s not summer yet: not for another three weeks or so, but all around the nation schools are winding down and for almost everyone that means SUMMER. . .

. . .the time when the Bobbsey Twins, the Box Car Children, and countless other serial children were able to solve riveting mysteries unencumbered by school. . .when Jim and Scout and Dill tried to make Boo come out.  . .when rural families needed children in the race to adequately prepare to survive yet another winter. . .when city families escaped festering close quarters to bask in country estates and sea air. . .when potted learning is thrust from lecture hall and classroom greenhouse to thrive in outdoor reality.

From time to time conservative education has been called a children’s greenhouse: a nurturing environment in which seedlings are protected until vital enough to survive the harsh real life environment.  The reality is ALL academic education is a greenhouse experience, an experience that benefits the GROWERS, because it makes their task easier.

Make no mistake about it, however long the hours spent puttering in the greenhouse, however tedious the work of rigging the watering and ventilation systems, or opening and shutting vents at various times of the day, however time consuming shuttling plant racks in and out to the natural environment for prescribed hours—such work is both easier and more guaranteed of mass produced success for the GROWER than the alternative of working fields of seedlings bedded in a murky recipe of real soil, under an open sky that foists crisp sun, rain pellets, crushing cold, brisk winds and insect hoards down on defenseless plants at unprescribed, indeterminate and (always) inconvenient times and, for all of which, the grower can only compensate, not control.

Thus, the real world, for both plant growth and human education is not just more problematic for thriving plants and people, but far more challenging for both growers and educators to surmount all the variables. Less control, more challenges.

Nonetheless, those plants and children need hardened off, they need the rain and sun of reality. They need the work of growers and parent-teachers to improve their thriving rate. They need to look like they are growing on their own under a blue, cloudless sky, even when the rack can be pulled back inside within a moment’s notice. They need summer.

So on this cusp of summer, don’t keep those children in the greenhouse—and don’t just throw them outside—plan how to harden them to reality. What skills are they ready to master? Do they need more physical activity, or more reading comprehension? How automatic are their tidying habits? How ingrained are their spiritual habits? How often are they “bored?” How limited are their interests? How broad is their compassion? Their vision? Their world?

They can only be their most colorful and vital when we growers make the extra effort to put them in the real world, aware of what is likely to happened, wisely prepared to compensate for the unexpected, vigilant for genuine harm, and trusting God to preserve and flourish beyond all our efforts.

It’s summer time! Plan for reality-based learning together. Because, of course, we all need reality-based learning, don’t we? New horizons for myself. . .skills to perfect. . .habits to strengthen. . .or correct. . .new vistas to dabble with. . .it’s summer time!