Americans, Learn!
When Dr. Ben Carson spoke to homeschooling families last Saturday night in Cincinnati, he encouraged each member of the audience to raise the level of education in America. I thought his method was brilliant and very much like the one his mother began using with him and his brother about 1962–when First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy wore pillbox hats, John Glenn orbited the earth, and the Beatles recorded their first hit.
Dr. Carson encouraged each person in the audience to spend thirty minutes each day learning something new. He suggested that we open up an Algebra book or a book about chemistry and start learning it. He told us that it wouldn’t take long before our acquaintances would notice.
Several times during the evening, Dr. Carson told us stories from America’s past. Another of his ideas for our thirty minutes a day was to study American history. I know one mother took this idea to heart, because she hurried to find us in the vendor hall after the speech.
Our usual practice when a vendor hall closes at the end of a convention is to start taking the booth down immediately. The organizers in Cincinnati gave us until midnight last Saturday night, so instead of hurrying, we joined the long, long line of conference attendees heading to hear Dr. Carson.
When his speech was finished, we went back into the vendor hall to pack up. We are never the first vendor out the door by a long shot, but even we were amazed when we got back and saw row after row of empty booths with only a few of the 300 or so vendors still packing up. There was our lone booth still set up.
As we began pulling out boxes and filling them with what needed to be packed, the mother hurried in from the hallway and came to our checkout table wanting to buy an American history curriculum. Evidently she had visited our booth during the conference. She said that she had planned to wait two years to teach American history, but after Dr. Carson’s talk she didn’t want to wait!
I like the idea of raising the education level of America, one citizen at a time. That’s what you homeschooling mothers do every day–raise the education level of America, one child at a time.
A wise man will hear and increase in learning,
And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
To understand a proverb and a figure,
The words of the wise and their riddles.
Proverbs 1:5-6
Being European (Belgium) I do like this one. I have changed the title ‘Americans, learn’ into ‘Our family name, learn!!’ and written it down in my personal agenda. Very encouraging and this is so needed, since there are not many homeschooling families over here. A homeschooling convention only exists in our dreams …