The goal of Christian homeschooling is to equip kids with a holistic thinking toolbox.
This requires some form of structure and a ton of nurturing.
The best educational outcomes are achieved by utilising what is known as transdisciplinary learning.
This is, explained, Polytechnic, ‘the integration of knowledge into some meaningful whole.’
Home educators are not raising specialists in a given field (narrow disciplinary learning).
The same can be said about insulated or bubble learning (interdisciplinary). This is where educational outcomes are limited to subjects that correlate, such as biology and chemistry.
Neither are they focused on standardised, rubber-stamped group outcomes (multidisciplinary learning).
This is the concept favoured by bureaucrats and the industrial education complex.
MDL often detaches parents from their kids, and kids from a subject’s relevance, as well as how and where that knowledge is best applied.
Instead, Christian homeschoolers are raising children up to be skilled thinkers and resilient doers.
Under transdisciplinary learning, kids are taught to be reflective, not reactionary.
Here children are nurtured into society, not abandoned in the world to be raised by their peers.
Simply put, transdisciplinary learning is cross-platform.
The concept shows where two or more subjects meet and builds an educational foundation similar to cross-referencing in a textbook.
Instead of cutting subjects off where they overlap, the transdisciplinary framework taps into where they complement, even correct, each other.
The result is a well-rounded Christian homeschool curriculum that inspires Bible-balanced, deeper learning, and a love for rigorous inquiry.
Additionally, there are no spectators in homeschooling proper.
Transdisciplinary learning engages mum and dad as part of their child’s educational team.
Here, kids are nurtured with a parent’s guidance up to the point where students become stakeholders in their own education.
This is the essence of Kale Kneale’s new Christian Homeschooling curriculum builder guide.
Founder of the Kingdom Thinker’s Academy, his 8-page initiative is a bold, ground-breaking first for Australian Christian Homeschoolers.
Without losing sight of the trees in a quest to see the forest, Kneale, a qualified, and seasoned school teacher, brings together ‘7 Steps to Christian homeschooling with purpose in a woke culture.’
Best summarised as God, life and the world around us, Kneale’s first homeschooling handbook advocates, for a ‘methodology which reflects deeper learning.’
His goal is to help parents, and kids tackle the bigger picture through transdisciplinary learning.
Five points make it clear that Kneale’s approach is about spiritual warfare, in the context of the Woke war on everything.
Following this 5-point introduction are seven steps built on transdisciplinary concepts, designed to ‘foster deep understanding and engage student curiosity.’
For Kneale, a key aspect of Christian homeschooling is spiritual warfare.
In our contemporary culture, kids need to recognise and reject substitute saviours, while fighting off the Woke mind virus, and an anti-life world.
The kind that justifies butchering of the English language, and preborn children as “healthcare.”
The false belief that feelings are facts, and climate change is a “settled science,” along with, Christ-hating Darwinian theory (both science and social varieties), white-hating Critical Race Theory, the sugar-coating of sin, and Socialism.
There’s a lot to like about Kneale’s handbook.
He puts some good tools into the hands of parents who want to empower kids with the gift of deeper learning, and its fruits: emotional maturity, discernment, and scientia (wisdom).
The properties of transdisciplinary learning are also transferable. They have relevance for any concerned parent keen to nurture resilient children in a hostile society.
This handbook is for parents, who, as Hannah Arendt said, ‘do not want to expel their kids from their world, or leave them to their own devices, but prepare them in advance for the task of renewing it.’
As C.S Lewis observed, “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. Starving students of sensibility makes them easy prey for the propagandist.”
To forewarn is to forearm.
Credo ut intelligam: Faith seeks understanding.
Kale is currently working on an online course for parents, called ‘Christian Homeschooling Made Easy: Transdisciplinary Learning in Action.’
To find out more about his work, and Kingdom Thinkers, catch his Caldron Pool interview from last June here:
