Salt and Salt Shakers

Sigh...a long post...a very long post in two parts...

For a week or two now I've been pondering something I read on a blog. I keep thinking I've run out of things to blog about then something else comes up. As I was reading I was reminded of a book title years ago about believers being salt and how salt isn't intended to stay in a salt shaker. Believers being the salt, the church being the shaker. A home can be a salt shaker, too, or a school - any institution that lives unto itself. I don't remember the author or the title. I don't even know if I even read it, but the image of salt and shaker stuck.

I've blogged about public school before. I went through public country/small town schools with all their ups and downs. My husband went through Manhattan private schools. When we first had kids, public school wasn't even on our radar for all the cultural and Biblical reasons Christians still choose 26 years later. We home schooled - a separate story.

Next week my youngest of five graduates from an urban public high school as did her siblings before her. I can't say we've come out unscathed [just this week the staff had a really BAD day at school] but we've met some wonderful people and we gave a lot of time and our kids learned a lot about people and friendships and caring and working together with people who aren't like you - things I could never have taught them at home and things they didn't get at church.

There's a mixture of "good" and "bad" in the world but it's in the church, too. Being exposed to "ungodliness" 8 hours a day isn't ideal. But I don't think it's an accurate description of all that God does in the lives of people spending their days in the secular work place or in public schools. Yet children in school are in an educational environment - they're there to learn. It's the spirit of the place. Teachers impart more than cognitive skills and information. Children are shaped by their teachers. People learn in the work place but it's different. That's probably why we have to prayerfully think twice when we decide where to "educate" our children. We know that spiritual formation is just as important as all the other learning that takes place, maybe more so but so are the attitudes they grow towards people.

I'd been warned of all the "ungodly" issues in public education and I had my own experiences but we stepped out in faith. We happened to get a staff who respected parents. My experiences left me feeling like the Christian materials we'd been reading for ten years were a lot of propaganda. There's ALOT to fix in public education but there are also those moments when God does what only God can do or when He just breaks apart your stereotypes. ie. Even though we (a very diverse urban public school played suburban and parochial schools (well-known Catholic and Protestant private schools in our area), our sports teams won sportsmanship awards for a number of years running. Kids from our school went to Ivy League schools and earned an amazing number of scholarships (merit, not just need). The kids could participate in small special programs full of opportunities they never would have had in smaller religious schools, they were given opportunity to serve the greater community - different opportunities than they would have had in private school. We were involved parents and willing to be team players.

I think you'd be surprised at all the believers committed to teaching in public schools - teachers, administrators, other staff. There's a way we support them and what they're doing when we send our kids to their schools. They affect the environment, other staff members and the kids, even if they can't change the curriculum, even if they can't change the system. As my age I'm coming to think maybe it takes more faith to keep giving even if you know it will only affect/effect one person than it does to know you're changing the world. Did we want our kids to become casualties? Absolutely not. Did we bring some light with us? Hopefully.