From the Classroom to the Home
My background as an educator is diverse, covering the spectrum from public high school to age-integrated private school to 4-year university. However, the most significant work of my life has happened within my own home. My wife and I have homeschooled our seven children – now ranging from 1 to 21 years old – for two decades. This was never about “re-creating school at home.” Instead, it was about forging a different path. Today, our oldest is graduating with an engineering degree from a top-tier university, a testament to the fact that learning “by the way” doesn’t just work – it excels.
The Pursuit of Freedom
Whether as Head of Technology at a financial services data vendor, in my advocacy for libertarian principles, my work in abortion abolitionism (see endcoercion.org), or my leadership in community theater, the animating principle remains constant: the emancipation of individuals from systems that diminish human dignity and constrain human potential. I seek integration through music and literature. I maintain that a properly ordered life is one in which the creative, the intellectual, and the spiritual are not segregated into discrete compartments but woven into a unified whole. This integration is itself a lived rejection of the compartmentalization that characterizes institutional thinking – a daily embodiment of learning “by the way.”
Above all, following Jesus provides the foundation and pattern for this whole-life approach. The call to discipleship is not a Sunday morning affair, nor can it be confined to formal religious observance. It is, by its very nature, an all-encompassing reorientation of one’s entire existence – precisely the kind of integrated, ubiquitous, continuous engagement that characterizes genuine learning and authentic living.