TLP 550: Expectational Education, Part 3 | The Universality of Expectations

The Universal Perspective is unique to Expectational Education because it balances what we know about a person with what we know about mankind as a whole.

Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way

Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth, Love, Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

God the preeminence in their parenting. Welcome to our 550th episode and part 3 of our preview to Expectational Education, an educational philosophy that teaches parents, pastors, counselors, coaches, and teachers to equip those under them to accomplish their best in all things.

As always, today's episode comes with free episode notes, a transcript, and links to a wide library of related resources.

Simply check out the description of today's episode to access them. Today we're going to talk about the first of two main approaches to setting expectations.

It's called the Universal Approach and I pray that by the end of today's episode, you will see your children in a very new light.

So let's begin. When it comes to identifying appropriate high expectations for our kids, we must start with a broad, sweeping look at humanity, or more specifically, at children and young people at large.

You may have heard the statement, don't miss the forest for the trees. This idiom communicates that you not lose the big picture because you're so focused on the intricate details.

Well in Expectational Education, we find that we can only identify the best expectations when we look at both the forest and the trees.

It's not that we don't want to consider the tree, that's very important and must not be missed, but we will never correctly identify what the tree needs until we have first considered what all the trees need in general.

Today's episode we'll consider the forest and next week's we'll consider the tree. But before we get into some forestry today,

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A philosophical bedrock of expectational education is that educators absolutely must utilize a universal approach to determine appropriate high expectations for their students.

If we do not use this approach, we're going to fall into the same trap into which modern educators fall.

A couple episodes ago, I talked about how the American school system has no real idea what our children are capable of accomplishing.

Because of that, we see lower and lower expectations in the school system every year, and our students are gladly accepting the invitations to failure.

And what's really sad is that the schools who believe they're pushing back against the low expectations because their students have better test scores, they too all too often only have moderate expectations for their students.

As we learned before, moderate expectations are simply low expectations masquerading in complacency. Now, I never want to extinguish the passion and drive that parents and educators have to help their kids succeed.

Quite the opposite, in fact. But that doesn't mean that I simply applaud low expectations. I want to take those same parents who are trying and those same teachers who are trying and give them some biblical and historical glasses so they can rightly see their students and expectations the way

God does. For this reason, the universal perspective is unique to expectational education because it balances what we know about a person with what we know about mankind as a whole.

Now, the universal perspective does not favor the experiences of any one nation. It's not interested in nationalism because it seeks to understand the potential and power of all students in general, mankind as a whole.

The universal approach is also unique because it rejects the idea that modern man is somehow better than ancient man.

We're not more evolved. In fact, the Bible teaches that despite our technological advances, we have de -evolved in more ways than we are comfortable admitting.

Therefore, the individual's potential is understood not through the narrow lens of modern exceptionalism, but through the encompassing lens of all of human history.

Only when such a perspective is adopted can we see that our students are capable of far more than we realize.

And this is where I get excited. It's so easy to become complacent and lazy when we compare our little A students to all the underachievers in our world.

But when we see what our children are really capable of accomplishing, I hope it breaks off the educational shackles which bind our imaginations and kicks open the door to a whole new world of possibilities.

Just listen to this shortlist. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at the age of 18.

Laura Ingalls Wilder started teaching school when she was 16. Louis Braille created the

Braille language for the blind when he was 15. Mozart wrote his first symphony at age 8.

For thousands of years, teenagers have started families and built businesses, and history is replete with child and teenage monarchs who successfully ruled empires.

The Bible talks about them, and the history books are full of them, and many of them did a really good job. Now with the exception of Mozart, this list focused mostly on teens.

But that's not to suggest that children younger than 13 aren't capable of far more than that for which we give them credit.

In fact, I'm going to argue that for a 12 or 13 year old to marry, start having kids, run a farm, start a business, rule a kingdom, whatever, they had to be much more mature in the years leading up to the times that they turned 12 or 13.

You're not going to take a typical 8 year old in America and imagine that when they turn 12, they'll do a great job starting a family.

I plan on talking about it much more at the beginning of season 30, but the average American has a really messed up plan for preparing kids for adulthood.

It's messed up because, well, most people don't actually have a plan, but for those who do, their expectations are way too low.

They believe the lie that you're not an adult until you're 18, and they've also believed the lie that you shouldn't treat children like adults.

So they've been bankrolling their teenagers' extended childhood believing them to be children only to expect them to start acting like adults at the magical age of 18.

But the Bible shows us a very different idea. There are no teenagers in the Bible. What I mean to say is that there are children and there are adults.

Sure they may be young adults. Sure they may have a lot left to learn, but they're still adults. They've put off childish things or are in the process of doing so, and they're functioning as the adults

God created them to be. For thousands of years, societies have unilaterally agreed that you become an adult when your body transitions into puberty.

The idea is that when you're old enough to procreate, you should be old enough to procreate. And the assumption up until just recently has been that procreation was done by adults in a biblical family structure.

Now, I know that what I'm saying can sound ludicrous, but it only sounds that way for two reasons. The first is that we all recognize the fact that we don't personally know a single 15 -year -old who we would say is quote -unquote ready to have kids.

But do you know why that is? It's that way, not because it has to be that way, but because of the second reason.

We haven't taught them how to be a good parent when they're 15. We haven't expected that from them.

In fact, we're not even teaching them how to be good parents at 18 because our society has decided that 18 is still too young.

Well, as long as we keep inviting our young people to fail by having low expectations for them, they will be more than happy to fall to the lowest expectation and then further still.

Now, this is a bit of a rabbit trail and I don't want to lose anyone here, so let me tie all of this together. This is not me arguing that our teens need to be starting families.

I know I talk about having kids and parenting a lot. I'm using that as an extreme example because if they can have kids and start a family, then yes, they can definitely start a business and they can run a country, okay?

But this is really not about starting families. I've been saying that the application of expectational education extends far beyond the formal school room.

It needs to be the foundation of my parenting. If I consider the universal perspective on children and teens and I will have a biblically high expectation for my kids that they can and should be far more mature than other kids their age.

And that's the only point I'm trying to make. My kids should be blossoming into the young adult God wants them to be before they finish puberty.

Now, don't cram a bunch of assumptions into what I'm saying. I know that when you say something that's outside of the box, people start making applications that are also way outside the box and never what you intended, okay?

I recognize that most of us live in the countries where young people are not legally allowed to marry under the age of 18. Again, I'm not saying we break the law.

I'm not saying that they need to get married. In fact, if it were legal tomorrow, the majority of our kids would be too spiritually immature to please the

Lord in marriage. They shouldn't do it. But that's the point. We need to be helping them mature beyond where they are and far beyond where the world says they should be.

I'm also not saying that we kick our 13 year old out of the house just to get his own apartment. That kind of thinking is absolutely tainted by the world's understanding of what it is to be an adult.

According to the scriptures, to be an adult is to be at a certain stage in our physical maturity. And to be a mature adult is to be spiritually mature.

And God has high standards for the spiritual maturity of our children. We need to be teaching our kids how to love, trust, and obey

God. We need to have high biblical expectations that they should and can glorify Him with their choices.

Then, as they transition into adulthood, we can help them continue to grow in those truths.

And we need to stop making excuses for our kids' sinful behavior. It doesn't matter that they're two or that they're teenagers.

God wants them to be more, and He capacitates them to rise to His expectations.

The point is, if your kids had been born centuries or a millennia ago, the expectations for their behavior and life choices would be so much higher than what the world expects of them today.

And you know what? The majority of your kids would have risen to the appropriate high expectations of the time. They would have been working on the farms.

They would have been doing school differently had they been in school. They would have thought differently than the kids think nowadays.

They'd be harder workers. They would be stronger. They would probably, in many ways, be healthier. So my desire is to raise your homes and your schools and your churches' understanding about what we can be in the power of God and to the glory of God.

Now, let's take all of that and go back to the formal ideas concerning education. Please note that the universal perspective is not interested in judging educational methods and styles, whether ancient or modern, whether it's first world or third world.

This is not about comparing the school systems of America and China or classical conversations and BJU Press.

The universal perspective is most interested in determining the potential and power of children and teens overall.

Whereas the modern perspective would have us see children as so much less than they are, the universal perspective helps us to see that our children and young adults are capable of so much more than our society currently expects of them.

For those of you who don't already know, this modern perspective I'm referencing started taking root in America in the early 1900s.

While child labor laws are quite valuable, like most government programs, the legislation which removed the kids from the sweatshops lacked nuance and foresight.

No one should be surprised to discover that the government created even more problems than they solved.

And I'm not arguing that we should have kids in sweatshops. What I want us to see is that in their attempt to address the scores of children who now no longer had anything productive to do with their lives, compulsory schooling became the government's answer.

The government didn't create compulsory education because they fundamentally believed that all children needed to be educated. They just wanted the urchins off the streets.

The quality of the education offered, and the fact that it was created primarily to provide very little more than supervision, resulted in an education whose very genesis had nothing to do with appropriate high expectations.

In fact, it had very low expectations. Get them off the streets. So for the first time in human history, education actually started to devolve, specifically in America.

But this was not due to the ability or the maturity of the students. It had everything to do with keeping the machine running.

Government programs not only have a tendency to mediocrity, they also often have a very counterproductive effect, creating far more problems than they solve.

Fast forward 100 years, and we can see just how much we've lowered the expectations for our students. Have you ever looked at the curriculum of ancient schools?

You can even go back to the 1800s if you want. There are many adults today who would not be able to understand what children were being taught just a couple hundred years ago in this country.

And it's not because we're stupider. It's because no one has ever expected us to do any better.

It's not that we're not capable of greater cognitive and spiritual maturity. We just don't have any reason to push ourselves.

Do you remember what I said a couple episodes ago about genius being expected? Sure, there are those who are expecting great things of themselves, but there are fewer and fewer who are having great things expected of them.

In expectational education, we believe the universal approach helps us have a more accurate understanding of the potential of any given student's cognitive abilities and spiritual maturity because it assumes they are at least capable of achieving the average of what people their age have been achieving since the beginning of time.

And the average of what young people have been achieving since the beginning of time is significantly higher than what they're achieving today.

Now after all of that, you might say, okay, Aaron, I agree. It can be empirically proven and has been proven that people in general were doing more at younger ages than they are in America today.

But is it right to just assume that my child could do those same things? Is it right to assume that my child could create the

Braille language or write a symphony or rule a country? And to that question, I say simply, yes, that's what the universal approach is for.

It helps us lift our expectations for what may be possible. Now, as I said at the beginning, we need both the universal and individual approaches.

We need to consider the forest, all the trees at large, and carefully look at the individual tree in front of us.

It's the universal approach that gives us the parameters, and it's the individual approach that provides the tools.

So allow me to use a metaphor where learning is being compared to architecture. Let's say that the modern approach claims that a 16 -year -old is only capable of building a chicken coop.

And so the individualized approach comes in and would seek to provide the 16 -year -old with all the supplies and tools necessary to build that chicken coop to the best of that individual's ability.

Maybe the 16 -year -old needs a better hammer than other 16 -year -olds, I don't know. Maybe that 16 -year -old can handle different building materials than another.

That's the individualized approach to functioning within the modern perspective of what 16 -year -olds are capable of doing or learning.

But with the universal approach, we can look backward through time and across the globe to learn that an average 16 -year -old is actually capable of building a summer cottage.

With that framework for appropriate high expectations, the individualized approach then seeks to equip this one 16 -year -old with the tools and supplies necessary to achieve those appropriate high expectations.

And yes, different 16 -year -olds will need different tools or supplies. But when it's all said and done, they will have a summer cottage, not a chicken coop.

And that's why we need to start with the universal approach. We need to recognize that God has created people with the ability to be and do far more than they realize.

When we look universally at what people have accomplished in the past and what they're accomplishing across the globe, we should easily come to the conclusion that we, as the average

Westerners, are not achieving what we should be able to accomplish. Biblically speaking,

God says, Be holy as I am holy. But so much of the Western church is still singing deep and wide to our kids.

They don't even know what God's holiness is, let alone how to be it. Earlier I said,

I pray that by the end of today's episode, you see your children in a very new light. I hope you can look at your kids and say, regardless of how mature they are today,

I know that by the grace of God, they can be far more mature than even I realized. And the same goes for you and for me.

Now some people are energized by that realization. They see the exciting prospect of what they and their family can be and it lights a fire under them to help them achieve those appropriate high expectations.

But others get overwhelmed looking at the difference between what we are and what we could be. If you're in that first group, awesome, that's what

I want for you. Be encouraged. Light that fire. See how awesome your family can be by the grace of God and to the glory of God.

I believe the tenets of Expectational Education can help you achieve them. But if you're in the second group, let me encourage you to simplify the situation.

Remind yourself that God wants everyone in your home to do their best. We can all agree on that. And sure, you may have been functioning off the wrong idea of your family's best.

You may have had too low of expectations. It is what it is. For now, let's focus on simply taking

God at His word. Once we've done that, Expectational Education can help you take the next steps to actually helping each member of your family grow into the appropriate high expectations

God has for them. To use another forestry metaphor, don't get overwhelmed by the idea of having to chop down a whole forest.

Just focus on the one tree in front of you and we'll move to the next one when the time comes. I strongly encourage all of you, regardless of what your response to this episode may be, to listen to the

Fifth Way to Parent series. It and a bunch of other resources are linked in the description of this episode and it will help each of you make certain that your expectations, whatever they may be, are pleasing to the

Lord. And speaking of expectations, I expect that you will lovingly share this material with your friends, fellow teachers, pastors, and family.

Let's help each other's families be as awesome as they can be. If you are a Christian school teacher or homeschooler,

I would love to speak at your school during a teacher in -service training or at your co -op. I have spoken at a number of teachers' conventions and I would like to connect with more homeschooling conferences.

So, if you are running any of those or know people who are, will you please share my name with them? The Truth Love Family is passionate about equipping families to glorify

God to the best of their ability and we'd be honored to serve yours. And speaking of serving your family, we still have biblical counseling slots as well as coaching and discipleship slots available.

Anyone who signs up for counseling, discipleship, or coaching before the end of July will receive a 50 % discount on all of their sessions until they're done.

Just write to us at counselor at truthloveparent .com or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894.

I'll see you next time as we continue our study of Expectational Education. To that end, we'll be discussing the other side of expectations as we look at the individual approach.

Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship

God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's Word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

And remember that TLP is a listener -supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.