Windows and Mirrors: Part II

The homeschool world has something to fear from this dogma.

Thank you to Jessi Bridges for this enlightening piece on a notion that has gained a great deal of traction in the children’s literature space. You can followJessiBridges on X and on Instagram. The first part of her piece on Windows and Mirrors can be found here.

In a previous article for RB4K, I discussed the concept of literary windows and mirrors. This idea, first introduced by Emily Style who co-founded the National SEED Project with “white privilege” developer Peggy McIntosh, has spread throughout public education. The ideology that this seemingly harmless concept is built upon has dangerous implications.

Not Only in Public Education

It’s not in public schools alone, however, where this practice has become common. Social Justice has crept into the very place where parents thought their children were safe from the Critical Race pedagogy of so-called antiracist educators. In recent years, the homeschooling world has accepted the windows and mirrors concept as well. For example, Charlotte Mason expert Leah Boden writes positively about Emily Style in her book Modern Miss Mason:

“In the late 1980’s, Emily Style, writing for the National SEED Project, introduced the world of education to the concept of ‘curriculum as window and mirror.’ Using this idea, author and speaker Amber O’Neal Johnston has spoken powerfully regarding the lack of diversity in our lists of living books. She writes about how books can be used to help children learn to love themselves and others; she also describes our need to provide ‘mirrors and windows’ for all our children. Books can be like mirrors that reflect who the child is, and books can be like windows that give an insight into other cultures and ways of life.” (p.95-6 kindle)

Perhaps no one has been more influential in introducing homeschoolers to the analogy of books as windows and mirrors than Amber O’Neal Johnston. Her rapid ascent on social media and the release of her first book A Place to Belong have centered around her desire to give her own children mirror books so that they could, “bask in their reflections for a while.”

In a presentation O’Neal Johnston gave for the popular literature-based Christian curriculum Sonlight, she explains that a literary mirror “is a book that reflects a child’s own culture or personhood and helps build their identity.” She later goes on to say, “there is a significant need for literary windows to help fill the gaps that can so easily widen between white children and children of color and boys specifically need to be offered windows that highlight the fullness of the lives of girls and women.” Throughout her talk, O’Neal Johnston references both Emily Style and Rudine Sims Bishop and much of what she asserts assumes the same belief of systemic racism and sexism that “anti-racist” educators promote about the Western canon of literature.

Decolonizing the Library in Homeschool Communities

While many in academia and public schools are more brazen in admitting their intent to “decolonize the canon” those in the classical homeschool realm tend to conceal their intentions with nebulous language. And yet, the ideology behind the goal is the same. There is an underlying belief that two groups exist: the oppressors and the oppressed. According to this view, white men have asserted power for too long including by dominating the literary canon, and it is now time to change this by replacing their books with those of BIPOC authors.

O’Neal Johnston expresses this assumption when she writes in her book, “While I don’t want to burn the classics, I do want to de-elevate some of them and set a few others aside to make room at the table for other voices and perspectives.” (p.102) In a 2018 blog post she expresses a similar sentiment in regards to the selection of books among literary classics: “The utter lack of choice within the book market (and especially among living books) of brown characters is upsetting, but the reasons are structural, nuanced, and can’t be fixed overnight.”

Leah Boden offers the same solution to this perceived problem. In her book she writes, “My suggestion isn’t to do away with every book written before the twenty-first century; but there may indeed be some you will want to rightfully leave alone” (p.95 kindle).

What both of these women express regarding the literary canon and the solution posed is hardly different than that of public school teacher Terry Kawi, as quoted in part one, who suggests that book selections ought to be made utilizing a “critical lens” which requires recognizing the dominant culture and elevating the voices of people deemed to be marginalized or oppressed. Kawi writes, “It is time to reconsider what texts we view as canon, what voices we regard as worthy, and what themes, storylines, and storytelling mediums are considered academic or rigorous. It is time to select the stories that really matter: ones that center and empower our BIPOC students.”

In this view, the standard by which we determine what literature we provide for our children is not what is best in quality, but who wrote the book and whether or not the book maintains the anti-racist perspective of so-called marginalized people.

Mirrors and Windows to Develop Global Citizens

Kawi goes on to later explain one goal of replacing the literary canon with window and mirror books. She writes, “Instead, what if we were to use windows to learn history, authentic perspectives, and perhaps, shared experiences? What if these windows could help us be better global citizens and teach us ways to navigate, honor culture, and make prosocial choices?”

Modernism and the United Nations, not Classical Education, would have us believe that the goal of an education is to develop what Kawi refers to as “global citizens.” The UN has stated that “promoting global citizenship in sustainable development will allow individuals to embrace their social responsibility to act for the benefit of all societies, not just their own.” According to the UN website, “the international community has agreed to ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including global citizenship.”

Twentieth century philosopher and progressive educational reformer John Dewey proved to shape much of modern education with a similar perspective that, “schools should take an active part in directing social change, and share in the construction of a new social order.”

Given this, it might be surprising to see self-proclaimed Christian Charlotte Mason (Classical) educators who embrace and promote this same goal. Yet, Amber O’Neal Johnston explains why one ought to use literary mirrors and windows in their homeschool: “We want to create a home atmosphere where children value differences and embrace diversity, and we hope to launch informed, compassionate, and engaged global citizens into the world. Knowledge of others is the only way to impart a global mindset.” (p. 86)

When compared with the statements made by several of the educators mentioned previously as to their purpose and goal in implementing the window and mirror concept, it becomes glaringly obvious that all of these women are on the same page, following and advancing the same narrative.

In fact, O’Neal Johnston quotes Style in her presentation for Sonlight when she wrote, “It is limiting and inaccurate to only educate our children provincially when they must live their lives in a global context, facing vast differences and awesome similarities. They must learn early and often about the valid framing of both windows and mirrors for a balanced, ecological sense of their place(s) in the world.”

Kaitlin Jackson concludes her academic article: “We cannot raise and cultivate global citizens without intentional efforts to normalize, celebrate, validate, and include the experiences, narratives, and voices of all citizens on that globe.”

The term, “global citizen” is fraught with the same ideology which promotes the normalization and celebration of all identities as equal, except for white, upper-middle class, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian males. What all of this ultimately boils down to is an economic and cultural Marxism, taught in both public and home schools in order to bring about a utopia of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And in this system of thought, Christianity is the enemy.

This destructive, progressive trajectory would have us do away with the traditional Judeo-Christian culture and value system that has existed for two millenia. It’s the same ideology that fueled BLM in its desire to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” and free itself “from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

The Problem with Literary Windows and Mirrors

Aside from the alarming implications of developing “global citizens” through education, there are at least two major problems with the literary mirrors and windows concept. 

First, the idea that children need books that act as mirrors promotes an over-focus on self, the supposed need for self-affirmation, and the validation of a personal identity. This, however, is not the purpose of an education, and specifically, it is not the purpose of literature. An education does not exist to better understand oneself, to self-actualize, or even for the utilitarian purpose of social action. These are all modern misunderstandings of education. As Angelina Stanford recently pointed out, “Modernity thinks that the point of education is to see ourselves or to understand ourselves.” Modernity is incorrect.

This viewpoint regarding education turns the individual into the center, the gauge, the focal point, the plumbline, and ultimately the judge of everything, including truth. But education and specifically literature is not primarily a mirror with which to see a reflection of our own experiences or identity. We are not to read a story looking for ourselves or read ourselves into a story. To quote a popular Matt Chandler sermon, “You’re not David. Your trouble in life is not Goliath.” But as human beings, we are so self-focused and self-centered that we do think everything is about us, including the stories we read. This educational concept only serves to further fuel that self-absorption and ego. An education that centers self, makes self the center.

Second, the idea that children need literary windows to peer into the lives of others promotes the acceptance and celebration of all identities and the culture from which those identities originate, even sinful gender and sexual identities and cultures. Viewing other’s lives this way is often coupled with a dangerous empathy that accepts everyone’s perspective and identity as equally valid. This is cultural relativism, not objective reality. This view also turns those who are not part of the “societal default” into victims of society at large and of individuals whose identity falls into the categories delineated as the hegemony.

In contrast, a true education is one that doesn’t produce global citizens, but one that cultivates a rightly-ordered affection between the child and the True, Good, and Beautiful things of God, informed by knowledge and wisdom which lead to humility and a life of obedience and faithfulness to the Lord. This is an education that seeks to look outside of self in the literature consumed. But rather than focusing on other’s identities it seeks to look upward to God, to the transcendent realm, to something greater than and higher than individual people. This is what we all truly have in common, that we live in God’s ordered world, surrounded by the transcendent ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

This is About Ideas

Ultimately this is a discussion and debate over ideas and truth. As CS Lewis has so aptly said, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.” The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

People are promoting ideas that are enemies of God and the truth and it is our responsibility to challenge those ideas, for the sake of the people who have been captured by them. As Voddie Baucham has said, “We have to identify these ideologies and we have to mark them and we have to oppose them and destroy them. Don’t coddle them, don’t modify them, don’t baptize them, destroy them. And take every thought captive.”

I have quoted multiple homeschool educators and I want to make it clear that I agree with Tom Ascot when he writes in By What Standard, “I am not accusing any of the people I have named of being Cultural Marxists or of consciously promoting Critical Theory. What I am saying is that the influence of that worldview is apparent in what they are advocating and how they are contending for what they believe to be justice.” (p. 15)

Over the past several months, a group of homeschool mothers have been developing a statement of biblical philosophy that counters the ideology promoted by those who teach that books ought to be windows and mirrors and that the goal of education is to cultivate global citizens. It is our sincerest desire that all would read and consider what we have compiled as a challenge to bad philosophy. You can read the statement here.