Thoughts on Education
The parent is a child’s first teacher, best teacher, and only lifelong teacher. All other mentors pale by comparison, although there are many true stories where non-parents have helped to fill holes, gaps, or deep fissures left in the mind and heart of a child in a troubled home. Thus, all formalized education must be considered a very personal and institutional partnership that prepares a child for adulthood.
A good education teaches to the mind, body, and heart.
- Skills and knowledge are essential for employment and service, especially in today’s competitive marketplace. High expectations must be matched with resources and commitment on the part of all stakeholders.
- A healthy body provides energy and the means to carry out human functions. Exercise, proper nutrition, and safe habits enable the body to perform the way God intended; mood altering chemicals mask, diminish, and even kill the body slowly or in a twinkling of an eye in cases of “accidents”.
- The heart constitutes the reservoir of values which guide decision-making, provide reference for “right” and “wrong”, and gives the motivation to achieve and serve. Volunteers and paid professionals who surround and interact with youth are role models who transmit values to the next generation by word, deed, and spirit. Critical life values are “caught” as much as “taught”.
Every child is created by God; thereby, he or she is born with a purpose and is entitled to love, dignity, and worth. A society that marginalizes its youth casts a blind eye to both the present and the future.
Education is life long. Education is the whole of life experiences, not just that which occurs in a school setting. Indeed, what happens outside the school walls has tremendous, even critical bearing, on the effect of a child’s education while in the school setting.
Living and learning are like two sides of the same coin; they cannot be separated. Indeed, each contributes to the other even beyond the grave, because each human leaves legacy to those left behind. Those memory tapes usually play on and on in the hearts and minds of people without full knowledge of all the sources.