Which is the basis of your education? What do your goals generally look like? Are they to learn the names and dates of Presidents and Kings or are they to understand the ways men govern and how man’s character affects his governing? Are they to memorize the parts of speech and list of prepositions or are they to communicate clearly God’s message they have to share? Rather than going on with examples I’ll just ask, do you think the goal of education is to memorize reams of information? Do you think little children can’t learn ideas such as these?<\/p>\n
Surely you’ve heard the old adage, “Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.” (I’ve seen it attributed to Tobias Gibson.) Think about what people talk about in society – the weather and other trivial facts, other people, themselves (the smallest of people surely fit here), and ideas. Can you not see that the adage is true?<\/p>\n
Yes, religion and politics can bring disagreement in discussion, but they are the seedbed of ideas. All of life goes back to the core questions all of man has, whether he seeks their answers or seeks to avoid them, “Who is God?” and “Who is man?” and “What has God done?” and “How then is man to live?” You cannot escape religion and government in discussing ideas, because these are core to life itself. It is in the discussion of ideas that the mind grows – that society grows. And in discussing ideas, a child and a child’s mind grows.<\/p>\n
There are educational philosophies that believe in teaching the great ideas, but — only in the later years of education. They spend the early years filling the child with facts to memorize. They believe the child will have something to think on and understand later, if he is full of facts first.<\/p>\n
I respectfully disagree. A young child truly can reason and understand. Granted, not at the level of an adult, we grow<\/em> in wisdom and understanding. But a child wants ideas; he longs for ideas; he continually asks “Why?” We’ve given a child a false misconception of value by granting our exuberant praise for rattling off a list he has memorized, rather than for his question of “Why?” Do we not see that a child who asks “Why?” has a hunger for learning. He desires growth. A child trained to rattle off information for praise has a hunger for self-acclamation. Knowledge truly puffs up. Surely we desire our children to hunger for growth in life and character more than self-acclaim and pride.<\/p>\n Does our basis of ideas mean we do not teach facts? Of course not! That would be impossible. As a Christian growth (not education) seminar I attended years ago taught, “Knowledge does not lead to wisdom. Wisdom always leads to knowledge.” It fits perfectly in our style of education. Information does not of itself lead to anything but parroting of knowledge. Ideas always apply to information. They are studied out in their very applications.<\/p>\n Learning ideas is our goal. We teach information within the context of ideas to give the information meaning. Learning is not just “knowledge.” It is wisdom, understanding, and knowledge – the proper understanding of knowledge and application of truth. As God’s Word teaches, “knowledge puffs up.” Men are “ever increasing in knowledge but never coming to the truth.” Yet, the “Lord gives wisdom, from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.” “Add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge….” In my words, teach information within the context of ideas, with the understanding and application of the ideas being the goal of the lesson. That is, above all teach Biblical ideas (principles) as the foundation of all of education and life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Which is the basis of your education? What do your goals generally look like? Are they to learn the names and dates of Presidents and Kings or are they to understand the ways men govern and how man’s character affects his governing? Are they to memorize the parts of speech \u2026 Continue reading