Much can be determined about civilization by the value placed on its teachers. I don`t mean the alleged value or what society may think it should be, but the actual importance, we as a nation attach to this inarguably critical position.
Every culture has had teachers of renowned. Even if the sound of their names have long ago died to any ear, the essence of the truly gifted teachers` lessons live on in the lives of the students they taught, sometimes beyond the lifespan of the nation or republic of their origin. Instructors of the sciences have passed on invaluable formulas, bards have given the world brilliant patterns of prose. Scholars and architects have contributed to humankind, disseminating vast knowledge of philosophy and spectacular structures. The seldom praised and underpaid middle class man or woman laboring daily in our towns` public school, spent at least part of today teaching your young son or daughter basic spelling, mathematics, art, music and or history. Why does this last sentence seem to pale in the light of the previous? It has everything to do with the priorities of our public interests, and the values of culture.
Today our society values that which entertains above what educates. From the Obscene yearly contracts of overvalued sports stars, to the vulgar royalties paid to popular actors, we as a culture are far more concerned with diversion than direction. This sad truth is slowly becoming evident in this country as we slide further down the list of the worlds educated developed nations, and take a back seat to places like China, Japan, and Germany in the developement of advanced technologies. Except for domination in the film and sporting industry, we seem only to excell in the field of new military hardware. At least this keeps us in a position of world power by capacity of force, if not brilliance.
So much of this tragic dilema has its` roots in a place far deeper than distraction, preoccupation or just plain negligence. Can we pay our teachers lavishly and expect better educated children? Possibly. Should we make the qualifications for this position more rigid? There are certainly some substandard instructers in todays schools. Should we institute a year- round education program for the students, a smaller pupil to instructor ratio, better equipped classrooms, more modern textbooks,a curriculum updated to the needs of this century? Obviously these thing could help, yet none of them truly address the underlying problem, the deterioration of our nations values.
We have available to us the best instruction there has ever been, provided by the best possible teacher we could have, who provides us with all we need to know about values and the teaching of our children. Yet the wisdom of our Creator and His Word are all but outlawed in the forum of education today. Because of this what is left for our kids, after the best substance of ethical and moral teaching has been stripped from the classroom, other than the cold facts of declining average national grades and a withering interest in the persuit of the knowledge of God, and the critical teaching He offers.
We have turned far from the education Jesus labored so hard to provide us with from the Father, and we can see the painful evidence of this in the world our children are growing up in . The teaching to children of strong ethical and moral truth as defined by the Bible must be the priority of the people in our country, if we are to continue as one nation under God, and truly come to understand the value of a teacher.
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5 comments:
Thank you Sojourner,
For filling in the gaps in my thought on this subject. Your battlefield insight is invaluable, and God bless you for the work you do every day with our kids.
I work in food retail and can see the lack of attention to discipline evident in society today, in just the few minutes it takes for families to go by our counters. It must be glaring from your vantage point, and I think you must be gifted with great patience to deal with those wayward children. Now if only there were an easy way to deal with the wayward parents!
As HCC is the only church I have attended, other than my own daughter my expierience with Christian children other than those I know at our church in about nonexistant. Needless to say, the children of the unsaved parents I know all have definite social and ethical problems that are painfully obvious, even to the parents, who don`t seem to understand what has happened to their kids.
Thankfully my little girl is well mannered and respectful of adults thanks to her gaurdians, and what God gives me to teach her. As far as I can tell most of the youth at HCC are good souls, and the parents seem to understand biblical discipline and apply it well. Many children, especially teens are very involved with the church, I see them at spring and fall cleanup, they volunteer for Thanksgiving outreach, VBS, and the sunday school and teen Bible studies are well attended. I am sure that some have problems and give their parents pain with bad attitudes and actions, my own daughter is very aggressive toward other kids when she wants attention and has been reprimanded for her behavior more than once. I realize that these things are not unusual for young people, but the issues should be addressed quickly and biblicaly, and the rod applied judiciously that they may learn such behavoir is not acceptable.
I fear Soj, that you are right, our childrens behavioral and ethical futures look grim, unless we as parents apply ourselves to learning what God teaches us about raising them, and then are fearless of social mores in our loving application of this knowledge.
mkz,
Although I acknowledge the role the Bible plays as a moral "ruler" so to speak, I believe the real problem of schooling is discipline and the type of material we are teaching. As you say, we have great "equipment" for our students, modern schools, fair class sizes, and sophisticated teaching methods.
Sojourner gets this one right in that teachers and parents used to work in concert on behalf of the child. There is none of that type of coordination going on today. In fact, there's tension instead. Administrators know best (like in Lexington) and parents know nothing. Even actively involved parents are made to sit in the back of the class.
I don't believe the Bible should be taught in schools. But I believe students should be able to organize study groups or prayer meetings. Christian parents should be very leary of putting their kids in a public school. If you can-private or home school them.
A teacher's value is determined by their concern and love for what they are doing and not by some foolish NEA union that has ruined education and made schools ineffective and unsafe. Americans need to go around this beauracracy and find their own alternatives.
David and Sojourner, as I read Davids` post the first thing that came to mind was the difference between the time when the Bible was tought in schools, and today.(Why do you feel David, that the Word of God should be void from our schools? Can we not teach our children anything in this forum that disagrees with what athiests believe to be important to a childs intelectual growth?)As Soj said, the violence and apathy that are such a part of todays classroom were not known then. Not a very long time after the Bible and the Pledge were removed from the curriculum things started to change. Do you feel there is no correlation here between the events that occur today and the removal of these important practices from the educational landscape? I feel there is. Facts are tought, ethics are ignored, truth is waylaid for the sake of conformity and everything but God is OK, so nothing but God is wrong. I can only Imagine how much better our grade schools and universities would look today, if We still pledged allegiance to our flag every morning and learned about the love of God every day, in addition to reading, writting, and arithmatic.
I really do believe in the seperation of church and state. And even though I'd like less hostility toward Christian belief, I see a large problem if you introduce the Bible as something that is taught. You'd certainly have to teach the Koran, The Book of Mormon, etc., as you'd offend non-Christians. Plus, the constitutionality of teaching the Bible and using public funds to do so would cause a 5-alarm response from the secular left.
No doubt, the Bible would positively change kids for the better. But we have to realize that unless we become a theocracy, that era has passed us by. We would be better served to make Bible clubs and prayer meetings more tolerated in our schools than going for classroom Bible study.
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