MORALITY & EDUCATION MATTER

Right now, our country is in educational decline.

I've got one reason to share: Right now, our country is in moral decline.

You see, you cannot separate the two.

~*~

"The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics."This is an absolute wake-up call for America," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The results are extraordinarily challenging to us and we have to deal with the brutal truth. We have to get much more serious about investing in education."

(Huffington Post)

As an Educator who has spent nearly twelve years in the field, teaching everything from preschool to highschool, all ages, nearly all subjects, many learning capabilities (from bright dyslexics with 140 IQs to Autistic children who barely speak) and many educational settings (from private, non-religious, to private Christian to alternative school for troubled teen girls, to public school in Anywhere, USA) there is one thing that I am committed to: providing quality education to children regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. This has always been my goal and will continue to be.

As a Christian who is an Educator, I want to make it clear: we cannot leave out morality if we are going to provide quality education. When we try to educate without a moral code, we raise up intelligent barbarians who have no moral compass and are capable of any heinous crime. I dare say we are seeing this now. College students brutally murdering their classmates because no one taught them the skills of how to communicate or how to resolve conflict without violence, another college student murders a girl on her wedding day, because he didn’t learn he can’t have everything he wants. Still another college student murders his girlfriend after repeatedly fighting with her. Yet his violence was overlooked by his coaches because he was good at sports. Where do people learn these things and internalize them? At home but also at school, where the majority of their time is spent outside the care of parents. Whether we say it out of our mouths or express it in our actions, we are teaching something every day.

When we teach through our actions and now blatantly in some classrooms that God does not exist, that the moral code that shaped our nation "really isn't that important", we wind up graduating students who lack courage, integrity, honesty, kindness, compassion for their world at large. They matriculate into higher education where there are even less restrictions, and suddenly find themselves having to make moral decisions they have little foundation for. They are soon swept up into the tide of what feels good, looks good, simply operating on their senses, not realizing the war for their very soul that is waging. With parenting methods ranging from "you're not getting married until you are 85" to "I just let them float along and figure it out" (even though we ourselves needed direct instruction), we as a country have been blessed to not have self-destructed before this point.

I think of the many Classic writings of authors like Dickens. In order to even really understand half of what he refers to, one would need an understanding of Basic Biblical principles and characters. When I have children who frequently ask, "What's a BIble?" (not what kind of Bible is that?) or "Who is David? Who is Goliath? Who is Mary? Who is Abraham? What is a Hebrew?" I am reminded of the verse in Judges 2:10 :

After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the LORD or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel.

Why did that generation grow up not knowing the Lord? They were not taught. They were not introduced to God. They did not hear the testimonies of God. It may even have been politically incorrect to share your faith. The previous generation remained silent about God and in turn the next generation gained none of the benefit of knowing the God of their forefathers.

I am thankful today for the wonderful educators that graced my life. They are why I teach today. They not only educated me on matters of the natural but they lived their faith out, right where they were in the workplace and marketplace. No one saw it as strange, or detrimental. No one saw it as brain-washing. No one saw it as separation of church and state. I will never forget my second grade teacher, Mrs.Salzman. She was a kind and gentle lady. She introduced me to Hanukkah. I even dressed up and danced like a dreidel for the school program! I fell in love with the Jewish people and culture because of her care for me as a student. The day she announced that she was returning to Israel, I was heartbroken. I never saw her again, but I remembered that she was Jewish. I wanted to meet this God that she would run off and leave Me for! Thankfully, I met him in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Mrs. Salzman never tried to convert me. She never said, you must believe what I believe or else. It was the love of God shining in her that drew me.

I can share countless stories of teachers who I grew up with who lived out their faith, modeled integrity, love, faith, kindness, goodness, and concern beyond my race or skin color. I learned from them more than how to create art or calculate a problem or how to write. I learned to live out my faith in such a way, that it teaches even when class is over, the books are closed, and the diploma is in hand. If I have only deposited head knowledge into my students, I have failed as a human being and I have failed them in their future purpose. They will need more than head knowledge. They will need a moral compass. My prayer is that my life will always point them in the direction of the true North, The Way, The Truth, and The Life.