Education: The Great Conversion Process

We must not limit the scope of our education. We must seek learning out of the best books, no matter their source. 

What a miracle is the human mind. Think of its power to assimilate knowledge, to analyze and synthesize. What a remarkable thing is learning, the process whereby the accumulated knowledge of the centuries has been summarized and filtered so that in a brief period we can learn what was first learned only through long exercises of research and trial and error.

Education is the great conversion process under which abstract knowledge becomes useful and productive activity. It is something that need never stop. No matter how old we grow, we can acquire knowledge and use it. We can gather wisdom and profit from it. We can be entertained through the miracle of reading and exposure to the arts and add to the blessing and fulfillment of living. The older I grow, the more I enjoy the words of thoughtful writers, ancient and modern, and the savoring of that which they have written.

Under a divinely given mandate, we are to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” (D&C 88:118.) And “whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.” (D&C 130:18.) 

- Pres. Hinckley, "I Believe", August 1992 Ensign

The Importance of Asking, "What Do They Mean by That?"

There was a quote in an NPR article some time ago that I liked and recorded.  I want to share it today and explain why I like it so much: 

I met a Kabbalist in Israel named Avraham, and he explained it like this. For years, he read religious texts but always wondered: "How do they know that?" One day, he shifted the question to: "What do they mean by that?" A subtle shift, but a crucial one, he told me.

We have become obsessed with knowing - and I don't mean just in our Mormon culture. Our entire modern society is based on the pursuit of knowledge - and, while the pursuit of knowledge is important, it often obscures the underlying meaning of our view of things and can (and does) attack the foundation of faith that is necessary to continue to seek new knowledge as openly as possible.

Let me try to be plainer with regard to making the internal paradigm shift mentioned above.

"How do they know that?" is a skeptical, doubting, negative-side-of-the-coin perspective / launching pad - strictly because, when it comes right down to it, the only "right" answer in many cases, especially in the realm of religion, is, "They don't." 

End of inquiry - beginning of cynicism.

"What do they mean by that?" is a very different question. It is focused on understanding, empathy, connection, unity, etc. It addresses the potential to learn from what can't be "known" - and, thus, is not the self-defeating exercise of the other question. It allows for growth and change of perspective and "additional light and knowledge" - or, in other words, "continuing revelation". It opens the person who makes that shift up to new possibilities and forces that person to dissect statements and search for understanding - not spiral to the crashing impact of, "They don't."

That shift really is crucial to peace and charity, in my opinion - since it allows me to strive to make every interaction I have as valuable and educational and growth-producing as possible, even if, sometimes, the new question ("What do they mean by that?") leads me to the conclusion, "I get it - and I disagree with that meaning." However, more often than not (and far more often than most people would think), it leads me to the conclusion,  

"I'd never thought of it quite like that. COOL!!"

The Purposes of Our Sunday Meetings: Some Things Aren't Appropriate for Sacrament Meeting

I have spoken with quite a few people over the course of my life about why our Sunday meetings sometimes aren't nearly as spiritually delicious as they should be - why, when you look around the chapel, so many people seem disinterested.  There are some reasons I wouldn't change (like hearing from average members in Sacrament Meeting who are not good public speakers or who are not well-prepared), but there is one fundamental change I would make church-wide, if I could.  I would make sure every member understood the specific purposes of our meetings, starting with those who preside and set the tone.

In my opinion, the primary purposes of our Sunday meetings are as follows: 

1) Sacrament Meeting: Worship

2) Sunday School: Doctrinal instruction

3) PH & RS: Community building (including "fellowshipping" activities and temporal matters)

There is room for some overlap, but only within the parameters of the purposes. For example:

1) It's OK to provide doctrinal instruction in Sacrament Meeting, but that instruction should be about worship-focused things. Grace, charity, meekness, forgiveness and any other godly characteristic is fine as a topic for a talk, as long as they are presented as aspects of true emulative worship - but tithing, food storage, HT & VT, etc. are not appropriate Sacrament Meeting topics. Anything can be related tangentially to worship by a good speaker, but it should not be necessary for a speaker to take a non-worship-focused topic and bend it into an appropriate topic. 

2) Sunday School should be a school - and I prefer the group discussion model for ALL classes comprised of members who've been attending long enough to have a fairly solid doctrinal foundation. I want real meat in Gospel Doctrine, for example - with those members occasionally cycling through Gospel Essentials (maybe once every five years or so), just to make sure the foundation milk doesn't get sour.

3) PH & RS should be about people - defining and planning service, discussing HT & VT, discussing how to find and reach and inspire others, lessons on those things that really aren't worship-focused but community-centered (like tithing, food storage, emergency preparedness, fast offerings, even temple attendance, etc.), basic get-to-know-you activities, learning from the life experiences of others, genealogy, etc.

Sacrament Meeting should be "spiritual" in nature; Sunday School should be "educational"; Priesthood and Relief Society Meetings should be "social".  I am most concerned about keeping Sacrament Meeting spiritual and worshipful in nature and focus, since there can be spiritual moments within education and sociality.

Sunday School Lesson Recap: Comprehensive Self-Reliance and Creating Zion

The focus for next week is going to be self-reliance in the context of thanksgiving, so the lesson last Sunday was more of a lecture format than I usually do. There was some participation, but I talked more than normal today. Therefore, this post is going to be more of a summary than a detailed description.

1) Scriptural Interpretation Methods

Parables are understood to be representative stories that didn't actually happen but teach a moral or a lesson. We have been told Jesus taught parables (they are labeled as parables for us), so we read them as such. Many stories, however, aren't labeled for us, so we often read them as being literal accounts of actual events.

There are multiple ways stories can be read, including as being: literal, allegorical, symbolic, mythological, etc.

We talked about what can be taken from the following scriptural stories using each method above: Noah's flood, the Garden of Eden and Job. We then talked about various views of the Atonement: Penal Substitution, Representative Suffering, Symbolic Ordinance (the traditional scapegoat), etc.

2) Spiritual Languages

God speaks to us "in our own language, according to our own understanding". Moroni's promise says ONLY that God will make truth known to us, particularly about extending mercy to His children. Oliver Cowdery's experience isn't applicable universally. I am a good example of that, since most of my "answers" haven't come in that way. So, missionaries should stop using Oliver Cowdery as the end-all-be-all, one-size-fits-all answer method.

We all need to discover our own native "spiritual language" and allow others to do the same.

3) Physical, Emotional, Financial and Educational Self-Reliance

We talked about each aspect and the need to do the best we can, specifically in order to be able to give the help others need - and to be able to accept that help from others - in an atmosphere that fosters Zion.

I ended the lesson with a direct, blunt discussion of making sure each spouse in a marriage has enough education to be able to support self and family, even if they want to have a traditional marriage where "one parent" works outside the home and "one parent" doesn't have a paying job. I mentioned that over half of the married women in the Church work outside the home now, for many reasons. I told the boys not to insist that their wives leave school without adequate education, and I told the girls not to let their husbands insist that they leave school without adequate education. There simply are too many situations that happen to too many people now to assume they won't need a personal, adequate education to support themselves and their families at some point.

My Biggest Problem with Homeschooling: Rhetoric

I’ve worked in education in one way or another almost my entire adult life, including years in “the trenches” trying to do something opportunity-changing in some of the deep trenches. I don’t mind homeschooling in principle, and I have no problem with the concept of people pulling their children out of public schools and teaching them on their own. I have friends who do that and are masterful at it. I also have friends who should be locked up for what they have done to their children in the name of protecting them from the world. I have observed that homeschooling runs the same gamut as public education when it comes to the quality of the education itself, so I can't criticize it at the personal, individual level.  It is a personal choice, and I am grateful for that opportunity in this country.
 
My biggest problem with homeschooling is the rhetoric I have heard and read. 

Too much of the homeschooling rhetoric writes off those who are in the public education system and casts the issue in adversarial and derisive tones. This is going to sound a little harsh, perhaps, but I have a hard time with someone who abandons someone else and then turns around and castigates those whom they abandon. Public school teachers and students alike lose MUCH when adults who care and children who care leave (especially when those people who leave are the very ones who could serve as examples and role models for those who have no choice but to stay), and they lose even more when those adults and children who leave turn around and criticize and condemn them verbally.  Much of the rhetoric I have heard and read over the years have been based in fear and criticism; too little has even attempted to reflect compassion and understanding, much less love.  

Again, I defend passionately the right to homeschool, but it’s easy to forget that the choice to do so is founded on a degree of luxury – of being “relatively rich” (meaning having something others don’t have, including simply opportunities and choices), and my heart hurts when those who can afford to homsechool (and I don’t mean that in strictly economic terms) criticize those who can’t and, in a very real way, dust their feet of the relatively poor in this regard.

No matter what decision one makes in this regard, I would prefer more compassion for the little ones who have no choice – and a little more ministry among them.

Homeschooling is Wonderful - and it Sucks

The range of educational experiences in homeschooling is the exact same as in public schooling.

Homeschooling in general is no worse than public education, but it also is no better.  Just like public school, it depends largely on the teacher.  It ranges from awesome to mediocre to bad to "throw the parents in jail, 'cause what the ____ were they thinking?!?!" I've seen it work wonderfully, and I've seen it really screw up kids.

The worst situations are when parents who can't teach take their kids out of public schools to avoid "bad influences" and "the world". They end up with badly educated, paranoid kids. The best situations are when parents who can teach take their kids out of public schools to enhance their educational experiences and tailor to their own learning modalities.

That's my two cents' worth, anyway. I love homeschooling, but I really hate it.

Learning Modalities and How They Affect Religious Communication

Most classroom teachers teach by using the same modality with which they learn best. Those who learn aurally (by hearing things articulated verbally) tend to lecture; those who are visual learners tend to do PowerPoint presentations or use lots of pictures; those who are kinesthetic learners (by movement and physical contact) tend to assign hands-on projects; etc. Generally, this holds true even if the majority of their students learn best through different modalities than the teachers do.

Those who are the best teachers (who can reach the most students in a way that those students will understand) are those who understand the dominant modality of each student and find a way to present the instructional material in ways that allow all the dominant modalities to be employed. That's a very difficult thing to do, so there are students who end up in most classrooms not understanding what the teacher is trying to teach.

I personally think this happens in religion just as much as in the academic classroom, if not more so - since people tend to imbue their religious learning modalities with divine approbation and assume all will experience God (or not experience God) in the same way they do. I see this all the time around the Bloggernacle - people talking past each other to a large degree, often because their own manners of experiencing the divine simply are different.

Spiritual Intelligence & Humility

“Light and truth” has always fascinated me as a definition of intelligence. (D&C 93:36)

My dad was ecstatic to leave high school and formal education; he worked as a milkman, a type-setter handling hot lead that left his hands rough and calloused, a farm worker between jobs, etc. He retired after 20 years as an elementary school janitor.

He’s one of the most intelligent people I have met in my life, based on the D&C definition. He’s also perhaps the most selfless, humble man I know. I think there's a direct correlation, perhaps even a causation, between humility and spiritual intelligence.

Socio-Economic Status and the LDS Church

There is a fascinating paradox within Mormonism. There is the general perception among many that this church caters to the poor and uneducated and ignorant and desperate. In fact, if you ask members themselves to identify the "best potential converts", I would be willing to bet that many would identify exactly this group - the poor, humbled ones.

Contrast that with the actual demographic descriptions that often are published in comparative studies of various religions. In all of them I have seen, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are aggregated as (among, at least) the most educated believers in the world - with a standard of living that also is near or at the top of the lists.

The question in my mind that rarely is discussed or addressed in these studies is whether both of these seemingly opposing claims are true - that the nature of the Gospel that we teach appeals to the poor and oppressed initially and then, in very real and practical terms, inspires and motivates and literally "empowers" those who stick with it to raise their education and/or standard of living - if not with the initial converts, then at least with their children. I suspect the "middle class" perception of the Church from the outside is a result more of this growth from generation to generation (how 2nd and 3rd generation Mormons appear and live) than it is to the status of converts when they first join the Church.

In that sense, if those around them tend to remain in poverty while Mormons (outside of America) tend to raise their standard of living in ways measurably different than those around them, then perhaps that contributes to the impression that these Mormons are more "American" than "native" - simply because they act and dress and carry themselves more "middle-class" than their friends and neighbors. (Fwiw, I have heard critics say that converts in poorer countries join the Church simply to "get a better education and make more money". How's that for a warped criticism - whether it's true or not?)

It would be an interesting way to explain the oddity that those in developing countries who become established in Mormon culture tend to raise their standard of living relatively high enough to have excess within their culture, while those who have enjoyed multi-generational prosperity tend to succumb more to the allure of their prosperity, over-extend and lose it. (Sounds like I'm paraphrasing the Book of Mormon, doesn't it?)

There is a good spiritual lesson in there for anyone who wants to look for it.