My Educational Goal

I've been asking myself some hard questions such as:

What should my children know before they leave my home?
What does God want my children to know?
How can I teach them to turn to God and be happy regardless of their circumstances?
How can I help them continue on their path of discipleship?

I've learned a few things in the past years as I've pondered these questions.  An important pattern has emerged in the things I've read lately.  I hope I can accurately express it in this post.


“In life’s adventure the central problem is character building...  In the next life your righteous character will be evaluated to assess how well you used the privilege of mortality.” -Elder Richard G. Scott (Nov 2010, Ensign)
 
I know that an education is not simply filling my children’s minds with information.  I want them to seek truth and work to apply it so that they can become disciples of Christ.  I have noticed, as I've read, that God cursed the ground for our sake.  He wanted us to learn to overcome the natural man without taking away our agency - so He gave us weeds.  We would have to eat bread by the “sweat of [our] face” (Moses 4:25) so that we could learn to yield our natural tendencies to our desire for that which is better.

I like to think of this pattern as a Cycle of Happiness.  I now see it in many things I read:

Seeking Truth (light and knowledge) + Work Ethic = Righteous Character

It was sometimes said in other ways:

Desire + Action = Becoming

Elder Dallin H. Oaks recently stated, “It is our actions and desires that cause us to become something.” (Apr 2011, Ensign)

In educational circles it is often described as:

Love of Learning + Hard Work (Study) = Education


In the TJEd community we might phrase it like this:


Love of Learning + Core = Scholar

Most recently, I have noticed it in this familiar formula:

Hope + Faith = Charity

“Hope is the desire of [Christ’s] followers to gain eternal salvation through the Atonement...hopes can lead to dreams which can inspire us and lead us to action” -Elder Steven E. Snow (Apr 2011, Ensign)

Faith is “the principle of action in all intelligent beings.” -President Joseph Smith (Lectures on Faith)

“Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.” (Moroni 7:47)

This is the pattern that we notice when we read the Book of Mormon more than once.  The first time we find much truth.  As we apply truth we become, as I recently read and wrote about,
“informed: we will in other words be taking on the form of truth, coming under the formative influence of the Being who is its source, changing so that we are more like him, more “of the truth.” -C. Terry Warner (Foreword, Arm the Children: Faith's response to a violent world)

The next time we read the Book of Mormon we have become more Christlike so we seek and are able to see more truth.  We are filled with more joy and understanding.  We work to apply this new knowledge, and we become more Christlike.  Thus, this Cycle of Happiness continues.

“Faith and Character interact to strengthen one another.  Character is woven patiently from threads of applied principle, doctrine, and obedience.” -Elder Richard G. Scott

The simple, basic practices in our home such as prayer, family home evening, and scriptures study will all feed our desire, motivate our actions and help us become.  We must also have the ability to work hard to accomplish what we are motivated to accomplish.  This is why teaching our children to work is so vital to their progression.  They need to know how to do hard things when called upon to do them.  Too often this cycle of happiness is broken after someone feels motivated to to something, but then they lack the effort to follow through.  Work, along with gospel study, needs to be a priority in our home.

Another place that I have seen people move away from this cycle is when they confuse play with entertainment.  Young children learn through real play which requires effort, creativity and imagination.  As they get older they really do progress to learning in other ways like reading and writing.  They continue on their path of seeking light and knowledge.  Children who are given entertainment instead of the opportunity to use their imaginations for real play, often continue to seek this false lifestyle of big fun for very little effort.  I know adults who use their free time to entertain themselves instead of using it to seek the real joy that comes from putting forth the effort to seek more truth, light and knowledge.

I may have quoted this before, but it is worth repeating:

"We should not bring up our children to respond to the exciting, the thrilling.  Americans don't get told this, but the thrilling and the exciting are bad... if we inure our children to stability, to repetition, to normal life, if we get them interested in sameness and in the variety that can be found in sameness and exclude the exciting and thrilling, then they will live decent lives.  But if they want always to have a thrill and titillation, their sex will go that way, their aesthetics will go that way, even their religious experience." -Arthur Henry King (Arm the Children: Faith's response to a violent world)




I am learning that a simple lifestyle in which we have a real environment, without the quick entertainment, and in which we learn to work is producing a desire for more light and knowledge and an ability to work for it.  That is my educational goal - for my children to be firmly planted in this cycle.  I used to think that an education was for a career so that they could support themselves and their family.  I now understand that being motivated by money is the way Satan gets us to loose focus.  I firmly believe that if we "seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness...all these things shall be added unto [us]. (Mathew 6:33)

Instead of seeking for my children to have successful careers, I want them to be people who seek for truth and light, work had to apply what they learn, become more Christlike as they do so and thereby seek more light and knowledge throughout their life.  This is eternal progression.  This is the cycle to eternal happiness.