Restructuring Education

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The Huffington Post "Obama Education Waiver Plan" of 8/10/2011 speaks of wavering parts of the No Child Left Behind program to modernize education. From my perspective, we can try to patch our education technique by means of rigid standards and waivers, but the full possible of educating our children can't be reached if we continue to apply an incomplete definition of education, as "the act or procedure of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, creating the powers of reasoning and judgment, and frequently of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life."

An "enduring" State is founded on culture, dominated by ideals, and motivated by service attained when its citizens have been raised with the individual commitment to develop a nicely-balanced personality, leading us to a companion definition for education:

"The acquirement of abilities, the pursuit of wisdom, a realization of self, and the attainment of spiritual values."

To achieve this definition, education need to cultivate the 3 endowments of the human mind: intelligence, moral awareness and spiritual insight. Together, these endowments produce the harmonious development of the human personality, and bring us the Objective of education: to be fully empowered to contribute one's finest to the advancement of self and civilization. By way of the development of intelligence we hone our skills and cultivate our reasoning and emotional abilities.

What about moral awareness? Our expanding social structure has readily adapted to intellectual and scientific growth, but abounding technological achievements have eclipsed the moral ethics that the property institution as soon as provided. And ethics is the external social mirror that faithfully reflects the inner development of the members of society.

The household and loved ones - the crowning glory of a lengthy and arduous evolutionary struggle - is the natural social arena for the development of ethics: patience, altruism, forbearance and tolerance, all important for peace and progress. Home ethics is 1 of civilization's only hope for survival.

And spiritual insight? Living faith is what empowers people to elevate morality to the spiritual levels of unselfish service. To constrain living faith in civil interaction is like removing the sails of a sailboat. It is wise to separate religious institutions from education and government, but it is true religion - the desire to locate and know God - that organizes the human personality in an ascent to higher levels of appreciate and devotion, of service and fellowship.

The time is NOW to recognize that the educational idea and definition must consist of cultivation of the three endowments of the human mind that modifications to our education program alone will not obtain the result we seek in our young children without having the edification of property life and the progressive force of living faith.