© 1999 Jerry Prentice
© 1999 International Urantia Association (IUA)
Jerry Prentice
Missouri, USA
I have spent the last fifteen years—to my surprise—in education developing curricula and training young people to become productive members of society. Some students have a thirst for knowledge, a foundation, the self-discipline to acquire it, and the personal values to put it into practice successfully. Many, however, leave our schools and leave their families with none or few of these qualities. Why? Is the problem the public education system or the family? I would say both. But since each is essential to the other, it is impossible to say which is the root of the problem. Is education suffering from the breakdown of the family? Yes. Is the breakdown of the family due, at least in part, to the failures of our educational system? Probably. Wherever we place the blame, however, in trying to find a solution as a society, we must begin with education. Education Must Be Refocused on the Development of the Whole Person — The enduring state is founded on culture, dominated by ideals, and motivated by service. The purpose of education should be acquirement of skill, pursuit of wisdom, realization of selfhood, and attainment of spiritual values. [UB 71:7.1] the foundation of which should be proper and wholesome family living.
Why must education be so sterile? Why can’t it include moral development and even spiritual values? What happened to knowledge for its own sake? What happened to learning how and why things work—not just from books but by working with things. When did “measurable results” take the place of understanding? Are our children so fragile that we must falsely overestimate their self-concepts rather than nurture them as a result of genuine achievement? How can students leaving high school be unable to read, write, and do arithmetic and be unable to apply these basics to practical life?
What is the root of the problem? In the United States we have divided education into one-hour blocks and unrelated subjects. We have separated intellectual learning from practical life. We have made education the pursuit of credentials, not knowledge or wisdom. The value of education is measured by the annual income it generates, not by its contribution to social progress or personal growth.
The world of university education depreciates skill and practical knowledge—the source of the necessities of life—food, clothing, and shelter. In our teachers we value degrees over practical knowledge and wisdom. It is no wonder that so many of our young people drop out of formal education long before they finish high school. Much of education is in direct conflict with the creative and dynamic idealism of youth. But more than anything, our greatest mistake has been to have so largely displaced parents, family, and values from the educational process. We are too busy buying things for our children and saving up for their education to have time to educate them during their formative years.
In our zeal for religious liberty we have made our public schools non-religious schools. And, by placing too much emphasis on the value of empirical evidence, we have made higher education anti-religious.
Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world. Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology… [UB 111:4.4] Civilization can hardly progress when the majority of the youth of any generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pursuits of the sensory or outer world. [UB 111:4.3]
Our children need new perspectives. They need to learn first to do, to acquire some practical skill, to live responsibly, to evaluate and be evaluated, they need to know how to discriminate. Then abstract concepts can be learned and applied. Education should make every task, whether mundane or important, easier and more meaningful. We must find more effective ways of educating our children. Insects are born fully educated and equipped for life—indeed, a very narrow and purely instinctive existence. The human baby is born without an education; therefore man possesses the power, by controlling the educational training of the younger generation, greatly to modify the evolutionary course of civilization. [UB 81:6.24] To do this, their teachers also need new perspectives, whether they be the parent educators or the masters in the school. We need to educate parents and change the way we educate teachers. Education, whether secular or religious, must begin in the home and with the family and continue in that same home and family at the same time as it continues in school.
About education and family on a neighboring planet the Urantia Book tells us:
These people regard the home as the basic institution of their civilization. It is expected that the most valuable part of a child’s education and character training will be secured from his parents and at home, and fathers devote almost as much attention to child culture as do mothers. [UB 72:3.4]
And about family and education in general:
The humans of olden times did not possess a very rich social civilization, but such as they had they faithfully and effectively passed on to the next generation. And you should recognize that most of these civilizations of the past continued to evolve with a bare minimum of other institutional influences because the home was effectively functioning. Today the human races possess a rich social and cultural heritage, and it should be wisely and effectively passed on to succeeding generations. The family as an educational institution must be maintained. [UB 82:0.3 the boldface is mine]
From these quotes it is clear that the family should be the foundation of education. But how can we make changes at the family level? It will take both sustained and gradual efforts. We must educate parents directly whenever we can, but we must start educating our children now, who are future parents. To do this, we must change the way our children learn by preparing a new age of teachers, a better way of teaching. We must unify in one educational process: the value of the family, the search for knowledge, practical and responsible living, wisdom and growth throughout life and even eternal growth.
Now begins your personal education, your individual spiritual training. From first to last, throughout all Havona, the instruction is personal and threefold in nature: intellectual, spiritual, and experiential. [UB 30:4.27]
The schools of the Planetary Prince of Urantia, 500,000 years ago, provide us with some examples of how this unification might be accomplished in an educational context. These examples seem to transcend the vicissitudes of time and culture. Although time and technology have brought many changes, the essentials remain.
In the headquarters settlement on your world every human habitation was provided with abundance of land. Although the remote tribes continued in hunting and food foraging, the students and teachers in the Prince’s schools were all agriculturists and horticulturists. The time was about equally divided between the following pursuits:
1. Physical labor. Cultivation of the soil, associated with home building and embellishment.
2. Social activities. Play performances and cultural social groupings.
3. Educational application. Individual instruction in connection with family-group teaching, supplemented by specialized class training.
4. Vocational training. Schools of marriage and homemaking, the schools of art and craft training, and the classes for the training of teachers—secular, cultural, and religious.
5. Spiritual culture. The teacher brotherhood, the enlightenment of childhood and youth groups, and the training of adopted native children as missionaries to their people. [UB 50:4.3-8]
Which of these elements is missing from our educational system today? Which is missing from family life? Let us compare our institutions with the Prince’s school.
Physical work. How many of our young people have that experience that comes from genuine, sustained, hard work that builds character and builds muscle? The muscle part they can get in athletics, but sports or recreational activities are very different from hard work both in the conditions of their exercise and in the results. Raising hay so that animals have food in the winter, building a house to live in, chopping wood for heat, setting up sandbags to dam and protect the city, all require sustained effort and an astonishing level of technical implementation. Such work brings a sense of satisfaction and esteem that one cannot get from participating in a sport. But to work hard at anything, even after fatigue and when one thinks one has no strength left, and to know how and where to draw on those almost inexhaustible reserves of personal strength, stamina and determination, has its own value far beyond the other benefits already mentioned. In the rural, agricultural area where I live and teach, teachers and employers appreciate the work ethic of the “farm boys” because most of them grew up working.
Social Activities. We have social activities, although perhaps they should be better directed, healthier. Somewhere in the busy lives of our children and adolescents—if we are to be their manager and chauffeur—we should make sure that these activities are culture-building, horizon-broadening, artistic, service-oriented, and enhance truth, beauty, and goodness in their lives and in the lives of others, including their parents.
Educational Application. How much of what our children learn in school do we justify with applications in our daily lives? Math, science, reading and writing learned since the first day of school is practical knowledge. We must show our children how it is used in everyday life. We preach the importance of education. “Get an education, if you want to have a job… later.” It’s a long way from the first day of kindergarten to that eventual career. The intellectual foundations must be integrated and validated in daily life. We must show the benefits and practicality of education from the beginning and throughout life.
Vocational Education. Our teenagers may take a Home Economics major or several Purchasing Techniques majors because they are easy credits. In some families this is a valued part of family life; in most families parents are too busy with their careers to teach or model homemaking. How much of family life is devoted to the development and application of practical and cultural research? We send our children to school, to music lessons, to dance classes, and when they are old enough to work, we send them to work. Do we read to them, read with them, sing with them, dance with them, and work with them? Do boys and girls help fix the plumbing, plant the garden, feed the horses? Can they cook a real meal (not a microwaved TV breakfast), do the dishes, clean the kitchen, do the laundry? Do they share our daily work at home and our professional work?
Spiritual Culture In many homes religion is something to join or something to practice on Sundays…or Saturdays. Continued spiritual growth is largely a foreign concept. In our work, social life, and leisure time with family do we discuss and teach the importance of spiritual values, hard work, and service—especially by example? Do we promote truth, beauty, and goodness? In the home we must not only talk about our devotion to spiritual growth, to God, but demonstrate it. In our schools we must stop ignoring God in the name of religious freedom. Our children and teachers must know that religious freedom is not only the freedom to choose an allegiance to some theological doctrine, but also the experience, expression, and discussion of personal spiritual values.
Agriculture has been valued as an important part of culture and education throughout human history. Farming is not an old-fashioned business. It is much more than a “humble job.” Today, progressive farmers must have a much broader understanding of how things work than most other occupations. Sustainable agriculture will continue to be a growing challenge for civilization. Especially in view of the rapidly declining human-land ratio, agricultural education should be a matter of primary interest for educational institutions at all levels.
And now is industry supplementing agriculture, with consequently increased urbanization and multiplication of nonagricultural groups of citizenship classes. But an industrial era cannot hope to survive if its leaders fail to recognize that even the highest social developments must ever rest upon a sound agricultural basis. [UB 68:5.13]
Agriculture and horticulture are also taught throughout the entire educational period on the extensive farms adjoining every local school. [UB 72:4.1]
Work with the soil is not a curse; rather is it the highest blessing to all who are thus permitted to enjoy the most human of all human activities [UB 66:7.19]
The Urantia Book presents to us ideals of education which are in keeping with the efforts of the Planetary Prince which prevailed so long ago. How far do our attempts at education compare with these ideals? Do our family and school activities permit us to be involved in this search? Are our lives so organized as to unify Religion, Family Life, Education, and Career so that we and our children may have those experiences which are so essential to the development of a harmonious personality.
The purpose of all education should be to foster and further the supreme purpose of life, the development of a majestic and well-balanced personality. [UB 195:10.17]
Evolutionary man does not naturally relish hard work. To keep pace in his life experience with the impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality [UB 102:2.7].
_Education is the business of living; it must continue throughout a lifetime so that mankind may gradually experience the ascending levels of mortal wisdom, which are:
1. The knowledge of things.
2. The realization of meanings.
3. The appreciation of values.
4. The nobility of work—duty.
5. The motivation of goals—morality.
6. The love of service—character.
7. Cosmic insight—spiritual discernment.And then, by means of these achievements, many will ascend to the mortal ultimate of mind attainment, God-consciousness. [UB 71:7.5-13; the boldface is mine].
In our families, in our schools, we readers of The Urantia Book must utilize this fifth epochal revelation to direct this whole life affair — education — toward God consciousness.