About the un-Orthodox Lesson of the Day

Let us try to look at a few ‘backgrounds’, as found in modern education, today. Primarily, we have large common areas fitted with big windows, colourful surfaces almost everywhere and the very ordinary geometrical shapes of the furniture where the numerous wireless devices are worshiped by all. Spying on each other, in such environment with no enclosures, would be quite an easy task. Also, there is no need to mention that cameras watching you are in all places! The most common shape found almost universally is the prism, from the ordinary shape of the desks, rooms or books, to the ‘art-like-objects’, as the ‘perfect god’ worshiped in “2001 – A Space Odyssey” movie. A similar ‘thing’ is also on display at UN Headquarters in New York. They love ‘art’ and ‘perfection’, because the pedestal of any famous statue of awarded individual is the ‘great’ prism!

The lack of decorations would shock a visitor from other centuries, because man is supposed to be surrounded by beautiful things, in preparation for the indescribable beauties of the Heavenly Realm. Presently, any inspiration from surroundings dies quickly, with these empty screens, and the bare display becomes filled with material and spiritual graffiti of all kinds… Normally, these blank spaces are found everywhere, not just in schools of our modern age. As expected, on school walls you can discover some didactic material used in our educational system: maps of colored entities, models of all types, posters and different kinds of information. In religious schools, one can encounter sacred objects, but the Right thing on display (a Holy Cross, for instance) is most of the time in conflict with the rest of items found in the nearby…

How about the teachers? There is always a strong demand for them to do something new, all the time. Therefore the ‘professional development’ becomes compulsory for every educator, with a minimum of hours per year, sometimes out of own budget. Amongst other professions, educators must register to a government body for being granted permission to do their job. The registration is temporary and has to be renewed every year. This regimentation makes some people more important than others, according to the un-Godly viewpoints, because criteria are changing all the time and they are never done following a real public consultation. The main criterion is of ‘progress and advancement’ towards ‘glorious times to come’…

Teachers are for eternity pressed to go for ‘leadership’ positions, as being just an educator is not anymore the objective of the system, because not the education is the purpose of this work with students! Teachers have to learn tricks in order to establish a reasonable ‘class management’, according to what instructors of educators claim. Lacking knowledge of subject matter, wearing funny clothes, using bad language would not be a huge problem, as we all are so ‘different’!!! The most important thing would be to have a great knowledge of all trickery, for the ‘benefit’ of the rowdy students!

The latest ‘guidance’ in teaching is to be purchased by eager experts in such training, then talked about and spread to everybody else, in the hierarchical order of this business. The most recent method of teaching is always praised to the maximum, amongst professionals, so the teachers must follow and register in different sessions of raising their level of understanding and knowledge. The basic skills that any child must acquire are replaced by skills which are of a lesser importance or which are straight harmful to the young ones, like doing some internet ‘research’…

The structure of the lessons is changing according to a design of ‘everybody learns and everybody teaches’. The routine of education is upstaged by the novelties which are made for this purpose of distraction. The ‘older’ plan is not changed in this way, but it is put into a political correctness wrapping. It is to note that the original assessment and grading of students was drawn according to an expected scheme, as thought by … Charles Darwin. He said: “identify the 20 percent of the population considered capable of being leaders, another 30 percent who were capable of being professionals, 30 percent who would be part of the workforce even though functionally illiterate, and 20 percent considered to be uneducatable”. Great!!! So, you did not get a High Distinction, but do not worry, your Pass is good enough; even a Fail will qualify you for some rewards! You will be a great professional, anyway, but in your ‘lower’ distinctive group…

‘Dumbing down’ as many unskilled students as possible, that is to keep them away from the Spiritual upbringing and away from the True Knowledge, will lead to the creation of future felons. Nowadays, the methods of teaching are like styles of writing, regardless of what one teaches or writes. A style of teaching could be to give the right instructions for equipping students with useful skills, or the present type of very ordinary teaching with some belly-dancing or third-sex education… but this ‘quiz’ type of educational activity turns almost compulsory even during lessons breaks. Most of the questions are about very insignificant things: the name of an actor who played a certain character in a given year or the title of a book of no use for own salvation. These gadgets of ‘opportunity’ that we are surrounded by mark all of us in a way that our immediate interest is changed, unexpectedly. Stressfully, a ‘bright’ future is preferred and become triumphant over the ‘dull’ present…

Therefore a ‘monotonous’ present would be only fulfilled during the … weekend! That is why many ask the same questions: “How was your weekend?” or “What will you do next weekend?” Sort of a life cut in half: a boring one, for the sake of a salary and a happy one, for the sake of some freedom and exuberance! Also the space needs to turn into something else, a ‘new thing’. One given teacher, who otherwise would be very helpful and friendly, was once amazed that educators could live in the same community with the students that they teach. He was stunned because the greetings from and to the students must be enough for the first half a day! That disconnection that one feels and tries to get accustomed to in joyful way is a disconnection from everybody else and own neighbourhood, so to speak. We are not judging, just trying to identify the wicked conventions that we are so accustomed to…

The multitudes of methods that are used to make people rejoicing into a bad realm are overwhelming, because we have been disconnected from the Source of Life, Who is Christ. The old methods of teaching are very effective, not just disciplining the children but also giving a good and real preparation to these students to grow and become healthy young adults, knowing what they want to become. If they have been taught and equipped with the spiritual and material weaponry, they will be avoiding the pitfalls and failure… So, it is not just a job or profession to be learned but also the method to follow for minimizing the impact of this world upon one’s life.

Normally, our own nature is fallen and these skills are very important in life, because they are the only ones which could be passed from generation to generation, as a key to make one’s life not so miserable: to become able to fix a broken mechanism, to do some gardening, or to build a house. In schools, we could be given handouts, books and of course, the ‘great’ digital pieces, such as desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, i-pods, printers and scanners, which are all of the latest generation… We are all literate, but only practical things could teach us how to solve future problems.

At the end, some important questions that we can ask: are your children able to use practical skills, generally? Can your children repair own damaged pushbikes? Are your offspring ready to prepare a meal? Are your boys and girls learning to design and build some useful objects, at school or at home? Are our students becoming competent into planting and harvesting the outgrowth in your garden? Finally, will our learners be intelligent enough to separate the object from its image? It is an important last question, because all these digital devices are making ‘substitutes’ of the real things, be they human beings, hopefully waiting the Resurrection, or all other creatures and the articles that we make. We have been made with the gift to craft as well, but most of the time we destroy rather than create, ‘enjoying’ the image of the destroyed!