A Beautiful Mind (and Heart)

"If you ask a secular educator about learning theory, he would likely describe learning as a mental process centered on the child's material brain, and measured by the retention of discreet facts and information. He would emphasize the role of the teacher and the acquisition of knowledge. The secular educator would acknowledge neither the existence of a Creator God nor the existence of an immaterial heart and mind. Instead, he would view a child's mind as an empty vessel waiting to be filled. The educator might describe the child as a wonderful and complex human organism. But when all the educational rhetoric is stripped away, to the secular educator the child is still just a smart animal, the product of evolution in a godless, material universe that just happened by cosmic chance.
As a Christian home educator with a biblical view of education, your answer to the same question about learning theory should be very different. You would describe learning as a personal process involving both your child's heart and mind, and measured by wisdom, understanding, and knowledge of truth. You would emphasize the role of the child as a whole person with an innate, natural appetite for knowledge and a limitless capacity to learn. You would be more concerned with your child's understanding of important ideas and concepts, than with the accumulation of discreet knowledge. Your child is not just a soulless brain that needs to be filled up with facts by a teacher, but a person in relationship with you and God, who has eternal value, dignity and purpose because he or she is made in the image and likeness of their Creator" - Sally Clarkson, Educating the WholeHearted Child

Before I start, I must add that not all public educators have that view on education and learning (mom, Matt, Mary and many others I am sure); and I know for sure that many home educators teach to the mind and not the heart. So one does not necessarily equal the other. I just wanted to share this because I have been thinking a whole lot about educating the mind vs. educating the whole person. When our children grow into adults what is going to matter the most? 20 years from now what kind of people do we want our children to be? I know that, for me, it is much more important for my children to be good brothers, fathers, husbands, friends, hard workers, etc than for them to have a bunch of meaningless head knowledge. Being able to recite the states and capitals and all the presidents in alphabetical order and memorizing all the elements of the periodic table along with all the basic rules of grammar are not bad things to know, but I don't want all this head knowledge to overshadow the true purpose of why God placed us here... to serve and encourage one another, to work, and to worship and glorify the Father. It is easy to get caught up in the lie that we need to keep pace with the public school and focus on doing all that we can to make sure our children pass the EOG's with flying colors so that we can prove to the skeptics that our children really are learning something at home... but I just want to remind myself and my homeschooling friends that that is not the point and purpose of educating our children. Let us keep our hearts and minds focused on the real goals for homeschooling... and for me those goals are building strong family relationships, strong character, strong morals, and a strong work ethic and have very little to do with curriculum, testing and the standard course of study.