Chop Down the Oak Trees

At life’s end, God measures your worth in terms of the learning you brought to Him. This is the “weighing in balance”. He measures what you have learned from choices of good and evil over a lifetime. Constant life-long learning must be a goal. You can only graduate by dying. A guide to learning may be employed to assist in needed learning skills, learning how to learn. A good teacher is a constant irritant, providing questions, but no answers.

A good student listens. A good student actively works at learning. A good student develops his/her own questions and answers. Passion and desire are the keys to knowledge. If the student does not care about learning, learning cannot take place.

The student must turn the key in the lock to open the way to learning. If the student is not motivated to learn, learning cannot take place. If the student does not perform the required work of study learning cannot take place. If the student doesn't know how to study, learning cannot take place.

A parent has a responsibility and duty to the child, society, and God. That duty is to encourage learning in children. The duty of the parent is to work constantly to keep a child’s attitude toward learning positive. The duty of the parent is to work constantly for this positive attitude lest the child falter and be unable to continue to learn. Parents are the responsible persons.

Parents set the priorities for the family and the child. Learning is a high priority. TV is not a high priority. Parents must guide their children in learning how to make choices.

Once a person believes that he / she cannot learn, it becomes true for that person. Once a person believes that learning is difficult, it becomes true for that person. This belief, once its seed germinates, instantly sends up a sprout, and leafs out into an enormous oak tree.

The oak tree of self doubt is a powerful emotion. The oak tree of fear of learning is a powerful emotion. It is more powerful than fear of violence. It is more powerful than fear of parental anger. It casts a shade stronger than years of coaching can overcome. Children infrequently recover from the wild growth of fear of learning.

Sometime, one time, in either 4th or 5th grade, I found myself too over-confident, too “busy” to put in the usual time spent studying my weekly spelling list. I tried to bluff my way through. It didn’t work. I failed the test.

I was smart enough to take my speller home for the weekend. I expected my teacher to tell my father about my little problem. I was right about that.

After dinner that night, my Dad told me to go get my speller and meet him in the living room. A few questions later and he and I came to the same conclusion, that I’d not put sufficient time into studying my spelling list for that week. Dad very quietly went on to say that he thought it was time that he helped me learn how to learn. He would also help me learn how properly prioritize my efforts and attention to this task. He never raised his voice, not once.

Somehow that made it even worse. He had me begin by standing in front of him.

First I learned how to recite, spell aloud, correctly each word of that week’s list from top to bottom, plus the “extra” words at the end. Every time, I made an error, we started again at the top.

Then I learned how to recite, spell aloud, correctly each word of that whole list from bottom to top. Every time, I made an error, we started again at the bottom. Then I learned how to recite, spell aloud, correctly each word of that whole list randomly, until I’d correctly spelled each word at least twice. Then we went through each variation one more time: top to bottom, bottom to top, and randomly.

Then I learned to spell, recite aloud, correctly the spelling of each word in the list, randomly, in reverse. “Cow” became “woc.”

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“Visualize the word before you say the first letter,” Dad said.

Then I learned the list for the next week, in the same way, and there was a follow-up lesson on Sunday night. I remember agreeing that it probably wouldn’t be necessary to repeat this kind of lesson again.

And it wasn’t necessary. That two hours of a very quiet spelling lesson was enough for me to learn that if I spent enough time at it, I could learn, and as much as possible, I didn’t need much assistance or encouragement again to put in the necessary time.

There is a powerful lesson that you can learn from that little true story. I'm sure that my father would rather have done any number of things for two hours that Friday night. Now I know that he invested those two hours in my future. That investment paid off handsomely for him and me. I am politely suggesting that you invest in yourself and your children. Please do not pretend that you will not have to continue to invest in your children as they grow. My father made many investments in me. You need to do the same for your children.

To learn is the purpose of your life. The soul that God provides you is an insatiable black hole for information. Your soul is fully capable of storing all the experiences from a long, fruitful lifetime of eager, active learning. We only hope to someday build computer memory storage with that capacity.

We are all molded through the process of life. We are all created by God through the evolutionary process. We are designed to grow to a sufficient brain size to think. We have sensory organs to gather survival information. We are the eyes and ears of God.

God is the potter. We are the clay upon the wheel. We are the clay containers of His knowledge. We are the pots. We are fired, hardened, made useful to God in kiln of our life experiences.

Article Source: http://www.religionarticlelibrary.com

(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace completed an MA and taught in the public schools for 28 years. He recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, the layers of money sucking priesthood, and their departures from the fundamental ideas and messages of Religion. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will outrage everyone. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com

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