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Upgrade Chapter 9 - The Principle of Life Integration · Passing On The Faith

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The activities of real life consist of developing relationships, raising children, conflict resolution, hard work, negotiating and achieving contractual agreements, debating political positions, visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction, for Christians, designing and preparing the necessities of life, growing crops, leading, motivating and delegating, and teaching others how to do these things.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose this is the most basic way of describing the activities of life.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: If education does not prepare us for these activities, if it does not teach us how to bring the principles of knowledge into life, it is all but useless.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to Passing On the Faith, a podcast for generation.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Every week, we bring you a powerful moment in one of our sermons, audiobooks, webinars, or conference box.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: This week's episode is a chapter from our audiobook upgrade, entitled The Seventh Time Tested Secret for a Successful Education.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Principle of Life Integration, written by Kevin's concept.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Chapter 9.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: The Principle of Life Integration.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Matthew 7, 24.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: If your daughter receives a very good education, by the time she is twenty four years old, she knows the derivative of a cosine.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: She knows how Freudian psychology differs from Skinner's.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: She knows who Rome fought in the Punic Wars.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: She knows that Plato asserts ideal forms as an absolute and eternal reality of which the phenomena of the world are a transitory reflection.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: She knows how pinocytic vesicles function in an amoeba.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: She knows how to parse just about any Latin verb, and that is only if she's received a very good education.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: However, more likely than not, she will be clueless on how to manage a household of seven people, or how to handle a budget of$100,000 a year without running the household into the ground.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: She won't know how to cook a meal, how to hire a contractor, how to raise children, how to change diapers, how to calm a baby, how to nurture a two-year-old, how to exercise authority, how to create a budget, how to cut food costs by 40% without wasting fuel, or how to train a five-year-old in social skills.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: She will not know how to maintain vehicles, how to assess value in products and services, or how to decorate a house.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: She won't know how to engage in hospitality with skill, wisdom, and grace.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: She won't know how to do ninety eight percent of life.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: But did I say that she knows how to parse just about any Latin verb?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Children will sometimes learn to parse Latin verbs.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: But for what reason?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: The goal must be to improve reading ability, comprehension, and communication.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: But then why do they need to read and communicate?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: First and foremost, Christians are called to read the Bible and to edify one another with these words.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Our children will need to communicate in order to worship, nurture relationships in family and church, engage in trade and business, and teach God's word to their children.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Knowledge is one thing, but knowledge without the ability to apply that knowledge is useless and often counterproductive.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: In the proper education of a child we must teach two things.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: We teach them knowledge and then we teach them how to apply that knowledge to life.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: The seventh time tested secret for a successful education the principle of life integration.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: What is knowledge anyway?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: If education operates in the area of knowledge, then it would make sense to define knowledge.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Philosophers tell us that knowledge is a justified true belief.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if knowledge is a belief, then we need to define belief.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: As it turns out, the Bible has a great deal to say about faith or belief.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Knowledge or belief from a Christian worldview is more than facts stuffed in a brain.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: From a biblical perspective, bare knowledge is insufficient.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Knowledge or belief must bring some kind of action with it.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is the point of James when he said faith without works is dead James two twenty six.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: True religion cannot be reduced to knowledge.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Genuine faith must include action.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: For an example of that faith in action, James suggests visiting the orphans and widows in their affliction one twenty seven.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Moreover, action based on knowledge is the capstone to knowledge.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: JAME twenty three and twenty four New King James Version.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: The one who simply hears the ideas of the word receives some kind of a superficial knowledge of the truth.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: If he does not follow up with an active practice of the word, James concludes that he never really knew it in the first place.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: The superficial learning experience is characterized by the man who glances at himself in the mirror, gets an idea of what he looks like, and then walks away and quickly forgets the image.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Truth, according to the Bible, is practical.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Jesus goes so far as to say, But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, and his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God John three twenty one.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Truth is not something that sits there and looks at you.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Truth is something that is done, it is acted out.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Several examples should suffice to illustrate the point.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: What is love?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is defining the term enough to really know what love is?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or is there more to it?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: The philosopher of the modern age, Jean Jacques Rousseau, was the man who threw away his five children on the steps of an orphanage.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yet he made an astonishing claim.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was born to be the best friend that ever existed.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: No one ever had more talent for loving.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: But his life proved that he did not know the first thing about love.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: One may study every book in the world about love or travel the globe lecturing on the subject, but he really knows little about love until he has loved the unlovable.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: You do not know love unless and until you have sacrificed your pride, your comforts, your wealth, or your life for the love of a friend.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Those with the most penetrating understanding of forgiveness are those who have forgiven one who brought irreparable harm upon their children or themselves.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus understood it.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Luke twenty three thirty four.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: We could talk about love and forgiveness all day long for the next forty years, but we can never truly know these principles until they have been integrated into life, until they have been lived.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Action based in knowledge is the seal on knowledge, providing permanence, depth, and clarity to that knowledge.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Another way to look at this is by distinguishing between knowledge and wisdom.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Wisdom is the application of knowledge to life.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wisdom is vitally important to every young man and woman.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can almost hear the father in Proverbs crying out with unrelenting insistence.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom and with all thy getting get understanding four seven.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It is the way to walk in life and the road to success.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: The voice of wisdom speaks I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasures eight twenty three twenty one.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: If knowledge does not develop into wisdom, then that knowledge is fruitless.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: The goal of education then is not to increase knowledge, but to learn to properly apply knowledge in the living of life.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thus, the Western Christian idea of education has a component that makes it radically different from the ancient Greek form of education.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: The Greeks separated knowledge from practice.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: The idea realm had very little connection, if any, with physical life.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Greeks developed their scientific knowledge in the mind and generally refused scientific experimentation.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: They had long ago suggested that a large iron ball and a small iron ball would fall to the earth at the same velocity.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't until Galileo conducted his experiment that the law of physics was codified.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: The scientific method came later in the Western Christian world.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Aristotle's rhetoric appealed to a man's mind and emotions, but little was said about his will.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: The purpose of rhetoric was to establish knowledge and develop means of persuading the mind and emotions.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Persuasion was not intended to drive action, only perspectives.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: The classroom recently I had the opportunity to teach speech at a local private school.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I noticed that there were some students who were progressing well in the class while others were not.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: In an attempt to analyze the problem, I asked the students several questions.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: How many of you engage in conversation around the dinner table?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: How many of you present lessons to your family from the Bible or lead study groups in your church or in other situations?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: The result of this informal survey was exactly as I had suspected.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Those students who were doing well were those who would take the skills learned in the class and integrate them immediately into real life experiences.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: The home is a non-age segregated natural environment in which the young child may test his abilities without intimidation and ridicule.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, the classroom, as traditionally configured, is extremely limited in its capacity to integrate learning into life.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is much too sterile for true life integrated learning.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: How much of the rest of life is tied into a classroom?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: The activities of home, work, trade, and politics are, for the most part, not engaged in a classroom.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lecture oriented classrooms have their place in academics, but when those classrooms become the pervasive environment and when lectures become the predominant method, education will fail to provide for the integration of knowledge with life.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: What is real life all about anyway?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: We have defined education as preparation for life.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: If education must prepare a child for life, then we ought to have some idea of what life is about.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: About ninety percent of life is relationships, and about ninety percent of relationships are family relationships.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Beyond that, the environment in which we operate in real life is home, work, and church.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: The activities of real life consist of developing relationships, raising children, conflict resolution, hard work, negotiating and achieving contractual agreements, debating political positions, visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction, for Christians, designing and preparing the necessities of life, growing crops, leading, motivating and delegating, and teaching others how to do these things.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose this is the most basic way of describing the activities of life.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: If education does not prepare us for these activities, if it does not teach us how to bring the principles of knowledge into life, it is all but useless.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible teaches us to live life focused on others, not ourselves.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is a life of serving others.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus characterized this life in such beautiful motifs as washing his disciples' feet and dying for sinners.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: This notion flies in the face of the me centered age that seeks after the welfare only of ourselves or our own families.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: There is something inherently paradoxical in the statement from Jesus Don't seek your own happiness, you will never find it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Seek the kingdom of God, seek the happiness of others, and you will turn out to be happy.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Paraphrased from Matthew six thirty thirty three, Romans twelve ten.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: As we apply the principle of life integration, we should incorporate service to others in our children's education.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Visiting of a widow, preparing a meal for a sick family, an occasional missions trip, making a provision for orphans, defending the oppressed fatherless, and engaging in hospitality as a family should all be regular events in any Paidea program in the raising of a child.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Life was not designed to be cluttered, self-centered, and material focused.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is not primarily technology, it is relationships.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is pure and simple serving.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Integration.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Experts in foreign languages tell us that the best way to learn a language is by completely immersing oneself in another culture without access to one's own mother tongue.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: In this completely life integrated environment, most people can learn to communicate well in the new language in about three months.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it would take a minimum of two to three years to learn the language, and then it is not usually learned very well.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: When the rest of education is integrated into the familiar environments where real life happens, that integrating principle kicks in.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, school is not the context for real life.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: School takes place on an island where knowledge is conveyed, well sanitized and safely separated from the rest of life, as in business, family, church, politics, and culture.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Home education will be much more life integrated because about 75% of life takes place in the home.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Mentorship is also highly effective as far as it brings theoretical knowledge directly into the work environment.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: The mentorship presents the big picture and then ties in the disparate pieces of knowledge into the whole.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: The apprentices discover by real life experience how multiple aspects learned in their various college courses actually interrelate in the business world.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Without real experience in business or ministry itself, they will never understand how the parts contribute to the whole.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: That which is taught in the mentorship goes far beyond what can be conveyed by direct verbal communication.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: The apprentices will pick up on the way the master craftsman does his work, and they learn by carefully emulating the method.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Healthy economies are much more dependent on mentorship training than college instruction.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Whether a young person will seek a career as an artist, a musician, a business owner, a plumber, a doctor, a journalist, a home builder, an engineer or a pastor, he or she will never learn the field, the craft, or the art form well without spending two or three years in a mentorship.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: When I graduated with an engineering degree from one of the top three engineering colleges in California, I was still unprepared for a job in the macroeconomy.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: My school prided itself in hands-on learning, the best laboratories and high academics.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless, this preparation was insufficient to introduce a productive engineer to the marketplace.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was virtually worthless to the company where I worked for at least three years.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, more experienced engineers provided helpful mentoring on site for me.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: As I transferred into new divisions and took up new projects, I would seek out the best engineer mentors and visit with them on a daily basis.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would subject my work to their review, listen carefully to their verbal analyses of designs, and attempt to follow their line of thinking.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually I became an effective engineer and manager in the corporate setting.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Not long after graduating from college, my father and I were developing a piece of property, and in the process put in a drilled well some two hundred feet deep.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: The well was a poor performer, but we could see quite a bit of water almost filling the casing.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Peering into the well, I told my dad I would like to calculate the amount of water in the pipe.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get a string and lower it into the well to figure out the water level, I suggested.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Always the more practical minded, my dad responded with why don't you just drop a rock?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't sure what he meant.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was making an obvious application of the basic physics equation h equals one half gt squared.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Every kid who studied high school physics and most college engineering students should know the formula.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: But to this point, I had never used the theoretical concept in real life.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I had studied the principle on paper, but because I had never applied the principle in three-dimensional space, the principle was useless to me.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: For this reason, about 99% of learning is a waste of time.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Unless the theory is taken into real life, the knowledge is irrelevant and soon forgotten.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: The second way in which life integrated education is obtained is by the provision of a great number of real life experiences in the three-dimensional world.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: While some things are learned from a flat two-dimensional textbook, most of these pieces of knowledge are not well suited to high-level memory, available for recall at a moment's notice for the rest of one's life.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: The ability to recall, integrate, and apply knowledge has a great deal to do with the connections that are established in the brain.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: The only way to establish a rich network of connections within the brain on any piece of knowledge is to connect it with a three-dimensional experience.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Academic experiences beyond the books include field trips, experimentation, and handwork projects.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is not to eliminate the conceptual information obtained from books, but it is the field trips that expand, clarify, and solidify that information obtained from books.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: One evening last year, as we were preparing for bed, my wife was lamenting that our daughter Emily did not complete her English grammar assignments that day.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: After pursuing the issue a little further, we discovered that she had been working hard on a lengthy and detailed email communication to her grandparents.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was right then that we determined we had become far too rigid in our academic program and we needed to integrate more of real life into it.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: After all, when you grow up to manage a home or a business in real life, what are you doing all day?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Are you busy working on English grammar assignments?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Of course not.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Your life is filled with things like writing notes and letters to family and friends, recording life events in diaries, preparing business letters, and maybe writing an occasional work of fiction.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: In recent years, I have increasingly involved my 13-year-old son in my life.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: He is with me at least six days every week.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: He has studied his algebra, Latin, and English composition in my office downtown, in conference rooms, restaurants, the state capitol, the car, and on rare occasions, a classroom.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: While the environment changes, it is always real life.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: His education is much more than a textbook.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: He hears business negotiations in the boardroom, cell phones conversations, the hiring of subcontractors for a building project, sales calls, and an occasional high stress conflict situation.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: One afternoon last winter, I received a phone call from a representative of an important publishing company.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: He was interested in a book I was writing and wanted to meet with me in a nearby city.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: I knew this would be a key meeting in the development of my own career, and I was tempted to leave my son at home.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: When he found out about the meeting, however, he asked me if he could attend.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: For nearly 15 minutes I wrestled with the decision.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Should I integrate my son into this and risk losing an important contract?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: What would the executive say if I brought my son with me into the interview?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Would my son say something?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Something that would affect my chances of developing a good relationship with this key publisher?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: After all, one never knows what a thirteen year old boy might say.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: As I vacillated on the decision, another series of questions rushed into my mind.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Important questions, life changing questions.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly what am I trying to accomplish here?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Am I trying to publish a book or raise a son?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: What am I doing in life?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: What better opportunity could I find in which my son could learn something about real life, real negotiations, and real business?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: With clarity and certainty I knew that my purpose was to raise a son.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: There was no reason for him to stay home, yet there was every reason in the world for him to be there.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: The boy could watch his dad squirm for two hours while trying to sell himself in a high stakes interview.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: So he came with me that day and watched and listened.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: On the way home, he commended me on several aspects of my presentation and suggested several areas that might have been improved.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: By the time he is eighteen years old, I hope that my son will have the wisdom I have learned in my twenties, thirties, and forties because he traveled with me and watched me.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: He will learn the most valuable lessons I have learned the same way I have learned them through real life experiences.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I could discuss the principles of business negotiations with my son for ten years and put him through every textbook I could find on the subject, but real life situations are far more effective than all the flat academic work typically assigned.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: We must avoid at all costs the separation of school and life.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Learning must never be confined within the school walls for any young person.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: This does not mean to eliminate the two-dimensional textbook work, but it does mean that if the student has nothing in real life to hang the textbook work upon, what he learns from the textbook will be next to useless and soon forgotten.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Think integration.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most important lessons impressed with hearty dogmatism on the new initiate by seasoned teachers at home or school is relax.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: The tendency is always to load up the schedule of parent slash teacher and students alike with quantity rather than quality.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yet so much of life's lessons are taught while doing life.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Life is cooking dinner, reading out loud, playing a game, running to the store, changing oil in the car, driving in the car, talking on the phone, changing a diaper, visiting the chiropractor, reading the newspaper, subcontracting a job on the house, writing letters, negotiating, debating, attending a church worship service together, attending a political rally, bargaining for an automobile purchase, voting by absentee ballot, and a thousand other things.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: If our children know everything about the death of Socrates, but nothing about the above experiences, they are much further behind the student who knows all of the above.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: The practical student will always know where to go to find out about the death of Socrates if that is needful information.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Several years ago, my wife was in the kitchen grinding coriander seed with a mortar and pestle arrangement, and the coriander was flying around the kitchen.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Our little nine year old daughter Bethany looked up at her and suggested Why don't you use the pepper grinder for that, mom?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: For a moment, Brenda gazed at her in amazement.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: God has blessed us with a little genius, she said.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: But how did Bethany come up with such an idea?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: While it is true that the coriander seed looks a great deal like the peppercorn, only differing in color, the little girl was merely applying to coriander seed what she already knew about peppercorn.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is true life application.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: But somehow these applications come hard considering the present configuration of education.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is as if we are learning to ride bicycles by studying bikeology for twelve years.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: We take bike 101, bike one hundred two, bike one hundred three, bike statistics, bike dynamics, bike accident recovery, and so on.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: But we have never quite mounted a bike and started pedaling.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: We have twelve years of theory and no meaningful life application.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is a highly stilted form of education.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: A fundamental aspect to life integration.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: After spending most of my formative years on an island out in the Pacific Ocean, my family returned to the United States in 1981, and I matriculated into a large West Coast public university.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: My quick ascent to student body president at the university is still an enigma to many.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Looking back at that experience today, I can identify one key factor that contributed to my success.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was my ability to speak to every group on campus and relate to those groups.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: While other candidates were visibly uncomfortable in some environments, I was able to relate comfortably across the spectrum.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Liberals, conservatives, minority groups, engineers, sororities, and athletes.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: While being careful not to alter my core principles, I did adapt my message to meet the interests and the sentiments of each group I was addressing.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Leadership, above all fields, requires the ability to relate to a wide variety of people who do not think and act alike.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: A real problem with the modern classroom situation is the click.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Typically, the click discourages diversity in the group, especially age diversity.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: The beginning of the click is age segregated classes.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Often the click narrows to income class, cultural background, or skin color.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Since the advent of the large public school, which replaced the one room schoolhouse, age segregation has become the nearly universal approach used in school, church, and youth club.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: But as the young person moves into the business world, he simply cannot expect his employer to populate his division with only those who belong to his particular peer group.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, this typical classroom approach also tends to encourage immaturity.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Delayed maturity is the sad consequence of children growing up without regular social contact with those older than themselves.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: They are unable to mature in their vocabulary, relationships, and practical wisdom.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: My early formative years on the Japanese mission field gave me an advantage.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was a middle child of six, and our home was regularly habited by adults.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: When associating with those of my own age, almost without exception, they were children of a very different cultural background than my own.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: We rarely ran into any other Westerners in the remote village where my father labored.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Most children are socialized in their own peer group according to the cultural expectations of the day.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: They expect to associate with people who think and act just like them, of their own cultural group.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the world does not run that way.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: How will we raise our children to be effective leaders, team coordinators, or team players in church or business if they have been raised in youth groups, age segregated classrooms, and the narrow confines of their peer group?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: While the one room schoolhouse may not be available to every parent, this principle of cross-age contact is an important factor in the education equation.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Some children attending age segregated classes do find creative ways to cross the barriers.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Older children may be called upon at times to mentor younger children in another class.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Some parents have more interaction with their children than others.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some parents intentionally invite interesting people with diverse backgrounds to their homes for dinner.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Our family had the privilege of entertaining a pastor from Zambia for an entire week last year.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Still other parents involve their children in their businesses on the weekends and during the summer months.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: There are literally thousands of ways in which we can integrate our children into our lives, our homes, and our businesses.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge for every parent is to find the best ways to make that happen.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: The loss of life integration With the progressive advent of institutionalized schooling, the opportunity for life integration has gradually dissipated in Europe, America, and the Far East.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Schools have been increasingly separated from family, business, church, community service, and the rest of what constitutes real life.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Far more time is spent in a school building today than was spent in the classroom in the year 1776.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Even by the eighteen eighties, the farmer boy, Almanzo Wilder from Little House on the Prairie, spent less time per day, fewer days per year, and fewer years altogether in school than children do today.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yet it was rare to find illiteracy in America in the nineteenth century.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: The illiteracy problem is exponentially worse today even though we now have far more professional teachers, far more schools, and far more time spent in those schools.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it would have been the exception for a boy not to have found his way into an apprenticeship by the time he was fifteen or sixteen.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now in the twenty first century, hamstrung by child labor laws, mandatory attendance laws, and social expectations, it is rare to find young men at fifteen or sixteen who are seriously engaged in an apprenticeship.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: The nineteenth century humorist Mark Twain warned of the potential damage that could be done by the institutionalization of education, quipping never let school get in the way of a good education.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: A few tips This book is not intended to provide a narrow set of rules by which one might educate one's child.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: The broad principles are here.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, the following tips are only suggestions that might be helpful as you work this principle of life integration into your child's education.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: One, tie in the things they have learned recently to what you are doing.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: If, for example, your son has recently studied the relationship of velocity, distance, and time, have him calculate your velocity by timing between mile markers on the road.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: This means that you must have an idea of what your children are studying in order to incorporate that knowledge into real life.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: two, limit the time they spend listening to lectures.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: three, do things in life that are really important.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Build relationships.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible gives us an idea of what constitutes the important things of life.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: four, take your children with you on shopping trips, business trips, and recreational activities as often as you can.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Five, train your children to think and communicate all the time, especially when it comes to the real and important things of life.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do this by example.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: The dinner table should buzz with intelligent conversation on stimulating topics.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Six, train your children to be able to interact well with people who do not think and act just like they do.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Seven, encourage your children to start their own business or work the family business with you.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Seek out apprenticeships, especially those that will coalesce with your child's calling in life.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: eight.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Give preference to hands on training if it is at all practical.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nine.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Look for a learning environment that is as close to real life as you can find.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: ten.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Incorporate curriculum that understands the importance of real life application.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Conclusion More than anything else, real life is real people and the contact that our children have with them.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Real life is relationships as we work to cultivate and maintain those relationships.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: These include business, family, church, and social relationships.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: It is the development of understanding and love.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is communication and the conflict resolution skills necessary to guide those relationships through the rocky waters of life.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: A complex skill set such as this cannot be learned in a peer group, but it can be learned in an integrated family, church, or similar social environment.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, in the all-important task of educating the next generation, our children must be able to integrate the knowledge they attain from books into real life.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: They must be able to apply the concepts of mathematics, language arts, geography, history, art, and so forth in everyday life.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Any education that does not provide application or the savvy for application is useless.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Application must be so folded into the theory that it would be almost impossible to distinguish the seams.org slash media.