HomeARC ML 0371
"THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION!"--MO November 1975 DFO No.371
--(From a discussion on Child Education:)
Copyright © January 1976 by The Children of God
[HomeARC note (10/98): The Charter states: "Children under the age of 16 have the right to: Sufficient time, opportunity and educational materials to receive an adequate education that allows them to become competent in a manner appropriate to their age, ability and aptitude, in the skills of reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, sciences, and other curricular subjects, including practical-life skill" and to seek official certification for such schooling ("Rights of the Children," Point 8.F., G.; see also 9.J. concerning further outside studies).]
1. (MARIA: HOW MUCH FORMAL EDUCATION SHOULD WE GIVE OUR CHILDREN to enable them to live within our communities in our present-day society? How much education do our children need to be able to understand the MO Letters and the Bible, the basics of our spiritual education?)
2. I USED TO TELL MY PROFESSORS in college that it seems the whole higher educational system was designed to make things as complicated as possible and to know too much about things that we don't need to know so much about. There are lots of primitive peoples who live very happily without knowing very much at all except their daily life and how to survive.
3. IF THERE ARE THINGS IN THE MO LETTERS our children don't understand, they can easily look them up in a dictionary or an encyclopedia or a science book or something without necessarily having to go to college to know it all. Somebody can look it up for them or their teachers can explain it to them without the kids having to waste years on a big education.
4. LITTLE CHILDREN SHOULD HAVE a little history, geography, general science, basic math, basic reading, be able to read and to write and to figure and to understand the basic scientific principles. I never had much science but read a lot of science on my own. I never had anything beyond general science in junior high school as far as my formal education was concerned.
5. I NEVER TOOK CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS OR ASTRONOMY or even the senior high school subjects on science. Most of what I learned about science was just what I picked up from my own general reading and study.
6. THEY NEED TO LEARN TO READ AND WRITE AND TO FIGURE. They need to know some math and basic general science, a little basic general history, world history. Thank God we don't have to specialise in the history of any particular country, unless it's some history on the country in which they live which they ought to know something about. But we're scattered worldwide and world history is more important to us than anything else, just general world history from the beginnings of Creation.
7. WE SHOULD HAVE A BASIC EDUCATION FOR OUR CHILDREN: Reading, writing, arithmetic, the old 3 R's, plus geography, world history and one year of general science. You get general science even in junior high now, and it's all most people need to know about the physical principles of the world around them.
8. THE NEWSPAPER'S MORE UP-TO-DATE ON SCIENCE than most science textbooks--they get old so fast because so much more is being learned all the time. So I think the equivalent of a year of basic general science, a year of geography, a year of basic world history and enough math to be able to go to the grocery store and figure out the cost of groceries or count up their litnessing money is enough.
9. I DON'T THINK THEY NEED ANY OF THOSE ADVANCED MATH COURSES, JUST GENERAL MATH. I don't think they need geometry or algebra. Of course algebra isn't all that difficult. When I transferred high schools once, I got in with a class that were already on the second semester of algebra, but I'd never had any algebra.
10. SO THE TEACHER JUST HANDED ME THE BOOKS and said, "Here, study up on it yourself and maybe you can catch up with us"--and I was up with the class in two weeks! Otherwise I'd have been spending a whole semester studying algebra--algebra that I could do in two weeks! In two weeks I just read the book, and in two weeks I could go on with the rest of the class.
11. BUT OUR CHILDREN DON'T PARTICULARLY NEED ADVANCED MATH OF ANY KIND. Most of all what we want them to be is witnesses for the Lord, and newspaper boys on the street don't have to have an advanced course in mathematics to sell newspapers. Kids who are particularly interested in those subjects will study them on their own. So why should we want them to get involved with advanced math?
12. WHY SHOULD THEY TAKE ALGEBRA, GEOMETRY, TRIGONOMETRY and all that stuff unless they're going to be an engineer or a scientist or something? Who wants to be an engineer or a scientist when the world's going to pot and they've already got too many engineers and scientists who are about ready to destroy us!
13. AND HOW MUCH HISTORY DO YOU NEED? Most of these countries specialise in their own history, especially the U.S., so kids in America know very little about the outside world, but, oh boy, do they drill in the American history!
14. ACTUALLY, IN JUST ONE TEXTBOOK THEY COULD GET ALL THE HISTORY THEY NEED from ancient history right up to present current events--a basic general overall view of world history since Bible times. If they want to go and study something special about Attila the Hun, for example, they can get themselves a book of it and read it on their own just because they're interested.
15. THE ONLY THINGS OUR CHILDREN NEED TO KNOW ARE READING, WRITING AND ARITHMETIC--I mean simple arithmetic: Counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying, division and decimals. They need to really know their decimals and their percentages, as that sort of thing is very important.--This is just your basic math up to about the level of a 7th grader, or even 5th or 6th grade now in some schools.
16. IN OUR SCHOOL WHERE I TAUGHT, 7TH AND 8TH GRADE is where we really got into the final stages of basic math such as decimals and percentages, and beyond that you get into algebra and all the rest. We even got some basic geometry, you learn what squares are and how to find square measurements and volumes and stuff like that.
17. THEY ONLY NEED ALL THESE LITTLE BASICS THAT ARE USEFUL FOR EVERYDAY LIFE AND LIVING. Figuring out, for example, how much water there is in that tank or how much cubic feet of space and so on. This is all in basic math and that's all they need.
18. THEY NEED BASIC READING AND WRITING so they can read and write and then they can read whatever they want to read beyond what we teach.
19. BASIC MATH, BASIC WORLD HISTORY, BASIC GEOGRAPHY AND BASIC GENERAL SCIENCE about everything around the house, how the toilet works, the gas, the lights, the water, etc., plus the little basic principles of physics and a few basic things about chemistry.
20. THEY NEED THE EVERYDAY PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE OF PRACTICAL EVERYDAY LIVING--how a pump works and how a motor works and all the little practical things that most everybody has to deal with--what makes the weather, how the weather works, all these very simple things. That's all the scientific education they need outside of what they want to read on their own.
21. (WHAT AGE DID YOU START REALLY GETTING INTO BOOKS, really reading and learning about things from the outside?) Probably at about two or three! I can still remember sitting on somebody's lap with them showing me the pictures and telling me the stories. I got into books right away, as soon as I became interested in pictures.
22. WHEN I LOOKED AT THE PICTURES I WANTED TO KNOW THE STORY, so they'd sit me on their lap and show me the pictures and tell me the story. I loved it! Once I knew the story I could take the book and leaf through it and relive the story with every picture. I'd get so into it that it was almost like I was living in it--maybe I got too much into it.
23. I USED TO DREAM ABOUT IT. I used to think I was really living in that forest with those cockatoos that talked, it made such an impression on me, that magic forest. All those fairy tales and all, they still linger with me they were so real to me.
24. SO YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU TEACH KIDS AT AN EARLY AGE when they're really impressionable and it'll really stick with them, if not consciously, subconsciously.
25. (WHAT ABOUT GEOGRAPHY--SHOULD THAT GO ALONG WITH HISTORY?) Most of your new books on history and geography and the peoples of the world are combined now in what they call "Social Studies" and often they're combined in one textbook in which you learn about the world in general, its history, its peoples, its products, its economics, etc.--a general combined knowledge of the whole world in just one textbook, a one year course.
26. OUR CHILDREN NEED ONLY WHAT IS KNOWN AS A BASIC EDUCATION which used to be the common thing in the old days. All a child needed was about six or eight grades of basic education, and by that time they were 12 or 14 years of age and getting ready to get married and/or go to work on the farm and help Dad or help Mom with the housework and children, and they had no more time to go to school.
27. THE GIRLS STARTED HAVING BABIES of their own or were old enough to help mother take care of the family, large families with lots of children, and they didn't have time to fiddle around wasting their lives away sitting behind desks reading stuff they didn't need to know. They had to go to work and help the family.
28. THE BOYS HAD TO GO TO WORK ON THE FARM and so did the girls, so if they got six or eight years of education they were doing well. I know schools in Texas where they still make the 8th grade graduation a big thing because they never expect to see school again! The girls dress up and the boys make speeches and you'd think it was a college graduation!
29. THIS IS THEIR LAST TIME IN SCHOOL because they're going to go to work on the ranches and the girls are going to get married and have children, and some already have, and they're never going to go to high school or college either one!
30. EVEN A SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION IS SUPERFICIAL, extraneous and unnecessary for our kids. It's superfluous! Our kids are smart, and the Lord by His Spirit gives them wisdom.
31. (PAUSES TO LECTURE ON WARM CLOTHING:) Why aren't you wearing your long hose? It's so silly for you girls to sit around and catch cold and freeze because you haven't got enough sense to put enough clothes on to keep warm! In the wintertime every girl ought to wear a pair of panty hose and sweaters and jackets on top of them to keep warm! They don't have to have the buildings all heated up like ovens just because the girls are not willing to put enough clothes on!
32. [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: "
"] You spend the first four or five years [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: "
"] doing nothing but learning how to read and write your own language, basic reading, writing and grammar, learning to read and write, and some arithmetic. Then, depending on the school you're in, a year or two of some history and/or geography and/or basic science.
33. NOWADAYS THEY START BASIC SCIENCE WITH THE KIDS WAY DOWN IN THE LOWER LEVELS which is fine if they make it simple enough and they can take it. That's great! If they teach them early enough maybe they'll only need a 4th or 5th grade education!
34. I'M ALL FOR WHAT THEY CALL SOCIAL STUDIES where you combine world history, geography and the study of its peoples, governments and economics all in one textbook--in a one year course you get the whole thing. I think our children should be taught this basic world history including its geography, peoples, products, economics, governments, etc.
35. A GOOD BIG GEOGRAPHY-SIZE OR ATLAS-SIZE SOCIAL STUDIES BOOK which gives you all these in one volume with lots of pictures and maps is tremendous. I know I really enjoyed it when I was young. In the 7th grade we started getting that sort of thing.
36. UP TO THE 6TH GRADE WE REALLY DIDN'T GET MUCH MORE THAN READING AND WRITING AND ARITHMETIC mostly. I think our kids could learn to read and write and do math faster than that, so they don't have to spend so much time on it, since they get such individual instruction.
37. IN ONE LITTLE SEMESTER OR YEAR TEXTBOOK ON GENERAL SCIENCE they could learn the basic sciences and a little bit about each important thing that affects their daily lives. The science textbook that I used with my classes was just like that, very practical general science where you learn the basic principles, all those things which are very interesting and you can learn very simply from a simple little general applied science textbook.
38. (WHAT ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS AND THE POLITICAL SITUATION?) When I was in high school we used to get a little weekly newspaper, a current events paper in World History class which kept us up-to-date on current events, applied world history today, which was good. But daily newspapers, or newsmagazines--or even recent MO Letters--could be used.
39. 7TH GRADE TO ME WAS THE MOST INTERESTING GRADE in my whole education, because there for the first time we got to really use our knowledge of reading and math and foundation studies on several very basic sciences such as world history, geography, social studies, general science, etc.
40. PHYSIOLOGY AND BIOLOGY, THE LIFE SCIENCES, were fascinating, in which you learn about life and plants and animals and your own body. We need a good textbook on that that doesn't have all that damned evolution in it. The trouble with nearly all biology books now is that they are totally evolutionary and you can hardly get a thing that doesn't teach evolution.
41. WE HAD A COURSE IN JUNIOR HIGH CALLED PHYSIOLOGY, a study of the human body and all it's parts, and I can remember having to memorise all the various bones, organs, circulatory system, nervous system, etc., and how it all worked, and I thought that was great! It really has been a helpful basic thing to know about your body and diet and your stomach and lungs and how your veins work and your eyes see and your ears hear, etc.--everything you need to know about your own body, basic simple things. Sometimes they called it Health Class, sometimes they call it Physiology.
42. THESE ARE VERY IMPORTANT NECESSARY BASIC THINGS THAT THEY NEED TO KNOW, THE LIFE SCIENCES OF PLANTS AND ORGANISMS--BIOLOGY--the way plants grow and pollinate and all that sort of thing, the different kinds of animals, zoology, etc. In physiology, the study of the human body, is the time to bring in, by all means, the study of sex. We also have a lot of health and sex education in the MO Letters.
43. PENMANSHIP WAS MY WORST SKILL.--I was a horrible penman! All my worst grades were in penmanship and I was so glad that after the 4th grade we didn't have to have penmanship any more! After that you either wrote well or you were a hopeless case like me, and that was the end of it, thank God!
44. (MARIA: WE DON'T HAVE TO BE SO FINICKY ABOUT PEOPLE'S PENMANSHIP, just so it can be read.) Yes, as long as it's legible and clear. My script was horrible, so I finally gave up on script entirely and just went to printing, and I didn't learn how to print until I was in 7th grade and took manual drawing, on which I got some prizes for some of my architectural blueprints. From then on I've always printed. But even my printing isn't too good either, as my poor secretaries know!
45. YOU ONLY NEED ABOUT THREE BASIC TEXTBOOKS to sum up all the world's knowledge that you really need to know after you've learned to read, write and figure: Social Studies, General Science and Basic Biology.--Just three: Social Studies, General Science and Basic Biology. What else is there to know?--A grand total of only six basic studies: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Social Studies, General Science and General Biology. Those cover just about all you need to know, most of the world's basic useful knowledge.
46. WE DON'T NEED TO GET INTO LITERATURE except as each individual person is particularly interested. We've got enough literature in the Bible and MO Letters to keep them busy with all the literature they need to read! If they're interested in poetry or various other kinds of literature you could let them read it if they want to, the writings of various famous poets and authors like Shakespeare, Scott, etc.
47. IF THEY WANT TO READ BOOKS, LET THEM READ HISTORICAL FICTION or just plain straight history--both are thrilling reading. If they want to know more about any of these basic sciences or the human body or anything, they can study these on their own and read books on these subjects. (Maria: There'd be enough special projects just stemming from the MO Letters, things that they'd want to learn more about.) That's possible, because we mentioned an awful lot of famous people and places and things and sciences, etc., so if they find any of these things particularly appealing to them or interesting, they can always get books on these various subjects that they can read on their own.
48. (MARIA: IN SOME COUNTRIES IT'S VERY DIFFICULT TO GET BOOKS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, so it's difficult to have reference books and they can't just go to any library, because so many of our people are English-speaking.) So they should have a good representative English Library in their Colony and a good set of English encyclopaedias. I'd say for the average Colony in a foreign country who have got English-speaking leadership and children, they ought to have a good set of English encyclopaedias, particularly a children's picture encyclopaedia like the Book of Knowledge. These are usually rather expensive, so provisioning might be necessary, but people like to give to children.
49. THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE WAS POPULAR WHEN I WAS A KID and I just loved that! I used to go through it and read it a lot on my own. It was designed for children, simple, and you could really learn a lot from just reading the Book of knowledge. It was full of pictures, and you could read on any subject you wanted to, look it up alphabetically.
50. IT HAD A WHOLE SERIES OF STUDIES THAT WERE OUTLINED. You could even learn languages like simple French, etc. I remember I was trying so hard to learn French, not knowing anything about pronunciation or anything, but just reading it out of the Book of Knowledge. I think probably what little I ever did learn about French was from the Book of Knowledge. They had it all spelled out and they showed you how to pronounce it and all in interesting conversational and story form--merci beaucoup and all that stuff--and that's about all the French I ever learned.--Ha! (Maria: So that would be a worthwhile investment.)
51. YOU NEED A GOOD SET OF CHILDREN'S ENCYCLOPAEDIAS--not too low a level--I'd say on the level in which they're going to be really interested and investigative at about the 6th or 7th grade level, when they'll want to look up extra reading and study on their own. I think that's a very worthwhile investment for any Colony where they have very many English-speaking children.
52. SO IN EACH OF THESE COLONIES, EVEN WHERE THEY DON'T HAVE A SCHOOL, THEY COULD HAVE AT LEAST ONE GOOD BOOK ON EACH OF THESE BASIC SUBJECTS: General Science, Biology and Social Studies for the kids to read and study together or separately. That's all anybody needs to know. They don't need all those high school subjects of higher mathematics and more detailed history and the various detailed phases of economics, specialised sciences, etc. The System starts really specialising in High School now, where they get into the infinite details of each thing, more advanced courses on each subject, which our kids don't need.
53. WE'RE NOT GOING INTO LIFE TO TRY TO MAKE SCIENTISTS OUT OF OUR KIDS TO TRY TO MAKE THEM INTO BUSINESSMEN TO MAKE MONEY or anything like that. If we're going to make teachers out of them childcare nurses and children's teachers, our teachers only need to know as much as they intend to teach, so our teachers don't need any more than a 6th or 7th grade education themselves--what do they need more than that? I'll grant you that some college courses are helpful, maybe in education and studies on education, child psychology and how to teach and teaching methods and all this sort of thing. They can be helpful if they have had them.
54. BUT THEY'LL LEARN MORE THROUGH ACTUAL PRACTICE. They've got plenty of chance to actually practice teaching and experimenting on our own kids--they'll learn enough right there and more than they'll ever learn out of books. What else do we need to know?
55. YOUR GENERAL SCIENCE BOOKS EVEN DEAL WITH MECHANICS. They usually study the internal combustion engine and all that sort of thing in the General Science book, so that you'll understand all the various mechanical gadgets of your day and what makes them tick. So you don't need mechanical sciences of any kind beyond that stage. A good thorough General Science book, a good thorough General Biology book and a good thorough general Social Studies book will give you a good thorough basic education.--What else? That just about covers everything in the world and life and science.
56. (MARIA: RIGHT HERE IN JUST TWO SMALL INEXPENSIVE BOOKS WE HAVE, "THE BOOK OF THE WORLD" AND THE TRAVEL BOOK THAT BRITISH AIRWAYS PUTS OUT, they cover all that you've been talking about in the Social Studies in only two little books). Even if you can't get the textbooks you can just buy that sort of thing and learn a lot from a few little books. Of course it's all on an adult level, but by the time kids are at the 7th grade level they are on an adult level.
57. THEY SAY THE AVERAGE WORLD MENTALITY IS ABOUT THAT OF A 12-YEAR-OLD CHILD!--WHICH IS THE 6TH OR 7TH GRADE LEVEL! That's about as far as most people develop mentally, and that's about all you need to know. Anything they want beyond that they can do on their own in the library and get books on it if they can, or have them sent from home, and in special studies or history books.
58. I LOVED TO READ HISTORY AND I LOVED HISTORICAL FICTION because I was digging the real history out of it. I also loved science--that's why I loved science fiction, because it was scientific and I liked to study science, and that put it in an interesting palatable form. I also loved biology, particularly the sexual aspects, and that's why I liked sex books and girlie magazines--I was studying biology all the time in a very palatable form! Ha! With good textbooks on General Biology, General Science and Social Studies they will be getting all the basic education in general useful knowledge that they need to know to live in this world and understand it.
59. THEIR SPIRITUAL EDUCATION THEY'LL BE GETTING FROM THE MO LETTERS AND THE BIBLE as their spiritual guides in their studies in religion and psychology, etc. They cover everything else that they need to know. (Maria: Hopefully the MO Letters and the spiritual can be completely intertwined with the basic secular education.) Well yes, if they get that Index really going good where it's pretty thorough, if they want to read up on any particular subjects in the MO Letters they can run through the Index on them.
60. A LOT OF THE MO LETTERS NOW ARE HISTORY, but they're an interesting study to understand our history, what the MO Letters were like in the beginning and how they got started just as advice to the Family in the very beginning. But that much education, that's all our kids need, all they need to know to meet the public. If they have a good thorough knowledge of each one of these, they'd know more than most people do!
61. MOST PEOPLE GO THROUGH ALL THAT IN LOWER SCHOOL without being serious about it, without really trying to learn or understand, and then they've got to literally take it all over again in high school in a more refined state, and then all over again in college until they finally learn it. They spend half their life going to school.
62. OUR KIDS SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SPEND [ALERT! CHECK FOR SANITIZATION: YEARS AND ] YEARS IN SCHOOL, especially if we start them learning to read and write at the very early ages of two and three, as is possible, so they're reading well by the time they're four or five. As soon as they've got the language skills developed to where they can read and write well, we might even be able to teach them these final three general subjects--General Science, General Biology and General Social Studies--at the time most kids are just starting school, at five, six or seven years of age!
63. IN A VERY SIMPLE BASIC FORM WE COULD POSSIBLY TEACH THEM THESE THINGS AT A VERY LOW GRADE LEVEL, THE FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD GRADE LEVEL! It would be good to be able to get a textbook which could have them on that level if possible, and I have heard that they do nowadays in some schools, they do start them on some of those things at a very low grade level. If they can learn basic language skills and mathematics by the time they're five or six, to learn how to read and write and simple figures, the rest will be easy going. They could spend the next two or three years developing those skills a little more as they learn these other general subjects.
64. WHAT ELSE DO THEY TEACH YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW? They have a lot of practical things that our kids already learn in their Colony. You can learn typing from a textbook, sewing from somebody or even a textbook, music or guitar--any of our practical daily living skills. Of all the places to learn these practical things, the ideal place to learn them is in the Colony.
65. (MARIA: ANOTHER PROPOSED FORMAL TEXTBOOK CLASS FOR OUR REVOLUTIONARY CHILDREN IS ARTS AND MUSIC.) Well, I can remember in 7th Grade basic art and music appreciation classes where you just learned a little smattering of the main basic famous musicians and a sample of their works and a little study of the famous artists and a sample of their works. For those interested in art, a little something about colours, what colours to mix together to make this colour and that colour and so on, and basic music principles, we could have a basic art and basic music appreciation class.
66. I CAN REMEMBER THAT IN 2ND AND 3RD GRADES they used to set up a big radio in our little auditorium in our grade school and the famous symphonic conductor Walter Damrosh used to come on the first network shows on radio from New York City and explain to the kids about different stories upon which famous music was based and say things like, "Now can you imagine the ride of the Valkyries through the sky when you hear this music" or "This is the storm and this is the calm after the storm," etc.
67. BUT I DON'T THINK THAT OUR KIDS NEED TO LEARN ALL THE WORLDLY ARTS AND WORLDLY MUSIC and all that sort of thing. If they're interested in that, they can study it on their own. I'm just saying what are the basic absolute necessities. (Maria: I think the major emphasis on an arts and music class ought to be practical, like learning the guitar or learning to paint.) Yes, absolutely! (Maria: Or a little drama, in the little skits that the children put on, they're already starting their appreciation of drama.)
68. AFTER ALL, WHEN YOU STUDY MUSIC AND ART APPRECIATION, YOU'RE ONLY STUDYING THE FAMOUS WORLDLY MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES which are so far beyond anything you could ever possibly even hope to attain to yourself, you might as well forget about it--it's just stuffing your head with knowledge of what the rest of the world has already done and which you'll probably never be able to do yourself!
69. I THINK IT'S FAR MORE IMPORTANT TO LEARN TO PLAY THE GUITAR SIMPLY YOURSELF THAN TO STUDY BACH AND BEETHOVEN AND THE BEATLES! It's far more important to learn to make some little paintings yourself like I used to do when I was about five or six years of age, than it is to study who were the great art masters and what paintings did they paint and blah blah blah! About the only reason you did that when you were in school was to show that you weren't dumb, that you knew a little something about music and art and the people that were in it.
70. BUT WE'RE NOT WORRIED ABOUT OUR KIDS BEING DUMB ABOUT UNIMPORTANT VAIN WORLDLY KNOWLEDGE and worldly artists and worldly musicians, a lot of whom were inspired of the Devil anyway, so why should they know them?
71. THE SCHOOL EDUCATION OF OUR CHILDREN SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHIN SIX OR SEVEN YEARS at the very most, by the time they reach their teens. By the time they reach 12 or 13 years of age their education should be complete.
72. I'D JUST SUM IT UP SIMPLY BY SAYING WE ONLY NEED THE 3 R'S AND THE 3 G's: The 3 R's are Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic, and the 3 G's, General Science, General Biology and General Social Studies. (Maria: And their current events should be taken from the newspapers and MO Letters and things like that.)--Amen. They can study that in connection with Social Studies, and there are always new current events about science, biology etc. Much of it's not good anyway--just lies, theories and whatnot on evolution.
73. SO THAT OUGHT TO DO IT TO GIVE OUR KIDS ALL THEY NEED TO KNOW. If they want to study anything beyond that particularly, they can do it on their own or with a little help and encouragement from their teacher in their own individual research and reading. By the time they've learned to read enough they can read anything that they need to know. Then they have enough basic knowledge of all the main things about life and this world that they need to know.--And if they want to learn anything more they can read it on their own--we don't have to teach it to them.
74. (MARIA: AND THINK OF THE WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE WE HAVE IN THE BIBLE AND THE MO LETTERS ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE.) That's their religious education plus a lot of other things. (Maria: That could be incorporated into a reading course taken from MO Letters and the Bible. They can even get some art, geography, history and some of the basics from these and things like the Bible in Pictures. They can really be interlinked.) The Bible in Pictures contains not only photographs of all the places where these Bible events happened, but it contains a wide variety of famous art masterpieces on the Bible stories, so they'd get that in black and white at least.
75. (MARIA: IT'S JUST TREMENDOUS, IT MAKES ME SO EXITED, I ALMOST WANT TO BE A SCHOOL TEACHER!) You are a school teacher, honey, and you're gonna be, for we're developing an education for our kids ourselves. So here we are discussing education and getting maybe another MO Letter on it. (Maria: Think of how many people this will effect and how many mothers and teachers it will encourage.) Amen, it's necessary, they need to know what we think is the basic education that our kids need.
76. OUTSIDE OF THAT, RELIGIOUSLY THEY'LL GET ALL THEY NEED FROM THE BIBLE AND THE MO LETTERS plus a lot of other stuff. Anything else they want to read they can read on their own. What else is there? You get Social Studies, Biology and General Science. You need Phys. Ed., too, of course, as our kids need to know how to play too.--And they get some art and music and so on--all this in their basic form--right in the Colony! Praise the Lord! Thank You Jesus! It's an Education Revolution!--Amen?
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family}
