Blame the Edukators

We have a tendency to blame our educators for just about everything, I’ve noticed.

If kids aren’t learning, it’s not the parents’ fault or the child’s own volition – it’s the teachers who take the fall. If kids are getting STDs, it’s because they didn’t receive the proper education on safe sex. If they are abusing drugs, it’s because they don’t know how to use drugs safely…

Wait. Never mind.

Thomas Sowell made a comment recently that really got me thinking: Education is not something that can be given to anybody. It is something students either acquire or fail to acquire.

Hello, personal responsibility!

Education cannot be forced upon someone unwilling to receive it. If the parents (this usually only works if there are two) are involved, they can motivate the child to receive either an education or the long end of a big stick. But a child left to his or her own devices will not often choose the high road in education or any area for that matter.

Salvation isn’t in education. All those who are running around saying, “we just need people to get people better information and then they will make better choices” are living in a utopian fantasy that has no root in reality. There’s more “better information” in our country than at any point in the history of the world – we should all have minimal debt, huge savings accounts, zero crime and a negligible divorce rate. Yet, none of those things are remotely close to being true! What gives?

Personal responsibility. People sincerely believe that education is somehow the solution to the problem when in fact personal responsibility is the solution to the problem. Only the wise know the good they ought to do and do it consistently.

Jesus said more times than I can count “understand, understand, understand!” Knowing the right choice and understand the right choice are not the same thing. Wisdom is the difference between knowledge and understanding.

Jesus says in Matthew, quoting Isaiah, "seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand."

Wisdom is the principle thing – therefore get wisdom.