Education - Family - Community

"When we improve education, we improve families. When we improve families, we improve communities. And when we improve communities, we improve the world."

So - Better Education leads to Better Families which leads to Better Communities. This is one of the foundational fallacies of our world. But it's vital to so many - to provide them more money and more power - and legitimacy to what they are doing. I am sure many believe it.

I believe better families leads to better communities. I am NOT AGAINST education. I believe it's very important - it's just not the foundation of society.

We can educate people forever - and surely we have the most educated criminals of all time. But higher education doesn't lead to less evil (I don't have stats on this - you can search that out). While we can all use more education on many levels, education doesn't change the heart. By age 13, we all know (education) over 90% of all the right and wrong we need to know (again - no stats on this). And foundational to improving families is heart stuff. Even if improving families means money only, education has real limits in its power - because character does matter and will often affect earnings.

I see teens in all sorts of terrible family situations and no amount of education will fix it. It will take real heart change. We have so many educational programs for so many people - and yet - the same cycle of mess continues over and over. There are movies made about people who overcome their situation (and yet - the core problem in the situation isn't a lack of education - these people went to school - and even bad schools in America provide more education than much of the world gets). In Blind Side - education mattered - and made a difference - but it wasn't the core fix. It was family.

Changing the heart is at the core of changing families. And God is very pro-family. To go Biblical on this matter - good churches produce good families. And this will change the world.

As America falls apart at the seems we continue to provide more and more educational programs on every level. In our town, as educational leaders noticed a real decline each year in pre-schoolers knowledge and social behavior, they saw the need for more early childhood education. I doubt one child without a loving home before this education now has one because of it. Not many seem to like "No Child Left Behind" - but even if one had a perfect education policy, that wouldn't fix families. All the education in the world won't strengthen the family unit (the Church has much blame to take). And it is the family unit that holds society together.

This is rather incoherent. I hope it makes sense. Education is good - it just won't change hearts. Government won't change hearts. Church programs won't change hearts. Heart change is something only God can do. He does condescend to use us - and I think He uses us most in relationship with others.

That's it.