Truly Educated

This is one of my favorite pictures of Golden Delicious.  

I took it one quiet afternoon while she was washing her tea set after serving her dolls tea.

Several years later, Braeburn saw this picture (he was 11 or so then). 

 He looked at it for a long time and then said, "I would like to have a day like this day today."

I also love the feeling of this picture.

I think Braeburn meant that he would like to have the feeling of being with someone pleasant, doing something quiet and enjoyable in the warm sunlight.

That is the feeling Golden Delicious gives all of us:  peace, light, and serenity.

Now she is down at BYU and we miss her.

  I find myself wishing that as a mom I could smooth all the rough spots for her and let all her days be filled with sweet happiness always.  The education we give our children in our homes is so much more important than anything they get anywhere else. 

 I happened to read an essay in, A Different Kind of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto on some things a real education should include.  I happen to agree with all of them:

The Educated Person

1.  An educated person writes his own script through life.  He is not a character in anyone else's play, nor does he mouth the words of any intellectual's fantasy.  He is self-determined.

2.  Time does not hang heavily on an educated person's hands.  He can be alone.  He is never at a loss for what to do with time.

3.  And educated person knows his rights and knows how to defend them.

4.  An educated person knows the ways of the human heart; he is hard to cheat or fool.

5.  And educated person possesses useful knowledge;  how to build a house, a boat, how to grow food, etc.

6.  An educated person possesses a blueprint of personal value, a philosophy.  This philosophy tends toward the absolute; it is not plastic or relative, altering to suit circumstances.  Because of this an educated person knows at all times who he is, what he will tolerate, where to find peace.  But at the same time an educated person is aware of and respects community values and strange values.

7.  An educated person can form healthy attachments wherever he is because he understands the dynamics of relationships.

8.  An educated person accepts and understands his own mortality and its seasons.  He understands that without death and aging nothing would have any meaning.  An educated person learns from all his ages, even from the last minutes of his life.

9.  An educated person can discover the truth for himself.  He has intense awareness of the profound significance of being, and the profound significance of being here.

10.  An educated person can figure out how to be useful to others, and in trading time, insight, and service to meet the needs of others, he can earn the material things he needs to sustain a wholesome life.

11.  An educated person has the capacity to create new things, new experiences, new ideas.

Hang in there Golden Delicious!

Like Grandpa always says, "Don't let school interfere with your education!"