As the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions begin to ease and schools cautiously open up once again to more children, the importance of education has been in the headlines and the subject of much impassioned debate.
Exactly what impact will the absence of face to face education have had on the future prospects for our children? Has on-line teaching and more self-directed learning left crucial educational gaps? What disproportionate impact might we now see among the more disadvantaged families within our communities?
Or is all this an over reaction which fails to account for the resilience of our young people to survive, to catch up and to overachieve in spite of a less than perfect educational experience?
Wherever you may sit in this particular debate, the importance of sound education, in its various forms, to “train and instruct mentally and morally…” (Oxford Dictionary), should be indisputable.
In Sunday evening’s Prayer Zoom we were praying for some really BIG subjects of injustice, one of which was for the c.58 million primary level children in the world not going to school, of which 80% are girls. Exactly how do I begin to change this injustice? Perhaps William Wilberforce felt the same when setting out to end Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, which took him the next 20 years!
In Acts 8:26-40 we read that Philip asked the Ethiopian Treasury Official “Do you understand what you are reading?” and the Official replied “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” Then, beginning with the passage of the Bible the Official was reading, Philip told him the good news about Jesus.
This educational opportunity transformed the life of the Ethiopian Treasury Official. One can only imagine the likely impact it had on how he subsequently managed all the Queen’s treasure!
You may not feel Shakespearean with words, however, moral education is often powerfully communicated through the example we set in our actions. As we saw in the recent riots with the image of the black man carrying the white man away from danger!
How might you share/live out the “good news about Jesus” today?
Phil