Real Bible Study

The Nugget:

Deuteronomy 6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
Deuteronomy 6:7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

My Comment:

What is wrong with our schools? Many complain that the students are graduating without being able to read well. Many educators argue that more money must be thrown at the problem. Well, college these days is very expensive, I’m told. When I tell current college students that I had to save up three years to be able to pay for college, they don’t get the point. When I went, it cost $725 a year for room, board, and tuition. Are the students learning more now in college than I did many years ago since the price of college is now far more expensive? I doubt it. I had the terrible student debt totaling $600 when I graduated. I was sent a delinquency notice once. It was not my fault. Because I went into teaching full time, my student loan was to be completely forgiven. I had to submit more paperwork to my principal at Cass Technical High School to have the delinquent status removed, and it was. But just today, I heard in the news that there are fewer housing starts for young people newly married because they cannot get a mortgage loan. Why? They have too much student debt, and that will ultimately somewhat cripple the supposedly recovering economy. About college graduates. I have read repeatedly reports that state far too many college graduates cannot read well. So, considering how much college costs, it surely is not a problem about money the colleges are getting.

I hear many in the news and elsewhere badmouthing teachers and teacher unions. There has been a strong public sentiment to support the notion of “Right to Work” laws in many states. This anti-union sentiment is irrational and unjustified. All “Right to Work” legislation accomplishes is to provide an environment where workers have a right to work for less. Workers also are largely denied the protection of union contracts which are there to preserve due process rights of teachers.

Sometimes it is true that if students did not learn, the teacher did not teach. My administrators were shocked to hear me affirm that. But there is more to the story.

Teachers cannot teach effectively when they are not allowed to teach what they know to the students before them. Teachers are required to submit “uniform lesson plans.” Those plans must show that teachers are following the script they have been given called a “pacing chart.” Administrators seem to believe that all students learn at the same speed and therefore for any given subject using a given textbook must all be on the same page on the same day across the school district. That shows how mindless those administrators are who believe in such nonsense. Any parents who have more than one child certainly have observed, even in the home, that children do not learn at the same speed or in the same way.

Teachers ought to be permitted and indeed encouraged to have each of their students learn as much as the students possibly can as individuals. Some students are better at a particular subject than others. They should be permitted to learn more about it than some other students who struggle with the subject. The bright students should not be held back because some less gifted students are unable to learn the subject as fast or as well as they can. One way teachers can meet the needs of students exactly as they find them is to allow teachers to individualize the instruction for each student. No teacher can do this at will, automatically. It takes teachers time to prepare materials and lesson plans and procedures to reach this goal. I found that I was able to “tweak” my lesson plans and materials and procedures each year, so that I believe I got better as the years went by.

Many years ago I listened to “talk radio” on the way home from school. At the time parents and students were in an uproar at how terrible the teachers were. Certain schools used to have students that achieved very well. But then something happened. More students were failing. Grade point averages were falling. Results on standardized tests were dropping. It was all the teachers’ fault.

But I knew from first-hand experience that the schools and teachers had not changed. The teachers had been teaching at the same school for many years. What had changed was the composition of the student body. And that reflected a great change in the families sending children to those schools.

The most important factor that affects how well a child will do in school is family background.

Most learning takes place in the home, not the school, especially in a child’s earliest years. Where does a child learn discipline and respect? Where does a child learn self-control? Where does a child develop a broad array of interests? Where does a child develop a wide and accurate vocabulary? The answer: in the home.

When a child does not learn these things in the home, when the child enters school, the child must play “catch up” for a long time. Good teachers can help immensely to close this family deficit. But I doubt that it can ever really be fully overcome, especially in the worst cases in the worst neighborhoods. I have found ways to do it, but in one semester or school year I cannot help most students make up for all the educational time and achievement that has already been lost over the many years they have been in school before they reach me in their high school years.

To change educational outcomes, to improve neighborhood school success, we must change the culture that many students have grown up in, a culture which frowns upon academic success but rather favors achievement in sports. The neighborhood and ethnic culture can be a real handicap to student success. Young people are allowed to listen to “Rap Music,” which is often very immoral and degrading in the values it expresses. Parents ought not let children and young people in their homes listen to such filth. Jesus pointedly said, “Take heed what ye hear” (Mark 4:24).

Parents and their children need to be reached with the Gospel of Christ through the outreach of churches in the communities where they live. If every family were an actively engaged regular Bible reading family, the academic and behavioral problems would be largely solved in the home. Schools would do far better. Neighborhoods would become safe. Students would reach their potential, instead of being squelched in their natural academic interest by wrong cultural attitudes from the media and peers in their neighborhood and school.

What can churches specifically do to address these issues? Encourage Christian public school teachers in the congregation to teach Sunday school. Offer academic assistance and homework help at the church.

Encourage every person in your church to read the Bible daily. It is almost time for New Year’s Resolutions. Beginning a regular habit of Bible reading in the home would uplift the spiritual growth of everyone who consistently reads the Bible daily.

Teach everyone in your church how to study the Bible. Send them here to www.realbiblestudy.com to learn how if you don’t feel qualified to do this in your church yourself (see the categories to the right related to “How to Study the Bible”).

Hold weekly neighborhood Bible studies in the homes of interested students in your Sunday school or youth group. If you have been teaching them the Bible, and allowing the students to ask their own questions, you will soon discover that young people are very interested in the Bible and eager to learn more.

Step out of your comfortable church setting and meet the people who live in the neighborhood on a regular, consistent basis. Sponsor a sports program that requires participants to attend a Bible study either prior to or right after each practice. How can I say that when you ought to have figured out by now that I absolutely hate sports? I can say that because I did it! Sometimes you just have to reach out in a manner that is uncomfortable and unpleasant to yourself in order to reach people where they will come.

Eliminate age discrimination in the structure of your church setting and its fellowship opportunities so young people can benefit from older people. I did this by having my elderly friend Uncle Frank help teach my high school Sunday school class, for example.

Someone with a special expertise in your church can present a topic to a youth group meeting as a special speaker. I learned much that impacted the direction my interests in the Bible would eventually take when Mr. Harold Fuller, an engineer who attended Thoburn Methodist Church, in Detroit, spoke to the youth group (“MYF”) about the fascinating subject of the mathematical structure of the Bible. I was especially impressed by his personal library of Christian books. Looking back now, he didn’t have all that many, but there on his built-in bookcase in the living room I still remember seeing two hardbound books in particular, Science Speaks by Peter Stoner, and the Seiss commentary on the book of Revelation. I have those two volumes in my own library now.

I noticed that the brightest, most eager learners I ever had the privilege to teach were the Jewish students in the Science and Arts Curriculum and the Chem-Bio Curriculum at Cass Technical High School. I suspect that the Jewish homes were permeated with the educational philosophy reflected in what the Bible teaches, as reflected in today’s Bible Nugget, Deuteronomy 6:6, 7.

Christian students ought to do every bit as well as Jewish students, and many of them do, especially if they have a firm grounding in the Bible in the home.

For those who desire to DIG DEEPER into this subject:

(1) Consult the cross references given in Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible on page 186 for Deuteronomy 6:6, 7.

(2) Consult the cross references given in The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge on pages 204-205 or in Logos 5 or 6 Bible software for Deuteronomy 6:6, 7.

(3) Consult the cross references given in the original Treasury of Scripture Knowledge on page 128 for Deuteronomy 6:6, 7.

(3) Most people today do not have access to those three resources, so I have posted cross references for this passage as I have developed them even more completely for your study as given below:

Deuteronomy 6:6. And these words. +*Dt 17:19. 31:12. +*Jsh 1:8. *2 Ch 17:9. **Ps 19:7. Ac 8:28. which I command thee. Dt 5:10. 11:13. Nu 15:39. Jsh 22:5. Ps 103:18. shall be in thine heart. +*Le 11:3. Dt 11:18. 17:19. 32:46. Nu 15:39. 1 K 8:48. *Jb 22:22. Ps 37:31. 40:8. +*Ps 119:11, 97, 98. Pr 2:10, 11. 3:1-3, 5, 21. 4:4. 7:3. Is 51:7. Je 31:33. Lk 2:51. 8:15. Jn 5:38. 15:7. 2 Cor 3:3. Col 3:16. 2 J 1:2.

Deuteronomy 6:7. And thou shalt. ver. Dt 6:2. *Dt 4:9, 10. *Dt 11:19. +*Ge 18:19. Ex 12:26, 27. 13:14, 15. **Ps 78:4-6. *Ep 6:4. teach. Heb. whet, or sharpen. or, repeat. Dt 31:19. +Dt 32:41. Jb 8:10. Is 28:10. diligently. ver. Dt 6:17. **Jsh 1:8. He 11:6. children. ver. Dt 6:20. Dt 29:29. 31:12, 13. 32:46. +*Ex 13:8. **Ps 78:5-7. *Ps 145:4. +*Pr 22:6. Is 38:19. Jl 1:3. +*2 Tim 3:15. shalt talk. T#1073. ver. Dt 6:20. Ru 2:4, 12. 4:11. *Ps 37:30. *Ps 40:9, 10. 77:12. *Ps 105:2. **Ps 107:2. 119:46, 172. 129:8. *Pr 6:22. *Pr 10:21. *Pr 15:2, 7. **Ml 3:16. *Mt 12:35. *Lk 6:45. 24:14. *Ep 4:29. *Col 4:6. **1 P 3:15. in thine house. Ps 101:2.