The Messenger - July 2012 - (Page 4)

The Messenger Making Gentle A Bruised World July 2012 Youth Ministry By George Swank Gospel According to George I am always amazed at the deep conversations our students end up having. During discussions, I am amazed at the comments they provide. I find myself looking back to when I was their age and wondering if I provided such wonderful insights. I don't think I did, but then again I was a thinker not a sayer. A couple of weeks ago, I was siting at a table, having lunch with a bunch of the High Schoolers. We got into this conversation about School and it's many shortcomings. The students talked about how they dislike that School is all about teaching to the test. There is no time to actually learn and internalize the information. So instead, they have to put as much of it as possible in their brains and spit it back out on a piece of paper. The only information that sticks are the things in which they have an interest. They talked about teachers and how the ones that they love and think of as great are the ones who go against the rules and do something different. These are the teachers who try their best to actually teach despite the system that is in place. I love teachers and I appreciate everything they do. I appreciate their situation; it must be so hard to teach when the School district has put forth these rules and curriculums. It must leave very little room to reach the students and help them to grow as individuals. What is the point of learning when you are not allowed to let it change you? What is the point of having information in your head when you haven't learned to think and grow? I read a book in college where the introduction included the story of a college student. She was in an ethics class one semester. Within the class there was this male student who had the highest grade and participated the most. One would think this would mean he really knew ethics. However, our female student ended up going to the dean to complain about this male student. Apparently the male student would asked her inappropriate questions after class and she felt harassed by him. She questioned the Dean about this. She asked him how we can teach ethics, but not expect students to internalize it and learn how to be ethical. I don't think it is the Dean's fault, but rather a fault of our education system as a whole. Students learn how to say the right things, how to do the right things, but never change as human beings. You can look at someone with a perfect GPA and say, wow, they must be smart, but then later be surprised that they can't think for themselves and/or make horrible decisions all the time. It does not take intelligence to do well in school. It just takes getting the work done and knowing how to fit that information in your head for a test. I'll give one more example. In one of my Youth Ministry classes in College, we had scripture memory tests. There would be a chunk of scripture we had to memorize and then we had to write it all out into a blue book. It was after the first test that I realized how ridiculous the test was. We had to memorize the scripture and write it out, and we had to get all the punctuation and capitalizations correct. For every little thing wrong, it was a point off. Now, I would naturally capitalize words that did not need to be capitalized, and I am sure a lot of do in our handwriting, but each one of those was a point off. I became obsessed with getting a perfect score, but the best I could ever do was a 99%. I was good at memorizing and those skills can be very useful. But to this day, I cannot remember those scriptures, nor what they meant. I never internalized. It is quite possible to take something in, but never have it truly inside you. 4

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Messenger - July 2012

The Messenger - July 2012
Council’s Corner
Youth Minsitry
Mission, Faith & Action
Our Graduates
Change of Address Updates
Reflections of Gratitude
Behind the Scene

The Messenger - July 2012