In this seminar we’ll share some of the cores principles of True Education and how to apply them in a school setting.

AdAgrA 2020: A Living Parable

<p>In this seminar we’ll share some of the cores principles of True Education and how to apply them in a school setting.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Intensive: True Education in the School

Eleida Feliciano

True Education in the School Part 1

The first presentation, I titled it The 2 Trees, and there's a huge foundational lesson that we learned about education from these 2 trees.

The story is found in Genesis chapter 1, I mean chapter 3 verses 1 through 6 and forgive me but on the other place I had a table and here's so low I can't see it so I'm going to sit down if you don't mind so I can read it.

By partaking oh sorry I actually don't have it here In the Spanish 1 I had it on the presentation.

Okay, so I'm going to go to my Bible here and look for it.

Forgive me for that, I should have been prepared.

So we are in the book of Genesis chapter 3 and we're starting with verse 1.

This is the saddest story ever told And it begins in the beginning of time.

It says, Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said unto the woman, Yet hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not surely die.

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

So here Satan is insinuating that the reason why God said not to eat of this tree is because there's something that God is keeping from them, which is true, but in his insinuation he is making them believe that this something is something good, something that they should desire.

Verse 6, And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make 1 wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat." So she listened to the serpent and his incineration and then she looked at the tree and it looked good.

And so this is a lesson for us because we cannot trust what we see.

We cannot trust our senses because a lot of things that the world is doing it looks good and we want to copy the world thinking it's a good thing you want to bring it into our schools but we cannot go by what we see we need to go simply by the principles that have been given to us Now regarding this passage in the book Patriots and Prophets page 54, Ellen Wise says, God had freely given them good and withheld evil, but they had eaten of the forbidden tree and now they would have the knowledge of evil all the days of their life.

Instead of happy labor, anxiety and toil were to be their lot.

They would be subject to disappointment, grief and pain and finally to death.

The 1 that is talking about this passage that you're looking at is Patriarchs and Prophets, page 54.

It says, by partaking of this tree, he declared they would attain to a more exalted sphere of existence and enter a broader field of knowledge.

And he insinuated that the Lord jealously decided to withhold it from them, lest they should be exalted to equality with himself.

Such has been Satan's work from the days of Adam to the present, and he has pursued it with great success.

He tempts men to distrust God's love and to doubt his wisdom." So the work that Satan did in the Garden of Eden, he's still doing today.

He's still making us believe that there's something that we're missing out.

We look outside to the world and what they're doing and we must grab these things because what God gave us is too simple, not exciting enough, or whatever the case may be.

But the reality is that what God was withholding from them was the evil and he had no intention that they ever would experience evil.

But when we choose to listen to the incinerations of the devil, only evil will come out of that.

And like we read on this when I got ahead of myself, we see that this experience was 1 that was not just in that moment, but for the rest of their lives.

And so we need to make a decision for ourselves that we're going to trust God and do what he says and not the insinuations of the enemy.

Because the problem here was that they distrusted what enemy was trying to do is to distrust God's love and his wisdom because if he loves us he's not going to keep anything from us that is good and if he says something to do and we think well I have a better idea then we are distrusting his wisdom we think we know more than God.

Continuing in Patriarchs and Prophets page 55 it says Satan represented to the holy pair that they would be gainers by breaking the law of God.

Many talk of the narrowness of those who obey God's commandments while they themselves claim to have broader ideas and to enjoy greater liberty.

What is this but an echo of the voice from Eden?

In a day ye eat thereof, transgress the divine requirement, ye shall be as God." So the enemy is always trying to lead us to transgress the commandments of God, to go against the requirements or the counsels that he has given us.

Eve really believed the words of Satan but her belief did not save her from the penalty of sin.

She disbelieved the Word of God and this was what led to her fall.

In the judgment, men will not be condemned because they conscientiously believed a lie, but because they did not believe the truth, Because they neglected the opportunity of learning what is truth.

We must set our hearts to know what is truth.

All the lessons which God has caused to be placed on record in his word are for our warning and instruction.

Their neglect will result in ruin to ourselves.

Whatever contradicts God's word, we may be sure proceeds from Satan." So we're giving here a clear understanding of what happened that day and the fact that when we disbelieve God, when we believe the Satan, it's because we're disbelieving God.

Because if we believe what God said is it's truth and we have perfect faith in Him, then any insinuation that comes against that we will reject it.

And so we need to set our hearts to love truth and to follow truth and to know truth.

In 2 Thessalonians 2.10 it says, and with all deceivableness and righteousness in them that perish because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.

So the people are going to perish just because they didn't receive the love of the truth.

So we have to not just know the truth, but love the truth.

Speaking here of Eve, it says in Councils on Health, page 108, She ate and thinking that she felt the sensation of a new and more exalted life, she bore the fruit to her husband.

So here she ate it and she actually felt that she had reached this experience that the enemy said.

But what's really interesting is that we are told by inspiration that Adam did not believe the lie that he knew it was it was a trick of the devil but yet it tells us in Patricks and prophets page 57 that Adam after his transgression Adam at first imagined himself entering upon a higher state of existence.

So when we go a different way that God tells us, sometimes we actually feel that's working.

And we see things that makes us think, well, see, there is no problem with that, it wasn't that bad, things are going well, I'm receiving what I thought I would receive.

So we cannot go by the experiences we have if they're not matching up what God says.

And so a lot of times people will tell you, well, you know, this is how I dedicated my children.

God have mercy on us and he will lead us, but if we want the best path for ourselves, for our children, we need to follow what God says.

And the more we go outside of his will, the more dangers we're in, and the harder it will be for us to go in the right path.

Let's look at the, consider this the experience of Israel of old.

Many times like then we look around and we think that there's something that we're missing, but it's a lie.

And they looked around and they believed that they needed to have a king like the other nations.

They didn't trust the system that God had for them to be led.

But even though God allowed them to have that, and many times we see that story, we say, see God had this plan but they came up with plan B and it worked out.

But they themselves realized what a mistake they had made.

And sometimes God allows us because he doesn't force us in his way.

He gives us what's best, but if we choose a different way, God will not force.

And he allowed it, but look at the experience they had later.

Eternity Pass, page 482 says, The people saw what a mistake they had made in desiring a king that they might not be different from the nations around them.

Many looked with alarm at the condition of society, fast becoming leavened with godlessness.

Bitter were the reflections of the people as they looked upon Samuel's quiet resting place and remember their folly in rejecting him as their ruler.

For he had so close a connection with heaven that he seemed to bind all Israel to the throne of Jehovah.

Samuel had taught them to love and obey God, but now he was dead.

The people felt they were left to the mercies of a king who was joined to Satan and who would divorce the people from God and heaven.

So afterwards when they look back they saw the condition that they have come into and they realize what a mistake they have made.

And sometimes when we realize that it is too late.

So God's ways are better and you may be thinking what does this have to do with education?

These are the 2 trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.

The tree of life produces the fruit of true education and the tree of knowledge produces the fruit of all false education.

And before you think I'm teaching heresy I'm going to share a quote that actually says that.

This quote is from an article that was written in the General Conference Daily Bulletin in March 6, 1899.

The article name is The Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge.

And it says, the Garden of Eden was not only Adam's dwelling, but his schoolroom.

As in that school, so in the school of earth today, 2 trees are planted, the tree of life, which bears the fruit of the true education, the tree of knowledge yielding the fruit of science falsely so called." And so all through her writings Ellen White refers to the false system of education as a science falsely so-called.

And that's because true science does not go against the principles of God.

So anything that goes against the principles of God is a false science or false education.

In Counsel to Parents, Teachers, and Students, page 12, it says, "'The tree of knowledge, ' so-called, "'has become an instrument of death.

"'Satan has artfully woven his dogmas, "'his false theories, into the instruction given.

From the tree of knowledge he speaks the most pleasing flattery in regards to the higher education.

Thousands partake of the fruit of this tree, but it means death to them.

Christ says, you spend money for that which is not bread.

Isaiah 52.2, you are using your heaven entrusted talents to secure an education with God pronounces foolishness.

So here we see how, so here we see how in this tree of knowledge, we end up, many to get this kind of knowledge, this kind of education, spend their money.

True Education in the School Part 2

Dear Lord and Heavenly Father, we are thankful that we have yet another opportunity to continue to study these principles.

We ask for the guidance of your Holy Spirit.

Give us teachable hearts that we may learn from you.

In the book of education page 296 it says, something better is the watchword of education, the law of all true living.

Whatever Christ asks us to renounce, He offers in instead something better.

And so like we talked about in the last session how the enemy is trying to convince us that God is keeping something from us.

And we can refer to this quote and know, yes, when God asks us to follow His way, there's some things we need to give up.

But what He's giving us is something better.

And we need to ask God to help us to have His mind so that we can understand things as he sees them.

Ok, so we're going to look at the curriculum and who would you think follow the right curriculum but Jesus.

In education page 77 it says, Jesus' education was gained directly from the heaven-appointed sources, from useful work, from the study of scriptures and of nature, and from the experiences of life.

God's lesson books, full of instruction to all who bring to them the willing hand, the seeing eye, and the understanding heart.

These are the textbooks that every true education school or home should have.

Useful work, study of scriptures, study of nature, and the experiences of life.

Now you will have many resources that you will use as you're teaching, whether at home or at school, but these textbooks are for every class, math, science, social studies, reading, language, whatever it is, these textbooks can be used for all of them.

And I'm going to be sharing not just the principles, but some examples of what I have done.

But I've spent the time in the previous, and by the way, those of you who were not in the previous 1, I encourage you to go to Audiverse and listen to it.

Because if you know the principles and the foundation of true education, you can teach anywhere.

I don't want what I share today to be like the method, right?

I'm gonna share some experiences of how I apply the principles, but what you need to know is the principles.

The Pharisees like to make all these rules and you can't carry this burden but 10 miles but God gives us principles and these principles are true every age, every country, every language.

And so if you have those principles then you can go forward with true education.

Always look at what you're doing and does this go with the principles of God?

Many things we do, they look good, they even have good results as we can see them, But if they don't go with those principles, it's not of God, we can dismiss it.

Now we're going to look at the textbook of experiences of life.

This is 1 that we can learn from all the time because we are always experiencing life if we're alive, right?

And in Education page 103, it says, as they learned us to study the lesson in all created things and in all life's experiences, show that the same laws which govern the things of nature and the events of life are to control us, that they are given for our good, and that only in obedience to them can we find true happiness and success.

So we need to teach our children to learn from their daily experiences, especially the difficulties.

And we don't like that, but that's 1 of God's most used lessons is the difficulties.

And many people think that recess is just a time to play.

But that's a class in our school as well and this is where most of the time we are really emphasizing on those experiences of life because they are having different difficulties between them and We as teachers need to be involved, right?

The children shouldn't be over there where you don't know what they're doing and saying because you can't guide them if you're not there.

That's why God gave children their parents and their teachers.

So the children come with all kinds of difficulties and as parents and teachers we want to rescue them.

We don't want them to have to struggle and so we want to rescue them.

But if we rescue them, they don't learn from their experiences.

This is why God doesn't rescue us from our difficulties, right?

And that's what we as teachers and parents need to do for our children.

He had just the talent of annoying all the other little children for some reason.

He just liked to bother and he had not learned that that was not appropriate.

So 1 day he comes and he is so upset because no 1 wants to play with him.

And as the parents as a teacher we want to say to the other children, You have to play with them.

And now in my school, I always told the children, no 1 is left out.

But at the same time, this person needs to be responsible for their actions.

They were doing this and this and this and this.

And then I said, okay, now tell me what were you doing?

And this is what we need to essentially be looking at because in the end, we cannot learn from the book of experiences of life if we're not looking at our actions and our doings and our responsibility in the situation.

But with the grace of God, we can change, but we can't change others.

So I asked this little boy, so what were you doing?

And he started telling me what he was doing.

And then I said, okay, now, just think about this.

If 1 of them was doing that, would you want to play with them?

And he looked at me like he never heard something like that.

And he probably never, because his mother probably rescued him every time.

So I said, well, if you wouldn't do it, why are you blaming them for not playing with you?

Now do you think if you go back and stop doing that that they will play with you?

And he looked at me like he didn't know, I said, why don't you try it and come back to me if it doesn't work and then I'll go talk to them.

The book of experiences of life is such a good book to learn from.

If we're gonna teach them that, we need to learn it ourselves.

And many of us were not trained in true education.

And even when we've gone through Adventist school system, many times we didn't get that.

You know, I grew up in a non-Adventist home, so I went to public schools, and I learned to be a teacher in public university.

And it wasn't until later that I heard about your education, so I started studying about it.

And the Lord has been my teacher because I didn't have that education and I had to be a student again because if you don't learn this yourself you can't teach them so we need to learn to learn from the book of experiences of life from the difficulties that we encounter Don't cry out to God to always rescue them from them, but ask God, what is it that I'm supposed to learn here and lead the children in this experience.

This day I had jacks out for the kids to play.

It was a childhood game of mine and the children nowadays don't play with it.

And so I tried trying to teach them how to play this and they were like, this is too difficult and they wanted to put it away and do something else.

And I said, well, if you don't try it, you're not going to learn it.

Let's set, because they were trying to, you know, you have to grab 1, throw the ball, grab 1, grab the ball, and then do 2, do 3 until you get all of them.

And so, they, it was, you know, they're doing it for the first time, they don't have the coordination of the ball, and it was not working.

So I told them, okay, how about you set yourself a goal of getting up to 3?

And just work at that until you get to 3.

True Education in the School Part 3

Dear Lord and Heavenly Father, we just pray for your continual guidance and for our hearts to be teachable, that we may hear your voice and we may be able to learn particularly what you're trying to teach us individually.

Now, another opportunity we have for building was the building of a tree house.

When you're trying to do tree education, there's so many things involved.

Sometimes you feel like, how do I do this?

But if you move forward to do what you can with what you have, the Lord all of a sudden starts sending people.

So 1 day I'm at this school, this gentleman, he came to volunteer at Wildwood, he's a doctor, and he was not there very long.

And 1 day, he liked to exercise a lot, not very many people make it to the elementary school site because it's on the other side of the campus.

But he was there walking and made it there and we got to talking and I don't know exactly how the conversation went and why I mentioned the fact that the children wanted a treehouse.

And So he said never did I expect this of a doctor.

Oh, I can build stuff I can work on that project with the kids because I told them they wanted that and I had been Looking for someone who could lead that project And our maintenance department was just really overwhelmed with work.

So they couldn't do it So he volunteered himself the Lord just sent him there I didn't even look for him And so there he came and what he did at first, he came to this school and he started working on the plans.

And so he taught them why he did what you do and how you decide that the the materials that you use and all the math that's involved in determining how big of a house to make and where the door needs to be, where the windows need to be, everything.

Now unfortunately, he ended up leaving a lot sooner than he expected, and he was actually not part of the project of building.

But once the plans were made, the kids' heart was up and the maintenance department felt bad and decided to give us some help.

And so they did come and they worked with the children and They built all the walls on the ground so that the children could be part of that and they were part of every aspect of it except to put the walls up there because that was a bit dangerous.

But they were part of this project and this is now a building that is part of our school and they were able to build it.

You know so a lot of times you you will think well how do you do all these things but if you do what you can with what you have the Lord will provide and that doesn't mean that you have to do all these things but like I said if you follow the principles do what you have you will be in the right track and the Lord will provide people who will help you to do other things.

There's other practical skills that are not necessarily mentioned other other classes and and practical skills are not necessarily mentioned in the SPIRE writings, but the idea, the principle is that they learn things that are useful.

And so you look around in your community and where you are, what would be useful, and give them those opportunities.

Because we are on a campus that has so many things, we made our whole campus our school.

So we took the kids to the herb shop where they sell all the herbs and vitamins and things, and they worked there once a week for an hour, and they would go and help with organizing the things, taking things out of the boxes that were shipped in there and putting prices on them and putting them on the shelves.

They also worked in the back putting the herbs in the little bags and they were supposed to put a certain weight there so they were using math as well for that.

They had to put precisely how much it needed to be and they had to be very careful with these things because we were selling it to the public so they couldn't leave the bag all full of dust everywhere.

They had to be very clean and neat about it and they really enjoyed doing that.

We also took them to the helpful store where they helped out in many different ways in the sock room, in the room where they bag the seeds and nuts and all the things that they sell there.

Now, if you've been to the Wildwood Health Food Store, you know it does not look like this anymore.

This was my second year teaching there, and they have remodeled the whole place, and it looks totally different.

But this girl was so excited because she got to run the registrar that day.

And for some reason, this pricing machine gun is just like the funnest thing for these kids to do.

Now the little ones, I take them there periodically.

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Intensive: True Education in the School

True Education in the School Part 2

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True Education in the School Part 1

44m

True Education in the School Part 2

1h 2m

True Education in the School Part 3

1h 7m

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