Women of Virtue

I'm interviewing great, women of virtue for my family blog.  I will be posting the interviews on Fridays.  Check out the latest one here.

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An Invitation

You are all invited over to my family blog Finding Joy in the Journey.   


I'm documenting 1000 of the everyday little moments of joy  that come from being a wife and mother, and the joy that comes from living the gospel of Christ.  I will also be interviewing great women that have inspired me.  See you there!

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Every Educational System Has A Moral Goal

"Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum.  It wants to produce a certain kind of human being.  This intention is more or less explicit, more or less a result of reflection; but even the neutral subjects, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person.  In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike in others the industrious.  Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle." (Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 26)
After reading this paragraph, I grabbed a pen and wrote out what my moral goals were for educating my children at home.  Here is the list I came up with:

My goals for educating my children
I want them to:
know and love God
recognize and embrace truth
develop good character
love fellow man
know and understand the principles of freedom
seek to fulfill their God given mission in life

I've thought a lot about this since I read it, about six months ago.   I've asked myself many times if the things I am teaching my children are in harmony with my goals for them, or am I spending too much time on things that don't fit with what I really know to be important?  It is so easy to spend time doing good things, there are so many "good things" out there, but the good things aren't always going to help us reach our goals and the good things can keep us from doing the best things.

If you home school, what are you educating your children for and to become?
If you send your kids to public school, what are their moral goals for your children?  Are they in accordance with your family values and goals?

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Even One More Reason I Home School

First, just for the record, I think global warming/climate change is a HUGE CROCK!

crock

noun Slang .

a lie; exaggeration; nonsense

From the Washington Post

"Maryland’s Board of Education passed the environmental literacy graduation requirement on Tuesday. Gov. Martin O’Malley says Maryland is now the first state in the nation to have such a requirement. The No Child Left Inside Coalition, which pushed for the requirement, says 48 other states are considering similar requirements, a sign of the increasing popularity of environmental education.  Under the graduation requirement, public schools will be required to infuse core subjects with lessons on conservation, smart growth and other environmental topics. School systems will be able to shape their programs, but they must align with state standards."  (emphasis added)

And, I can tell you that I saw this (below) coming as soon as I heard that the EPA declared human breath a pollutant. 

And just in case you couldn't hear him clearly, here is what he said,

“One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, and the spacing of the children.
You have to lift child survival rates so that parents feel comfortable having small families and most important — you have to educate girls and empower women. And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.

I give them about 2 seconds until they implement that into their environmental literacy state standards.

"Public policies are being made every day that are antifamily, and the definition of family is changing legally around the world... Antifamily media messages are everywhere. Youth are being desensitized about the need to form eternal families."  (Julie B. Beck, Teaching the Doctrine of the Family)

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Childhood and Youth Are No Time to Get An Education

"...you can set no store by your education in childhood and youth, no matter how good it was.  Childhood and youth are no time to get an education.  They are the time to get ready to get an education.  The most that we can hope for from these uninteresting and chaotic periods of life is that during them we shall be set on the right path, the path of realizing our human possibilities through intellectual effort and aesthetic appreciation.  The great issues, now issues of life and death for civilization, call for mature minds."

"There is a simple test of this.  Take any great book that you read in school or college and have not read since.  Read it again.  Your impression that you understood it will at once be corrected.  Think what it means, for instance, to read Macbeth at sixteen in contrast to reading it at thirty-five.  We can understand Macbeth as Shakespeare meant us to understand it only when we have had some experience, vicarious or otherwise, of marriage and ambition.  To read great books, if we read them at all, in childhood and youth and never read them again is never to understand them."  (The Great Conversation, The Substance of a Liberal Education by Robert M. Hutchins, The Great Books of the Western World v. 1,  p.76, emphasis added)

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Principles

I've been thinking about this quote a lot lately so I thought I would share it.

"The ability to stand by one's principles, to live with integrity and faith according to one's belief - that is what matters.  That devotion to true principle - in our individual lives, in our homes and families, and in all places that we meet and influence other people - that devotion is what God is ultimately requesting of us.  It requires commitment - whole souled, deeply held, eternally cherished commitment to the principles we know to be true in the commandments God has given.  If we will be true and faithful to the Lord's principles, then we will always be temple worthy, and the Lord and his holy temples will be the great symbols of our discipleship with him." (President Howard W. Hunter, Ensign, 2010, p. 39

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Our Safeguard and our Guiding Star

I recently read a talk by President James E. Faust entitled The Virtues of Righteous Daughters of God.  (To read it click here).  I like what he had to say about virtue.  He said:

"Many people do not fully understand the meaning of virtue. One commonly understood meaning is to be chaste or morally clean, but virtue in its fuller sense encompasses all traits of righteousness that help us form our character.  An old sampler found in a museum in Newfoundland, stitched in 1813, reads: 'Virtue is the chiefest beauty of the mind, the noblest ornament of humankind. Virtue is our safeguard and our guiding star that stirs up reason when our senses err.'" 

As I read Pres. Faust's definition of virtue, it brought to my mind this scripture in proverbs:

"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies." (Proverbs 31:10)

I have always loved this scripture and it takes on so much more meaning when considering that virtue encompasses all traits of righteousness.  I like that the following verses go on to tell us what a virtuous woman looks like.  Some of her traits include:
trustworthy
dependable
good
industrious
strong
compassionate
giving
prepared
honorable
wise
kind
not idle
good mother
good wife
worships God
(Proverbs 31:11-31)


In his talk President Faust give us 10 virtues for us to pursue in "our quest for excellence and happiness."  They are:
1 .Faith
2. Honesty
3. Chasity
4.  Humility
5. Self-Discipline
6.  Fairness
7.  Moderation
8.  Cleanliness
9.  Courage
10.  Grace
I thought all of these virtues followed along so well with the verses in proverbs.


President Faust concludes his talk with this beautiful message and promise,

"These are challenging times. I believe your spirits may have been reserved for these latter days; that you, like Esther, have come to earth “for such a time as this.” It may be that your most significant, everlasting achievements will be your righteous influence on others, that your divine feminine inner beauty and intuition will find expression in your quiet strength, gentleness, dignity, charm, graciousness, creativity, sensitivity, radiance, and spirituality. Enhance these sublime feminine gifts. They will make you appealing and even irresistible as you serve others as the handmaidens of God.  I testify that if you practice these virtues, you will be able to “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men.”

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