Education

TUES., JUNE 13, 1989, 11:01 AM
AIRPORT, SALT LAKE CITY

On the next to last leg of your journey home, you have a layover here, with sufficient time for a Teaching. You look out at the mountains and the ever busy airport, but your theme is your profession. You have been “on vacation” from it for some days, but tomorrow you shall resume your role. Your lack of sleep and several cups of coffee make you jittery, but I am able to overcome this. Hear, o son, even as you write in an awkward way.

Education is fundamental to life, for it includes both the formal and the informal ways in which learning takes place. Being an educator is a noble profession, and I have directed you to this as your life work. Yes, I directed you to it, even as you early motivations were toward coaching, the directing of a special kind of learning. I kept you in it, as you had reasons to work otherwise. I have encouraged you to see that your best role is as the professor, who teaches classes largely of motivated learners, who writes as another means of influencing learning, and who takes opportunities for special presentations and consulting.

You just have visited the campus where your career began. You always feel some bit of regret that you didn’t remain there for you would now be the senior faculty member. I was a part of that decision to leave, but the family reasons were sufficient. It was just a convenient means to get you where you are now, exactly where you should be. You know this, but I’ll repeat it yet again: you are precisely where I want you to be, which is where you should be, doing what I want you to do, which is what you should be doing. Can it be any clearer than that?

You are in an important field, even as it is a minor one by school, university, and world standards. You are sufficiently well known and respected, though you are not outstanding… as you would like to be. You have many opportunities to encourage learning about important aspects of earth life, each of these involving spirit. You are good at involving your spirit in your teaching, and this is My major charge to you. You have seniority that allows you to teach as you should, and you use this quite responsibly, from My “place of judgment.”

Continue to use your well-developed approaches to encouraging learning, and still, be not satisfied, but use your imagination and creativity to develop even new ways… or variations. Be aware of criticisms that may arise and assess these carefully, using spiritual development as your major criterion. Strive to be a popular teacher only as your methods lead to spiritual growth.

The forms of education that are of most importance to Me are those that influence lives… and help develop more young educators. This does not exclude gaining factual knowledge, but knowledge about funerals, ozone, and alcohol is rather secondary. You must exhibit knowledge to retain your credibility, but teaching facts is not your major task. You know this. I just remind you.

Teaching another or others is an effective way of learning. Continue to encourage this in all of your classes. And be sure and help learners appreciate how they are learning and how they can continue this on their own. Yes, there are more ways to “do” this, even as what you do now is quite effective.

Consider how some of your students may undertake research into how spirit is encouraged in classroom learning. Consider research into how stories are an important means of encouraging spirit. Yes, you should see that some of these studies are published, and that you get some “credit” for this.

As a teacher or dean at Punahou you would have touched more individual lives than you do now, but in your present best position your indirect effects, through educators that emulate you in certain ways, you have actually more influence as an educator.