Reading Chapter 18 of Teach The Children

This is really an interesting chapter. Parents who's youth are attending Vanguard need to try and find this book by Neil J. Flinders. It's called Teach the Children An Agency Approach to Education.

Here is a quote from page 311 that fits me and speaks for me.

 "Academically, my credentials are limited. It's almost as if you're down here with your finite wisdom bouncing around and taking the hard knocks; every once in a while, by hard work and persistence, you feel that spirit of enlightenment that has divine origin. Then you say, 'Eureka!' and you run with it...If you are a humble follower of He who knows all truth, the doors are wide open. The Lord will help us use our talents to inspire one another in all kinds of things."
-(David Allan's story of his role in developing a standard for atomic clocks.)

Chapter 18 is about scholarship. The meaning as it's related to man's relationship to God, man's relationship to man, and man's relationship to nature/things.

I also liked this quote. "True scholars create, report, explain, and clarify (4 R's); they listen, comprehend, confirm, correct, and reject. To engage in debate, disputation, argument, contention, self-serving salesmanship, and other forms of intellectual compulsion is not scholarship-it is rhetoric."

I had to look up rhetoric: 1828 dictionary says

RHET'ORIC, n. [Gr. from to speak, to flow. Eng. to read. The primary sense is to drive or send. See Read.]

1. The art of speaking with propriety, elegance and force.

2. The power of persuasion or attraction; that which allures or charms. We speak of the rhetoric of the tongue, and the rhetoric of the heart or eyes.

Aristotle defines rhetoric as the 'art of persuasion'. It's the skill that convinces everybody of anything for a fee. It the training and skill by which ne can make unimportant things seem important so says Hugh Nibley.

As parents with youth in Vanguard we need to read this chapter as well as chapters 19, 12, 13, & 14. I'm guessing the whole book is a good idea too....in time.