final tidbits from Yeaxlee on education & knowing Truth

  While it may not be the common purpose of a blog, I have found that as much as sharing ponderings and readings with others, a primary benefit of this blog is to be a repository for my thoughts and for what has affected my thinking. It allows me to collect my ideas, form them, and - vitally - to review them based on topics or themes that I may return to. In that spirit, I wanted to share some final thoughts from Basil Yeaxlee, especially pertaining to knowledge of truth, education, and a bit more on parenting.

Religion and the Growing Mind - Basil Yeaxlee

Knowledge of Faith & Truth

    "Dr. A. B. Macaulay, in discussing the nature of religious dogma and its relationship to science and philosophy, points out very aptly that if religious faith must be integrated with scientific knowledge, so also must scientific knowledge with religious faith. We must agree if we hold that both are natural functions of reasonable man living in a rational universe." 

(pg 113, citing The Death of Christ, pp. 31ff.)

"What we are emphasizing here is that the very nature of religion, as this is discoverable in the growing mind, is to make demands upon historical reality, and through it upon a Reality beyond space and time, yet personal." (pg 114).  

"...some truth cannot be told except in poetry." (pg 116)

"The Kingdom of God is not simply a gradual transformation of the kingdoms of this world but a mighty creative power which from beyond this world is ever breaking in through men and women who, in their day and degree, are creative and other-regarding as Jesus uniquely was in the days of His flesh." 

(pg 136, citing Rudolf Otto's The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man) 

Education

"...we must save ourselves from the risk of confusing education with instruction..." (pg 179)

About teachers... "In truth it may be doubted whether anybody in whom the parental instinct is not strong will ever make a first-class master or mistress." (pg 201)

"All good teaching is interesting teaching, but it is not thoroughly educative unless it stimulates children to discover fresh interests for themselves." (pg 213)

Parenting

"At the same time it is their [parents'] function to bring children gradually into contact with the larger world, so that the children can accept the good and throw off the evil for themselves." (pg 185)