Using Your Mind

In the days of the one room schoolhouse, education was much more rigorous than today.
Just look at The Original Blue Back Speller and peruse the spelling lists.
I wonder how many high school students could spell and define most of those words?
McGuffey readers were also used, beginning in the mid 19th century.

The readers became progressively more challenging as you went to the next level.
The readers at the advance level contained essays from well-known writers.
Essays from American writers such as John Milton, Lord Byron, and Daniel Webster.
The readers emphasized spelling, vocabulary, and formal public speaking.

The editor, William Holmes McGuffey, was a conservative theological teacher.
To him, public schooling consisted of a moral and spiritual education.
As our society grew more pluralistic, the content of the readers changed.
Salvation, righteousness, and piety, so prominent in early version, were removed.

Education became more secular and tried to meet the perceived needs of society.
Even in math where ciphering in your head was expected, the expectations were lowered.
Now, “doing it in your head” was replaced with figuring it out on paper.
Slide rules and then calculators replaced that.

Doing math in your head is not expected anymore.
Showing multiple steps, using words to describe how you got your answer is the norm.
Simple calculations need to be done on paper, if they are done at all.
Mental math is outdated.

At what price?

In order for a culture to be undermined, it must be trained to stop thinking.
It has to resort to being spoon fed information.
It wastes its time on the trivial rather than concentrate on the substantive.
It becomes a society of learners not thinkers, which is vastly different.

When I food shop and have to buy multiple items, I do that calculation in my head.
I taught my children simple rounding and practiced that skill as we went food shopping.
If I am at a restaurant and I need to tip my waitress, I do not need to get out my calculator.
That percentage can easily be figured out in my head.

We smile at the absurdity.
Without practice, the ability to do mental math will disappear.
A news story I read made me laugh.
It was entitled, “A second grader’s revenge against Common Core math.”

It was a simple math problem with directions.
Mike saw 17 blue cars and 25 green cars at the toy store. How many cars did he see?
Write a number sentence with a [square] for the missing number.
Explain how the number sentence shows the problem.

The second grader responded correctly with a precious explanation.
17 + 25 = [42]
I got the answer by talking in my brain and I agreed of the answer that my brain got.

He talked in his brain.
He agreed with his brain.
He did mental math.
According to the Common Core standards, that is a problem.

What?

In cases of political genocide, people were tortured or executed for being intellectuals.
One could be considered an intellectual if they wore glasses.
If you wore glasses, you could read; if you could read, you could think for yourself.
Thinking for yourself meant that you might come to disagree with the regime.

That was not allowed or tolerated.

We should be wary of anything that demands us to stop thinking.
We should be appalled at anything that requires us to leave our minds at the door.
We should be talking in our brains as that precious second grader said.
We must be careful what we put into our brains.

God wants us to think; He created our minds after all.
God wants us to meditate on His Word; He tells us that over and over.
We need to be pouring Scripture into our brains.
Then they will be doing the right kind of talking.

Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…(Luke 10:27)

We are commanded to love the Lord with our minds.
We are not to leave our minds at the door.
Mental math gives us practice in using our minds wisely.
Scripture memorization is an excellent way to train our minds in righteousness.

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
(Deuteronomy 6:5-9)

This is teaching.
This is discipleship.
This is walking alongside training minds and hearts.
Thinking, meditating on God’s Word, pondering, considering, and contemplating.

This is using your mind, actively, and consistently; filling your mind with Truth.
Truth combats lies.
We must know the times and think of ways to redeem it for God’s Glory.
That does not happen when are minds are left at the door.

Therefore prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires that you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:13-16)

Prepare your minds for action.
Do not leave your minds at the door.