Dear friends, sure you are doing well this beautiful day, which the Lord made by Himself. It is painful that I had to excuse myself from this page without notice. Sometimes, life and its vicissitudes can be so overwhelming but for the mercies of God. I am glad I am here today against all odds to do this advocacy, which is very dear to the depth of my heart. It is my irresistible conclusion that irrespective of the enormity of the challenge I face in the process of disseminating this message, I owe my conscience a duty to show up to do so.

Today, I will share with you the 3^rd fact you must consider before you register your child in a school.  Here is the 3^rd fact: Consider what you stand for: we rise and fall by our values, even when we have not taken time to define them. The truth is there is no other way to live productively except by values, which are predicated upon universal principles. What are universal principles? Yes, these are principles, which are universal in nature. They govern the entire universe. They are created by God to sustain the affairs of this world. The more we are aware of their existence and learn how to effectively operate them, the more we are in charge of the affairs of this world. When life slips out of our hands, it is because we have not paid adequate attention to mastering universal principles, which God Himself put in place to govern this world. For example, growth, sowing and reaping, attitude, change, choices etc. are governed by universal principles.

There is no other way to train our children except by inculcating in them values, which we must model.  As we seek to register our children in a school, our benchmark must the values we sustain in our homes. Since the school’s role in the development of our children is complimentary, we must be committed to choosing a school, which will complement our family values. And the schools which can inculcate our family values in our children are the schools, which share same. No person and organisation can give what they do not have.

It means, according to our values, we have determined the kind of education we want to expose our children to and we have begun the charity from home. We are therefore looking for a school, which will help complement what is already being done at home. When We take our children to schools, which do not speak our language in terms of values; we are going to create confusion for our children as to what values to sustain in life. When confusion sets in, they become double-minded and once they become double-minded, they become unstable in all their ways. I am sure you do not want to invest so much into the confusion of your children in the name of paying school fees for your children to be taught, what you do not believe.

It therefore means, we don’t find such school in our immediate area, we will keep scouting and if do not ever find the school within a reasonable distance; we may decide to train our children and resort to home schooling. Before you think, home schooling is too tasking, let me quickly submit that the destiny and the future of our dear children is worth all the caution, care and sacrifices. I can say to you as someone, who suffered enormous childhood abuse that the impact of wrong upbringing is eternal except there is divine intervention.

Please note that education is not only about equipping the head of the child. Education must combine equipping the head with knowledge and injecting into the heart character and virtues. Brilliance without integrity will give birth to an intelligent devil. A school of thought, which I verily agree with submits that EDUCATION derives from the verb EDUCE, which means ‘TO DRAW FORTH FROM WITHIN’ Muriel Spark submits, ‘to me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.’ The child carries inside of him/her the seed of human ingenuity, which means he/she is limitless in his/her capacity to create and he/she is limitless in his/her options in life.

In closing, let me share a story with you. James Dobson, a renowned American Christian psychologist discovered that many schools in America were in the name of teaching sex education, exposing children to pornography and teaching them about sexual orientations beyond male and female. He also found that many Christian parents have registered their children in such schools. Dobson began a campaign to alert parents about the perversion of their children’s value system in the name of sex education.

The problem I have found is that many parents do not live by defined values. If they live by any it is by default. The result of the foregoing is that they lack a clear value-based benchmark on what school to register their children. Another problem is that those who claim to live by defined values do not do enough to protect same, particularly with their children. They also underrate the power of contamination and double vision. The conclusion is that though many of us claim to live by principles, we do not. If we really do, we will defend our values stoutly. I think I should round up here and allow you to think about our discussion today. Join me on Monday as I discuss the 4^th fact to consider. Have an INSPIRED week.