Editorial February 1, 1993 Issue

The potential and possibilities of God's child

Mark Swinney

In recent decades, some of the schools in the United States began experimenting with an unconventional way to sort and classify students. Children of the same age were segregated into groups by what was perceived to be their intelligence and learning ability. The kids caught on to this very quickly; it was easy for them to tell just which students the teachers thought should do well in class, and which ones shouldn't.

The classification of some students as inadequate surely gave them a high hurdle to jump, but whether or not a child warrants extra help with his or her studies at a particular time, that child never deserves to be pigeonholed publicly as a slow learner. While it is important to address the needs of each student, and never to ignore difficulties, no child needs to carry the extra baggage of being openly identified with what are judged to be lesser learning capacities.

The practice of classifying students by so-called learning abilities can tend to solidify the problem rather than help the student find freedom from limitation. But we can't really recognize people's innate aptitude to progress unless we make an important leap. We must admit and understand that intelligence doesn't exist in matter, but in God; and that God's creation—spiritual man, which is our true selfhood—reflects divine intelligence.

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