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Yes! This is just the sort of thing Charlotte Mason talked about in her various educational books. She contrasts the two types of education: analytical and synthetic (or synthesis). She points out that while analytical education is necessary and helpful we make the mistake in modern education of having it proceed the synthetic education. That is, like your example, you had dissected a mouse before you had even truly experienced a mouse. She also points out that joy and love for something can only come through a synthetic (whole/unified) relationship of the thing. One of my favorite quotes of hers, "Education is the science of relationships."

This is such an desperately necessary topic to address. Thank you for writing on it.

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Maybe neither way of questioning is poison or cure but just two different ways of knowing the world? The difference between ‘who?’ and ‘how?’ Like melody and harmony: alone, insufficient, but together, resoundingly beautiful. To know the ways the world works and also why it does, and for both answers to turn us back to the glory of the Creator! (Credit where it’s due: Marty Solomon teaches this idea at the beginning of the BEMA podcast)

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Wow. This is so beautiful and so relatable. Thank you.

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Yes!!!!!!! Excellent piece. So true what a nice read as well.

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This is the best thing I have read on Substack-period-exclamation point.

I am standing up cheering your words and because of them standing up in praise to the Lord.

I love this:

“And it was the same for God; all the abstractions seemed to make me less full of awe and my vision of him was mundane, nothing more than a machine to be examined. And all the premises, all the syllogisms, and all the doctrines never did what I needed them to do: Fill my heart.”

Thank you!

Yes! Yes! Yes!

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Wonderful! To me it was even poetic!

Thank you for sharing this thought provoking piece. The thought came to me that the knowing Christ and the growing in Christ is the goal of becoming a child of God and revealing to the world Who He is. Thank you.

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