How, then, should we educate our young?
First, treat them as spirits. They are spirits, entering a physical body. That is not an easy thing for a spirit to do; not an easy thing for a spirit to get used to. It is very confining, very limiting. So the child will cry out at suddenly being so limited. Hear this cry. Understand it. And give your children as much of a sense of “unlimitedness” as you possibly can.
Next, introduce them to the world you have created with gentleness and care. Be full of care, that is to say, be careful, of what you put into their memory storage units. Children remember everything they see, everything they experience. Why do you spank your children the moment they exit the womb? Do you really imagine this is the only way to get their engines going? Why do you take your babies away from their mothers minutes after they have been separated from the only life-form they have known in all of their present existence? Will not the measuring and the weighing and the prodding and the poking wait for just a moment while the newly born experience the safety and the comfort of that which has given it life?
Why do you allow some of the earliest images to which your child is exposed to be images of violence? Who told you this was good for your children? And why do you hide images of love?
Why do you teach your children to be ashamed and embarrassed of their own bodies and their functions by shielding your own body from them, and telling them not to ever touch themselves in ways which pleasure them? What message do you send them about pleasure? And what lessons about the body?
Why do you place your children in schools where competition is allowed and encouraged, where being the “best” and learning the “most” is rewarded, where “performance” is graded, and moving at one’s own pace is barely tolerated? What does your child understand from this?
Why do you not teach your children of movement and music and the joy of art and the mystery of fairy tales and the wonder of life? Why do you not bring out what is naturally found in the child, rather than seek to put in what is unnatural to the child?
And why do you not allow your young ones to learn logic and critical thinking and problem solving and creation, using the tools of their own intuition and their deepest inner knowing, rather than the rules and the memorized systems and conclusions of a society which has already proven itself to be wholly unable to evolve by these methods, yet continues to use them?
Finally, teach concepts, not subjects.
Devise a new curriculum, and build it around three Core Concepts:
Awareness
Honesty
Responsibility
Teach your children these concepts from the earliest age. Have them run through the curriculum until the final day. Base your entire educational model upon them. Birth all instruction deep within them.
I don’t understand what that would mean.
It means everything you teach would come from within these concepts.
Can you explain that? How would we teach the three R’s?
From the earliest primers to your more sophisticated readers, all tales, stories, and subject matter would revolve around the core concepts. That is, they would be stories of awareness, stories dealing with honesty, stories about responsibility. Your children would be introduced to the concepts, injected into the concepts, immersed in the concepts.
Writing tasks likewise would revolve around these Core Concepts, and others which are attendant to them as the child grows in the ability to self express.
Even computation skills would be taught within this framework. Arithmetic and mathematics are not abstractions, but are the most basic tools in the universe for living life. The teaching of all computation skills would be contextualized within the larger life experience in a way which draws attention to, and places focus upon, the Core Concepts and their derivatives.
What are these “derivatives”?
To use a phrase which your media people have made popular, they are the spin-offs. The entire educational model can be based on these spin-offs, replacing the subjects in your present curriculum, which teach, basically, facts.
For instance?
Well, let’s use our imagination. What are some of the concepts which are important to you in life?
Uh...well, I would say...honesty, as you have said.
Yes, go ahead. That’s a Core Concept.
And, um...fairness. That’s an important concept to me.
Good. Any others?
Treating others nicely. That’s one. I don’t know how to put that into a concept.
Go on. Just let the thoughts flow.
Getting along. Being tolerant. Not hurting others. Seeing others as equal. Those are all things I would hope I could teach my children.
Good. Excellent! Keep going.
Uh...believing in yourself. That’s a good one. And uh...wait, wait...there’s one coming. Uh...yeah, that’s it: walking in dignity. I guess I would call it walking in dignity. I don’t know how to put that into a better concept, either, but it has to do with the way one carries oneself in one’s life, and the way one honors others, and the path others are taking.
This is good stuff. This is all good stuff. You’re getting down to it now. And there are many other such concepts which all children must deeply understand if they are to evolve and grow into complete human beings. Yet you do not teach these things in your schools. These are the most important things in life, these things we are now talking of, but you do not teach in school. You do not teach what it means to be honest. You do not teach what it means to be responsible. You do not teach what it means to be aware of other people’s feelings and respectful of other people’s paths.
You say it is up to parents to teach these things. Yet parents can only pass on what has been passed on to them. And the sins of the father have been visited upon the son. So you are teaching in your homes the same stuff your parents taught you in their homes.
So? What’s wrong with that?
As I keep saying repeatedly here, taken a look at the world lately?
You keep bringing us back to that. You keep making us look at that. But all that isn’t our fault. We can’t be blamed for the way the rest of the world is.
It is not a question of blame, it is a question of choice. And if you are not responsible for the choices humankind has been making, and keeps making, who is?
Well, we can’t make ourselves responsible for all of it!
I tell you this: Until you are willing to take responsibility for all of it, you cannot change any of it.
You cannot keep saying they did it, and they are doing it, and if only they would get it right! Remember the wonderful line from Walt Kelly’s comic strip character, Pogo, and never forget it:
“We have met the enemy, and they is us.”
We’ve been repeating the same mistakes for hundreds of years, haven’t we…
For thousands of years, my son. You’ve been making the same mistakes for thousands of years. Humankind has not evolved in its most basic instincts much beyond the caveman era. Yet every attempt to change that is met with scorn. Every challenge to look at your values, and maybe even restructure them, is greeted with fear, and then anger. Now along comes an idea from Me to actually teach higher concepts in schools. Oh, boy, now we’re really treading on thin ice.
Still, in highly evolved societies, that is exactly what is done.
But the problem is, not all people agree on these concepts, on what they mean. That’s why we can’t teach them in our schools. Parents go nuts when you try to introduce these things into the curriculum. They say you are teaching “values”, and that the school has no place in such instruction.
They are wrong! Again, based on what you say as a race of people that you are trying to do-which is build a better world-they are wrong. Schools are exactly the place for such instruction. Precisely because schools are detached from parents’ prejudices. Precisely because schools are separated from parents’ preconceived notions. You’ve seen what has resulted on your planet from the passing down of values from parent to child. Your planet is a mess.
You don’t understand the most basic concepts of civilized societies.
You don’t know how to solve conflict without violence.
You don’t know how to love without condition.
These are basic -basic- understandings, and you have not even begun to approach a full comprehension of them, much less implement them...after thousands and thousands of years.
Is there any way out of this mess?
Yes! It is in your schools! It is in the education of your young! Your hope is in the next generation, and the next! But you must stop immersing them in the ways of the past. Those ways have not worked. They have not taken you where you say you want to go. Yet if you are not careful, you are going to get exactly where you are headed!
So stop! Turn around! Sit down together and collect your thoughts. Create the grandest version of the greatest vision you ever had about yourselves as a human race. Then, take the values and concepts which undergird such a vision and teach them in your schools.
Why not courses such as…
Understanding Power
Peaceful Conflict Resolution
Elements of Loving Relationships
Personhood and Self Creation
Body, Mind and Spirit: How They Function
Engaging Creativity
Celebrating Self, Valuing Others
Joyous Sexual Expression
Fairness
Tolerance
Diversities and Similarities
Ethical Economics
Creative Consciousness and Mind Power
Awareness and Wakefulness
Honesty and Responsibility
Visibility and Transparency
Science and Spirituality
Much of this is taught right now. We call it Social Studies.
I am not talking about a 2-day unit in a semester-long course. I am talking about separate courses on each of these things. I am talking about a complete revision of your schools’ curricula. I am speaking of a values-based curriculum. You are now teaching what is largely a facts-based curriculum.
I am talking about focusing your children’s attention as much on understanding the core concepts and the theoretical structures around which their value system may be constructed as you now do on dates and facts and statistics.
In the highly evolved societies of your galaxy and your universe (which societies we will be talking about much more specifically in Book 3), concepts for living are taught to offspring beginning at a very early age. What you call “facts”, which in those societies are considered far less important, are taught at a much later age.
On your planet you have created a society in which little johnnie has learned how to read before getting out of pre-school, but still hasn’t learned how to stop biting his brother. And Susie has perfected her multiplication tables, using flash cards and rote memory, in ever earlier and earlier grades, but has not learned that there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about her body.
Right now your schools exist primarily to provide answers. It would be far more beneficial if their primary function was to ask questions. What does it mean to be honest, or responsible, or “fair”? What are the implications? For that matter, what does it mean that 2+2=4? What are the implications? Highly evolved societies encourage all children to discover and create those answers for themselves.
But...but, that would lead to chaos!
As opposed to the non-chaotic conditions under which you now live your life…
Okay, okay...so it would lead to more chaos.
I am not suggesting that your schools never share with your offspring any of the things which you have learned or decided about these things. Quite to the contrary. Schools serve their students when they share with Young Ones what Elders have learned and discovered, decided and chosen in the past. Students may then observe how all this has worked. In your schools, however, you present these data to the student as That Which Is Right, when the data really should be offered as simply that: data.
Past Data should not be the basis of Present Truth. Data from a prior time or experience should always and only be the basis for new questions. Always the treasure should be in the question, not in the answer.
And always the questions are the same. With regard to this past data which we have shown you, do you agree, or do you disagree? What do you think? Always, this is the key question. Always this is the focus. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think?
Now obviously children will bring to this question the values of their parents. Parents will continue to have a strong role - obviously the primary role - in creating the child’s system of values. The school’s intention and purpose would be to encourage offspring, from the earliest age until the end of formal education, to explore those values, and to learn how to use them, apply them, functionalize them - and yes, even to question them. For parents who do not want children questioning their values are not parents who love their children, but rather, who love themselves through their children.
I wish - oh, how I wish - that there were schools such as the ones you describe!
There are some which seek to approach this model.
There are?
Yes. Read the writings of the man called Rudolph Steiner. Explore the methods of The Waldorf School, which he developed.
Well, of course, I know about those schools. Is this a commercial?
This is an observation.
Because you knew I was familiar with the Waldorf Schools. You knew that.
Of course I knew that. Everything in your life has served you, brought you to this moment. I have not just started talking with you at the beginning of this book. I have been talking with you for years, through all of your associations and experiences.
You’re saying the Waldorf School is the best?
No, I am saying it is a model which works, given where you say as a human race you want to go; given what you claim you want to do; given what you say you want to be. I am saying it is an example - one of several I could cite, although on your planet and in your society they are rare - of how education may be accomplished in a way which focuses on “wisdom” more than simply “knowledge”.
Well, it is a model I very much approve of. There are many differences between a Waldorf School and other schools. Let me give an example. It is a simple one, but it dramatically illustrates the point.
In the Waldorf School, the teacher moves with the children through all levels of the primary and elementary learning experience. For all those years the children have the same teacher, rather than moving from one person to another. Can you imagine the bond which is formed here? Can you see the value?
The teacher comes to know the child as if it were his or her own. The child moves to a level of trust and love with the teacher which opens doors many traditionally oriented schools never dreamed existed. At the end of those years, the teacher reverts to the first grade, starting over again with another group of children and moving through all the years of the curriculum. A dedicated Waldorf teacher may wind up working with only four or five groups of children in an entire career. But he or she has meant something to those children beyond anything that is possible in a traditional school setting.
This educational model recognizes and announces that the human relationship, the bonding and the love which is shared in such a paradigm is just as important as any facts the teacher may impart to the child. It is like home schooling, outside the home.
Yes, it is a good model.
There are other good models?
Yes. You are making some progress on your planet with regard to education, but it is very slow. Even the attempt to place a goals oriented, skill-development-focused curriculum in public schools has met with enormous resistance. People see it as threatening, or ineffective. They want children to learn facts. Still, there are some inroads. Yet there is much to be done.
And that is only one area of the human experience which could use some overhauling, given what you say as human beings that you are seeking to be.
Yes, I should imagine the political arena could use some changes, too.
To be sure.