Education doesn’t make you happy, and nor does freedom.  We don’t become happy just because we’re free, if we are, or because we’ve been educated, if we have, but because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy.  It opens our eyes, our ears… tells us where delights are lurking… convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever… that of the mind… and gives us the assurance, the confidence, to walk the path our mind… our educated mind… offers.

- – Iris Murdoch

 

             “There is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever… that of the mind”… meaning that if we are not educated, academically and other wise, we are not truly free.  So if we want our children to grow up to be truly free human-beings, we must find a way to inspire them to fall in love with the idea of educating their minds.

            How do we inspire our children?  We must be inspiring parents and teachers alike.  We must be in love with what we are teaching because if we do, they will.  We must be in love with learning, for if we do, they will.

          I would like to start this by saying that I do not believe home-schooling is the only way to educate children well or even the best.  I will say that home-schooling worked out very well for my son and me.  But perhaps, the element in our home-schooling that made our educational technology work can be implemented in the more traditional settings to better support the students in their learning environment.

            When the parents who home-school use their creativity as well as their open minds to encourage thoughts that are other than their own, providing diversity of ideas, intellectual and otherwise, it provides a well rounded intellectual experience and can be a wonderful learning environment for the child since, he or she is learning while receiving the unconditional love that parents can so easily provide.

            Home schooled children may avoid the negative influence of misguided teachers who may discourage a child from being someone that is absolutely perfect due to their own lack of understanding or their awareness level.   I have watched instances of brilliant children, who were deeply misunderstood by their teachers, labeled trouble makers and received mistreatment by most of the faculty(negative perspectives being reinforced by one teacher to another).  These children ended up going through an unpleasant and unhappy educational experience, impacting them powerfully. 

            I know that there are many wonderful teachers in the traditonal educational systems and I want to take time to honour them since they are some of the most important people in our world.  The great teachers.  Our culture does not take notice enough of these very special beings even though they powerfully impact the young minds of our future… our future!

             One of the reasons whyI home schooled my son was perhaps due to my exposure to a few bad situations.  Another reason why I kept my son away from the traditional educational environment was that I wanted to preserve and protect my son’s brilliance, his creative instincts and his strong sense of self.  I think if done right, a traditional school environment can do the same thing.

 

 

To know that our brains have endless potential to learn is just amazing! 

I love this talk!

           It’s just too easy, getting into a pattern of noticing the negatives, whether it be general issues of life or actions and habits of those around us.  This habitual pattern may stem from our desires for things to be good, or more aptly… our fear of failure.  

            I know that when I seem to focus on the negatives of my life, I think I am attempting to prevent something that I fear.    And when I am in this place of fear, I tend to overly correct and criticize everyone including myself.  And when I am in that constant habit of correcting or criticizing everyone, I am not empowering those around me as I want to be doing or as I think I am doing.  Instead I am most likely disempowering everyone.

            If as a child one is often criticized without receiving much in the way of positive feed back, he or she may then, as an adult, not know what it means to just be a part of life, to just know that things are right, just as they are.  It may be that as he or she felt picked apart, he or she learned to pick a part their own world, looking for areas to fix and make better to prevent from being picked a part by those who were in charge of loving them.

            The only problem with this way of being as a parent, is that as a parent our deepest desire is to empower our children and being overly critical contradicts what we want for our children.  We all want our children to be confident, strong and know how wonderful they are.  We want them to go out and conquer the greatest of obstacles and be on top of their world.  We don’t want them to become overly self-critical and spend even one minute doubting them-selves.

            I think about what it feels like to be overly criticized, to have someone notice only the negatives and have those negatives become the only focal point from which they view me.  It feels awful, to say the least. 

            And then I think about my friend, Mara.  Whenever I am in front of her I always feel like I’m on top of the world.  I know that I feel the way I do because she always sees the best in me and therefore connects with the best part of me.

            Our children need for us to be their critiques at various times, but if we find ourselves predominantly in that mode, and not as often their accepter and admirer, then we may need to step out, take a deep breath, clear our lenses and take a new look at our perfectly beautiful and beautifully perfect children.