A good teacher once said that students cannot know the true joy of learning until they have worked as hard as they can. I’d like to explore now why this may be true…

Let’s first define for ourselves what “working hard” in school might mean.
Working hard in school means…

• Working in a regular and consistent manner – the advantage of this would be that more in depth and long term learning would occur. Exams would be easier to take and cramming would be unnecessary(cramming most often does not result in helping a student do well on their exams anyway, and of course, cramming does not result in quality learning).

• Consciously learning to focus one’s attention as fully as one can and mindfully learning, the almost meditative practice of learning to focus one’s mind on the topic at hand.

• Fulfilling one’s responsibility of doing all of his or her assigned work and more to create a greater learning experience, as well as learning what it means to be “responsible” for one’s duties/agreement/commitments.

The positive consequence of working hard then is not only getting good grades, but also gaining the hard working habits it would take to help students prepare themselves for a life that is easily productive and easily successful. Working mindfully and regularly to attain sets of knowledge should also help students get ahead in life, though financial success is not the only benefit of working hard. Knowing how to work hard and knowing how to exert oneself in life can bring a sense of self-fulfillment that cannot be experienced otherwise. The value of our children learning how to work hard in school and gaining that habit for their education and their future lives is invaluable, to say the least.

Motherhood and fatherhood come with weighty responsibility.

For now, I am going to focus on the mother, one half of the important force in a child’s life.  Furthermore I want to talk about the mother who gets to be capable and has been allowed to become a good mother.

Well… who is this good mother?  What kind of a person is she?  What human quality does she possess?   How strong is she so that she can help her children become self-confident and emotionally intelligent people?…

Would you say that… this woman should have a good sense of herself, strong capacity to love, and a deep level of intellectual curiosity, etc.?

While no one is perfect, those characteristics that are mentioned above, a good sense of herself, strong capacity to love, and deep level of intellectual curiosity will definitely be helpful attributes to have if she is to become a good parent.

So… how do we bring up women with those above qualities?  To answer that question better, we need to go a little backwards and discuss what kind of an environment this future good mother must have had.

To allow a female to grow up to be that emotionally strong and intellectually developed woman, we must provide a supportive environment for her.  We must reveal to her or allow her to discover that she is intelligent, strong, and infinitely capable of just about anything that she puts her mind to.  She must be allowed to grow to her full strength as a human being!  Make sense, right?  If you agree, take a mind walk with me just a little bit further.  I have something that I would like to discuss with you as we walk…

Let me now flash backwards in my life a week or so to reveal to you why I am writing this piece in the first place.

At the top of the ninth inning of a Giants home opener game, a portly porkish man with a square-ish head, standing, experiencing too much thought in his unhappy little square-ish head with the umpire’s call, began a string of verbal attacks at a Braves hitter, which went something like, “get up, pick up the bat, don’t be a wuss, it didn’t hurt,” and as if that wasn’t enough he pushed out of his mouth a louder, “don’t be a little girl!”

The guy was almost indescribably obnoxious in his mannerism and voice while he said the words, “don’t be a little girl”   But those words are not always said by indescribably obnoxious drunken idiot of a man like him; those words are said by many normal men and even by some women, and this is what concerns me much more than some indescribably obnoxious people.

Since this particular moment with this man, the indescribably obnoxious man who had said “don’t be a little girl,” I have been hearing men who are not so obnoxious as that drunken man repeat his words.  I have been witnessing normal average Joes saying it.

Just the other day, I heard John Oliver, a comedian that I like very much, who is definitely not a redneck ignoramus, say it.  Right after revealing that the British now have a more sophisticated technology that aides commentary discussing the British elections, to a very impressed looking Jon Stewart (representing the USA), John Oliver said, “yeah, little girl,” (speaking for Britain.)

No matter how different all these people may be from each other, there is one belief system that they all have; when they say, “don’t be a little girl” they are saying, don’t be weak.

Let’s explore possible ways that this can be unhealthy for the females of our lives, and in turn, the lives of all people involved.

When a little girl hears those words, “don’t be a little girl,” she hears that being a little girl represents something that one doesn’t want to be.  Being a little girl means being shamefully weak and perhaps even cowardly.

When this is said so often and so easily, with such certainly of its truth that being a little girl means that one is weak, there have to be consequences on the deep unconscious of the female hearing it.

Could this type of treatment of females identity why so many intelligent females put up with bad and unhealthy relationships with men?  Could it be that many females at some deep subconscious level believe they are inherently weak, and that they need a man to complete them, no matter at what cost?  If females are the ultimate symbol of weakness, how can they expect to be anything of real substance?

I can hear arguments against this going as follows: “but many females manage to be successful and strong and all of those things…” yes, that is true… could it be that it isn’t that these treatments do not affect females, but despite those effects, some of them still rise and the rest have hard time rising from under such weight of emotional put downs and never fully grow?  Consider smoking; smoking doesn’t cause cancer in all people but we know that smoking does cause cancer in most.

If continuing the habit of using the phrase “don’t be a little girl” meaning, “don’t be weak” may hurt most females of our generation, we should examine how this also may  affect the males of today and of the future.   As Mary Wollstonecraft argued once: better education and better treatment of females is needed if we want to protect the potential of the human race.  She was saying to everyone that these females whose emotional and intellectual well-being are being put in harms way will grow up to be poor mothers to all, to men and women.

It is just too easy to find examples of the emotionally, intellectually and spiritually stunted women in our generation.   I am proposing that we at least give it some thought as to what we are saying to and around our little girls.  I am proposing that we give our girls a full and fair chance to grow up to be as strong as any human being has potential to become.  I am proposing that we do not use the word “little girls” to symbolize the state that is the weakest of the weakest.  I propose that being a little girl is not something to be ashamed of.  I am asking that we allow our little girls to grow up to realize their full selves, what ever that may be.  I would like to suggest that that world, a world that had honored a full growth of the females, would be a very nice place to be for us all.

 

Bob Compton, the film maker of 2Mminutes, talks in his blog about the rigorous high school educational practices in Korea and the affect that it has had on its citizen’s standard of living.

http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/12/the-three-year-high-school-in-korea-is-the-most-intense-darwinian-educational-system-i-have-witnessed-anywhere-in-the-world.html

            In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, an author of,  A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, argued that girls should be educated to strengthen their body, heart and mind.  During her time females were being taught to focus on learning how to be physically attractive to men so that they may be cared for by the men.

Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart.  Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent.  Infact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

-Mary Wollstonecraft

            Over two hundred years later, Mattel appears to completely lack a good sense and a sense of responsibility toward how some of their best customers are being powerfully mis-educated by them.  You can read about it at:

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/10/13/barbies-fat-ankles-latest-flap-racial-body-image-controversies

 

I am interested in your thoughts.  Please leave me a comment.

           Yes, it was dangerous for six year old Zachary Christie to take a camping knife to school, but as one MSNBC correspondant said, the people in charge could have used this incident as an opportunity for an open conversation about this very topic.  Instead, the people in charge decided to sacrifice the little boy to make their point.

            If they were so worried, they could have talked with Zachary’s parents.  But to put a little six year old in a reform school with kids who can actually teach him to be something that he would have never become on his own is beyond logic.  It is STUPID!!

            Where the hell is the heart?  Wait… for that matter, where the hell is the head?  What is wrong with these people?  They cannot really be thinking that this experience is healthy for the six year old.  What kind of a lesson are they teaching their students with this?  Have they thought about the future of this child?  What would two months in a reform school do to this six year old?

            This is not a behavior of a civilized culture.  The people in charge of this school lack wisdom, intellgence and heart.  Trusting her own instincts as Thomas Eddison’s mother hand done once, Zachary’s mother is homeschooling her son for now.

            Thomas Eddison’s mother ran into a very foolish teacher who was determined to stick to her obviously limited level of curiosity about human nature and her inability to see children with a clear understanding.  This teacher tried to convince her that there was something very wrong with young Thomas.  His mother pulled Thomas Edison out of the clutches of a foolish and ignorant teacher/school and homeschooled him … the rest is history.

 If you’d like to help Zachary please visit:  http://helpzachary.com/

 

Zachary Christie made this film when he was five years old.

 

What do you think about this?    

Will you please leave a comment?

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.