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Teach Your Children Well The
philosophy of the classroom in this generation will be the
philosophy of politics, government and life in the next. Abraham Lincoln By Richard Kieninger The
Importance of Early Childhood Education
The Brotherhoods inform us that the proper education
of children is essential to the progress and maintenance of an ever-improving
level of civilization. This is based on thousands of years of observation and
experience in Lemuria and in the other advanced cultures, where it became
apparent to the Brotherhoods that only highly developed individuals can
comprise a highly developed civilization. It is therefore mandatory in order
for a culture to produce Initiates in large numbers to devote much of its
attention and energy to the maximization of the potentials of each succeeding
generation. Each child must receive optimum support and training if he is to
be neurologically, emotionally and psychologically fulfilled. He deserves
every possible opportunity that assists his becoming intellectually bright
and creative—his intelligence is directly proportional to all these factors
and more.
It
takes years of happy interactions that are as close to one-on-one as possible
for the older generation to pass on the best that it has to offer to the
succeeding one, and for the younger generation to receive, integrate, and put
into daily practice that which it has been given. This is the only way that
young children can learn until such time as they are capable of reading on
their own with comprehension. Paddling Upstream for the Good of
Humanity How
can we make the world a better place than we found it despite the economic
pressures in our current society—pressures that usually make it necessary for
both parents aspiring to the American Dream to work outside of the home,
placing their children in the care of others such as sitters, day-care
providers, nannies, relatives, or neighbors. This is an unfortunate situation
as the older generation simply is not available to pass on the best that it
has to offer to the next. We
hear much about deteriorating “family values” these days and that academic
skill levels are plummeting. Given this, there should be little wonder that
crime is escalating geometrically. For many children, gangs with their own
distorted ethics are replacing missing parental guidance. Everywhere there is
fragmentation, frustration, irritation and pressures. Pleasure tends to come
through drugs and things we must buy—cars, TVs, boats, clothes, food, movies,
video games and toys—rather than from loving associations in the home and
elsewhere. It
is valuable for peace of mind and a satisfying family life when parents live
in a more moderate house, letting one parent remain at home to cultivate
their children’s intelligence, care for the household’s needs at a more
leisurely pace, and prepare healthy food for the family. Interactions
with other children who are steeped in the negative patterns of violence in
entertainment and who are determined to maintain and spread the view that
learning has to be deadly boring can be trying to both adult and child who
are following a more sane path. It has never been easy to deal with people
who do not want to move up from ignorance or any other lack of abundance.
Attracting other families who share more positive lifestyles will come with
time, because like attracts like. Children
are benefiting in those families that have had the courage and vision not to
succumb to the cultural norms. To those of you who are in the process of
deciding to seek healthier and happier options for the development of your
own family, be assured that you will be amply rewarded for your efforts! No
one knows your child better than you do; no one knows what your child needs
better than you. Parents
are, and always will be, necessary for a child’s positive education. The
questions to all parents out there are: Are you going to do your job? Are you
going to raise your children or are you going to let the state mold them for
you? Whose values to do want your children to espouse? Whose moral code do
you want them to live by? If
you do not want the state’s ever-changing version of values and morality,
then you must step in and assert your own authority. The Supreme Court said
you have a constitutional right to control the upbringing of your own
children without interference from the state. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923). If
you have a child, be a parent. Bearing a child does not assume the latter.
You have a job. Do it. If you do not want to take the time and do the work
that is required to raise your own children, then do not have them. They
deserve more than what the state thinks it is minimally obligated to give
them. The Generation Gap The
generation gap is parents losing their children! Parents may fulfill the
responsibility of feeding, clothing, and educating them, but the children
shun the parents, are recalcitrant and contrary, rebutting and disputing
whatever the parents say or want of their offspring. We
talk of the communication gap between parents and children as the “generation
gap.” We speak of it as a matter of course, as something which inevitably
occurs between the generations and as though nothing can be done about it—a
fact of life. But this isn’t so, even though it is pervasive in the culture
of the United States and is becoming so in countries which are imitating our
mercantilistic way of life. They
do not share with each other the feelings, thoughts and wishes of deepest
value. That which is essentially the fundamental person has been put aside
and thwarted for so long there is nothing left but the pattern of rebuffing,
repelling and turning away. Contemporary
parents vastly underestimate the time, attention, love, patience and
follow-through that is required for a person’s growth from a baby to a vital,
contributing adulthood. The greatest gift parents can give their offspring is
the gift of their time! This is a gift of themselves. Nothing can take the
place of it. TIME EQUALS LOVE. Fulfilling needs equals love. Feeding the mind
and spirit as well as the body equals love. The
Creator gave us the raw materials, and we mold the clay by every thought,
word, act, gesture, belief, gift, desire, intention—or negligence of
these—about the child. We need to ask if we are educating children by
negligence or by intention. If we put our children out to day care, we are
neglecting them, and this they will unconsciously act out as if they were
abandoned. Development
of the Conscience One of the basic characteristics of the human mind is the power of conscience. It is this faculty which allows a person to hold to a set of principles and behavior for a lifetime and also allows an Ego to adjust to the unique mores of whatever society he incarnates into. Conscience depends largely upon the conditioning of the brain from infancy onward, and it is formed in the day-by-day process of identification with the idealized images of all the people who represent power and protection and love and nurturing, especially one’s parents or parent-substitutes. The blank brain of the baby begins to imprint every detailed attitude of the persons around him. Their ethics, standards, values, ambitions, demands, wishes, fears, prejudices, personality traits, feelings and emotional responses are all absorbed and woven into the child’s own personality. The fact that all standards and the distinction between right and wrong develop at a time when a child has no critical sense or any discerning power of reason may explain the anachronistic and often unrealistic early value judgments and interpretation of morality that form a person’s conscience.
A child’s conscience develops without his conscious awareness, and it begins with his intuitive sensing of the emotions of those around him from the moment of his birth. His morality is molded by his need for acceptance; so he seeks to be good in the eyes of those upon whom he relies for security. He is motivated to control his animal drives in order to avoid rejection, punishment and the pain of guilt. After about the age of four years, the sense of morality evolves and he learns the difference between what is right and what is wrong. The great bulk of the conscience-forming process is completed by the fourth year; and as adults in this modern world, we are governed by a conscience which sits in rigid, pitiless judgment of our every thought and deed. It is unalterable and subconscious. One did not come by his conscience rationally and one can barely alter it rationally regardless of how much he can honestly justify actions—good and bad—which run counter to his conscience. The thoroughness of the conscience-forming aspect of man can be demonstrated by nationalistic traits and family attitudes that have passed from generation to generation for centuries. The child literally continues the society without ever having thought about it in the process.
Home-Schooling
Home-schooling today is actually a return to the
truly traditional method of children being instructed by their parents.
During that time it was understood that one’s children studied the Bible and
learned their basic moral and ethical values at home, along with the
elementary subjects necessary for further education. The expected and
anticipated way of life was that all elementary aspects of life were taught
by the parents. Times have changed; maybe people have not.
Home-schooling does not require any special
schooling on the part of the parents. The beauty of home-schooling is that
parents learn more than their children in the process. To teach a child more
than we have been taught requires extra study, and therefore the life of the
parent is enriched as he learns with the child; so there is a benefit for
both. Parents improve their reading by learning to teach their children with
phonics. Parents learn the history they missed in school. They increase their
vocabulary. They learn that their values are worth passing on to their
children. They may exchange services with others who have certain skills to
teach their youngsters. They may lean heavily on the public library. There
are maybe as many ways of “doing” home-schooling as there are parents doing
it, and there are now many networks of home-schooling families. Children
who are home schooled tend not to suffer the generation-gap complex. Nor do
most youngsters who grow up in intentional communities. For example, Japan (a
highly industrialized country) and most European nations have not been much
troubled by this breach of communications between the generations. Why?
Because there was generally a pattern of at least one parent staying home
with their offspring while the other went out to earn the living. Home-schooled
youngsters are comparatively strong individuals with a certain centeredness
and aplomb, which few children who attend public school can duplicate. Those schooled
at home tend to be vastly more creative and self-reliant than others. They
tend to be thoughtful, able to be with themselves and are able to be focused
and quiet. They are accustomed to working with their parents rather than
discharging so much energy in opposing their elders. In short, a generation
gap does not occur in these families.
A valuable thing a parent can teach the child at age
three or four is how to seek answers by first asking questions, and later how
to go to other sources besides the parent for those answers. Accessing books,
reference materials, recordings and other knowledgeable people for answers to
feed an insatiable curiosity, opens up the world of the Mind to the young
child. This goal, of providing access to many sources of information in
unlimited quantities, is a worthy one for the mother of a pre-six-year-old. A
parent is the only person close enough to his own baby to be the child’s
ideal teacher. However, some teachers have been able to teach a baby more in
ten minutes a day than the parents can in weeks, because only a few parents
are aware of universal principles of teaching and learning. Lab-school
programs demonstrate and document the dramatic raising of the I.Q. levels of
groups of infants. Parents can learn from child-development specialists who
are making great progress in understanding early education. Those teachers
know how to make learning fun. They also know that each child is receptive to
learning at his own rate of speed.
The main “turn-on” for the tiny child is the
enthusiasm and fun conveyed by the teacher. Conversely, one of the greatest
blocks to learning is anxiety. Therefore, the confident and knowledgeable
parent can help the child feel in control of the information being gained.
The child is then freed from spending his energy on dealing with tension and
can retain the information more readily. When the child has a teacher full time, and often two teachers in both mother and father, he should be able to read by the age of three and to write by the age of four. Words, mathematical facts, and pictures of all kinds can be shown on flashcards (at first very large flashcards), with one bit of information on each card, in very short learning sessions. Prior to the age of two you can teach a child a multitude of mathematical operations before he are even able to speak. Tiny children are able to instantly find the answer to an equation which involves three or four operations, because they will have been helped to develop access to a center of the brain that most people aren’t in touch with as an adult. Consistent and pleasant early exposure to math facts grows the brain in mathematics processing so that the language of math is acquired naturally and effortlessly.
There
are those who would say that many home environments are chaotic and unstable,
and surely the children of these homes would be better off in school. To them
we would say that very few home environments could match the noise, the
chaos, the neglect and abuse inherent in the structure of public schools.
Parents would have to abuse their children constantly for five to seven hours
every day to equal the abuse of classroom life. Even the most neglectful and
deranged parents cannot maintain such a pace. It takes a large system to
break down a child. One
of the merits of home-schooling is that it allows people to slow down enough
to take in what they are learning, to care about it, and to enjoy it by
relating it to the greater spectrum of knowledge, thereby making learning
relevant. Home-schooled
children are quite different from “normal” children. All ages and abilities
can play and work together without prejudice. The degree of natural
compatibility, the ability to cooperate and share which home-schooled children
display is remarkable. It’s through their interactions with other people that
you really step back and say, “Wow, these are really different kids.” They
are extremely mature, responsible, passionate, sensitive, careful and
respectful. Who
would not want children like that! And now we know why home-schooling is
growing the way it is. It is much more than just a rebellion against mass,
inept public schooling. It is a movement to gain greater values, greater
freedom, and greater satisfactions with one’s family and one’s life. They are
not available from Madison Avenue, or Washington, or the local germ incubator
known as the public school with its drugs, violence, peer pressure,
nihilistic, dumbed-down curriculum, and union-dominated, politicized
establishment. An
alternative to home-schooling is for new parents to enjoy a regular home
visit from a parent educator who helps answer day-to-day concerns and
questions, and recommends a program of mental and neurological enrichment.
They would also meet on a regular basis to learn about an area of general
interest to parents such as effective discipline, healthy diets, etc. This
kind of support does much more than supply the parent with much-needed
information; it instills a sense of confidence and know-how. Parenting is
enjoyed much more when you are not constantly wondering if what you are doing
is “right.” Subtle Aspects of Early Childhood
Education
“Courtesy is the keynote of serene living. Children
must at an early age learn to observe the courtesies that smooth the paths of
life. In order to be courteous, one needs only to consider first the effects
that the satisfaction of his desires will have on others. The common
annoyances of life are eliminated through this simple observance. Why should
anyone discard trash on the public scene, deface property, shoplift
merchandise, selfishly demand undue privileges, or disturb the peace?
“Silence is important to the human soul. It is
during quietude that Egoic advancement is gained. Peace and tranquility
within the city will be an observance jointly required of everyone.
Soundproofing of factories, offices, and homes will be required. The playing
of radios or music so loudly that it can be heard beyond the confines of
one’s house or auto must be guarded against at all hours of the day. Persons
should no longer be subjected to the loud talking of others or to the sounds
of the automobile’s horn, roaring motor, or squealing tires. Industrial and
transportation sounds must be reduced to a whisper.
“Noninterference from external noise is a basic
right of every person. Noise is an invasion of personal privacy. Without
noise, productive efficiency surges upward, tempers are in repose, and
tensions ease. The tyranny of noise in present‑day cities is costing
men dearly in inefficiency and fatigue. Your city shall be able to
demonstrate that urban life can become tranquil merely by practicing
courtesy. How can one help but be courteous and thoughtful of others when
everyone he encounters considers his feelings before their own wishes? These
attitudes are best instilled from birth so they become second nature.
“Children learn discourtesy and destructiveness from
others; and parents can easily guide their children away from detrimental
influences when, as in the community, there are few examples to mislead them.
Children in primitive tribes, whose safety and very lives depend upon their
being undetected by enemies, are trained to silence even while in active and
joyful play. These children do not suffer a disturbance of personality because
they are not permitted to scream and shout while having fun any more than
city children are disturbed because they must play on narrow sidewalks
instead of in the broad boulevards. In both cases the preservation of the
children’s lives depends upon their respective restrictions. Children are
exceedingly adaptive in this respect. Raucous behavior in children and
adolescents stems from lack of easily practiced rules of noiselessness.
Civilization must be taught to children. Whatever omissions
the parent is guilty of, he is indeed responsible. If the offspring whom the
parent unleashes upon the world is a danger to it or a drag upon the society
rather than a benefit, there are karmic repercussions which accrue to the
parents. To raise a child properly requires much effort. On the other hand,
to not instill character and purpose in one’s child on the grounds that to do
so imposes upon the free will of the child amounts to avoidance of
responsibility. Given
the importance of childhood education to mankind’s progress, it seems ironic
that little or no education or training is available for parenting. In no
other area of life is there the expectation that one automatically knows how
to undertake such a complex skill. We should not expect of ourselves or
anyone else that we instinctively know how to be a parent. In the U.S. today
help is readily available for learning how to deliver your baby and
breast-feed him/her, but formal education on how to educate your child is
almost nil. That
being the case, a key to the success of the Adelphi community and to the
evolution of a new nation is the availability of training and support for
all parents. Finding Support The
national societal issues involved are too large for an individual or even a
single family to change. The best that can be achieved is for a couple to
decide their course of action based on the family’s needs. Some families are
joining intentional communities where they have the support of like-minded
people. These may be found in cities as well as in rural areas. Many do
home-birthing and home-schooling. Some move to smaller towns where pressures
are not so extensive, where neighbors know each other and perhaps where they
can be with their families. In addition to personal satisfactions, they see
they can close the generation gap. Certainly, they will look for ways to set
up their lives so that parents and children may spend long periods of time
daily with each other—happy, relaxed time with each other. A Glimpse into the Future
Imagine a world where all parents greet their
newborns with deep joy and excitement about the teaching opportunities for
their future. The mother and father will understand that this child of
potential genius has chosen to learn from them. They are fully bonded to
their child because they have given birth free from fear and from the
unnatural medical practices that are common today. True
enrichment is shared freely. It establishes an ability to learn quickly and
easily, and instills a love of learning. All of us have potential that is
untouched in every area and we all seem to have unique propensities in
certain directions that are activated by broad stimulation. A child can enjoy
being introduced to a wide range of disciplines and can make choices to excel
in one or more of these. The
child who has been neurologically enriched early in life has interests in
many areas; loves reading and can do so with ease; has greater ability to
perceive and recall details; has superb memory; is often skilled in two or
more very different disciplines; has a strong, well-coordinated physical
body; is able to question and probe to solve problems creatively; can
understand and empathize with others; and can play and interact with both
children and adults with comfort. This kind of well-rounded ability makes a
child adaptable intellectually, socially, culturally, and physically and can
set the child on the path to being able to accomplish whatever he or she
chooses. The
family is at the core of society, and thus a civilization can only be as good
as the family units within it. The most fundamental programming of behavior
and attitudes is established in early childhood and becomes rooted in the
budding consciousness. How are the children educated? What kind of values do
they learn? How is their character and self-image shaped? What sort of
examples do they see? Do they learn how to love and to be loved? The most
deeply rooted characteristics are learned in early childhood. It is very
difficult to undo what has been learned in the first six years of life. Years
of psychotherapy often cannot undo bad childhood experiences. At best we can
only hope to develop awareness and overlay it with a secondary response. On
the other hand, a good childhood environment is the springboard for a happy,
healthy and productive life experience. The
Brotherhoods have informed us that we have barely scratched the surface of
our human potential. Along with the processes of moving, talking, and using
all of their senses, tiny children are ready for learning right from birth,
and far more so than most people ever believed. By learning about the stages
of brain development, parents can do a great deal to advance a child’s
intellectual, physical, artistic and athletic abilities beyond what is
commonly believed today. In fact, parents are the child’s first and best
teachers. The
world enjoys the benefits that the intelligent child, grown to adulthood,
gives back to the world. The benefits may come in the form of inventions, the
arts, literature, wise counseling, scientific discoveries, philosophies, or
many others. An unhurried, well-loved, and intelligent child grows into a
stronger, more giving person. Early education, which has been given mostly by
parents, has produced the gifts of every genius that the world has ever
known. Occasionally it was an aunt, uncle, grandparent or friend who was the
deciding factor between that child’s mediocrity or greatness. Every
child has the potential for genius—a potential so broad that all children can
be talented in music, have perfect pitch, express themselves artistically, do
mathematics expertly, follow the scientific method to deduce laws of nature.
If you teach children the facts, they will intuit the laws. A superior
education involves the accumulation of skills and application of information
to real-life experiences. Our
not doing everything possible to enrich the lives of all human beings by
making them geniuses in a world full of geniuses is almost criminal. We know
what builds intelligence and what undermines it. We cannot envision a world
of whole-functioning human beings because it hasn’t been seen since Lemurian
times. Yet, shall we not make giants and eagles of the next generation? Only
when we are all well educated, aware and involved can we hope to lay a
foundation that can support Egoic growth for centuries to come. We can then
benefit from growing up in a superior environment as we incarnate in the
future into what we help create today. |
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