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A RICH ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH TO BE A PARENT If you are the parents of a young child
when you move to Stelle, you undertake a responsibility which is probably new
to you—that of educating your child. You’ve gathered from reading The Ultimate Frontier that educating
children carefully during their first few years is an essential step in the
Brotherhoods’ Plan for developing an advanced civilization. Perhaps from other
readings you’ve found many cases of two-and three-year-olds who have learned
to read and write and work with numbers. You may have begun to realize the
significant benefits of early education for any child, and when you come to
Stelle, you set about finding out how to provide these benefits for your own
child. If you ask the right questions, you soon
become aware of two factors. First, the little bit of information
Stelle has been given on this subject by the Brotherhoods tells us that
optimally children are reading by age three and writing by four if they have
been lovingly stimulated and taught from birth by their parents, and that at
the height of Lemurian civilization—a height we are working toward—children
of six had learned from their mothers at home most of what children in this
culture learn by the end of elementary school. So you know essentially what
the philosophy here says about early education. Second, you find that a similar picture
is emerging from current work in child development and education. The period
when a child is most sensitive to language—oral and printed—is when he is
around two to three years old; if from birth he is surrounded by printed
language as extensively as he is by oral language, he learns to read more
easily at two or three than he would if he began learning to read at five or
six. And there are parallel findings pointing to much earlier learning in
other disciplines—math, science, the arts. It seems clear now, in fact, that
early training doesn’t just give a child a good start, it actually increases
his usable intelligence; it “grows” his brain! When we are faced with the
fact of brain-damaged six-year-olds who can read at a sixth grade level, we
see the implications for whole children, and conclude that what this culture
calls “genius” is any normal child’s birthright. Given these understandings, you, then,
are the one who makes the crucial decision about how much of yourself you
will invest in your child’s education. Your intention to give your child the
best seems strong and sound, but there are two aspects of yourself which you
know you must take into account in making your decision and setting your
goal. One aspect involves the patterns of parenting you have already
established, including programming you received from your own parents, which
has largely defined your view of what parenting entails. The other aspect is
your level of skill in teaching your child—your perceptiveness and
sensitivity about your own particular child, your understanding of child
development and psychology, awareness of the steps involved in learning, your
own self-discipline and patience, and the degree of artistry you’ve gained in
finding the fun of any activity and happily obtaining cooperation. A self-analysis makes you aware of both well-developed
and poorly developed parts of your parenting-teaching self. The assortment of
talents seems at least good enough to start with. You occasionally feel that
Stelle must be full of super parents who’ve surpassed yet to such an extent
that you’ll never catch tip. Then yet catch yourself, smile at your fears,
arid tell yourself that it’s not a race, remember that you can learn anything
you decide to learn, and more realistically conclude that most parents at
Stelle arrived here with a bag of parenting skills probably rather similar to
your own. If there are parents who are giving their child a fuller education
then you have given yours tip to now, you will look, listen, and learn how
they do it. Perhaps Stelle has given them tools which you could use too. You
decide to find out what aids Stelle has to offer you as you grow to become
the optimal parent-teacher for your child. A difference you discover right away is
the reinforcement of sharing with other parents who are educating their
preschoolers. Everyone’s doing it; it’s just part of the environment. That
helps it start to feel almost natural You do notice that there are degrees of
commitment, constancy, and skill in teaching among the other parents you
meet. Each has special strengths which you begin to discern. Often with you
is the temptation to gravitate toward parents whose strengths most closely
resemble your own; the familiar is comfortable. Increasingly, though, you get
yourself to seek out a parent who teaches well in an area you know little
about. You arrange a time, get a babysitter, and go watch a mother
successfully teaching her child how to read; you observe closely and pick up
pointers from an especially effective father; you go talk to parents whose
three-year-old has competencies you would like to help your infant develop.
And you trade skills: a Lather works with your son and his for half an hour
cacti week on carpentry skills, and you take both boys for another half hour
each week to dramatize an event in history. Or a four-year-olds mother gives
reading enrichment to a one-year-old, whose mother is teaching drawing to the
four-year-old. The sharing is there for the asking; you feel rich. And then there’s Early Learning. It takes
you a while to even find out about all the helps it offers you. Its structure
is fluid, its programs varied, and its focus constant as effectively—as
possible to help parents of children under six in educating their children
for greatness. You might meet it first if you come to
Stelle during the months before your child is born and are met with the
support, information, and training offered by Early Learning’s newest
manifestation, the Birth Program. Or you might attend an occasional
birth-related film sponsored by the program for anyone in Stelle to view. The persons from the Birth Program who
give you training in preparation for birth also teach you ways to stimulate
and work with your newborn so you know how to feed his brain as easily and
naturally as you feed his body. This information from the Birth Program is
the precursor to information and help you receive from another Early Learning
service called Teaching-mothers-how-to-teach-their-children-to-read. Parents may make use of this service
whenever they wish. But if you have learned how easily two-year-olds learn
reading when they are given the right helps from birth, you begin your
relationship with this service along with other prenatal training. It is a
simple, warm, stimulating, ongoing relationship between you and an
experienced mother-teacher who helps you design ways of teaching your infant
to read in the happiest and most effective manner. The two of you meet
together to talk about initial steps you might take. After that, you meet
together every few weeks to see what your child is learning and what steps
might he ready for next. In between these regular meeting times you can call
the mother-teacher to discuss new developments, ask any questions, report on
progress, or figure out new approaches. The relationship exists as long as
you find it helpful until your child is an accomplished reader. At about
the same time you initiate that relationship, you may also begin attending
every-other-week meetings of the Mothers’ Study Group, where you share
experiences with mothers or preschoolers, study specific topics, or work
together on common goals. You learn that you are part of a community of
mothers here. At almost every meeting you hear an account of a mother who is
working her way through aspects of child-rearing, getting ideas from friends,
and arriving at creative solutions which work for her child. The realization
slowly grows within you that parenting really is a learned skill which can be
strengthened and refined through conscious application and practice. You feel
supported, enriched, and ready for your child to be born. Before or after his birth you may begin
using another outgrowth of Early Learning, the Parents’ You attend occasional special seminars or
lectures given by knowledgeable persons on, for example, effective parent
communication, positive parenting, and psycho-biology relating to early
childhood. And at least once during your child’s first years you participate
in Early Learning’s annual Parent Workshop, as well as its Open House, given
to introduce the basic concepts of Stelle’s Montessori-based classroom
program. You may want your child to be in that
classroom when he is three, so, wanting to learn more about it and hoping to
find ways of contributing to programs you’re already benefiting from, you
begin going to meetings of the Early Learning Council. Under the Department
of Education, it is a coordinating body of parents, teachers, and an
administrator who are convinced of the necessity for excellent early
education and are willing to devote regular time and energy to facilitate its
continued growth in Stelle. Your child may enter the classroom as a
three-year-old, participating in the one program in which Early Learning
works with young children directly rather than through their parents. The
classroom’s parent-education function, however, is central to its presence in
Stelle. The
classroom experience is a supplement for three- to-six-year-olds to the basic
one-to-one, home-based learning which is the foundation of children’s
education here. The “tuition” you pay for your child’s admission to the
three-year program is commitment to work regularly with your child each
weekday plus acceptance of full responsibility for your child’s early
education. The classroom serves as a demonstration to parents of ways to
elicit and strengthen a child’s self-discipline. And regular parent-teacher
conferences, following parents’ guided observation of their child in the
classroom, give you practice in objective observation plus an opportunity to
discuss your child with a trained adult who has experience with the child’s
learning patterns. By the time your child is five, he begins
his sixth year of living in an environment which is stimulating, nurturing,
challenging, and accepting, his sixth year of working regularly with you at
home, and his third year in the classroom. You have the option then of moving
your regular working-together sessions from your home to a stimulating,
school-like environment called The Primary Program. This setting is available
for a mother to come with her five-year-old to work, still on a one-to-one
basis, but with the guidance and help of an experienced supervising teacher
who meets with each mother regularly to offer suggestions which the mother
can use to maximize the use of this valuable time with her child. If your child was born in Stelle and you
have been stimulating and teaching him from birth, he may be doing work at a
sixth-grade level in most subjects during your year together in the Primary
Program. But the program was originally designed for, and is perhaps most
useful to, parents who come to Stelle with a five-year-old who hasn’t yet
been helped to acquire the basic learning tools of reading, writing, and
arithmetic which he will need to enter Stelle’s Elementary School. He can
learn these skills most quickly and thoroughly with the one-to-one attention
of his mother in, if she chooses, the environment of the Primary Program.
There, as she works on giving her child the basics, she can be guided through
the process by a teacher who has led other parents up this path toward their
child’s independence in learning. Does all this sound like a lot—all these
helps for you to use in learning to educate your child? This is a rich
environment in which to be parent. But being part of Stelle is a rich
experience in many different ways, and it provides tempting diversions as
well as all these helps you know that helping your child develop most fully
is providing a sturdy building block for the advancement civilization we’ve
set about beginning. Keeping focused on constantly giving your child your
balanced best requires unselfish determination, a strong mind, virtue and a
resilient, steady love. You decide to rear and educate your child
to be an unobtrusive stranger to the present culture, and a Citizen in a
vastly finer civilization; that is the necessary first step. Once that
decision is made, you find what you need to help you reach that goal, and in
the process you become part of the help for other parents who have made that
same commitment. |
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