Not a day goes by there is not an article in our local paper on our local Public School System. If it is not a cry for more money, it is complaints over poor attendance, or that many local teachers are not fully a course in miracles app. While some schools are being “demoted,” others are being “promoted.” First, one thing and then another. Obviously, there is something amiss in our current approach to educating our children.
Other articles in the local newspaper carry reports of the increased interests and energies being expended by the “little” people to end the imminent threat of our own government by the increasing invasion of our private rights in the name of protecting the people from inside terrorism. People are grouping at the grass roots level to petition their respective government representative, the President and members of Congress, to end these daily threats to our lives. They are sick to the bone of living in daily fear of imminently undermining the guarantees of our Constitution. We need to adhere to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s, Four Freedoms: Speech, Worship, Want and Fear.
With all of this bombarding our brains, consider “holistically” the relationship of education to the many efforts of a given society to prepare its young for adult responsibilities; responsibilities of learning to control our own individual natures as well as contributing to the future of human evolution. Apparently, nearly all the fuss over our imminent demise is being conducted by adults in whom we’ve given our trust to govern and lead us. Obviously, something is wrong with this world’s political and educational systems.
Some minor research will tell us that the word, “education,” derives from the joining of the Latin, “e”, meaning “out,” with the Latin word, “‘duco,” meaning to “lead” or “take out from.” Simply, it means to draw out of the pupil the inherent wisdom that lies within him or her. This word, education, has many implications given a little thought.
One such implication is that the newborn brings into this world from previous incarnations a past history of acquired experiences and knowledge of the true value of things. The trouble is most educators and parental caregivers are ignorant of this fact. The newborn is flooded by the events of its immediate environment from the very moment of birth and forwards; as it grows it forgets to remember what it already knows! More people the world over believe in reincarnation than those who do not; mostly those seeped in the Judeo-Christian ideals.
When formal education begins, the pupil is bombarded with facts and figures that are supposed to be memorized. And all these things being taught to the pupil are things to be grasped by the senses and are restricted to an empirically material and concrete world of so-called knowledge, whereas it is the world of Meaning that needs stressing.
The current methods of education markedly contrast with a true “educational process,” as these words were originally intended. The existent model is more of a “putting into” than one of self-discovery. The students are being inculcated (from inculcare= to stamp into, or tread upon) with a body of pre-determined and quite mundane information of questionable validity, especially for the bringing into existence of a new “world order,” which the new Aquarian Age promises us. Such a new world order needs to be one based upon the ideals of world peace and the consistent application of goodwill, altruism and true brotherhood by each individual to every other individual upon this earth.
The educational process must begin with an honorable and purposeful goal. It must go beyond the mere imparting of facts to be remembered to one of searching inwardly for the true meaning and causes behind the facts, which eventually should lead one to look within the self for such meaning. One anonymous educator has expressed it thusly: “Education can be an adventurous quest for the meaning of life, involving an ability to think things through.” (Emphasis added).
The goal of education should be to promote the full self-realization and potential of every student; to encourage the goal of the person’s ultimate relationship with the universe, as stressed by Abe Maslow; that noted psychologist who died before his time. Self-centeredness must be transcended so the person develops a realization of his position relative to the whole of existence. To properly teach is to draw out of every student the potential wisdom which he or she inherently possesses. Teachers, conditioned by their own inculcated experiences need to be helped (but by whom?) to realize and accept the fact that the child, every child, has a body of universal wisdom at the core of its being, as they themselves do, waiting to “inform” the student who can be helped to make contact with this accumulated body of eternal truths which will vary with each student.
