Saturday, July 26, 2008

Educating with Truth

Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 - Friday, November 2, 2007, Session 1

Just some thoughts about educating children as a parent.
I think our time is better spent finding our own education then it is spending hours debating phonics or whole language or forcing our children to learn the multiplication table or what have you. If they see you learning and you maintain a working relationship of respect and kindness it just happens. They will show you what they need and through your actions of respecting them and being kind to them education will happen.

All the contraptions, methods, paraphernalia, dogma, and standards are just an excess of organization for those who are unable to put the rigors of their own early institutional incarceration behind them. Why do we constantly try to make sense of our own childhood abuses by self-justifying them and perpetrating them on those we most hold dear.

I have an image in my mind of a mother spanking her child. The mother is weeping. The child frightened by both the violence and the emotions of the mother will never understand that the tears are from generations of pain. The mother thinking in her own mind that if she can love her child with all her heart and still abuse the dear soul that maybe that means that her mother loved her. That because you can do the most humiliatingly cruel things to those you care most about you are proving to yourself you were loved. That you are a lovable worthwhile person and that Yes this is Just how it is. She finally understands what her mothers tears were about all those long years ago.

Parents need to find their own truths before they can teach them to their children. In my search for my own personal truths to teach to my children I have come to the conclusion that forcing belief in the super natural would be akin to physical beatings. Battering ones emotional reality for some backwards notion of giving comfort, peace, guidance, and eternal salvation.