Okay, I’m ready to move on. You promised to talk about some of the larger aspects of life on Earth, and ever since your comments about life in the United States I’ve wanted to talk more about all of this.
Yes, good. I want Book 2 to address some of the larger issues facing your planet. And there is no larger issue than the education of your offspring.
We are not doing this well, are we.... I can tell by the way You brought that up.
Well, of course, everything is relative. Relative to what you say you are trying to do, no, you are not doing it well.
Everything I say here, everything I have included in this discussion so far and have caused to be placed in this document, must be put into that context. I am not making judgments of “rightness” or “wrongness,” “goodness” or “badness.” I simply make observations of your effective-ness relative to what you say you are trying to do.
I understand that.
I know you say that you do, but the time may come—even before this dialogue is finished—when you will accuse Me of being judgmental.
I would never accuse You of that. I know better.
“Knowing better” has not stopped the human race from calling Me a judgmental God in the past.
Well, it will stop me.
We shall see.
You wanted to talk about education.
Indeed. I observe that most of you have misunder-stood the meaning, the purpose, and the function of education, to say nothing of the process by which it is best undertaken.
That’s a huge statement, and I need some help with it.
Most of the human race has decided that the mean-ing and the purpose and the function of education is to pass on knowledge; that to educate someone is to give them knowledge—generally, the accumulated knowl-edge of one’s particular family, clan, tribe, society, nation, and world.
Yet education has very little to do with knowledge.
Oh? You could have fooled me.
Clearly.
What does it have to do with then?
Wisdom.
Wisdom.
Yes.
Okay, I give up. What is the difference?
Wisdom is knowledge applied.
So we aren’t supposed to try to give our offspring knowl-edge. We are supposed to try to give our offspring wisdom.
First of all, don’t “try” to do anything. Do it. Sec-ondly, don’t ignore knowledge in favor of wisdom. That would be fatal. On the other hand, don’t ignore wisdom in favor of knowledge. That would also be fatal. It would kill education. On your planet, it is killing it.
We are ignoring wisdom in favor of knowledge? In most cases, yes.
How are we doing this?
You are teaching your children what to think instead of how to think.
Explain, please.
Certainly. When you give your children knowledge, you are telling them what to think. That is, you are telling them what they are supposed to know, what you want them to understand is true.
When you give your children wisdom, you do not tell them what to know, or what is true, but, rather, how to get to their own truth.
But without knowledge there can be no wisdom.
Agreed. That is why I have said, you cannot ignore knowledge in favor of wisdom. A certain amount of knowledge must be passed on from one generation to the next. Obviously. But as little knowledge as possible. The smaller amount, the better.
Let the child discover for itself. Know this: Knowl-edge is lost. Wisdom is never forgotten.
So our schools should teach as little as possible?
Your schools should turn their emphasis around. Right now they are focused highly on knowledge, and paying precious little attention to wisdom. Classes in critical thinking, problem solving, and logic are consid-ered by many parents to be threatening. They wantsuch classes out of the curriculum. As well they might, if they want to protect their way of life. Because children who are allowed to develop their own critical thinking proc-esses are very much likely to abandon their parents’ morals, standards, and entire way of life.
In order to protect your way of life, you have built an education system based upon the development in the child of memories, not abilities. Children are taught to remember facts and fictions—the fictions each soci-ety has set up about itself—rather than given the ability to discover and create their own truths.
Programs calling for children to develop abilities and skills rather than memories are soundly ridiculed by those who imagine that they know what a child needs to learn. Yet what you have been teaching your children has led your world toward ignorance, not away from it.
Our schools don’t teach fictions, they teach facts.
Now you are lying to yourself, just as you lie to your children.
We lie to our children?
Of course you do. Pick up any history book and see. Your histories are written by people who want their children to see the world from a particular point of view. Any attempt to expand historical accounts with a larger view of the facts is sneered at, and called “revisionist.” You will not tell the truth about your past to your children, lest they see you for what you really are.
Most history is written from the point of view of that segment of your society you would call white Anglo Saxon Protestant males. When females, or blacks, or others in the minority, say, “Hey, wait a minute. This isn’t how it happened. You’ve left out a huge part here,” you cringe and holler and demand that the “revisionists” stop trying to change your textbooks. You don’t want your children to know how it really happened. You want them to know how you justified what happened, from your point of view. Shall I give you an example of this?
Please.
In the United States, you do not teach your children everything there is to know about your country’s deci-sion to drop atom bombs on two Japanese cities, killing or maiming hundreds of thousands of people. Rather, you give them the facts as you see them—and as you want them to see them.
When an attempt is made to balance this point of view with the point of view of another—in this case, the Japanese—you scream and rage and rant and rave and jump up and down and demand that schools don’t dare even think about presenting such data in their historical review of this important event. Thus you have not taught history at all, but politics.
History is supposed to be an accurate, and full, account of what actually happened. Politics is never about what actually happened. Politics is always one’s point of view about what happened.
History reveals, politics justifies. History uncovers; tells all. Politics covers; tells only one side.
Politicians hate history truly written. And history, truly written, speaks not so well of politicians, either.
Yet you are wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes, for your children ultimately see right through you. Children taught to critically think look at your history and say, “My, how my parents and elders have deluded themselves.” This you cannot tolerate, so you drum it out of them. You do not want your children to have the most basic facts. You want them to have your take on the facts.
I think you are exaggerating here. I think you’ve taken this argument a little far.
Really? Most people in your society do not even want their children to know the most basic facts of life. People went bananas when schools simply started teaching children how the human body functions. Now you are not supposed to tell children how AIDS is transmitted, or how to stop it from being transmitted. Unless, of course, you tell them from a particular point of view how to avoid AIDS. Then it is all right. But simply give them the facts, and let them decide for themselves? Not on your life.
Children are not ready to decide these things for themselves. They have to be properly guided.
Have you looked at your world lately?
What about it?
That’s how you’ve guided your children in the past.
No, it’s how we misguided them. If the world is in rotten shape today—and in many ways, it is—it is not because we’ve tried to teach our children the old values, but because we’ve allowed them to be taught all this “new fangled” stuff!
You really believe that, don’t you?
You’re damned right, I really believe it! If we’d just kept our children limited to the 3 R’s instead of feeding them all this “critical thinking” garbage, we’d be a lot better off today. If we’d kept so-called “sex education” out of the classroom and in the home where it belonged, we wouldn’t be seeing teenagers having babies, and single mothers at 17 applying for welfare, and a world run amok. If we’d insisted our young ones live by our moral standards, rather than letting them go off and create their own, we wouldn’t have turned our once strong, vibrant nation into a pitiable imitation of its former self.
I see.
And one more thing. Don’t stand there and tell me how we are supposed to suddenly see ourselves as “wrong” for what we did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We ended the war, for God’s sake. We saved thousands of lives. On both sides. It was the price of war. Nobody liked the decision, but it had to be made.
I see.
Yeah, you see. You’re just like all the rest of those el pinko liberal Commies. You want us to revise our history, all right. You want us to revise ourselves right out of existence. Then you liberals can have your way at last; take over the world; create your decadent societies; redistribute the wealth. Power to the people, and all that crap. Except that’s never gotten us anywhere. What we need is a return to the past; to the values of our forefathers. That’s what we need!
Done now?
Yeah, I’m done. How did I do?
Pretty good. That was really good.
Well, when you’ve been around talk radio for a few years, it comes pretty easily.
That is how people on your planet think, isn’t it?
You bet it is. And not just in America. I mean, you could change the name of the country, and change the name of the war; insert any offensive military action by any nation at any time in history. Doesn’t matter. Everybody thinks they’re right. Everyone knows its the other person who is wrong. Forget about Hiroshima. Insert Berlin instead. Or Bosnia.
Everybody knows the old values are the ones which worked, too. Everybody knows the world is going to hell. Not just in America. All over. There is a hue and cry for a return to old values, and for a return to nationalism, everywhere on the planet.
I know that there is.
And what I’ve done here is try to articulate that feeling, that concern, that outrage.
You did a good job. Almost had Me convinced.
Well? What do you say to those who really do think like this?
I say, do you really think things were better 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago? I say memory has poor vision. You remember the good of it, and not the worst of it. It’s natural, it’s normal. But don’t be deceived. Do some critical thinking, and not just memorizing what others want you to think.
To stay with our example, do you really imagine it was absolutely necessary to drop the atom bomb on Hi-roshima? What do your American historians say about the many reports, by those who claim to know more about what really happened, that the Japanese Empire had privately revealed to the United States its willingness to end the war before the bomb was dropped? How much of a part did revenge for the horror of Pearl Harbor play in the bombing decision? And, if you accept that dropping the Hiroshima bomb was necessary, why was it necessary to drop a second bomb?
It could be, of course, that your own account of all this is correct. It could be that the American point of view on all this is the way it actually happened. That is not the point of this discussion. The point here is that your educational system does not allow for critical thinking on these issues—or very many other issues, for that matter.
Can you imagine what would happen to a social studies or history teacher in Iowa who asked a class the above questions, inviting and encouraging the students to examine and explore the issues in depth and draw their own conclusions?
That is the point! You don’t want your young ones drawing their own conclusions. You want them to come to the same conclusions you came to. Thus, you doom them to repeat the mistakes to which your conclusions led you.
But what about these statements made by so many people about old values and the disintegration of our society today? What about the incredible rise in teen births, or welfare moth-ers, or our world run amok?
Your world-has run amok. On this I will agree. But your world has not run amok because of whatyou have allowed your schools to teach your children. It has run amok because of what you have not allowed them to teach.
You have not allowed your schools to teach that love is all there is. You have not allowed your schools to speak of a love which is unconditional.
Hell, we won’t even allow our religions to speak of that.
That’s right. And you will not allow your offspring to be taught to celebrate themselves and their bodies, their humanness and their wondrous sexual selves. And you will not allow your children to know that they are, first and foremost, spiritual beings inhabiting a body. Nor do you treat your children as spirits coming into bodies.
In societies where sexuality is openly spoken of, freely discussed, joyously explained and experienced, there is virtually no sexual crime, only a tiny number of births which occur when they are not expected, and no “illegitimate” or unwanted births. In highly evolved societies, all births are blessings, and all mothers and all children have their welfare looked after. Indeed, the society would have it no other way.
In societies where history is not bent to the views of the strongest and most powerful, the mistakes of the past are openly acknowledged and never repeated, and once is enough for behaviors which are clearly self destructive.
In societies where critical thinking and problem solving and skills for living are taught, rather than facts simply memorized, even so-called “justifiable” actions of the past are held up to intense scrutiny. Nothing is accepted on face value.
How would that work? Let’s use our example from World War II. How would a school system teaching life skills, rather than merely facts, approach the historical episode at Hi-roshima?
Your teachers would describe to their class exactly what happened there. They would include all the facts—all the facts—which led up to that event. They would seek the views of historians from both sides of the encounter, realizing that there is more than one point of view on everything. They would then not ask the class to memorize the facts of the matter. Instead, they would challenge the class. They would say: “Now, you’ve heard all aboutthis event. You know all that came before, and all that happened after. We’ve given you as much of the ‘knowledge’ of this event as we could get our hands on. Now, from this ‘knowledge,’ what ‘wis-dom’ comes to you? If you were chosen to solve the problems which were being faced in those days, and which were solved by the dropping of the bomb, how would you solve them? Can you think of a better way?”
Oh, sure. That’s easy. Anybody can come up with answers that way—with the benefit of hindsight. Anybody can look over their shoulder and say, “I would have done it differently.”
Then why don’t you?
I beg your pardon?
I said, then why don’t you? Why have you not looked over your shoulder, learned from your past, and done it differently? I’ll tell you why. Because to allow your children to look at your past and analyze it criti-cally—indeed, to require them to do so as a part of their education—would be to run the risk of them disagree-ing with how you did things.
They will disagree anyway, of course. You just won’t allow too much of it in your classrooms. So they have to take to the streets. Wave signs. Tear up draft cards. Burn bras and flags. Do whatever they can do to get your attention, to get you to see. Your young people have been screaming at you, “There must be a better way!” Yet you do not hear them. You do not want to hear them. And you certainly don’t want to encourage them in the classroom to start critically thinking about the facts you are giving them.
Just get it, you say to them. Don’t come in here and tell us we’ve been doing it wrong. just get that we’ve been doing it right.
That’s how you educate your children. That’s what you’ve been calling education.
But there are those who would say it’s the young people and their crazy, wacko, liberal ideas, who have taken this country and this world down the tubes. Sent it to hell. Pushed it to the edge of oblivion. Destroyed our values-oriented culture, and replaced it with a do-whatever-you-want-to-do, whatever “feels good,” morality which threatens to end our very way of life.
The young people are destroying your way of life. The young people have always done that. Your job is to encourage it, not discourage it.
It is not your young people who are destroying the rain forests. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are depleting your ozone layer. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are exploiting the poor in sweat shops all over the world. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are taxing you to death, then using the money for war and machines of war. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are ignoring the problems of the weak and the downtrodden, letting hundreds of people die of starvation every day on a planet with more than enough to feed everybody. They are asking you to stop it.
It is not your young people who are engaging in the politics of deception and manipulation. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are sexually repressed, ashamed and embarrassed about their own bodies and passing on this shame and embarrassment to their offspring. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who have set up a value system which says that “might is right” and a world which solves problems with violence. They are asking you to stop it.
Nay, they are not asking you...they are begging you.
Yet it is young people who are violent! Young people who join gangs and kill each other! Young people who thumb their nose at law and order—at any kind of order. Young people who are driving us crazy!
When the cries and pleas of young people to change the world are not heard and never heeded; when they see that their cause is lost—that you will have it your way no matter what—young people, who are not stu-pid, will do the next best thing. If they can’t beat you, they will join you.
Your young people have joined you in your behav-iors. If they are violent, it is because you are violent. If they are materialistic, it is because you are materialistic. If they are acting crazy, it is because you are acting crazy. If they are using sex manipulatively, irresponsibly, shame-fully, it is because they see you doing the same. The only difference between young people and older people is that young people do what they do out in the open.
Older people hide their behaviors. Older people think that young people cannot see. Yet young people see everything. Nothing is hidden from them. They see the hypocrisy of their elders, and they try desperately to change it. Yet having tried and failed, they see no choice but to imitate it. In this they are wrong, yet they have never been taught differently. They have not been allowed to critically analyze what their elders have been doing. They have only been allowed to memorize it.
What you memorize, you memorialize.
How, then, should we educate our young?
First, treat them as spirits. They are spirits, entering a physical body. That is not an easy thing for a spirit to do; not an easy thing for a spirit to get used to. It is very confining, very limiting. So the child will cry out at suddenly being so limited. Hear this cry. Understand it. And give your children as much of a sense of “unlimit-edness” as you possibly can.
Next, introduce them to the world you have created with gentleness and care. Be full of care— that is to say, be careful—of what you put into their memory storage units. Children remember everything they see, every-thing they experience. Why do you spank your children the moment they exit the womb? Do you really imagine this is the only way to get their engines going? Why do you take your babies away from their mothers minutes after they have been separated from the only life-form they have known in all of their present existence? Will not the measuring and the weighing and the prodding and the poking wait for just a moment while the newly born experience the safety and the comfort of that which has given it life?
Why do you allow some of the earliest images to which your child is exposed to be images of violence? Who told you this was good for your children? And why do you hide images of love?
Why do you teach your children to be ashamed and embarrassed of their own bodies and their functions by shielding your own body from them, and telling them not to ever touch themselves in ways which pleasure them? What message do you send them about pleas-ure? And what lessons about the body?
Why do you place your children in schools where competition is allowed and encouraged, where being the “best” and learning the “most” is rewarded, where “performance” is graded, and moving at one’s own pace is barely tolerated? What does your child under-stand from this?
Why do you not teach your children of movement and music and the joy of art and the mystery of fairy tales and the wonder of life? Why do you not bring out what is naturally found in the child, rather than seek to put in what is unnatural to the child?
And why do you not allow your young ones to learn logic and critical thinking and problem solving and creation, using the tools of their own intuition and their deepest inner knowing, rather than the rules and the memorized systems and conclusions of a society which has already proven itself to be wholly unable to evolve by these methods, yet continues to use them?
Finally, teach concepts, not subjects.
Devise a new curriculum, and build it around three Core Concepts:
Awareness
Honesty
Responsibility
Teach your children these concepts from the earliest age. Have them run through the curriculum until the final day. Base your entire educational model upon them. Birth all instruction deep within them.
I don’t understand what that would mean.
It means everything you teach would come from within these concepts.
Can you explain that? How would we teach the three R’s?
From the earliest primers to your more sophisticated readers, all tales, stories, and subject matter would revolve around the core concepts. That is, they would be stories of awareness, stories dealing with honesty, stories about responsibility. Your children would be introduced to the concepts, injected into the concepts, immersed in the concepts.
Writing tasks likewise would revolve around these Core Concepts, and others which are atten-dant to them as the child grows in the ability to self express.
Even computation skills would be taught within this framework. Arithmetic and mathematics are not abstractions, but are the most basic tools in the universe for living life. The teaching of all computa-tion skills would be contextualized within the larger life experience in a way which draws attention to, and places focus upon, the Core Concepts and their derivatives.
What are these “derivatives?”
To use a phrase which your media people have made popular, they are the spin-offs. The entire edu-cational model can be based on these spin-offs, replac-ing the subjects in your present curriculum, which teach, basically, facts.
For instance?
Well, let’s use our imagination. What are some of the concepts which are important to you in life?
Uh. . . . well, I would say...honesty, as you have said.
Yes, go ahead. That’s a Core Concept.
And, um.... fairness. That’s an important concept to me.
Good. Any others?
Treating others nicely. That’s one. I don’t know how to put that into a concept.
Go on. just let the thoughts flow.
Getting along. Being tolerant. Not hurting others. Seeing others as equal. Those are all things I would hope I could teach my children.
Good. Excellent! Keep going.
Uh . . . believing in yourself. That’s a good one. And, uh. . . wait, wait.. . there’s one coming. Uh. . . yeah, that’s it: walking in dignity. I guess I would call it walking in dignity. I don’t know how to put that into a better concept, either, but it has to do with the way one carries oneself in one’s life, and the way one honors others, and the path others are taking.
This is good stuff. This is all good stuff. You’re getting down to it now. And there are many other such concepts which all children must deeply understand if they are to evolve and grow into complete human beings. Yet you do not teach these things in your schools. These are the most important things in life, these things we are now talking of, but you do not teach them in school. You do not teach what it means to be honest. You do not teach what it means to be respon-sible. You do not teach what it means to be aware of other people’s feelings and respectful of other people’s paths.
You say it is up to parents to teach these things. Yet parents can only pass on what has been passed on to them. And the sins of the father have been visited upon the son. So you are teaching in your homes the same stuff your parents taught you in their homes.
So? What’s wrong with that?
As I keep saying repeatedly here, taken a look at the world lately?
You keep bringing us back to that. You keep making us look at that. But all that isn’t our fault. We can’t be blamed for the way the rest of the world is.
It is not a question of blame, it is a question of choice. And if you are not responsible for the choices humankind has been making, and keeps making, who is?
Well, we can’t make ourselves responsible for all of it!
I tell you this: Until you are willing to take respon-sibility for all of it, you cannot change any of it.
You cannot keep saying they did it, and they are doing it, and if only they would get it right! Remember the wonderful line from Walt Kelly’s comic strip char-acter, Pogo, and never forget it:
“We have met the enemy, and they is us.”
We’ve been repeating the same mistakes for hundreds of years, haven’t we...
For thousands of years, my son. You’ve been making the same mistakes for thousands of years. Humankind has not evolved in its most basic instincts much beyond the caveman era. Yet every attempt to change that is met with scorn. Every challenge to look at your values, and maybe even restructure them, is greeted with fear, and then anger. Now along comes an idea from Me to actually teach higher concepts in schools. Oh, boy, now we’re really treading on thin ice.
Still, in highly evolved societies, that is exactly what is done.
But the problem is, not all people agree on these concepts, on what they mean. That’s why we can’t teach them in our schools. Parents go nuts when you try to introduce these things into the curriculum. They say you are teaching “values,” and that the school has no place in such instruction.
They are wrong! Again, based on what you say as a race of people that you are trying to do—which is build a better world—they are wrong. Schools are exactly the place for such instruction. Precisely because schools are detached from parents’ prejudices. Precisely because schools are separated from parents’ preconceived no-tions. You’ve seen what has resulted on your planet from the passing down of values from parent to child. Your planet is a mess.
You don’t understand the most basic concepts of civilized societies.
You don’t know how to solve conflict without violence.
You don’t know how to live without fear.
You don’t know how to act without self interest.
You don’t know how to love without condition.
These are basic—basic—understandings, and you have not even begun to approach a full comprehension of them, much less implement them... after thousands and thousands of years.
Is there any way out of this mess?
Yes! It is in your schools! It is in the education of your young! Your hope is in the next generation, and the next! But you must stop immersing them in the ways of the past. Those ways have not worked. They have not taken you where you say you want to go. Yet if you are not careful, you are going to get exactly where you are headed!
So stop! Turn around! Sit down together and collect your thoughts. Create the grandest version of the great-est vision you ever had about yourselves as a human race. Then, take the values and concepts which under-gird such a vision and teach them in your schools.
Why not courses such as...
? Understanding Power
? Peaceful Conflict Resolution Elements of Loving Relationships
? Personhood and Self Creation ‘Body, Mind and Spirit: How They Function
? Engaging Creativity
? Celebrating Self, Valuing Others ‘joyous Sexual Expression
? Fairness
? Tolerance
? Diversities and Similarities
? Ethical Economics
? Creative Consciousness and Mind Power
? Awareness and Wakefulness
? Honesty and Responsibility
? Visibility and Transparency
? Science and Spirituality
Much of this is taught right now. We call it Social Studies.
I am not talking about a 2-day unit in a semester-long course. I am talking about separate courses on each of these things. I am talking about a complete revision of your schools’ curricula. I am speaking of a values-based curriculum. You are now teaching what is largely a facts-based curriculum.
I am talking about focusing your children’s attention as much on understanding the core concepts and the theoretical structures around which their value system may be constructed as you now do on dates and facts and statistics.
In the highly evolved societies of your galaxy and your universe (which societies we will be talking about much more specifically in Book 3), concepts for living are taught to offspring beginning at a very early age. What you call “facts,” which in those societies are consid-ered far less important, are taught at a much later age.
On your planet you have created a society in which little Johnnie has learned how to read before getting out of pre-school, but still hasn’t learned how to stop biting his brother. And Susie has perfected her multiplication tables, using flash cards and rote memory, in ever earlier and earlier grades, but has not learned that there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about her body.
Right now your schools exist primarily to provide answers. It would be far more beneficial if their primary
function was to ask questions. What does it mean to be honest, or responsible, or “fair”? What are the implica-tions? For that matter, what does it mean that 2+2 =4? What are the implications? Highly evolved societies encourage all children to discover and create those answers for themselves.
But.. .but, that would lead to chaos!
As opposed to the non-chaotic conditions under which you now live your life...
Okay, okay.. .so it would lead to more chaos.
I am not suggesting that your schools never share with your offspring any of the things which you have learned or decided about these things. Quite to the con-trary. Schools serve their students when they share with Young Ones what Elders have learned and discovered, decided and chosen in the past. Students may then observe how all this has worked. In your schools, however, you present these data to the student as That Which Is Right, when the data really should be offered as simply that: data.
Past Data should not be the basis of Present Truth. Data from a prior time or experience should always and only be the basis for new questions. Always the treasure should be in the question, not in the answer.
And always the questions are the same. With regard to this past data which we have shown you, do you agree, or do you disagree? What do you think? Always, this is the key question. Always this is the focus. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think?
Now obviously children will bring to this question the values of their parents. Parents will continue to have a strong role—obviously the primary role—in creating the child’s system of values. The school’s intention and purpose would be to encourage offspring, from the earliest age until the end of formal education, to explore those values, and to learn how to use them, apply them, functionalize them—and yes, even to question them. For parents who do not want children questioning their values are not parents who love their children, but rather, who love-themselves through their children.
I wish—oh, how I wish—that there were schools such as the ones you describe!
There are some which seek to approach this model.
There are?
Yes. Read the writings of the man called Rudolph Steiner. Explore the methods of The Waldorf School, which he developed.
Well, of course, I know about those schools. Is this a commercial?
This is an observation.
Because you knew I was familiar with the Waldorf Schools. You knew that.
Of course I knew that. Everything in your life has served you, brought you to this moment. I have not just started talking with you at the beginning of this book. I have been talking with you for years, through all of your associations and experiences.
You’re saying the Waldorf School is the best?
No. I am saying it is a model which works, given where you say as a human race you want to go; given what you claim you want to do; given what you say you want to be. I am saying it is an example—one of several I could cite, although on your planet and in your society they are rare—of how education may be accomplished in a way which focuses on “wisdom” more than simply “knowledge.”
Well, it is a model I very much approve of. There are many differences between a Waldorf School and other schools. Let me give an example. It is a simple one, but it dramatically illustrates the point.
In the Waldorf School, the teacher moves with the children through all levels of the primary and elementary learning experience. For all those years the children have the same teacher, rather than moving from one person to another. Can you imagine the bond which is formed here? Can you see the value?
The teacher comes to know the child as if it were his or her own. The child moves to a level of trust and love with the teacher which opens doors many traditionally oriented schools never dreamed existed. At the end of those years, the teacher reverts to the first grade, starting over again with another group of children and moving through all the years of the curriculum. A dedicated Waldorf teacher may wind up working with only four or five groups of children in an entire career. But he or she has meant something to those children beyond anything that is possible in a traditional school setting.
This educational model recognizes and announces that the human relationship, the bonding and the love which is shared in such a paradigm is just as important as any facts the teacher may impart to the child. It is like home schooling, outside the home.
Yes, it is a good model.
There are other good models?
Yes. You are making some progress on your planet with regard to education, but it is very slow. Even the attempt to place a goals oriented, skill-development-fo-cused curriculum in public schools has met with enor-mous resistance. People see it as threatening, or ineffective. They want children to learn facts. Still, there are some inroads. Yet there is much to be done.
And that is only one area of the human experience which could use some overhauling, given what you say as human beings that you are seeking to be.
Yes, I should imagine the political arena could use some changes, too.
To be sure.