2001-May Add-on

This month we discuss
Education & Child Raising

We have an interesting item by Alan Caruba on USA education. But it's short so let's introduce the subject with some of my own experience. That should be fun. A few of you may be curious or find it interesting, or may even be encouraged. Don't worry, it will not drag on.

People reading this probably realise that the famous, the rich, or 'the authorities' do not tell them the truth. Do such people know anything about the truth? How many ever honestly look for it? As someone once said, 'The question is not so much whether there is life after death as if there is life before death?' A valid question! Do we go through life mindlessly seeking to satisfy our animal instincts or do we search for the human reality and try to advance our human abilities?

Like most Australians of my age I was born into a 'poor' family ('financially challenged' they may call it today). I have never been elected to parliament or become infamous for any criminal activity. Never been an officer in an army (served three years)/ never managed a large company/ never been a professor of anything/ never been the life of the party, or a popular entertainer/ or a great athlete - I played tennis as a boy, a bit of fun. Never been married/ never been wealthy/ never been educated - at least not in the tradition of our culture.

Yes, I am your traditional nobody but, being born to a poor farming family well away from city contaminants may have been my big break. Could it be that being a nobody and know something is better than being a somebody and know nothing.

Some may be surprised to hear that I have hardly known the meaning of unhappy - or lonely. Actually I have found life a consuming challenge. I have been so poor as to not know where my next meal was coming from/ taken part in motor sport (in the days when you did not have to be rich and cars were cars not high-tech monsters). I liked that; I liked the driving and the challenge of preparing my car to be competitive.

I have been opal mining at a place called Lightning Ridge and recall crawling through old mined areas where the crumbling roof barely cleared my head -- where small pillars left by the miners to hold the roof from falling had crumbled and the roof had still not fallen. I wondered how large a flat area of soft rock will support itself. Scary that, certainly no one would ever have found me had it fallen while I was exploring.

I have been a carpenter; wandered alone through the Australian bush; photographed scenery along the eastern coast; run a small business. But that was before I knew I had a responsibility to warn others of the human situation and devoted my life to it. No doubt others are doing similar work. I do what I can. What exactly is to be achieved I cannot know. However I am confident that mankind has to be repeatedly warned if only so that, at the end, people will not be able to say, "But no one ever told us."

I would like to tell you something from my experience of education that may be of interest and encourage comment. From almost as long as I can remember I have been observing the behaviour of children and parents as well as of life and nature. Perhaps this was helped by my being a late child raised in the country with limited contacts with others.

It may also be of interest that I was given none of the stimulating experiences considered so important by caring parents today. Is early stimulation and teaching so important as it seems? From an intellectual reasoning point of view perhaps it is and yet, when I look at my own experience, I think that there must be more to it. Is it likely I am so uncommon?

My early years were spent, almost all of almost every day alone and following my fancies; playing my own games; presenting to myself problems and trying to work out answers. This gave me an insight into life and living. I recall watching rain and thinking of two drops on the same path - one, deflected by movement of a leaf or blade of grass might end up in the desert, the other, a thousand miles away in the great ocean. An important observation of consequences that may result from a small influence. Another thought (see *"The Indivisible Space").

An insight and interest thus created may have been stillborn had I parents that indulged me with stimulation, taught me to read before I had time to SEE the challenge of my world, and pushed me to become 'educated' to convention. Incidentally, at my time and place, formal education started between ages of 6 & 7 years -- kindergartens unheard of. My formal education started with a year or so of correspondence "home education".

Though usually alone I was not lonely or bored. Today, children smothered in artificial stimulation and 'entertainment' are so dependent on others that, when left to their own devices, they are bored and unable to cope.

Early knowledge of our world (and of ourselves) is essential to social advance -- we must learn from history. We cannot each begin at the beginning, eternally learning the benefits and dangers of fire; we would never get out of our caves. On the other hand we must also look beyond present knowledge for new understanding. How did the Egyptians build those great pyramids - no one has come up with a plausible answer - there was a science then that is unknown today. What is possible outside of our present dogma is unimaginable. As a famous inventor is reported to have said of some problem: 'We will have to leave that to some dedicated amateur to solve.' and thereby revealed an insight into the restrictions placed by mass education.

How can we know ourselves? Can we advance to greater understanding if we are drowned by education in dependence on the learned dogmas and attitudes of the contemporary world? Children today are so pressured to remember and believe conventional dogma that they do not see even the obvious contradiction between what they are told and the findings revealed in their textbooks. A criminal level of pressure! Have we still to learn the importance of intellectual self-sacrifice?

Surely we must leave time for contemplation and room for developing new insights, if not, there will always be a danger of someone, or some force, taking control of our lives for inhuman ideals or purposes. In fact, as we should now see, indoctrination to dogma may inevitably lead to stagnation, corruption and social disintegration.

Were I in control of a clone of myself I would attempt to duplicate as best I could my own childhood situation because that is what seems to have been near perfect in the stimulation and development of my own specific instincts and aptitudes. However if raising a child of unknown abilities and potentials I expect I would seek a balance: try to provide the important 'alone time'. Time for 'self-indulgent contemplation of life and the world -- for personal creativity - for learning to find and develop self-reliance and one's own nature, interests, and understandings'. Early opportunity may be critical.

An incident: at around the age of nine or ten years a young cousin came to stay for a few weeks and go to school with me. One evening when doing our homework my youngest sister (seven years my senior) was hearing my cousins homework of lines recalled correctly. Looking on I thought, "remembers the lines but does not understand the message: what good is that". A few years later, reading something difficult, I recall reminding myself: "You have to understand the principle; no use to remember if you do not understand it."

It would be foolish to throw a total blanket over education today. I am sure that in many subjects and many classrooms, effort is made to help students understand the principles behind ideas presented.

However, I am also just as sure that in many cases the student is only required to recall the lines or beliefs taught. Many doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs pass their exams but are hardly competent as professionals because they have little understanding of what they are about. This, particularly so, in the 'humanities' where 'educated stupidity' serves establishment needs.

New or old education.
It seems to me that a good understanding of education and child raising is not commonly available. The old tradition of "spare the rod and spoil the child", "speak only when you are spoken to", "listen and learn" etc., is still better than a humanist education which is a great example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

An undisciplined child is without human nurture and becomes a barbarian. To the degree it is denied understanding of its humanity it becomes a slave to its animal instincts. A baby is born with a hungry mind, it is hungry for knowledge of where it is, why it is, how to proceed. Sadly, parents, in humanist misunderstanding of what love means, seem intent to destroy or deform this hunger as quickly as possible.

When parents talk 'baby talk' for years, and the child is entertained, pampered and allowed to behave as it likes, it must be utterly frustrating for it's natural instincts. When it gets to know that it's parents do not intend to provide the guidance needed then it must instinctively feel that it's parents have no care for it. From there it is, as is so often demonstrated, only a short step to contempt and rebellion. A human baby is not the same as a pet kitten! We are not just animals despite what they want us to believe!

The first step is rebellion against parents, a later step may well be rebellion against society. Leading even to a self-destructive, uncomprehending despair. But, of course, child rebellion was what new-world ideology set out to achieve. To create a break between the existing culture and that to be imposed was essential to 'conciliatory enslavement'.

So we do not, in public, have much in the way of scientific or proven principles of child raising. What we have is huge research in 'public relations' which means public manipulation or social engineering: an understanding of how to get people to buy things, including manipulative ideas and lies. Good parents are not wanted. The better the parents the harder for the manipulators. For parents the best advice we have (much better than the planned inhumanity of humanism) is to be honest, firm and fair; certainly that is what my lifetime of observations suggest.

The problem is that every child is different, some are bright, some dull (myself, about average). Some extravert, some introvert, some placid, some aggressive. Some children (abused) adopt the 'slavery syndrome' response. Some need very firm but fair discipline but if unjust or overdone, may develop a stubborn intransigence. Others respond to gentle reasoning and may rebel at unneeded physical discipline. Detail advice on child raising is needed! This, particularly where a generation of parents and grandparents has been misled by humanist theory.

Upbringing and education is so important to the future of human culture! Personal experiences and thoughtful comment need outlet and encouragement. Please feel free.

* The problem of the indivisible space. From the days of my child-time wanderings and musings this item remains in mind. Watching my father and uncle building an addition to our house I saw a piece of timber lying across another. The thought came to me that the distance between would be halved if I moved halfway toward the point they crossed. The procedure repeated would halve the space again. The puzzle that occurred to me: "at what distance would half the space become no space at all" because it seemed obvious that at the crossing point they touched.

Seventy something years later a tentative conclusion. It may eventually (if not already) be confirmed by science. It is this: There is, in the nature of things, a space that cannot be halved: an "InDivisible Space": an IDS. There is no continuous line; no continuous movement. All movement consists of tiny 'space/time jumps'.

This means that every thing existing; every atom, via its parts, must jump that tiny space/time barrier to move. No movement would be possible if this tiny gap did not exist or could not be jumped. Without this space no creation would be possible; all energy would meld to "one" - a 'one' that could not be divided.

This solution suggests the necessity for a particle of energy (all matter is made up of particles of energy) to exist, momentarily, in two places at the same time. Because it cannot exist within the IDS it must, for an instant, exist on both sides. This may be explained (or at least shown) by quantum physics but my life does not leave me time to investigate there.
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