Theos-Talk Archives (February 1996 Message tl00053)

Hi, John,
Thanks for that reply. I think you're absolutely right. We shouldn't blame
the internet, but rather those raising the children. I hadn't thought of it
in those terms, but it's sure a very valid argument against censoring. It's
like Karma ... laying the blame where it belongs. I hope we do get into a
good discussion about it on theos-l. I think most of us have children &
we've never discussed anything ab0out them at all.

You mention that the subject of raising kids is rarely discussed in TS lit.
I  know of 2 references:

Jinarajadasa, in "The New Humanity of Intuition" wrote a chapter he called
"God's Agents - the Children". To quote a little from the first part of his
36pp (given as a speech, it looks like, in 1929)
"I must refer to the splendid work done for the physical nature of the child
in some countries."
"Pestalozzi, Froebel & Montessori.... have focused their attention on the
child as a soul, as a psychic & spiritual being"
Quoting Pestalozzi "no subject taught is worth a sou if it destroys courage
& joy.
"Teaching is not the essential principle in education; that principle is
love. For love is the eternal emanation of the Divine in us; love is the
central point of all education." I believe in that a lot. The things I
remember best from all the stuff I was taught as a child are the ones that
either my teachers loved to talk about or I loved to do, or both. I still
have a great love for Goethe, because my 1st - 4th grade teacher in Germany
(eons of years & eons of miles away) loved Goethe & taught us about him, &
his mother, & his poetry, & took us to the Goethehaus. I had a year of
European History, lovingly  & intelligently taught in HS, & I remember quite
a bit of it. The next year we had a very humdrum teacher for American
History, & I don't remember a thing, except what I picked up as an adult
lateron.
" Froebel... originated.. Kindergarten...The Kindergarten child, spontaneous
& free & happy, is surely what the child should be, rather than the child
seated on a bench in rows,'like rows of butterflies transfixed with a pin.'"
"Froebel studied... every aspect of life & nature ... so that he might grasp
the unity of nature."
"Montessori ... 'the child is not a lump of clay we are going to mould. ..
The child has a shape of its own, an individuality of its own, & potential
energies of its own..... The child ... is eager to awaken & to understand
.. & to act..... Parents & teachers interfere ... They suppress him in
their attempts to help him, & this is done with the most loving motive of
aiding the child.'" For example "They impose upon the child their rhythm, &
try to force the child to fit into it. Have you not seen a mother  ...
holding a child by the hand, & walking at her usual pace as the adult, and
the little one making rapid steps to keep pace ?... That is what is
happening all the time."
Montessori's method "Help me to do it by myself"

The other is a paragraph in Leadbeater's "Inner Life", which he calls "Our
Attitude towards Children".
To quote some of it "They have been entrusted to you, not that you may
domineer over them & brutally ill-treat them, & use them for your own profit
& advantage, but that you may love them & help them in order that they may
be expressions of that divine life. How beyond all words your patience &
compassion should be! How deeply you should feel the honour of being trusted
to serve them this way! ..... As souls you are all about the same age &
therefore your attitude must not be that of a selfish, cruel dictator, but
of a helpful friend...."(towards) "a soul wearing a new coat... Remember
always that true good means good for all, & that good is never gained at the
cost of suffering to others..."
Liesel
Member TI, HR, 5thRR
...........................................................................



>On Fri, 9 Feb 1996, liesel f. deutsch wrote:
>
>> I need to add a problem to what Alexis said, because I too believe in the
>> freedom of speech, & something occurred here locally, & I don't know how I
>> would deal with it. 2 Grammar school boys got instructions from the Internet
>> about how to make a primitive bomb. They had already tried it out, & were
>> getting ready to bomb their school, when they got caught. I'd like to get
>> some opinions of others on this net as to how they would handle this, not
>> the boys so much, but the fact that someone can put on the internet
>> instructions on how to make a bomb for kids to learn. How do you deal
with this?
>> Liesel
>> Member TI, HR, 5thRR
>
>Liesel ...
>	This sounds like a nasty, and obviously terribly dangerous
>situation, but I would tend to distinguish between cause and means in
>questioning what to do about it ... I guess I think the Internet, in this
>case, had but the tiniest part to play:
>	The sad fact is that for various reasons the American family is
>in really bad shape, and fractured children will come out of fractured
>homes. True enough, grammer school kids can get access to a number of
>things highly inappropriate for children on the Internet, but in the
>larger picture the Net is but a miniscule threat - the much deeper issue
>is the violence itself ... for every one kid that can find information
>about how to make a bomb from the Net, there are a thousand that already
>have guns in their hands; the root question (IMO) is, from where comes
>the intent to bomb a school? From where comes the desire to buy guns?
>	I remember my own grammer school days, and even if someone had
>just handed me or my classmates bomb instructions, it just simply
>wouldn't have occured to us to actually blow up the school ... and even
>if we found a gun in the playground, without thinking we probably would
>have just given it to a teacher.
>
>	I'm glad you mentioned this, however, as I'd love to see this
>turn into a discussion. In traditional Theosophical writings there is
>immensely complex discussions of esoteric truths ... but if the final
>goal is the moral elevation of humanity, the very core of the practical
>expression of this must finally reduce to *childraising* ... to the time
>of life when the core values and strengths of character are built into
>the human energy system. We currently have a social mileau in which by
>the time childen begin adult life so many are already so out of tune,
>aimed along a trajectory that will just increase this out of tuneness as
>time goes by - and being out of tune means the personality is broken off
>from the promptings of the spiritual levels of being, and the gap this
>causes ... the emptiness this inevitably creates ... causes people to
>begin living lives in more and more fractured and manic ways ....
>intentions become low, but without an inner standard are not even felt as
>being low; significant life choices are made for terrible reasons ...
>	What, then, do you (anybody (-:)?) think Theosophy would have to
>say about the raising of children - the field is wide open, as in all the
>thousands of pages of "source" writings very few words are mentioned on
>the topic.
>								-JRC
>
>