"You Cannot Teach A Seed To Grow"

was a verse from the song Ordinary Miracle, that struck me in such a way this morning that I had to stop housework to come and blog real quick.

This is how children (and ALL humans) should and need to be treated, like seeds. There are TONS of various seeds in the world that blossom into a grand and vast array of trees, grasses, flowers, vegetables, fruits, etc. All are seeds but each is unique and different and has its own contribution to make to the earth on which we live. Somewhere along the line, humans have tried to force other humans into being the kind of seed that they want them to be, i.e...a rose instead of a dandelion or a red oak instead of a maple or St. Augustine grass instead of crabgrass. No matter how much you'd like for that dandelion to be a rose, it isn't going to happen, but what will happen is the following: the dandelion will wither and shrivel up because instead of giving it what it needed, it was made to feel bad for NOT being the rose you wanted it to be. Either that or it will become a miserable rose longing for the dandelion it was meant to be.

Seeds need nourishment, protection, water, fertilizer, and freedom to grow...just as children need to be nourished, loved, protected and given freedom to grow. IMHO, the world would be a far nicer and happier place if more people were allowed to be who they are inside, instead of being forced into something that they are not.

Did you know that concern about where public education was headed...was a concern a century ago?

Anne Sullivan (teacher of Helen Keller)"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences."

Margaret Mead (Anthropologist)"My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school."

Albert Einstein "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year...It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail."

Charlotte Mason (19th Century British Educator)"Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking - the strain would be too great - but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest."

"The child must think, get at the reason-why of things for himself, every day of his life, and more each day than the day before. Children and paents both are given to invert this educational process. The child asks Why? and the parent answers, rather proud of this evidence of thought in his child.There is some slight show of speculation even in wondering Why? but it is the slightest and most superficial effort the thinking brain produces. Let the parent ask Why? and the child produce the answer, if he can. After he has turned the matter over in his mind, there is no harm in telling him - and he will remember it - the reason why. Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out - Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink? and so on"

Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist)"The secret of education is respecting the pupil."