2.WHY DO WE EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN?

Without a doubt, we live through very competitive days.

The society, the job market, and our personal needs are all very complex. Computers didn’t exist a while ago, but now connect or isolate those who don’t use it adequately.

In the name of competition, we take countless foreign language courses, Bachelors or Post-Graduation degrees. Consequently, what yesterday seemed to be enough to educate our children nowadays does not seem so…

We are anxious to give our children all possible ways to deal with the competitiveness around us. Therefore, we search for everything or anyone that can help this child to become the best on his/her field, better than anyone perhaps. Ultimately, we want our children to learn to compete.

In order to achieve this, we do not minimise efforts. We enrol them into courses, sports, private tutoring… We get all tools available for him/her to work; to be competitive. 

Have you stopped to think why we educate our children? What tools and which fights you wish him/her to be ready to deal with?

If you ask us what is lacking in our world, in our society, we would focus on the virtues that we lack in our soul: honesty, respect to one another, compassion, solidarity…

After all, who would not want a world full of these virtues?

Right, so this is the world we all aim for. This is exactly the world we wish our children to have access to, but are they ready to live in such place?

Would our children have on their soul elements that would enable them to live in a world with tolerance, compassion, and solidarity? How prepared would they be to live in such place?

Do you believe the education we give to our children has thought them tolerance?

Children and Youth who do not learn to deal with differences will never be able to know how to tolerate. We need to teach them we are all different on the outside, but inside we are all sons from the same Father.

What about compassion? Have we dealt with this subject in the school of our hearts? Our children will also deal with this topic here, in Earth.

Children or Youth will not know how light the soul feels when helping to minimize the pain or difficulty felt by another human being, if they are not given the opportunity to do it.

Solidarity… Have we discussed it at home? In a world where inequalities are happening everywhere, have we thought our children the need to help to minimize misery? Misery, which could be physical or spiritual needs?

Let’s not forget the first school of life is home. This is where the lessons we want the world to follow should be learned in the first place.

There is no value in wishing a world without violence, if we don’t teach tenderness and gentleness to our children.

The days we are living now are quite challenging days. A lot of people loose their references of values, where the urge to educate the mind and be competitive wins on top of the lessons for the soul… It’s at home where we need to cultivate noble values, to make the soul strong to deal with life difficulties.

We need no more concern in terms of learning to be competitive. We need to understand that being collaborative is a lesson we will be thought throughout life.

The biggest opportunity life offers us here is to learn to conjugate one single verb: to love.

Momento Espírita’s Editorial Staff
16th June 2009
Traduzido por Carolina Von Scharten - Londres
Thanks Claudia Werdine - Carolina Von Scharten