And they created school the way the devil had ordered. A child loves nature, yet they locked him up within four walls. A child cannot sit still without moving, yet they forced him to sit still. He loves to work with his hands, yet they started teaching him theories and ideas.

He likes to talk, yet they ordered him to keep silent. He strives to understand, yet he was told to memorize. He would like to research and seek out knowledge on his own, yet it was given to him in a ready-made form.

And then children learned what they would never have learned under other circumstances. They learned to lie and pretend (Adolphe Ferrière, a founder of the Progressive Education Movement).

My Response: It is just as accurate today.

Question: Why did they take this free bird, a child, and stuff him into a cage?

Answer: It is because for you adults, this is simpler and clearer. To pressure a child by force and make him stay in our four corners, and that is all.

Question: Then what are we taking away from him?

Answer: We take away the free development of his soul, heart, mind, and even physical development.

Question: Do you think this is the most important thing for a person?

Answer: I think a child should grow up free. That is, he should sit and listen to adults, but it has to be interesting for him.

And he should spend more time outside with his friends. Simultaneously with friends and a teacher. To go out to the field, fidget with some cars and large machines, and other things like that. Raise a child according to his own ways.

Question: Do you think this is more important than, say, to sit him down and study physics or algebra?

Answer: There is no use of it. Only a few push through it and only because they want to be better than others.

Question: So, you are least interested in knowledge?

Answer: Right. We do not need it.

Question: So, knowledge least of all. And what you just proposed, what is that? Does this set a person free? What does it give him?

Answer: What I am proposing develops a child through the natural course of his activities. In this case, he will invent all kinds of things. Not some airplanes or helicopters but spaceships! Based on completely different principles, ones that we assume are used by aliens. And so on.

So, this liberation will give freedom to ideas, and we still do not know what a child has inside. There are entire worlds in him.

Question: You speak of freedom; what are the principles of this freedom for a child?

Answer: The principles of this freedom are free contact with nature, discussions, conclusions, and debates with adults and peers. All this is very necessary for their proper development. Otherwise, you are simply placing them inside a square or a cube, and they cannot get out of it for the rest of their lives, you constrain their thinking.

Question: And you stop this whole progress by that?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What does this require of teachers?

Answer: It requires teachers to become different—not like teachers we have today. We have to redo all of it over the course of many years. But then, we will get completely different results.

Question: By realizing this, will we one day reach the fact we need to change everything? The Department of Education…

Answer: Through a great revolution.

Comment: You understand that this includes everything—the entire bureaucratic system.

My Response: All of it!

Comment: Bureaucrats will reject it.

My Response: I am not speaking of whether they would want it or not, whether we should fight for it or not. I am not calling for anything.

Question: So how will it happen?

Answer: I don’t know. I simply talk about what is true.

Question: Can our thinking be taken and changed from above?

Answer: Anything is possible from above. And by “from above,” I don’t mean the government.

Question: So, the upper force can just transform our thinking?

Answer: Yes.

Question: In what circumstances will it do so?

Answer: I cannot assert this with complete confidence, but it seems to me it is when we become completely disillusioned in what we have.
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From KabTV’s “New with Michael Laitman” 9/29/22

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