In the News (ABC News): “New research from New York University found that public school curriculum is falling short in providing “culturally responsive” education, a blind spot that researchers believe could be failing students across the country. …

“‘Culturally responsive’ education infuses the backgrounds, cultures, identities, and lived experiences of the students into the instruction of a classroom. These identities inform a teacher’s communication style, the tools they use in their lessons, and more, according to researchers from NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools.

“For example, educator and curriculum evaluator Sara Carroll-Muniz said in a press conference that when her students were having difficulty understanding allusion in poetry, she instead sought it out in songs they loved.

“‘We’re leaning on a lot of old, white poetry to try to get this message across and it just wasn’t clicking,’ Carroll-Muniz said at the press conference. ‘Hip-hop is rife with allusion … it’s just such a wonderful source for exploring that.’ “

How do you like the idea that, for example, arias in biology and lyrical songs in higher mathematics are being created? What will happen if we teach and instruct in this way?

Answer: Of course it will be clearer to the students.

Question: So they do not need to make any effort to understand?

Answer: None of this is needed. What for? It should get in easily in a sensory way.

Question: So we must work according to them, according to the students. If a student wants to, let him sing higher mathematics. What do you think of this way of teaching? Do you like it? Would you like to study in such a school?

Answer: I think it would help many people absorb mathematics, physics, and so on. All of this can be transferred to very simple things.

Question: You keep saying that the main thing is not even education, but the process of upbringing. Does it exist in this?

Answer: There is definitely the process of upbringing here. They teach students how to teach others, younger ones and so on.

Question: Can you say that when they sing together in class, then this is a process of rapprochement?

Answer: Rapprochement and adaptation. Of course.

Question: That is, is everything that is transferred to joint singing, to joint action, is collected in a “piggy bank”?

Answer: Yes, of course. Thus, in general, you can achieve a lot of success. But who needs it, just between us?

Question: You believe that it is so good that no one needs it as a result. And if it were bad, then maybe someone would need it?

Answer: This is how things work.

Question: So we do not want our children to rush to school to be willing to be together in class?

Answer: What is the point of this?! There is a thug waiting for them there, beating them, taking away their lunch money and things like that. I know that this is how it goes.

Question: Do we not need such a gentle upbringing?

Answer: We need a different upbringing. One in which the most ignorant students will understand that you need to be in good connection and in good relationships with each other. Otherwise, their society will reject them.

It is the most terrible thing when no one says hello to you, when you are rejected, when everyone laughs at you, and the girl you adored yesterday is puffed up and walks past you. These are all very good educational methods.

Question: So, suppose these are methods of education and upbringing. Do you mean tough methods of upbringing?

Answer: Yes, in the beginning this is what is needed, of course. If I am not connected with the collective by good ties, then nothing will help me.

Question: So are you saying to throw all education out of your head because nobody needs it? I exaggerate on purpose.

Answer: This is not an exaggeration. This is the foundation.

Question: And to start to take care of the connection in the classroom, the real connection, so that it becomes the most essential and important thing? And then add to this all the education, everything, absolutely everything.

Answer: Everything else will come on top of this.

Question: Will they ever want to implement this?

Answer: For this you just need good educators who know how to get into the students’ hearts, correctly distribute such roles among them, and somehow create such an atmosphere.

Question: Should educators themselves relate to each other in this spirit?

Answer: This is still far away, of course. And there is no way we can educate teachers! But maybe, it will be possible to come to an agreement with them so that they first unite in the teachers’ room, and then, in this state, go to the classroom. And then we will get good results in everything: kindness in the first place, mutual assistance, and the desire to study better.

Question: Will we get this too?

Answer: Absolutely, because otherwise we will let others down, and our students themselves will sneer at us. And so on.

Question: That is, our class should be the best, we should all be the best together. Is this also a conclusion?

Answer: Yes, but we should not point out that we should be better than others.

Question: Can educational bodies, ministries of education and upbringing, still take this as a basis?

Answer: No. This will be in real demand when you can pay teachers well.

Comment: To pay teachers, and then they will build the process like this? But they themselves should want this to happen in the classroom, right?

My Response: The point is that it will not last long because they do not have that kind of upbringing yet. You have to spark their interest.

Question: But money does have a serious effect here, doesn’t it?

Answer: Of course material interest does have an effect. That is, there are two components here: material interest and ideological interest.

Question: Can teachers spark each other with ideas?

Answer: I do not think so.

Question: Do you remember your first teacher? I remember you speaking about her with such warmth.

Answer: Oh! She was a special woman—young and married to a military man at the time she was teaching us. We lived on the edge of a military garrison. He often met her on the way back from work. I remember myself waving to him.

She was very, very devoted to us. She loved us.

Question: Maybe this is the key to real success?

Answer: Yes. But then the next year I moved to another school. It was a different life.

Question: If a teacher lives like this loving the class, loving the students… Or will this not last long as well?

Answer: This has stayed with me for the rest of my life. These are childhood experiences.

They gave me an example of what the first teacher could be.

Question: We started with rap, with an attempt to transfer the material to music understandable for a child, and then things will advance. What needs to be done to still have this atmosphere in the classroom?

Answer: If teachers can speak confidentially with children, then they can easily set the children on the right attitude to studies, to life, and to others.

Question: But in this way or another, you say it should go through the connection that exists in class?

Answer: Yes. This is the main thing. This is the basis.
[306190]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/10/22

Related Material:
Ten Reasons Children Do Not Want To Go To School
Was School Created by the Devil?
When The Teacher Becomes Desirable

Filed under: Children, Education - No Comments →

In the News (SOT): “Fifty-five judges in Belgium chose to spend a special weekend: they voluntarily locked themselves in a prison in the Brussels region to see what life is like for a prisoner, Belgian Justice Minister Vincent van Quinkenborn said in a statement.

“‘Judges obviously know what it’s like to be inside a prison, but experiencing this experience offers them a unique opportunity, which can help them impose sentences with full awareness,’ the minister continued.

“They will follow the prisoners’ daily schedule, will not be allowed to use mobile phones, will follow the same diet and have the same responsibilities as the prisoners.”

Question: In principle, prisons in Europe are somewhat different. For example, in 2020, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the country to pay five thousand euros to twenty-five prisoners who complained of violation of hygiene rules and lack of physical activity.

So, it is clear what kind of prisons these are. But how do you like the fact that prosecutors and judges went to prison, to see what conditions prisoners are in?

Answer: That’s great! I would let all of them through such institutions. People need to know what they are doing with prisoners, where they are being imprisoned, and whether prisoners have any opportunities to improve.

Question: How can this affect the correct sentencing? For example, the judge felt that it was terrible for him. What will be his next steps?

Answer: The next step will be to let them sit and figure out who felt what and who thinks what needs to be corrected. They have to make a prison so that people who have served a certain time in it, each of their terms in appropriate conditions and for appropriate offenses, would come out of there corrected. Otherwise, what is prison for?

Question: Why has everything changed so much in our lives: prisons have changed, judges have changed? Why did such a coup happen? You are now talking about the ideal…

Answer: No. I’m talking about what should be, but never was, because people don’t care. Previously, they just dragged a man to the block, chopped off his head and that’s it. And by doing so, they were ridding the world of him.

Comment: Or they were put in terrible conditions, in some pits or shackles, and so on. There was such evil and hatred all the time. Imprison him!

My Response: Yes, in order to eradicate them.

Question: What is it? Why is there no desire in a person to “fix” so that he goes through this process of correction?

Answer: What for? Do we need another person in society? It is better to isolate him, to send him somewhere.

Question: So, this nature acts in a person, to ruin, to putrefy?

Answer: Yes. Get rid of the unnecessary, as it seems to them, elements.

Question: What can be done to make something else triumph, so that some spark of love arises in a person?

Answer: No, our world is absolutely not striving for this. Therefore, why should we make some special, correct people out of prisoners? What does “the correct people” mean for our world?

Question: How can we turn the situation around?

Answer: Nowhere, in any country in the world today, are correctional institutions engaged in correcting people. At best, they are organized for some kind of work, and they work eight or ten hours a day. But this is good, it somehow still straightens them a little.

Question: But how should the world change in order for all this to change?

Answer: We need to change ourselves! We need to understand that we are prisoners in this world and must correct ourselves!

And we have to work on our correctional work that is internal, correcting ourselves. And then we can begin to correct the world around us.

Question: Which means, only as a result of correcting myself will I be able to look at the other correctly and direct him to correction, and not ruin him?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: It’s a long way to go.

My Response: I don’t think it’s long. It all depends on awareness.

Question: If there is awareness, can it happen quickly?

Answer: By itself, no. You just have to talk about it and explain a lot.

Question: But did these prosecutors and judges do the right thing by deciding to be imprisoned themselves?

Answer: Yes. In some ways, they will straighten up a little, within the framework of our world.

Question: So they can have some kind of minimal correction of their own?

Answer: Absolutely.
[307159]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/22/22

Related Material:
Then We Will Not Need Judges
The Judge’s Sentence: A Prescription For Correction
Who Are The Judges?

Filed under: Children, Crisis, Education, News - No Comments →

In the News (Science Daily): “An area of the brain specifically involved in putting in effort to help others out has been pinpointed by scientists at the University of Birmingham and University of Oxford.

“The research, published in Current Biology, shows that effortful altruistic behaviour -choices people make that help others — takes place in a different part of the brain from that used to make physically demanding choices that help oneself. …

“The area identified, called the anterior cingulate cortex gyrus (ACCg), is located towards the front of the brain. It is known to play a role in social behaviour, but has not previously been linked to putting in effort to help others. Interestingly, the researchers found that the ACCg is not activated when individuals make effortful decisions that only benefit themselves.”

Question: You always say that altruism is a consequence of correcting egoism, that we come to altruism, and it is quite a difficult job. Yet, it turns out that we can just make an altruist out of a person by surgery.

How do you feel about this? We can just activate this part of the brain and that is it, and we will live bestowing and loving!

Answer: But why live bestowing and loving? That is, the purpose of all this, what is it for?

Comment: To make me feel good about it.

My Response: Then we do not need any altruism or something else. Then you just need to inject a person with something cheering and that is it

Question: So, is this not a discovery for you?

Answer: No. There is no correction of the world and of a person in this.

Comment: Even if in this way we can turn criminals, for example, into kind, warm people?

My Response: This is not about people and not about every person. The fact is that there is the upper force of nature with which we must connect, come closer to in qualities, and participate with in the correction of all of nature.

Question: Is this such a program?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: Can it not be shortened by any operations or anything at all? Humanity is coming up with different pills, looking for any opportunities to shorten this path.

My Response: Where have you seen at least one person who would change or correct himself with a pill?

Comment: No one has corrected himself. You insist on this word all the time that a person should “correct” himself. Few people want to be corrected in our world. This word, on the contrary, scares people away.

I do not want to correct myself. I want someone to do good things for me, and I want to feel good so that nothing hurts me, so that I get up in the morning and sing along with the birds and go for a walk.

My Response: To do this, you need to be a little idiot and that is it.

Question: Is this not a person’s destiny to be a little idiot? 🙂

Answer: No, we are developing, and we need more and more. Therefore, I do not know whether there is any good ahead of us.

Question: If I come to such a happy, childish state, do you think that it will change sooner or later anyway, and I will get out of it?

Answer: This is an idiotic state.

Question: Will I be taken out of this idiotic state one way or another? Will I not be able to live like this?

Answer: Nature will throw you out.

Comment: That is why we are dealing with drug addicts who, in general, probably feel good. They are sitting disconnected, and we want to take them out of this state all the time.

My Response: Because their cheerful, disconnected state is a lie. Therefore, the world does not agree with this.

Question: Even if they do not harm anyone, is it still a lie?

Answer: Of course! The cheapest thing is to distribute drugs and calm humanity.

Question: Is the path of correction always so hard that everyone shudders from this word? Or not? Can I somehow accept it and say: “Okay, I am walking it”?

Answer: I think that the path of correction is, in fact, not really difficult. But it depends on dissemination, advertising, persuasion, and explanation. This is the problem of our wisdom.

The wisdom itself is not easy. A person begins to study it and does not understand what it is talking about. It takes several years for him to start hearing and to adjust himself at least a little.

Question: Why did Kabbalists make it so difficult?

Answer: Kabbalists did  not do anything. They take nature and try to twist it in any way, just so that it gets closer to a person. Nature is the opposite of a person. Therefore, there is nothing we can do with it.

It must be turned and twisted somehow so that a person begins to see it from several sides, so that he rises above his egoism, so that he begins to see the world in a different light, in a different guise.

This is the task of the wisdom of Kabbalah—to bring it closer to a person, to tell a person that there is an opposite nature.

Question: From hatred to love?

Answer: Love, yes.

Question: What if we repeat constantly that there is such a thing as “love”? Not only can you fight, kill, hate, and live with your egoism, but you can also love, you can learn to bestow?

Answer: No, we do not know what it is yet. Love is a pure quality of the Creator. We do not know what it is. With us, it all takes on some ugly forms.

Comment: More like animals.

My Response: Yes. And all this is wrong.

Question: Does it mean that in order to raise a person to the level of this upper love, upper nature, we need to turn him over?

Answer: To turn him over. That is, to tear him away from his egoism. And to attract to him the quality of love that will remain in him after this separation.

Question: What will remain?

Answer: A small dot. But only it can be adhered to the quality of love. It will develop and grow together with it.
[306512]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/27/22

Related Material:
“Take Off The Rose-Colored Glasses!”
There Is No Altruism!
Altruism Can Be Instilled

Filed under: Children, Crisis, Education, Globalization, News - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. Do we really practice this in the world today?“

We can realize the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” in today’s world through education.

Education means filling our media, our schools, colleges, universities, and our cultures, i.e. literally everything that influences us, with examples and explanations of our need to achieve positive connections among us all.

If we do so, then there is hope of reaching positive social values and a whole, pleasant, good and perfect world. If not, then our constantly growing ego—the desire to receive that wishes to devour others and nature for self-benefit—pits us up against each other on a collision course to destruction.

We can understand the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” similarly to how an ideal family functions. In the beginning of creation, we were a single family. Today, we need to realize ourselves as a single family among several billions of people, which is possible through regular learning of our interconnection and interdependence. We are currently like a family that grew up and lost their connection, and we need to bring them together to talk about it. That is what we need to do today in humanity.

Based on the video “How to Make ‘Love Your Neighbor as Yourself’ a Reality in Today’s World” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Education, Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Attendance Is Mandatory”

“Attendance Is Mandatory” may sound like the beginning of a post about school attendance, but it is not; it is a post about compulsory indoctrination at universities in Israel. On Sunday, at an academic convention at Haifa University, Israel, a new book was presented: Islam Is the Solution. The author of the book is none other than Abdullah Nimar Darwish, who founded the Islamic Movement in Israel, was convicted of terrorism, and served jail time in Israeli prison. One of the university professors declared that the status of the lecture is “attendance is mandatory,” and demanded that the students participate actively in this “important discussion.”

The university’s formal explanation was that the lecture is an academic event in every sense of the word. Despite the fact that the book and the lecture present terrorists as victims and Israelis, not Israeli soldiers, but all Israelis, as abusive oppressors, the university declared that it is tantamount to any other reading material.

Could the situation have been the reverse? Could a Zionist activist, convicted of terrorism against Palestinians, be invited to speak at Birzeit University near Ramallah (the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority)? Never in a million years, and rightly so; it makes no sense to invite an avowed enemy to speak to young people in your country and influence their pliable minds.

All over the world, universities determine their agendas according to their donors’ identity. When their prime donors are anti-Israel, such as the case with many universities in the US and the UK, the schools’ curricula reflect this view. But in Israel, where universities are heavily subsidized by the Israeli government, promoting an anti-Israel agenda simply makes no sense. I understand that in this way, these academic institutions are trying to show the world that they are democratic and offer equal opportunities to everyone, but I do not think that endorsing explicitly anti-Israel speakers is appropriate.

I am all for freedom of expression, and I think there should be no oppression of any person or opinion. However, academia should be a place where people learn skills and professions, not where they are brainwashed.

I am not saying that it is easy to teach history, civics, philosophy, and other courses in humanities, liberal arts, and social science without exposing one’s political leaning, but this should certainly be the goal. This should be the official policy of the state, the official policy of the university, certainly with state-funded universities, and professors and lecturers should aspire to abide by it, with the help of rigorous monitoring by university staff. The fact that today’s lecturers and today’s curricula are far more politically biased, in some cases even blatantly so, means that politicizing a course is a trend, and trends can be reversed.

There is, however, one subject that should be taught without any restraints or fetters: connection and mutual care among people. The world we see today reflects the tensions and enmities that pervade society. The reason so much of today’s schooling is political is that the aspiration to enforce one’s view on all of society has intensified in everyone, making previously non-political discussions heated and hate-filled disputes over governance and government, where each side believes that the other side is not only wrong, but that its view is an existential threat and should be treated as such.

As a counterweight to this trend, we must teach—and this is the most important lesson all of us should learn if we want to survive—that we have no other choice but to learn to care about each other. Israel is not the United States. If we are not united, we will not survive. If we are united, we will have no enemies. In my opinion, “Unity First” should be a mandatory course in every faculty, discipline, and major in academia.
[307775]

Filed under: Education, Israel Today, New Publications - No Comments →

Question: Irina writes: “I have not become a mother yet, but I really want to be. I see how mothers bring their children to our classes. I am a dancing teacher myself. I see how the kids are cleanly dressed, how their mothers admire them. And then I see the news, how men, still boys, kill each other. And I do not understand why? Why were there all these classes, clean shirts, matinees, and school? Why? How should one educate, love, and warm a person so that he does not want any wars and would not want to kill anyone?”

Answer: I understand this young girl. But I do not know how to answer her, except for one thing. At the core of human nature is egoism, which brutalizes, kills, and does everything to destroy us. We need to declare war on this egoism. How to do this is the most important thing.

Kabbalah teaches this. Let’s master this science together and destroy egoism. I have nothing more to say except for these compulsory words. But you will learn everything else from our courses, lectures, classes, and books.

Question: Is it possible to do this at the degree of our world with agreements with some kind of economic sanctions?

Answer: That is worthless!

Question: Will humanity be convinced of this?

Answer: Humanity must reveal that its nature, egoism, is evil. And that is why it cannot do anything good, no good will come out of it. So, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Question: So those barbaric wars that happened, are they going to be just as barbaric in future?

Answer: Even more barbaric.

Question: And the fact that man becomes more cultured, more knowledgeable?

Answer: All this will only be to his detriment. This is because egoism invents everything: all sciences, arts, techniques, and technologies.

Question: Does no spirituality enter into man?

Answer: No. Spirituality is love for one’s neighbor without any reason.

Question: And we cannot come to this through technical progress?

Answer: No, of course not.

Question: How will humanity understand this?

Answer: It will understand either through light or through suffering. There are two ways. And now they are beginning to open up to us.

Question: But are they both paths that somehow lead to the same path?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So one can be so long, lengthy, and the second is more direct and clearer?

Answer: Yes. Let’s hope that we will see it all somehow. At least the beginning of it.
[306571]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/27/22

Related Material:
Our Children Will Not Fight Wars
When Will The War End?
Do Wars Lead To Progress?

Filed under: Children, Crisis, Education, Globalization, News - No Comments →

Kabbalah on Education

Kabbalah comes to the rescue to today’s education and parenting crisis

Sibling jealousy is a natural reaction of egoism.

This is a natural reaction of egoism. Parents may try to explain to a younger child how they would like him to behave, but it’s impossible to demand a correct reaction from him. It’s written, “Educate a lad according to his path.” This means that parents have to compensate their elder child for his new position in the family, so that he feels that a good attitude towards the newborn is advantageous for him.

When a younger child is born, a mother feels excited that the family has become larger. An elder child should feel the same. How? For instance, he can receive a present “from” a younger sibling. That is, a child should see that a new baby allows him to derive something positive for his egoism. Otherwise the elder sibling will hate the younger one, as he senses that his mother’s attention is switched to the baby, everyone takes care of it, and not him. 

In previous generations, sibling jealousy probably wasn’t so acute, because people lived in more modest conditions, or elder children had more friends with whom they could play and thus paid less attention to their younger siblings. But today, parents need to fulfill the desires of the elder children, showing them that they receive something good thanks to a newborn baby in the family.

Filed under: Children, Education - No Comments →

Kabbalah on Education

Kabbalah comes to the rescue to today’s education and parenting crisis

Filed under: Children, Education - No Comments →

Comment: There are beauty contests like “Miss Universe.” By the way, it was once Trump’s business. It seemed to everyone that this was the most win-win business. But recently it was put up for sale due to unprofitability.

For the first time since this competition began in 1952, problems with profitability began before the “corona.” They say that this is due to a drop in the number of viewers.

But I personally have a feeling that external beauty has become less attractive in the world today.

My Response: I think it has become more internal. It has received a higher request, a need from the masses. But what is it really about today, due to such a huge farce that exists in the world? It’s just not possible.

Question: Is it possible to say something about the inner beauty of a person? How can I believe that this person is internally beautiful? What criteria should I proceed from?

Answer: Kindness, mutual assistance, compassion, and so on. Such as simple truths. The one that takes a person. This is the inner beauty of a person.

Question: You said the first word “kindness” and even stopped. It seems to be the most important thing for you. What do you put into it?

Answer: This is a person who can perceive another as close to himself. This is an amazing property! This is a gift from the Creator.

Question: So is this what you consider the greatest property—kindness?

Answer: Yes.
[306277]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/10/22

Related Material:
The Beauty That Has Been Imposed On Us
Slender Figure: Beauty Or Harm To Health?
Taste For Beauty Remains

Filed under: Education, Man and Woman, News - No Comments →

Question: Why are family workshops or workshops for people who know each other well much stronger than for random people?

Answer: Because people who are interested and mutually connected take part in them. In such circles, there is a complex structure of relationships: between friends, between girlfriends, between spouses, also between interactions of couples, and between the general relationship in a group, in a community.

There are a lot of levels and different systems of relationships and styles; that is why it is very interesting. All this jumps from level to level: personal, family, social, and spiritual relationships, and so on.

We can see amazing combinations between the five degrees that exist in nature: animal, human, emotional, and so on, according to Maslow’s pyramid. Meaning both psychological and Kabbalistic.

Question: Is it worth letting people without a partner into such events?

Answer: No, then there will be no synergy, only with similarity so that everyone experiences the same opportunities.

Moreover, if you put several friendly couples with a couple who is in a bad relationship, you will see that it will come out of there like “God’s little dandelion.” The rest will show an example of their interaction so that they will have to get closer to each other.

I have seen it, how they come out holding hands and they could not look at each other before. And this happens literally in thirty to forty minutes.
[306305]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Family Happiness” 12/7/13

Related Material:
Learning From Example
Men And Women: Mutual Expectations
How Can We Understand One Another?

Filed under: Children, Education, Man and Woman - No Comments →