Introductory Lecture “The Place” – 10.05.10
Posted on October 5th, 2010
Question: When you work with kids, how can you tell that the approach you have chosen is correct?
Answer: First of all, you have to make sure that the group of kids goes through all the states together. If common difficulties affect the group and envelop all the kids in the class, then the kids need some kind of an outlet such as sports. They need help to go through the difficult states easier.
However, obviously it is inevitable that every new level will entail a jump of egoism and lack of understanding, followed by clarifications and achievement of greater understanding than before. Children should be taught to overcome states of obscurity in their feelings and mind.
One’s soul never grows old, and a person as well as a child (who is also a person) never receives states where he doesn’t have “the end of the rope” he can grab onto in order to climb out of any mess, descent, weakness, and fog. Together with all the things that seem like “objective reasons” for feeling bad, we always have the opportunity to ascend from this state. Children must be taught this technique. That is how we give them the instruments that enable them to make it through life.
[22543]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
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Our system of upbringing has to work in a vein of our own life. We shouldn’t tell children nonsense and lies or paint a false world for them. Every toy must guide a child toward real life and the correct analysis of it. Every detail should be a tiny example of the realities of the big world. We should unfold it for the child gradually, keeping in mind that it’s the real world and not fiction.
To safeguard the child, I draw borders for him, while at the same time, give him freedom within them. A child learns to be human from his actions in these restricted and safe conditions. Gradually the borders expand, and gradually a human is formed within them.
Moreover, I don’t offer him solutions set in advance but merely a limited example. I don’t assemble the interconnecting “cube blocks” for him but merely set a pattern to follow and leave him with the freedom to fantasize and create. Occasionally, I even prepare puzzles, tricks, and traps for him so that he will be able to learn from mistakes. Only by doing so will I prepare a child for life.
How can I offer him all the solutions in advance? On the contrary, we grow from our experiences with puzzles and exercises, trials and errors. The memory of them forms a correct approach in a child, and he then knows where to start and how to solve a problem. In the end, if he errs, it will be solely because he was caught by surprise and didn’t expect such a turn of events.
Each following step starts precisely like this: It is new and unpredictable, and so the child makes mistakes. But while he is at it, he learns from his failure and benefits from it.
[22411]
From the Talk on Education 9/29/10
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Educating a child means bringing him closer to our world and the spiritual world. Over a short period of time, and particularly between the ages of nine until thirteen, the child has to figure everything out.
Education ends at the age of twelve or thirteen because children naturally stop hearing us. They act and attain on their own, not receiving anything from us. Therefore, we have to give them explanations and truth about what is happening in the world.
If we feed them lies, then it’s like poison that can never be removed from their consciousness. It distorts their worldview and to some extent separates children from reality, replacing it with an illusion.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we cannot use analogies and legends when educating a child, but their form and boundaries must be clearly defined. It’s one matter if the child understands you are speaking to him metaphorically, and a completely different matter if he thinks that there really is a forest inhabited by animals he only sees in pictures and that these animals are able to talk to each other.
Everything depends on how you present things: In the first case a person becomes acquainted with the real world, whereas in the second, his consciousness and memory are pervaded by false images. Besides, we have to understand that in many regards today’s fairy tales come from ancient faiths and mythologies, when every object was thought to have a soul, an upper force, and a special influence on a person.
[22417]
From the Talk on Education 9/29/10
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The purpose of education is to explain that to “love thy neighbor” is a common law of nature. Only this forms a child into a human being. This needs to be reflected in every subject being taught; all of them should incorporate the notion of the unity of nature and governance (“there is none else beside Him”) and the absolute interconnection of all the parts of creation (“love thy neighbor as thyself”).
Then the entire course of study will be based upon and governed by the single law, it will move in one direction, and this is exactly what the child will grasp. If it is written that the law of “loving one’s neighbor” is the “main rule of the Torah” (meaning the common law of the universe), then we must educate children based on this law and show that everything that happens in the world is defined by this condition.
The children will grasp this singular law, and both the upper governance and their proper behavior will become obvious to them. When we show that the best and the most horrible events in the world only happen in order to reveal to us the place where we need to fulfill this law, children will begin to have a different, purposeful attitude towards reality.
Those who want to correct themselves and, through themselves, the world are called human. This is how we raise human beings from animals.
[22190]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/27/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
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