Lasting Legacy

One hundred percent of all people who now live will eventually pass out of this life. That percentage cannot be changed or altered in any known way. As we go through life, we work hard, both at work and at home. During our lifetime we will have an opportunity to prepare the legacy that we will leave behind when our life is over. What lasting effect do you want to have on those around you? How do you want to be remembered? No matter what we choose to do with our lives we will leave a legacy: a legacy of something or nothing, a legacy of good or bad, a legacy of knowledge or ignorance, a legacy of wisdom or foolishness.

What we do, or don't do, may have an effect on our posterity in some way. How we choose to raise our children will effect how our children raise theirs, and so forth.

We all want what is best for our children, but often times what we believe to be best for them is not what they are here to become. As parents and mentors of children we seem to have an idea of what we want our children to be. Sometimes we guide them down their own path and sometimes we force them down a path we want them to take because we believe it to be best. Have we really pondered the reason, result or effect it will have on them? Every person our children come in contact with will leave a mark of some sort. What marks do you want your children to be left with?

As parents and mentors of our children we want to raise them to be strong and intelligent. We want them to be better than us; to not make the same mistakes we made. We want them to build upon the knowledge we give them so as to have more time to increase their own knowledge far beyond what we have. We want to teach them the skills we posses so they can become even more masterful in those skills than we are.

In order to build a greater posterity we need to closely examine how it is we are teaching our children and what it is we are teaching them. Keeping our children in our homes builds strong family bonds. Sending them away, especially at an early age, teaches them to rely on themselves because mom and dad aren't there. Sending our children out of our homes for long periods of time weakens family bonds and teaches children that strangers (strangers are those whose families we do not know, including the friends our children make away from a family setting) are the only ones to count on because they are the ones with whom our children spend most of their time. This is why children and teens are more apt to seek counseling with their peers than their parents. Strong bonds are not made and kept within the first three years before preschool. Strong bonds are not made and kept within the first five years before kindergarten. Strong bonds are not made within the first 14 years before high school. Strong bonds must be continually and consistently maintained in order to keep them strong. If you want your children to come to you then you need to be the one with the strongest bond to your children. If you want to be the most influential in the lives of your children then you need to be the one with whom they share the stronger bond.

We must also take great care in what we teach our children, because that will be part of the legacy we leave with them. Teach them to desire the good and despise the bad. Teach them to desire the simple things in life and they will find joy in those things. Teach them to honor the good traditions of their fathers. Lead them by example. We should rid ourselves, as parents and mentors, of all that we feel is not fit for our children to watch, read, say, do, hear, desire. Many parents question how their children learn bad words and behaviors before leaving the home for schooling. These parents ought to examine what it is they bring into the home themselves. What media do we allow to be influential to those living in the home? Our children are products of what we allow to be put into them.

There are many new and wonderful learning options available to our children in this technological age, but beware. All too often we see that science and technology replace morals and values in society. It is easy to be led away from the good and simple things in the name of progress. We must learn for ourselves if something is good for us by learning all we can about the pros and cons of a new idea or practice. We want our posterity to be left with only the best to influence them. We want our children to be able to become what it is they feel drawn to become, but what they are influenced by can have a deep effect on what they desire to learn about and do with their lives.

The intellectual, spiritual and moral food we give our children will be what helps them to grow. Any lack of these vital nutrients, or replacements of such with synthesized products, will leave our children deficient. Our children, and so our posterity, cannot survive on deficiency. Feeding our childrens' minds with intelligence and teaching them how to think, not what to think, will prepare them for leading. They will be more capable to strongly lead their family, friends, community and country. Teaching a child how to think, instead of what to think, makes all the difference in the world.

When a child begins to hunger for knowledge show them where to find the proper nourishment. Feed their desire to learn with the knowledge that best corresponds to their interests. If you continue this type of nourishment throughout their childhood they will continue it into their adulthood on their own. You will have given them such a great power, that of true knowledge and education. A learned man is neither blind nor foolish, a learned man is one who can think on his own. A wise man is one who will question everything and, through the process of true education, will learn all he can. A wise man will teach his children all he has learned, thus ensuring the intellectual survival of his own posterity. Ensuring the intellectual survival of our posterity will keep them a free people and keep them from being slaves through ignorance.

Consider well the legacy you are leaving your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. Choose now what that legacy will be and act now. You cannot change yesterday, but live today by learning from yesterday in order to make tomorrow better. Begin today by creating that legacy you would like your posterity to learn from. Create that future in your lives today.

I love this passage from C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man:

In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart form this, the later a generation comes - the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct - the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future.

Compelling Power

These definitions are found in the American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster, 1828:

Force, To compel; to constrain to do or to forbear, by the exertion of a power not resistible.
2. To overpower by strength.
3. To impel; to press; to drive; to draw or push by main strength; a sense of very extensive use.
4. To enforce; to urge; to press.

Compel, To drive or urge with force, or irresistibly; to constrain; to oblige; to necessitate, either by physical or moral force.
2. To force; to take by force, or violence; to seize.
3. To drive together; to gather; to unite in a crowd or company.
4. To seize; to overpower; to hold.
5. To call forth.

Compulsion, The act of driving or urging by force, physical or moral; force applied; constraint of the will; the application of a force that is irresistible.
2. The state of being complelled or urged by violence.

Upon first examination of these definitions we may feel that to be forced or compelled is something to be avoided. However, I ask you to consider what, or who, it is that is compelling our education. Is it someone else or their ideas that are being forced upon us, or is it our own desire to learn about a subject of our choosing that compels us? Are we driven by our own hunger for knowledge or by a system that was designed to make education uniform? The positive or negative state of these words is of our own making. Being compelled by another, to do something we hold no desire to do, makes these words appear to be negative in meaning. If we are driven by our own interests in pursuit of knowledge, under our own power to freely choose where our road will lead, these words take on a much more positive state.

When we are negatively compelled, we find that we feel negative emotions toward whatever it is that is compelling us. When we are positively compelled just the opposite is true. How, then, are we to have a positive educational experience? The answer is simple: by allowing our own educational desires to compel us to action, not the desires of others.

John Taylor Gatto worked as a school teacher for nearly 30 years in New York. After he won New York State Teacher of the Year he received almost 1,800 letters in response to some essays he wrote about what he had witnessed as a schoolteacher. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Frankfurt, Illinois "I had a rich personal inquiry going on in many things. School was for me a tedious interruption of my otherwise interesting life."

Madison, Wisconsin "I'm desperate what to do. Three bright and lively children but everyday I see a closing down of enthusiasm as they grind their way through a predetermined school program."

Force, compel, and compulsion do not have to be words whose actions we try to avoid. If we allow our own educational desires to drive us, these words can be the greatest force in who we become.

Awaken The Genius

An education begins with the pursuit of knowledge of those things that capture our interest. When we are young we depend on our parents to guide us through that pursuit, showing us where to find the troves of knowledge that will fill our desire to learn. When children are given free reign with their education, with a mentor's guidance (i.e. parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, older sibling, teacher, and/or other trusted adult) they can learn at an amazing speed. Allowing children to follow their interests will inspire in them a love for learning and a love for learning will open up their hearts to the desire to be educated. As children learn about those topics that capture their attention the education they receive will seem like play. They will find joy in discovering the world that they want to know and become better acquainted with. Perhaps there are some true geniuses, but most geniuses are average people who were allowed to follow where their interests lead them and were guided by a caring mentor. All children have that capacity within them to become someone great, but it is up to those around them to provide them with the guidance they need in order to become that great someone.

We all have a lifetime in which to educate ourselves. Trying to force an education on a child will only result in that child developing the feelings of resentment for learning. It will seem to that child that an education is a painful process and must be unwillingly endured in order to become something. Children become unfocused, bored, moody, quarrelsome, disruptive, and are easily distracted when they have to sit for hours hearing about subjects that hold no interest for them. For the rest of their lives they will feel these emotions when they are in a school setting due to the fact that it was ingrained in them from the very beginning of their educational experience. Geniuses are not found in this type of setting, they are stifled.

In order to awaken the genius in children we need to allow them to decide where their interests are and guide them in following those interests. We cannot continue to mass educate with a one-size-fits-all education and expect individualism to shine through. There can be no master in a field of study if everyone has the same education. We are all unique and have unique qualities and interests, so why should our learning be something that forces sameness. We should teach children to be the individual we tell them to be by allowing their genius to govern their education. Do not stifle it by putting them into a situation that will induce pain; instead teach them there is joy in learning by guiding them through their own desires and then watch as the transformation from child to genius is made.