TRUE EDUCATION-COOPERATION

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 42, 17 August 1918, Page 4

TRUE EDUCATION-CO-OPERATION

TO THB EDITOR.

vSir, —The family scheme of things has worked wonders for tho world, but it is changing from the patriarchal idea to the fraternal, where individuals of a family will be thought of, not as superior and inferior, but more from the standpoint of equals co-operating. In the American civilisation you find coming the elements of greater co-operation among individuals for home and business. No American father would give an order to a child as an order, because he knows the child would not obey it. He would not dream of giving it because that is not in keeping with the American spirit. The child is looked upon as a brother;' and if you are to get a child to do some particular thing, even if he is only a little tot of two or three, you have so to word your language, your whole mental attitude, so that you treat him as an equal with the family—you expect co-operation, not obedience. It is very necessary to take up this attitude towards children if you desire to produce a fuller opening of their individuality and a quicker response to any appeal you may make to the higher nature.' As it is now you often find that up to a certain age children have beautiful natures, then they begin to hai'den, to retire within themselves, and for years this change is marked with many difficulties. In the future it must be ensured that the natural nature of the child is retained through all the years of growth, and the people of this> generation must work towards that end.

It must be recognised that our attitude towards children must change, for they are souls.manifesting in bodies, having a mystic nature of their own, understanding equally with their parents very often what is required, but with this handicap, that the body and brain are not yet fitted to expresß "that real cooperation. It is for the parent and teacher to go out of his way to pain the response of the soul' of the child, and this means a total reconstruction of education, and it must come. It is an important thing to realise that in the future, with all great fraternal schemes of civilisation, you cannot have co-opera-tion, you cannot have internationalism, unless the change begins, in the home. To some extent there has been a modification in the thought of the home, not as being of the family, but as an association of equals, to realise something of common purpose. A great characteristic of the near future will be the development of the intuition, the^ quality of knowing things that are considered unknowable, of seeing things that are not visible to physical sight, and so on. These are the kind of things which are going to give the great principles of the future. There will be greater communion with the mother intuition of Nature; children will not be shut •, up in wooden buildings, there will be open-air schools for all children, not for delicate ones only. The inner nature of children will unfold in wind and sunshine, in gardens and woods.

Within the hearts and minds of children an intense friendliness with all that lives can be developed; there is more in thoughts of brotherhood than somo people realise. Most people are familiar with tho thought of brotherhood; the difficulty is in putting it into practice. If the children of to-day, the men and women of the future, are to live usefully, they rnußt ba trained to put into practice in their own lives this great dominant thought of . brotherhood.—l

am, etc.,

STUDENT.

16th August