I don’t know how others define the meaning of education; but to me, education is nothing different from inspiration. In other words, its function is to direct the youth to pursue their dream, ambition and help them to understand the value of ethics; I remembered a famous quote of Nelson Mandela, he said that Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. You may suppose this is the task and job of a teacher or an educator. And I believe that the foundation of education originates from the family; so, you don’t have to be an educator, or a great teacher to instruct, direct or encourage inherited generations. As a parent who experience and face the current situation of society today; you may wonder what would be the best ways to raise your kids properly. And in this article, I hope I can bring you some idealistic recommendations to bring your children up successfully.
As I said, the foundation of education originates from the family; how could it be? I assume that parents are the first teachers of their children; as you know, kids imitate all of your behaviors and attitudes. And they learn all things from their parents; in that manner, they would do and treat the same things that you had treated them to their children when they grow up. In the Western psychopathological analysis, it explains that a kid has the violent tendency in personality caused by some family issues such as harsh discipline, aggressive treating from parent, so on. When I came to this point, it reminded me of some articles talking about the school violence; according to those articles, the school violence originates from the impact of media violence. Personally, I do not accept this theory; as a matter of fact, entertainment is just entertainment, it does not construct your kids’ personalities instead of education. I’ll give you some example.
You want your kids to be kind, gentle, and non-aggressive, so teach them how to love others, respects others’ lives as their own; even a life of an ant.
You want them to be honest; point out the hideousness of deception, fraud, losing credit from friends, and family.
You want them to be obedient. Just keep calm and listen when they made mistakes; be patient to explain to them why they should not do that. Don’t be over-stressed or impotent when their mistakes could be repeated several times.
There are thousands of examples that I can give you, but what I’m trying to tell you that the parents should give first priority of teaching the lessons of virtue and morality for children; and these lessons would follow them through all their life. Why the virtue and morality should be given in priority? Because a good man contributes his heart in creating of a peaceful society; and what the modern society lacked of are not talented or intelligent men, but the virtual one. And I assure that you want to live in the society when you got accident, an unknown pedestrian would come and make an emergency call or somebody would stand up and protect you when you got into troubles with bad guys. Moreover, those good guys would help to eliminate the indifference and apathy of society; and we’re not looking for good men, or waiting for them, but we’ll create them through education.
Another essential part of education is knowledge; no matter if you’re rich or poor, the best gift that a parent should give their children is knowledge from books. Perhaps when I come to this point, some parents may reject this; as in the time of technology, children prefer games and other stuffs in the ipad, or smart-phones than finding anything interesting in books that full of letters. Or if you ask them to read something, normally they would select a comic than a novel; so what you need to do is a strategy that arouses and stimulates their curiosity; because psychologically analyzed, human is the most inquisitive being that never stop looking an answer for conceal things. You can learn this fact from our ancestors; because of their curiosity, now we know about natural phenomena. To be more persuasive, I’m telling you about my story. Just like other common kids, I loved watching cartoon and reading comic than reading a book till I was ten years old; and I still remember my mother usually complained about that. My uncle was the one who told me about stories of how the stars, suns, galaxies and comets work; all these stuffs drove me to come to his bookshelf and read. Then he told me about bizarre things that he had read from a novel of Jules Verne, ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea’. And I don’t know from what moment I became a book worm; and I started exploring things around me from books. The book gives your children the power of knowledge, imagination, creativity, writing skills, vocabulary, concentration, etc. So let’s start help your kids reading with a strategy!
Another point that I suppose it is necessary to mention in this article; the parents should know what field of study that their children are strong at. And what the parents need to do is encouraging and supporting them. And when your children are old enough, they have their thoughts and self-conscience; just let them select what they want to do or study, and ask them to be responsible for what they selected. Don’t force them or push them; what we’re trying to do is not helping them as we thought; but we’re creating a heavy pressure on the family, and a gap between two generations. Let them know that you give them the freedom to decide their lives; this is how you love your children in a right way. Because in the parents’ eyes, kids are always kids, and don’t be afraid of losing them; we should be afraid that they’re not growing up.
“Education is our greatest opportunity to give an irrevocable gift to the next generation”, said Ernie Fletcher; this is one of my favorite quotes. In my viewpoints, education begins from the family; and the inherited wealth that could be given from parents is the virtue and knowledge. And please stop asking them to become what you want them to be; let them learn and grow up naturally as they are. There is an interesting quote from the book ‘To kill a mocking bird’ of Harper Lee that I really love and I guess it would become a lodestar for you to teach your kids, followings,
“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em”.
You can accept this or not; but please read slowly and think carefully what I said. I hope these can help you out and change your mind.
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