Dear Tom,
To follow up on yesterday’s letter regarding education. Kelley helped me understand that essentially there are two principal theories regarding education. There is the blank-slate model versus each child is a unique soul. Most of education today is based on the blank-slate model in which children enter the world empty and whatever you teach them – whatever you write on them – determines who they become. Every parent and enlightened educators, like they have at Kelley’s school, know this model is wrong. I have to look no further than my own family. Even as infants each of my four were different from each other. My twin grandsons are completely different from each other. I could tell from the moment I first held them. The older model is that each soul is already unique, and each has a story that he or she came to earth to live. Real education starts when that unique story and innermost part is engaged.
Spending time with Will, Jake, and Kelley helped me realize that youth is the time of life when you can’t stop the soul from acting. If you try to stop it, you are either going to precipitate either a collapse into depression, or an outward explosion into violence.
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