Thursday, October 09, 2008

Education is cultivating what's hidden as seed

A mother of two young children, while blogging about the value and meaning of education, quotes Thomas Moore’s book, The Education of the Heart:
Thomas Moore said, "Education is the art of enticing the soul to emerge from its cocoon, from its coil of potentiality and its cave of hiding. Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities - that's training, or instructing - but is rather a making visible what is hidden as a seed." (Education of the Heart)1.
Now, she supports home schooling and continues, "Think of the child before school - the massive learning that takes place from birth to age 3 or 4. No one coaxes the baby to roll or reach, she does it on her own volition driven by her own curiosity. What enormous leaps of cognitive, physical, emotional, and social development take place during these years. This is what we hope continues to happen upon sending the child to school - growth, enrichment, becoming good people. But all of this happened at home without the standardized tests or workbooks. So, what changes?

These are the thoughts that weave through the network of preconceived notions of schooling and education. I have brought my son home because of it. He has attended school up until this year at a delightful private school that is the closest thing to home school that we can find. His little sister is in preschool there now, although I still have reservations when I see the inevitable conformity setting in. What I want for my children is to stay in touch with their personal geniuses- for their education to be an ongoing life process, not something that takes place from 8AM til 3PM."

1. Moore, Thomas. The Education of the Heart. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1996.

Labels: ,

Links to this post:

Create a Link

Back to Barque: Thomas Moore
Back to Barque: Thomas Moore as Catalyst