Have you thought of home-schooling your child or children?
Are you aware of the gaps in the current education system?
Are you one of the conscious parents who are willing to take responsibility to home-school your child?
Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have considered allowing my son to be home-schooled honestly until I began to witnessed the kind of damage the public education system was doing to his pure innocent space and destroying his passion for learning during the last 10 years of studying in primary and secondary education. In addition, I have been a volunteering teacher in Nithyananda Weekend Gurukul (a Vedic learning system) which was revived by my Guru, HDH Bhagawan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam (fondly also known as Swamiji). I am able to see the higher possibilities when we are able to provide the nurturing learning ambience for our next generation of children.
First of all, let me share with you the gaps of the modern Western education system.
- Binary logic vs Multi-dimensional Logic. The Western education focusses on mainly the binary logic i.e. the length dimension of a child’s thinking and his/her ability to regurgitate the same information is rewarded with distinction instead of the teaching a child the multi-dimensional logic of the Cosmos in Vedic learning system. As a parent or teacher, you should know that binary logic is not mature enough to capture the cosmic reality, meaning the child will have limited cognition of the reality without a full-brain learning. There is no knowledge about self and their innate wholeness and how to be emotionally balanced in the growing complex world. As a result, the modern education is inadequate in preparing the future generation to live a fulfilled life. It only prepares children to run in a rat race as executives, engineers, accountants, bankers. No wonder children are losing interest in the education system because what they learn will be obsolete after graduation! Swamiji told His balasanths (child-saints) who study in Gurukul that they should not learn anything which can be googled. That’s the most mind-blowing advice to the new generation!
- Stress & violence caused by fear in exam. The different examination and grading systems invariably cause tremendous stress and disturbance in children at a very young age, which creates a life-long fear for examinations. A recent study carried out in United Kingdom found that academic worries were the biggest cause of stress for nearly 50 per cent of children. Further research has confirmed that exam worries cause children more stress than peer pressure to be ‘trendy’ or find a boyfriend or girlfriend. Too much comparison among peers is built into the system which creates jealousy and incompletion in each child. This fear slowly develops into guilt and violence which, in turn, destroy their consciousness resulting in psychiatric disorders by the time they reach puberty. YoungMinds, the children’s mental health charity in England, says nearly one million children between the ages of five and 15 now have mental health problems like depression and anxiety and the numbers look set to keep on rising. I’ve counselled a few teenagers in the last 2 years who were so stressed by school. I saw how my son was bullied a lot when he was in primary school and gradually, he became numb to violence by fighting back as it was the only way for him to survive. I was shocked by some of the incidents he shared with me which got me worried about violence becoming a pattern in him. I had to bring completion in him. Swamiji revealed that “If we can remove examinations from our education system, the world will become non- violent”. In Vedic Gurukul, a Guru gives complete freedom in learning to a child to explore on his/her own creativity and passion, the Guru is the divine guide to give basic formulas and cognitions to awaken knowledge.
- Failure to groom dynamic leaders of tomorrow. Over emphasis of Intelligent Quotient (IQ), but missing the important dimensions of Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Spiritual Quotient (SQ). The current system does not teach children how to create a powerful inner image and awaken their highest possibility. Many teenagers or young adults, by the time they finish their high-school or university education, they are still lost in their life. This is because they are not given the larger picture about life so that they know how to plan for their life. In an increasingly complex world, we need more independent thinkers and dynamic leaders who can take humanity to the next level consciousness.
With the above facts in mind, with Swamiji’s inspirations, I started to explore other ways of learning for highly evolved children, commonly known as Rainbow kids or Indigo children, who have come down for conscious breakthrough, my son definitely falls under this category.
As a mother, my desire is to give my son a supportive and fulfilling learning environment such that it allows him to explore his higher possibilities. By having him home-schooled, I started to see so much healing happening in his inner space and more inspirations were triggered. He told me he wanted to start an online business to learn the rope of running a business as he aspired to take up a diploma in business. I was thrilled to hear that and gave him all my support and whatever resources to get him off the ground. He has also started to take responsibility for his body by exercising regularly to shape up in this new year. I noticed once my teenage son is no longer getting agitated by school or violence, he is showing a series of positive changes becoming more life-positive and having the freedom to do things at his own pace and at his own terms. I am just a space holder for him to blossom in his life for whatever purpose he has assumed this body.
This remarkable shift in my son gave me tremendous inspiration to encourage more conscious parents to home-school their children if they are willing to take up the responsibility in providing time, energy, life and space to their children’s possibilities. In fact, last year I started working with a group of creative kids’ yoga teachers whom I trained to develop more content based on Vedic knowledge for home-schooling parents. This will be another big contribution this year in the field of enlightened parenting. Stay tuned for the announcement of the launch. Namaste. 😀