Betty excitedly tells me of the success of her children.

It is a most remarkable story; indeed, given the modest resources at her disposal, inversely counterbalanced by the high levels of achievement, of not a few, but a dozen, children, this small farmhouse serves as glorious witness to the world regarding academic excellence that might be accomplished by devoted parents!

"Four or five of my kids were valedictorians in their senior class. Paula, too," Betty laughs, "was always number one in her class, until the last year, when she dropped to number three - I think she just didn't want to give the valedictorian speech!"

Something tells me that Betty might be right; that Paula could have been there, if she'd wanted to.

"Ok, Betty, tell me what your kids are doing today."

Summa Cum Laude

With Highest Distinction! a phrase indicating utmost stellar academic prowess; a bit of Latin that would so often be spoken in this little farmhouse...

And now Betty treats me to a wonderful report of her children's occupational achievements:

• a medical doctor; a pharmacist (who graduated #1 in his college class!); a physical therapist entrepreneur, nearing completion of her doctorate; a chemical engineer; and so many classroom teachers...

My head is spinning now. And I am laughing. "Betty, we need to bottle and sell you!"

"Ok, Betty, here's the burning question. How did all of this happen? I've sort of noticed that this isn't the norm out there in the world. What's your secret?"

A fish doesn't know that it's in water

I have used the analogy of the fish in water, oblivious to its natural environment.

Betty cannot give me a direct answer. She really can't put her finger on it. This, too, is remarkable to me, and I begin to realize that people of high accomplishment often do things in such a natural way that their own methods remain hidden, in plain view, even to themselves!

But I will not give up so easily. And I press on for possible answers.

"Well," she says, "I think my kids did fine because we didn't have any money and they just needed to make their own way."

This makes me laugh even more, and I say to her, "Betty, there are lot's of people in this world who have no money, but I don't see their kids' names on the valedictorian speaker's list!"

She tries again: "Well, we just couldn't help them very much. We couldn't afford special lessons for them. They just had to learn to help themselves."

This second answer is merely a form of the first. I decide that I would approach this from a different angle.

"Betty, tell me what you did for your children; for example, did you read to them?"

Now the lights begin to come on.

"We always had hundreds of books in the house. Would you like to see them?"

I certainly would. Now we're getting somewhere.

The Bobbsey Dozen On The Farm

Betty leads me up the creaking, ancient, and narrow wooden stairs to the second floor. There is a very small room at the top; a landing, really. I remember this tiny anteroom. I played here when I was quite young. It is a place filled with books.

"I used to have a few hundred more," she muses, "but I gave them away."

• "Every one of my kids could read before they went to school!"

Betty now points to the top shelf of a small bookcase. Resting thereon are 20 well-worn copies of various episodes of Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Bobbsey Twins, and The Hardy Boys. 

"You see that row of 20 books up there? Lisa (the chemical engineer) read every one of those books before she entered first grade!"

And, as Betty speaks, I find an old thrill creeping into my Being, of the kind I knew when I once studied such books as Give Your Child A Superior Mind, Cradles of Eminence, and All Our Children Learning (P.S. #10). What Betty is showing me, revealing to me, is simply wonderful... a treasure-trove find... here, in this mystical little farmhouse, across the lake!

The cake that was a flop... just the way we like it...

We are back in the kitchen, and Betty, now primed for our game, is starting to remember things... she intuitively senses that certain things helped The Twelve.

"My kids were always with me, playing around here, in the kitchen. And if they wanted to make something, I always let them bake whatever they wanted to. I remember once when Paula was little, she baked a layer cake. But when she took it out of the oven, it flopped onto the floor!"

Betty now laughs as she mentally sees little Paula: "But she didn't cry or anything like that - she just said, Well, we can just make cupcakes now!"

And now I start to see everything... in a cosmic flash of gnosis, I understand how it all happened... I can now feel the essence, the positive spirit, of this Good Lady, who drew the best out of those little ones, her Even-Dozen, her Twelve Disciples!

The children's large vocabulary... did not include the word "failure"

Young Paula's remark about the cake speaks volumes. All that we need to know here.

Betty had created a learning environment in which it was ok to experiment; ok to fail; ok to make mistakes; ok to try again... no condemnation... no "original sin" to work off... no guilt-trip... no self-loathing...

I think it was Einstein who once said something like, "The way to have a good idea is to have a lot of them"; and, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." But a child will never have a lot of ideas if she is made to feel defective when mistakes are made; in such case, she will shut down, cut herself off from herself, and bury, as Emily said, her Being in Trance (P.S. #25).

And now, speaking with Betty as I sit at the old kitchen table, I see everything... I feel it... I see why all those kids did so well...

• They did well because... nobody stopped them, or got in their way! They did well because... they were given permission to do so! ... by this Good Lady who encouraged each tiny spirit to simply disregard errors, and move on, toward excellence!

What Is Education?

We shall return to Betty and Pete at the kitchen table, but let us consider a wider question: What is education?Allow me to share a few ideas, including some things I once wrote about this subject.

• Editor's note: Almost ten years ago I wrote a series of more than 20 articles on some of the great ideas of history. Follow this link to the Philosophy page and click on "Education," where you will find, at the top, my "Editor's 1-Minute Essay."

Liberal arts... Liberal education... something to be found in a Blue State?

We speak of certain arts, certain education, as "liberal" - what does this mean?

The ancient Greeks drew a distinction between education and training.

• Education was for a free man!

• Training was for a slave!

A free man required a "liberal" education; that is, education that would prepare him for "liberty," a life of freedom! As such, education, for him, primarily, meant learning how to think; acquiring wisdom; gaining understanding, of how life and society worked, so that he might take his place, as a decision-maker, in that world.

But, a slave was given mere training. Unlike the free man, a slave was not offered information for his own development, but for the benefit and pleasure of another. A slave was not taught how to think or make decisions - far from it; rather, a slave was taught to unquestioningly perform certain limited functions; such as, milking cows, planting crops, picking grapes, guarding cattle, and repairing barns.

The Wonder of You

As you know, if you have read all of my Personal Statements, no matter what subject we discuss, we keep coming back to the wonder of our own Souls, our Essential Core Beings, made in the image of God.

And we have seen - repeatedly seen - as per the analogy of Jesus' Artesian Spring (P.S. #23), that all good things reside within that Inherent Glorious Essence. And that our systemic problem is not one of diminished supply, but of paucity of awareness, of consciousness; an inability to access that which was given to us as divine right!

Notice how this plays out, even in the classical definition of "education," which is a Latin word, literally meaning, "to draw out."

• Editor's note: The "duc" root of "education" is found in the word "ductile," which, when applied to metal, might refer to an ability to be drawn out, shaped, into wire.

All of this becomes interesting. In P.S. #20 I brought to your attention the apostle John's words indicating that anything truly important cannot be taught to you by another but can only be discovered within. Anytime you receive, from a teacher, a universal principle, you will notice, within yourself, a rising sense that, on some level, you already knew this! it seems so right, and intuitively correct... it just makes sense, as we might say.

Plato said the same thing - that much of what we call learning is, in reality, a form of remembering that which had become hidden within one's true self. He famously illustrated this precept with an uneducated slave-boy, who, as Plato demonstrated, knew things about mathematics, though he had never been formally taught!

Our modern term "education" has classical roots reaching back to this idea of "calling forth," "calling out," of oneself the most important things that one needs to know; in other words, the glory of one's own soul houses all that is essential to our well-being.

True education will draw it out, from deep within, and into view, of our own consciousness!

How all of this relates to the teaching of little children... Betty's genius... less is more... the Fire within...

I learned something while speaking with Betty... many things, actually... but certain things became clear to me.

I have stated that a short time in the presence of Father John Kuhn will teach you all that you need to know about the true essence of forgiveness (P.S. #23). And it occurred to me that a brief interaction with Betty would teach me the most essential elements of early childhood education.

Little children have such a natural desire to learn and explore... to please their parents and teachers... to want to "grow up" and become something... to expand, to reach, to achieve...

All of this is really their own divine, positive, Soul Energy, yearning to break out, to be free, and to become what it was meant to be. It is a Fire within that cannot be destroyed... it will eventually have its way... it shall blossom and fulfill its destiny...

But unwise teachers and parents can set it back; harshness, and undue criticism, will make it go underground for awhile; negativity and hostility will, as Emily cautioned, cause one's Being to cover itself in Trance.

I have come to see that little children, if allowed to feel their own Fire and Glory within, will, once they learn to read, virtually teach themselves... once they know how to read, they will just run with it, and teach themselves all things. The pedagogue's job is to "fill in the gaps" of those few and occasional sticking-points that trip children up. Each child will have different sticking-points, different areas of academic stumbling, and it is these problematic areas that will require coaching-attention for the young student. But, for 90% of any content area, the good reader will need nothing but his or her own rising sense of self-worth and competence to achieve any scholastic goal.

It was not an accident, or fortuitous coincidence, that so many of Betty and Pete's kids developed into world-class top students and professional people. These kids entered school already knowing how to read! and, even more importantly, each possessed a sense of dignity and self-respect; a sense that mistakes didn't matter, that it was ok to try again - and with that, as would be the case for any normally healthy child, they were unstoppable, taught themselves everything, and would ask questions of teachers to help them "fill in the gaps"; and by this simple, but utterly powerful, process, these kids went right to the top.

• Editor's note: My friend Carolyn Sperle (P.S. #30), Betty's sister-in-law, offered to me this advice regarding child-rearing: "Listen to the little children. Try to understand what they are saying. Respect them. Don't talk down to them. They are your equals." Carolyn is another very wise mother, and one of her sons, too, also, these days, answers to a new first name, "Doctor."

What about Dad?

I haven't forgotten about Pete. And a short time in his presence will also tell you what a good father is like.

As I discussed education and the children's success with Betty, at one point, Pete, chuckling, with his characteristic subtle humor, jabs me: "Don't I get any credit in this?"

Indeed, you do, Pete!

First of all, Pete, the quiet farmer, is a closet intellectual. In the living room, he has his own collection of books that he has cherished. The children, of course, knew this, and emulated Dad's love for reading.

But even more than this - and you would have to know Pete to appreciate this - he is not, what I have somewhat-pejoratively termed, a ND Lion (P.S. #8). Pete is an evolved soul who was not harsh with his children. It is simply a fact of life that if Pete had been a judgmental sort, much of Betty's nurturing efforts would have been for naught, diluted by another's negative energy, causing pandemic self-loathing in the twelve little ones - what Dr. John Welwood terms, a sense of "The Bad Self" and "The Bad Other" (P.S. #23).

How the kids stay in touch with Mom and Dad... and with each other...

On this trip to my hometown, I would learn of more than one family riven by internal dissent; fractious divisions of "you harmed me... and I will never forgive you." Even merely hearing of these discontinuities in the flow of familial love is difficult to bear. Such episodes cause even physical infirmity in the parents who must preside over this ill-will among siblings... grown children who do not speak to each other.

I sensed none of that sort of friction as Betty spoke of her children. And while I do not know much about this family's inner workings, I suspect, in the main, that the psychological health of this group stands on good ground.

And, while it is also true that even if parents were to be perfect, children will make their own decisions, and can choose to live a life contrary to the principles they had been taught. Even so, I sensed that Betty and Pete had somehow succeeded, even in this minefield of sibling relations.

Today, both Betty and Pete's positive energy toward their children is reflected in how this remarkable family stays in touch with each other. Paula created a software piece that serves as Betty's computer homepage. Every email from the kids, finds itself, under various headings, categorized on this page. It appeared to me to be a "family blog" page, wherein each one contributes and makes comments - not only to the parents, but to each other - very regularly, most days, it seems. Betty said this blog-entity contained "thousands of photographs," with an extensive archive of as many emails.

This is so unusual.

So many of the families that I know have disenfranchised elements, within the larger family group, which do not speak to the other members! Most families could never have a "blog page" such as the one I saw on Betty's computer! It became clear to me that the sense of "The Bad Self" and "The Bad Other" had been greatly minimized by the non-judgmental approach of Betty and Pete - this became so evident to me! as if heaven itself had sent to me a flash of insight.

One more little story about Betty

I asked Betty if she had any photos of Father John Kuhn. She had several. I explained that I wanted to use these in my upcoming articles, and might I make photocopies of them.

Betty instructed me to remove the photos of interest from her album. I attempted to do so, but the prints were firmly attached to the page, and I was concerned about tearing them. I expressed my misgivings to her.

What Betty said next, and how she said it, might have been the most instructive point of our entire conversation:

"Oh, don't worry about tearing them. Just pull them out. If they tear, I'll just glue them back in. I want you to use them!"

Such a simple little statement. It's difficult for me to convey the importance of her brief comment. But, again, in those moments, just as with the story of Paula's flopped cake, I had this flash of insight into Betty's genius with those little kids.

• See, she was treating me just as she had treated those kids. I couldn't make a mistake around her. Whatever good thing I wanted to do or accomplish, that's all that was important - don't worry about mistakes, they don't matter, you just go ahead and try your best.

Unbelievable!

Here I am... almost 60 years old... and Betty is drawing out of me these latent feelings of "you can do it... everything is ok... you just keep trying!"

Incredible! Such is the pedagogic magic of this tiny white-haired Lady.

• And in this little example of human interaction, a negotiation of two spirits communicating across an ancient kitchen table, we see the very heart and essence of "education"! this process by which one "draws out" of the Artesian Well of another the soul-qualities of virtue!

The definition of Education... I can't explain it... but I know it when I see it...

And, in this little farmhouse, I think I've caught a glimpse.

Education is not merely filling little heads with information. Information-gathering has its place, but that's such low-level stuff. Kids can do much of that themselves, if they learn how to read - that kind of activity is what they offered slaves! ... mere training!

True education is a process bordering on the other-worldly! something that allows a Soul to feel its own Freedom; the thrill of simply Being! a process by which one's Essential Self blossoms into an Independent Person.

Education is a drawing out from the vast storehouse of the Soul the great riches of wisdom and understanding... of critical thinking... of appreciation for the fine arts and the deep things of the intellect ... things that you can't "teach to the test."

Education is a fanning of the Fire within! It creates a thirst and hunger to know, to have, and to become, regarding all that which is good in life.

Education is nothing less than a booster rocket, propelling one into higher orbit, a higher consciousness... from which vantage point one sees... and understands... and believes... that existence has meaning... that success is possible... and that one has the abilities and capacities to meet life on its own terms... and win!

All this... the spirit of education... not mere training... is what I sensed to be the true product of this little farm!

My friends across the lake...

Dear Word Gems Readers... I hope I have been able to impart to you some of the transcendent importance of what I witnessed with, and understood from, Betty and Pete.

Our conversation was about very ordinary things of life. Just two neighbors talking. Nothing high-tech or deeply philosophical... and yet...

In all of my years of thinking about, and researching, educational methods, I have never found a clearer path to, or definition of, success in this area than that exhibited by Betty and Pete... my own acres-of-diamonds neighbors, just across the lake.

Congratulations to both of you!

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