Forming the mind.

What goes in your mind

Something my family and I have consider a great deal is how we intend to raise our children. Given that we plan and putting the first one in the oven here pretty soon this is as one might imagine a rather important question. Two books which I recommend to the readers are "The Male Brain" and "The Female Brain", these books have given us quite a bit of insight not only into each other but also into the development of children.

One thing we have all agreed on is that we are going to unschool our children. This does not mean that we do not plan on educating them however. Given how bad the modern school system is and that home schooling is nothing but a copy of that same system we have decided that this is the best rout for us personally. Another reason why we have decided to go this rout is because it matters what goes in someone brain, especially at such a tender age as when children start school.

The modern education system is designed to keep students down to the level of the lowest intellect in the class. By opting for unschooling however we can not only give our children an active education, but also allow them to progress at an accelerated rate. The particular program which we intend on using with our children is one which is more akin to the older school curricula. Books such as See Spot Run, will be excluded from our home. We do not see why children should be subjected to such idiotic and pointless books. Instead we plan on exposing them to Juvenile and adult level books. Add to this that our children will not be allowed to watch television and will have at least until their teen years limited access to computers. What no television? No computer? The reasons for no television should be obvious. It is not because we believe that TV is evil, rather that most TV programs are trash, which we wish not to expose our children too. Add to this that it is important for kids to burn off their energy and they cannot do this as TV Zombies. One of the greatest things my own mother did while I was growing up was to make me earn TV time. Through homework? No interestingly enough I got 30 minutes TV for every hour I played outside.

While we plan on raising our children to love books our collection is going to be quite limited, for the same reason that we will not expose them to TV. Children internalize more than adults what they read, it becomes part of them, and part of how they think. As the children grow older what we allow them to read will of course expand. Currently when we read a book we always have in mind our children even though we ourselves may enjoy it, we ask ourselves "is this something I want my kids to read" and "What morals does this teach?" I am always conscious of music lyrics of dialogue on TV or in a movie, this is because we take in subconsciously hundreds of messages each day which influence the way we think. I am always amazed at how many people listen to a song because it has a good beat but are completely unaware consciously of the message of the song.

We need to be aware not only of what goes into our children's mind, but also what goes into our own. As it influences what and how we think. The first thing I do whenever I finish reading a piece of trash book is detox my brain with a good book that I like. Given that I consume 8 to 10 books a week this means I reread good books quite often, which is one way to know a book is good.