Raising Children - The Nature of Education -- Chinuch - 23 Tammuz - 21 July 2014 - part I скачать в хорошем качестве

Raising Children - The Nature of Education -- Chinuch - 23 Tammuz - 21 July 2014 - part I

Raising Children - The Nature of Education -- Chinuch - 23 Tammuz - 21 July 2014 By way of introduction: we said that we must understand that when we educate, there is a basis for the action... is what is taught to the child contrary to his nature? No! Absolutely not! You are in fact leading the child into his own world. It is not training. It is not education. Education is new information. Chinuch is different. By contrast chinuch is built around different principles. It is like teaching someone how to drive -- he has a feel for it! He's part of this reality. He just has to practice what he already knows. The learner has to get into the car and practice. If the person had not seen a road or a car before he would not be able to relate. There is human intelligence and reality preceding the chinuch. The chinuch is the action of correlating the person and his sense of life with life in the world. You can help someone to get accustomed to driving a car. But is that what keeps him on the road? Is his fear of an accident what keeps him there? No, he relates to the function and reality of the road. It is a human reality that reflects the human perception of the world. And he doesn't first hear of the road when he gets behind the wheel. He has a recognition of the reality of the road. He knows the world is not a jungle and that it is a place of meaning and interconnection. Children know how to ride bicycles. And each child knows that to ride he must not look straight down to the ground. You look ahead. The wheels touch the ground, but the movement is in the intended direction. It is a simple point that is illustrative of all aspects of human activity. The Rebbe MAHARASH was a child and playing with others outside and they challenged each other to climb a high ladder. None could make it. But the MAHARASH climbed straight to the top. His father the Tzemach Tzedek, his father asked him how he did it. The boy responded, 'I didn't look back. I went straight up. I didn't look down.' The other boys situated themselves on the earth. The Rebbe did not have that orientation. This is an intellectual sense. It is a soul sense of reality. It says, 'God made the world, and for this reason things are real'. Principles of chinuch mean to bring the child along via the things he can relate to, beyond what he can grasp and understand. Children have a profound sense of the reality of life. He knows that a human being is in the world not just to survive. He knows the human being has a mission. And the whole world stands ready to help him accomplish his mission. An object like a 'table' is one of the things that help him with his mission. When the child sits at a table it is natural to him. He senses he's here as a human presence, not just to feed himself. He senses the apple is a created entity, and it is appropriate to make a blessing -- he senses the reality. He begins to respect the elements of the world he encounters -- everything is real. And then every piece of information is part of a whole reality. This way whatever he is learns he is 'at home' and not 'at a loss'. Proper chinuch sets a child on a happy path for life... and when he learns he feels that he is learning about his world and not 'put upon'. This is the second phase of chinuch. The first phase is to maintain a respect for, and a cognizance, of the wisdom of the child. So when a child makes a blessing on a piece of fruit, it is much more than training. He and the fruit acquire a different significance when the bracha/blessing is made.