HOLD ON TO YOUR KIDS by
Becoming a Mentor
Kids cannot form true attachments to large organizations, institutions, or social movements. Neither can they receive an education from them.
A child can learn some things from large entities, but they can only receive an education from known mentors.
“True universality in the positive sense of mutual respect, curiosity, and shared human values does not require a globalized culture created by peer-orientation. It requires psychological maturity—a maturity that cannot result from didactic education, only from healthy development . . . only adults can help children grow up in this way. And only in healthy relationships with adult mentors—parents, teachers, elders, artistic, musical and intellectual creators—can children receive their birthright, the universal and age-honored cultural legacy of humankind. Only in such relationships can they fully develop their own capacities for free and individual and fresh cultural expression.”
A mentor provides all the educational necessities Google and robotics cannot and never will be able to provide. Google knows more historic facts than any doctoral professor. What Google cannot speak to is what it looks like to live more wisely from the lessons of a historical event, or what it felt like to live through it. A robot can keep kids safe and teach them how to make goo from cornstarch. What a robot can never do is share life stories and bring peace and safety not just to a child's body, but their attachment-hungry soul.
We must quit trying to compete with technology in the educational realms of delivering facts, figures, and fun ideas. Instead, we get to lead homes and school programs that provide the known, guiding adults children need most.
This week begin to implement the mentoring practice of weekly "interviews" for the kids you want to hold onto.
An interview is simply a weekly check-in with a known, trusted adult mentor.
It is the time every Saturday afternoon when Mom and Dad stop to encourage their children, share stories from the week and further past, look ahead to what is coming, and help mentor their children toward greater growth.
It is the time every Monday afternoon, when the school program puts away the goo and places children instead before a designated mentor.
Especially on the educational front, where we are dealing with mass quantities of kids, it will take time to develop an adequate mentoring program. To mentor one child well is however infinitely better than mentoring none. We must begin taking steps.
With some effort and thoughtfulness, we can all position ourselves and our staff teams to take on the mentoring role of an education that produces quality people, not just quantifiable scores and outcomes.
For a more detailed plan for doing inventories,
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