Inspiration!
I have an interesting friend who I met during primary Montessori training in Hartford. She lives in Boston and has spent her life travelling the world, living in ashrams, and various places to give her children the very best education possible. Lately her 2 sons, now in the late teens attend Harvard extension programs and they are earning credits towards their bachelors. They are children deeply spiritual and wise. They have amazing awareness of themselves. She has absolutely no money and has relied on miracles, bold visualization, the kindness of others and pure guts to look after these boys on her own. Right now she is undertaking the AMI elementary training summer program in Hartford, trying to set up a Montessori based music school, becoming a yoga trainer and being a full time mother.
She believes that school is like prison and is will forever damage the soul of a child. For this reason she primarily unschooled her children, and finally moved to Boston and put them into the Sudbury Valley School during their mid teens. At this school the children choose what they want to do and how they learn.
We sat and talked into the morning hours…education philosophy, personal journeys, enlightenment, Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen…these sorts of things. It was great.
The thoughts that are distilling after a sleep are these.
Love is the element that allows humans to “include everything” or embrace the oneness of the human condition in all its forms, good bad and ugly. Without this element we can not transcend or evolve collectively or individually.
This embracing, inclusive love lies in the realm of being; it is a state.
Being evolves through relationship with the environment. Knowledge enhances the experience.
Laws in the universe governs all life including humans. Any extreme swings of the pendulum, produce the opposite experiences, or compel exploration to restore balance. To assist in restoring balance take one step towards resting pendulum position!
Believe in your children. Embrace the “whole” of them.
These kind of chats with inspirational people are extremely enjoyable for me. 
July 9th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
I enjoyed this post.
I read something in “The Element” and also in “Can the World Afford Autistic Spectrum Disorder” that both said that unless a person feels safe, secure, loved, and all that good stuff they can never be open and free enough to tap into their full potential, cannot use their full creativity or access all that they can be. I completely agree with this.
People living to “just survive” whether from poverty, living with emotional pain, living with abusive people, living in fear, living with physical pain or sick with an illness are in a different mode more like basic survival and it is energy sapping and very different from those who are living with more ideal conditions.
I have wondered sometimes if the reason that some homeschooled kids are successful, whole and happy young adults when in their 20s or the way they are different at college admissions times is not due to something academic learned in their HSing but due to close family bonds, strong attachment and other good things that MAY have been in their family and childhood. I realize not all homeschooled kids are in the perfect home environment though.
I wonder if not going to school spared some of them from potential negative circumstances that could have changed who they were for the worse. I certainly had school experiences that were quite bad and did need to recover from them.