Secrets of Getting Children to Study
Nurturing Creativity in the Child
The principle behind effective education and learning is a simple one that applies to
children of all ages as well as to adults. This principle is joy. When we understand that
joy and happiness arise when we are growing and displaying an ever larger portion of our
inherent ability and infinite potential, then our objective is clear. Dr. Taniguchi
explains this as follows:
Our method of learning is a happy one. The most ideal learning is when children think
it is fun. It is only natural that it should be joyful. This is because it is guiding
one's inner life so as to allow the true image to grow. Learning is to freely unfold
outwardly one's true self, the law, God's life the everlasting life that dwells within.
The feeling that wells up when one lives his life freely is called happiness. Therefore
there is no reason learning should not be fun. If learning does not make a child happy, it
is because even though it may be called learning, in the true sense, it is not the kind of
learning that nurtures life.
I firmly believe that there is something lacking that is distorting the learning, if a
child is not having fun. Learning such as this is only suffocating a child's life while
claiming that it cultivates the child's life. There is concrete proof of the theory that
one's feeling is happy when life is growing and it suffers when life shrivels up. A good
example is that you suffer when you are confined in a small area. However, at the beach
basking in the sun when you take a deep breath and stretch yourself out, it feels good. In
essence, when your life is free, you are happy. It is only natural, therefore, to be
happy, if learning is nurturing your life. On the other hand, if it makes you feel
uncomfortable, it is suppressing your life and children feel they are being suffocated.
This is a different way of looking at the process of learning. If we regard joy as the
essential ingredient, the ingredient that brings life to study, then we realize that where
there is no joy, there is no life and study that is lifeless is of very little value. When
this principle is kept in mind then what is created in the child is a desire to pursue his
interests and talents to their maximum and his life is filled with joy and happiness.
Parents often have been conditioned to think that study is work, a kind of chore,
something that must be done whatever the effect on attitude. Here often the opposite
result is obtained. Children grow up disliking study of any kind because in their minds it
is equated with lifeless drudgery. For them life becomes an endless treadmill of existence
that seems empty and joyless. This is so because inside the true self is not expressing
itself in growth.
You may think I am advocating simply pleasure without any thought to growing up as a
useful member of society. This is not true and a misreading of what is being said. What I
am saying is that it is more important to emphasize the inner compass of children that
encourages the development and expression of their true selves than phenomenal results in
the moment. If their true selves are unfolding in a natural and unimpeded way, then their
true genius will reveal itself. When you see children's activities through the perspective
of the development of that inner spirit, you release their infinite power to accomplish
whatever they set their hearts on. Dr. Taniguchi explains as follows:
Children by nature like to study. You may think that children want to play all the time
but it is not true. The reason why they appear to be playing in the eyes of the parent is
because they are judging from the standpoint of its usefulness. When children are playing
with mud, they are not playing but they are actually studying. They are learning about the
nature of mud. What happens when they dig into it? What happens to the color of their
hands when mud is on them? What happens when it gets in their eyes? Their hands get rough
if they play with it too long. Children are studying and learning by experimenting with
these things. When they start to take interest in their studies, they will develop
artistic ability, if they have talent, or take interest in physics or chemistry
experiments, if they have scientific talent. The modern chemical industry is a product of
the growth of those children's talents who started by playing in the sand or mud. The
parents are so caught up in the immediate usefulness of what a child is doing and think
that playing in the sand or with mud only makes children dirty and really has no merit.
That's why they stop them and tell them "to go study." They keep their children
away from interesting studies and tell them to study something they have no interest in.
Therefore, in the minds of children studying is not interesting.
When we study the lives of great men like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Abraham
Lincoln we see this principle at work. They had very little formal schooling or didn't do
well in school but their inner genius was encouraged. We often set these people apart as
special extraordinary people, not like the rest of us. However, what is the quality that
sets them apart? Is it not the inner spirit, the joy of expressing that infinite potential
within? They are examples to all of us of what Dr. Taniguchi means when he says,
"Learning is to freely unfold outwardly one's true self, the law, God's life the
everlasting life that dwells within." Whoever does this is a genius.
by Bruce Mallery
