Q: Narani, you’ve had more than four decades of experience with Education for Life. Please share some of your insights.
Narani: When I first began to teach here in the Living Wisdom School at Ananda Village, there were lots of idealistic notions floating around of how you can be with kids.
Q: It wasn’t too long after Nitai Deranja first opened the school, and I can image that some of the wild thinking of the Sixties was still in the air.
Narani: That’s right, and we were learning that you can’t really impose your own idealistic notions on reality; that you have to plant your feet on the ground and let children be who they are.
In the beginning, we expected that if we as adults were a certain way, the children would want to be that way too, and that they might even all be saints. We had an expectation that they would want to live a spiritual life our way. And that’s just not reality, because children need to go through their lives on their own terms.
Q: A little kid is not a blank canvas on which you can paint your ideas.
Narani: No. (Laughs) And you need to come to a point where you can even feel all right about kids who may need to go through hard lessons and lots of questioning, and even rebelling.
We need to learn the very difficult but necessary lesson of how we can give them our compassion, with an understanding that if they must go through hard lessons, it doesn’t make them a bad person or un-spiritual. Their souls will steer them to learn many lessons, with many trials and opportunities, just as our souls have guided us through our own richly varied experiences toward ever-increasing happiness and inner freedom.
Living in a spiritual community where we all had images of our own ultimate perfection, we sort of wanted the children to be more perfect at the start of their lives than we were.
Q: After all, if they were born at Ananda, they must have special karma and be saintly, right?
Narani: Yes, and it never helped them to have those expectations, nor did it serve the adults who wanted to impose them.
One, the children hadn’t made a conscious choice to live a spiritual life. We were operating from a mindset that, well, they had chosen devotee parents, therefore they must be receptive and enthusiastic about this path. And in their souls it might possibly be true that God had given them the blessing to be born here.
Q: The Bhagavad Gita tells us that it’s exceptionally good karma to be born among spiritually striving and aspiring people.
Narani: Yes, but in the first years that they’re back on this planet, what they’re primarily working on is getting re-adjusted to this life with its challenges, which include working with their possibly very mixed karma, and they may be far from a point where they are ready to make a conscious, independent choice to be devotees and disciples, especially at a young age.
So we used to sort of expect a certain love of this path and inner commitment, and they didn’t have it, and very often they didn’t want any part of it. (Laughs) So, when they couldn’t live up to those expectations, and they didn’t want to live up to them, of course they felt sort of alienated by those unrealistic adult expectations.
Q: A great deal of the adults’ energy at the time was invested in making a living. The men were traveling long distances to work, building houses for Ananda Construction.
Narani: Yes, and also, we had the environment, the atmosphere, and many modes of thinking of a monastic community, where even the householders were trying to live that way, and it could reach a ridiculous extreme where you were wondering if it was even selfish to be serving your family instead of giving all your energy to serving God.
There was an unspoken feeling that being too attached to the family might risk closing your heart, and that you might fall into the trap of an exclusive, selfish “us four and no more” consciousness, as Yogananda called it.
Q: Yogananda was speaking of ordinary Americans after the Great Depression of the 1930s and Word War II, who just wanted to retreat into the narrow circle of family and feel secure with a little white house with a picket fence and a Ford in the garage.
Narani: Yes, and we had these little kids whose lives were limited by their parents’ lives and concerns. They certainly couldn’t take care of themselves, and yet their parents weren’t giving them the kind of commitment that their hearts and souls naturally longed for. And if the community called, boy, the parents would drop everything at home and go running. So the kids would end up feeling like the third wheel in a love triangle, and as a result many of them felt left out and came to hate and resent Ananda, because they felt it was stealing their parents away from them.
In time, thank heaven, we learned that you’ve got to serve your kids, and since then the children in the community have been much happier.
Q: Swami Kriyananda was so alarmed by those attitudes among the married couples, of feeling spiritually inferior to the monks and nuns, that he got married to set an example of the right way to spiritualize marriage and family life, completely free of those feelings of guilt and inferiority. He had many meetings with the parents, and in 1986 he published Education for Life. His wife, Rosanna, was Italian; she loved the children and insisted that they be included in as many community activities as possible.
Swamiji would quote Yogananda’s words from the original edition of Autobiography of a Yogi, where he says that the householder life is indeed the superior path, if married people can fulfill their worldly duties while keeping their minds and hearts on God.
Narani: We’re now giving lots of attention to trying to keep a healthy balance. At the same time, of course, you don’t want to retreat so far into family life that you start drifting back toward “Us four and no more.” (Laughs)
We’re finding that the spiritual life is always a balancing act, and that it needs lots of careful thought, meditation, and prayer to arrive at the right inner attunement and harmony with your own higher guidance. I don’t think there will ever be rigid borders around this area, because it will always have to be adjusted to the needs of the individual parents and children.
Q: There are two things I’d like to ask you about. One is how you got into education, because many readers might be wanting to teach. And also, how you became a teacher in a Living Wisdom School.
Narani: I always wanted to be a teacher. I remember very, very clearly walking into kindergarten on the first day and thinking, “Oh! This is what I’m going to do when I grow up!”
I can even remember the smallest details, like my teacher’s black hair and how she wore it, and the pink dress she was wearing. So that was it for me, and I haven’t wavered from that inner knowing.
All through school, I was always carefully observing the teachers and their teaching styles, and keeping a mental catalog of what was really good and what didn’t work as well.
I really liked the way my first-grade teacher taught reading. I thought she was soooo good, and her system seemed exactly right. I was only with her for six months, and for the rest of my years in school I kept waiting for the same exciting learning experience to happen again, but I never had another teacher who used her system. So I thought that, well, I’ll surely learn about it in college, but I never heard of or saw a hint of it again.
Finally, when I got my first teaching job, I called the school and said, “Do you know where Mrs. Axford is? I used to be a student of hers, and I’d like to contact her.”
She had long since retired and moved away, but they found her address and gave it to me.
I wrote to her and said, “I’m sure you don’t remember me, but eighteen years ago I was in your first-grade class, and I’m a teacher now, and I remember how you taught us reading, or at least aspects of what you did, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Q: Wow! What was her response?
Narani: She wrote me a nine-page letter. She said, “You can’t believe what you’ve done for me! I’m on cloud nine! Of course I’ll tell you.” (Laughs)
It turned out that it was a combination of several reading systems that she had put together, because she found that it worked very well.
There were some things I remembered, but I didn’t know how she did the classroom management. In her reply, she explained all of the details, and I’m still using aspects of that system today. I haven’t chosen to use all of it, because I’ve come across other things that are fine ways to teach reading, and that I enjoy.
At any rate, I spent all of my school years from kindergarten through college watching my teachers and learning. When I was young, and I would have babysitting jobs, I had a little box of lesson plans for things we could make and do, and I was always playing school teacher when I baby sat. (Laughs)
Q: Talk about a calling!
Narani: Yes, I’ve never questioned it, and it always seemed like the right thing.
Q: Could you talk about the little Catholics. It’s become a well-known story in the Ananda community.
Narani: It was during my first year of teaching here. I had been reading about St. Teresa of Avila, and I was so inspired by her writings and her life. I was teaching third and fourth grades, and part of my way of being with the kids was that I would share things with them that were going on in my life. So one day during our morning circle I said, “You guys, I just have to share this with you!” Because Teresa had such love for God, and such total surrender to whatever He might ask her to do. She had such love for anything that came from Him, and she wanted to instill that attitude in the hearts of the sisters of her order.
Anyway, I read a little bit to them about loving God so much, and about doing everything for God, and how the nuns married Jesus in a ceremony. [Narani speaks with wonder in her voice, like a child.] They lived in silence so that they could always be thinking about God, and they did their chores with God in mind; as Teresa taught them, always keeping Jesus near and talking to him as a dear friend “amid the pots and pans” of their lives.
When I finished reading, one of the little girls said, “Well, I think we could do that.”
I said, “Well, how?” So we played with the idea, and there’s a little aside, which is that when I was little, I wanted to be a nun in the worst way! I had never really felt a calling to that life, but oh, it just seemed like such a wonderful thing! [Narani is breathless with enthusiasm.]
So I thought, well, okay (Laughs), this is my chance! We spent some time working out how we could play nuns and monks, and we decided that we, too, would work in silence and do our chores, just like the nuns did theirs.
Our chores would be our school assignments, and I wrote all of the assignments on the board. Then we had someone be the bell ringer, and they would watch the clock, and at the beginning of every hour they would ring the bell and we would all stop what we were doing and we would pray.
And, you know, one thing that really impressed me was when one of the kids said in the beginning, “What would we pray about?” I said, “Well, you know, if you felt married to God, you would just talk to Him in the normal language of your heart. And maybe you would ask for help, in just the same way you would talk with your mom or your dad or your best friend, that’s how you would communicate.”
I decided, well, I’m going to take a chance, too, and I’m going to do this to the hilt! [When Narani laughs it’s like a little explosion, a bright spring of laughter.]
I thought, okay, this is my chance to be nun! So we would all stop and say our prayers, and I would always finish my prayer, because I didn’t rush. Whatever I wanted to pray about, that’s what I prayed, and then I would finish and look around, and I was never the last one praying. There was always at least one child still praying, and I knew it wasn’t acting, because their hands were clenched tight and I would see their brows furrowed, and you could feel the concentration in them. And then they would go back to their work.
When the first recess came, the kids went outside, and for a bit they didn’t know quite what to do. But then two of the little girls got a bucket and started cleaning the entryway floor! And I had said nothing to them about service.
I said, “Oh, you guys, I have to break silence, because I have to read this to you!” So I got my book, and I opened it to the part where Teresa talks about service, and about how, when you love God with all your heart, and you love your fellow man as an expression of God, you want to do things to make their lives better. It’s not that you have to, but you want to do things to help them. I said, “I’ve never even read this to you, and look, you guys, what you’re doing. You’re doing exactly what it says.”
We had never scrubbed the floor before. (Laughs) And I mean, they were out there with their buckets and rags scrubbing the entry floor.
Anyway, so the day went on, and oh, it was so cute, because the imagination, the pretend aspect was just wonderful. There was the real aspect, which was praying, and going inside in meditation. And then there was the fun-pretend aspect, which was how the little girls would take their sweaters and button them over their heads like veils, and the boys were stuffing their arms in their sleeves like monks’ robes.
So the hours went on, and it was a wonderful day. [When Narani describes the events, it’s “It was OBbviously such a WONderful day…”] And everyone was just real inward.
The next day I came back, and I was thinking, “Oh, that was wonderful, but that’s that.”
But at morning circle, one of the little boys said, “Can we do that again?” I said, “Nooooo…” Because I felt that you don’t want to run it into the ground and maybe spoil the blessing.
So I said, “No, I think one day was enough.” And I suddenly had a rebellion on my hands! “No! No! We want to do it again! We want to do it again!”
Finally, another boy said, “Look, I know God helped me with my work yesterday!”
I thought “Oooookkaaaay….” (Laughs) And, well, it ended up that we did it all week long. We spent the whole week in silence, and it was a little hard to teach! (Laughs) Trying to figure out how you can teach fractions without saying anything, so you just write it on the board.
But it was wonderful. And then on Friday nights we used to have movies outdoors on the lawn at the market, and wouldn’t you know it, they happened to be showing the movie “Brother Sun Sister Moon,” about Saint Francis and Saint Clare!
I was thinking, “Oh my gosh,, now here’s all this stuff about St. Francis. And, sure enough, the kids came back on Monday, “Now we want to be St. Francis and Sister Clare!”
I said, “Oh, okay, how can we do that?”
Well, the only thing they could put their finger on to be like St. Francis was to beg for food. (Laughs)
And I thought, you know, as a first-year teacher, I just didn’t know how I could send notes to the parents saying, “Please don’t send lunches with your children, because we’re going to go down to the market and beg from people after they’ve eaten lunch.” [Narani cracks up laughing.]
So I said, “No.” But afterward I thought, “What a shame,” because part of the attitude of St. Francis was accepting whatever God might give him. And if God gave him food, all right, and if God didn’t, it meant that God wanted him to be a little hungry, and that was okay, too. I thought, what chance would these kids have to be hungry and accept it as a gift from God.
Now, chances are, they wouldn’t have been hungry as they walked among their families saying, “May I have what’s left of your sandwich?” (Laughs) I doubt that people would have turned them away. But I just didn’t quite have the nerve.
So that’s what happened. It was a one-time thing, but you know, what really impressed me was how, when it came to sharing the spiritual life with the kids, what they really picked up on was not my ideas about this, that, or the other thing, but that I had shared with them because I was so filled with enthusiasm that I couldn’t contain it, and I had to share it with them. And I know that’s what they picked up on, and what gave it life.
So it really helped me as a teacher and a disciple, because even now and ever since that time, whenever there has been something that really moved me spiritually – not just the idea of it, not just the words of it, but that has truly moved me – I will share it with the kids. And almost always, across the board, it’s something that will touch them, too. Because they feel the vibration of it, and it’s so different than when I’m just talking to them about some aspect of the spiritual life with words abstractly. Instead, they feel it to the core of their being.
Q: That story captures so many features of Education for Life. For starters, EFL holds that if you want to share knowledge with children, you must make it experiential: you cannot just drone on with words, but you must give them a direct experience of what you want them to learn.
The story of the little monks and nuns is telling us that if we want to share spiritual inspiration with kids, we cannot just expect them to love the spiritual life automatically. Nothing will be as effective as a living experience. In this case, you all created a wonderful story together. You lived it. It was very much like the vibrant theater program at the Palo Alto Living Wisdom School, where once a year, all of the children enact the story of an inspiring person whose life had a profound impact on the world, such as Buddha, Yogananda, the Dalai Lama, and many others.
For an entire week you went deep into the spiritual life as St. Teresa taught it. I am guessing that such a profound immersion could only happen occasionally, as a rare and beautiful event, but that helping the kids learn by giving them their own experiences might be a regular aspect of the curriculum. Is that true?
Narani: I feel that you need to be open to opportunities that might happen at any moment, but you really can’t always make them happen on such a grand scale.
Q: From conversations with other EFL teachers, it seems that the direct experiences they give the kids can come in various sizes. In the kindergarten classroom in Palo Alto, the Spanish teacher uses songs and games to teach the kids the names of the colors. For example, she will lay hula hoops of various colors on the ground, and as the kids jump from one hoop to the next, they shout its color: Rojo! Amarillo! Azul! On the other hand, starting in fourth and fifth grades, the kids take weekend field trips that carry major experiential lessons, academically and personally; and in middle school they might take week-long field trips. The high schoolers have taken experiential service adventure travel trips to Mexico, Hawaii, Italy, and India.
Narani: In our case, it was a spontaneous moment that happened as a result of sharing my inspiration. I felt that it presented itself as an opportunity that needed to be recognized and deserved to be taken advantage of, but that in order for it to be such a profound experience, it would always have to come from deep inside, with a similar degree of spontaneous inspiration and love.
Q: In an Education for Life school the teachers are constantly listening to the kids and relating to the unique realities of each child, so that the teacher can blend their interests and enthusiasms into the curriculum.
Narani: Yes, and in an Ananda community there are many understandings that we share as members of a spiritual family. We know the kids, and they know us in a way that teachers might not always know their children. There’s a sense of family that we feel with our kids, and that they feel with us. We’re with them usually for a couple of years in school, but we might have babysat them when they were toddlers, and we see them outside of school.
I remember seeing one of my teachers in a grocery store when I was very young, and how shocked I was. Oh my gosh, what a regular thing for a teacher to do! To me, her life began and ended in the classroom. And, well, our kids see us all the time, swimming at the pond, speaking at Sunday service, having pizza on Friday night. So there’s a level of family bonding that doesn’t happen as easily elsewhere. Also, our classes are very small, which is a definite advantage for nurturing those relationships with the kids.
Because we work a great deal on their character, they need to be able to trust us, and know that we care for them not just as students, but inside, as persons, and as souls.
In a class with thirty kids, it’s harder. If you had a party with thirty adults, that’s a lot of people to have in your home. If you put thirty six-year-olds together six hours a day, you’ll be spending an awful lot of time on classroom management. But if it’s twelve kids, there’s more time for learning, and for being together and creating relationships.
It also feeds the spontaneity when the class size is small. If it’s been raining for three days and the sun comes out and there’s a rainbow, the most wonderful thing would be to walk through the beautiful countryside, To manage that with twelve kids is nothing, but with thirty you’ve got a much bigger job on your hands, to make sure those who are straggling aren’t left behind, and those up front aren’t running ahead and can’t hear you. It’s an ordeal, where here you can just do it. It’s much easier to go camping with our kids. I’ve known teachers in public schools that have done it, but it takes a lot of work.
Q: Are you deeply interested in the curriculum, and how one thing flows into another, and what to spend time on?
Narani: Oh, yes, absolutely, because we have to prepare our kids to succeed in the world. They can’t feel good about themselves if they can’t be confident and successful, so we’re very careful with the curriculum, that things get covered, so that when they move on from our school they’ll be up to speed. Frankly, they’re usually ahead, largely because of the environment in the classrooms.
I think there’s more enthusiasm, because there’s more personal involvement, And when you’re one of twelve you can’t get lost in the crowd. (Laughs)
Last year, a little girl visited us from South Carolina. She was in a very academically oriented private school, and she was in my class for a week as a first-grader. She did fine with the academics, but then we got a phone call from her parents, because her teacher was asking them, “What happened at that school?! This girl did not read when she left, and she came back able to sit down and read a book. What happened?!”
They were wondering what I had done, and the truth is that I didn’t do anything beyond what I regularly do with the kids. We just sit down and read, and we spend a lot of time with books.
I tried to think of what might have happened, because I couldn’t have taught a child to read in a week. The only thing I could think of is that she might have been under heavy pressure in her very academically oriented school, whereas here a lot of academic work gets covered, but there’s a warm, friendly feeling, and I daresay what happened is that she was able to relax and use the knowledge she already had.
Q: She was afraid?
Narani: Maybe, or feeling tension around being expected to achieve, and maybe putting pressure on herself. Who knows? It’s not that her teacher was bad, but I’m guessing that the atmosphere was different, where we would just sit on pillows and relax and read, and share when somebody had read something enjoyable, and we’re all going, “Oh, wow.” That’s the only thing I could think of. Because I didn’t give her any special lessons.
Q: One of the other teachers was saying that you try to create a family atmosphere, even to the extent of having rocking chairs in some of the classrooms.
Narani: Yes, and you know, there has to be a balance. We are the teachers. We have more training, and we are the authority figures, and the kids need to be able to count on us for guidance and knowledge, and to step in and be strong when it’s called for.
We’re there also to set firm boundaries and schedules, because if you don’t do that, the kids get bitter because they don’t feel taken care of, and they don’t have a sense of security, because they don’t know what’s expected.
At the same time, you can be in that role and be very friendly. A standout attitude I see in the teachers is a very, very strong respect for the children. You have to accept that they are children now, and we are the teachers, and that must be maintained, and it’s important to fill that role, but at the same time, we understand that they are souls, that they’ve been here before, and they were old, and they knew a lot. And while it might not be in their conscious memory, they are still worthy of our deep respect and of being treated in a kind, fair, and respectful way. And those attitudes and understandings and feelings lead to a certain family feeling, and a genuine care and affection for the children.
Q: Would you like to say anything about being on a spiritual path and how it helps you as a teacher?
Narani: One thing that comes immediately to mind is knowing that it isn’t all riding on me. I mean, I’m not going to make or break these kids. Also, there’s an awareness that I may have ideas that are intellectually the most wonderful thing I can come up with, but if they don’t have spirit behind them, there will always be a certain lack. On the other hand, if what I present has lots of spirit, the chances are much greater that it will be meaningful to the children.
I’m thinking of something that Swami Kriyananda told us. “Always look to the consciousness behind anything that you bring into the classroom.”
Whether it’s music, an art activity, or a game, or the way you present history, look to the consciousness behind it. It’s more than “I must teach them American history, and they need to learn these facts.” We’re always thinking of what kind of soul development occurred in these people, in our country, and in that situation. In everything that we teach the kids, there’s that aspect of consciousness and spirit that we’re keeping uppermost in mind.
When I’ve put my whole heart and soul into a lesson, and it didn’t come off terribly well, I can look at it and ask, “What can I do next time to make it better?” I can literally ask for guidance, and not feel that my brain is the only resource I’ve got, or some research study, or what have you. I’m always aware that there is a much greater resource that I can go to.
Q: Do you experience that often?
Narani: Yes. Some of the stuff I’ll think of, you know, I don’t know where else I could have gotten it. (Laughs)
I’m not one to sit down and pray and see flashes of light and hear words telling me “Do this.” It’s more subtle. There’s an impulse that will come, that wasn’t there when I tried to work it out with my own brain. And sure enough, that impulse will be just what needs to happen, in an academic subject or a social situation with the children.
A very important thing is also recognizing the part that the children play in my life as well; that I’m not just giving to them, but that the Divine Mother can come to me through the children.
Many times, something will be happening in my life, and I will have prayed about it, or I’ve been earnestly seeking guidance, and out of a clear blue sky one of the children will say something that’s deeply relevant and helpful.
Even if their conversation isn’t about what’s going on in my life, there will be a little bit of a sentence, or some small thing that happens, and the answer I’ve been searching for will come with full force and be exactly what I needed.
The children are the ones I spend most of my time with, so Divine Mother needs to use them. (Laughs) If She had to talk to me through an adult, She wouldn’t have many chances.
So for me also to be listening and drawing from them adds a dimension to our relationship that wouldn’t be there otherwise, where they would be “just children.”
There’s a side of them that I try to be aware of, and know that they are not alone in this world, and that we are all in this together. Divine Mother has given me to them, and She has given them to me.
Q: It must form a special kind of friendship, to have such respect and receptivity for the children. When I was a child, there seemed to be a great gulf between the adult world and the world of the child, and you don’t see such a wide gap here in the Ananda community.
I was watching two young boys, Kashi and Chaitanya, working in the Village office one day, and they were really enjoying themselves. They had come in and asked one of the adults a question, and there was a confidence and comfort that an adult wasn’t going to brush them aside as “just kids” or try to get them to leave and not interrupt their adult work. It was very nice to see how the adults respected the boys and gave them their full attention.
Narani: It’s very nice. Of course, there are differences. They have very childlike minds, and there are things that are stimulating to us that are not to them. So it’s not as if there are no differences between the generations. But there is a warmth and an acceptance, because we value each child. It may be because, as disciples, we would like to be more childlike in some ways. It doesn’t mean childish, but more childlike, and we can look to them to an extent as models for that. They also need to become gradually more mature, and we hope that they can look to us as examples of happy, mature adults.
Q: I had a math teacher in high school who had tremendous respect from his students. It wasn’t that he was a tremendous math teacher, but it was because of his personal qualities. He was a happy man, he was a calm man, he was a caring man, he was an enthusiastic man. You could say it all in four words, you know. And I remember Mr. O’Malley with pleasure.
Narani: I remember my algebra teacher in junior high. When we think back on those special teachers, it’s not just that he’s the one who taught me about this river going through this state. Chances are, what we remember is exactly as you said, the personal qualities and what that person represented, or the relationship they had with us.
Algebra was so hard for many of us, and he told us at the beginning of the year, “I’m single and I live alone, and every night I take my math books home, so you can call me. This is my phone number. If you’re having trouble with your homework, you can call me and I’ll help you with it. But on this night and this night I have my favorite TV programs, so don’t call between 7:30 and 8:00. But any other time is fine.”
He let us enter his life a little, and we knew that if he cared enough to take the math books home every night and let us call him, it was a statement of his commitment to us. And boy, did we work hard! I worked harder in that class than almost any other class, ever, because he committed to us, and we felt a strong pull to give him a like commitment.
Q: There has to be a personal element in the relationship.
Narani: Yes. It reminds me of working for a person where you feel really deeply involved in the business, versus working in a big bureaucracy where you’re just one of many. Maybe somebody will notice you, maybe they won’t, and maybe it’s important to get such-and-such done, and maybe it’s not important, and you’re never quite sure. You just know that this is what you were told to do, and so you do it. Or you don’t, and your effort is sort of lazy. But if you really feel part of the business, if you feel that it’s a part of you, you’ll work in a very different way. You’ll put out a different energy and you’ll care in a different way. And that’s what happens in this school.
Q: There’s a big theme in the schools here, of integrating the schools in the community. You seem to be reversing the proportions of what’s important in traditional public education. You know, where the more our schools get alarmingly bad or troubled by drugs and crime and bullying and so forth, the more people dig in their heels and say, well, academics is the answer, or we’ll teach formal classes in values, and so on. But it’s always just rolling down the same rigidly intellectual, pre-existing railway tracks.
Education for Life seems to reverse the proportions, where it’s 70% “how to live” and it’s 30% academics.
Narani: I would say it’s 50-50, because I feel that academics and personal development are both essential. If our kids grow into wonderful people, but they can’t make it in the world, there will be a certain inner and outer stagnation.
One without the other is weak. Essentially, it comes down to understanding what makes us happy. And that means that our kids need to learn to have control of their energy. They need to have control of their attitude. They need to be able to deal with the challenges life will throw at them. And in school, academics actually provide some of the laboratory experiences where they can develop those personal strengths. Certainly, the social situations that come up at school give them countless opportunities to learn those sorts of lessons.
In the struggle to master a math problem, there are character qualities that are also being developed. And in playing games and winning or losing graciously, there’s the skill of the game, and there’s the character behind it. So we try to work with both aspects in everything we do with the children. That seems a good definition for Education for Life. Take what you’re given, and be the best you can with it, inwardly and outwardly.