Cutting more Ties That Bind (Hardcover)

Surely, the fi rst requisite for a more successful system of educating
children is the re-education of adults, precisely because children are, of
necessity, trained by adults, both parents and teachers. Consequently,
adults need to be re-educated in a manner very different from their own
original indoctrination.
The chain-reaction that can be observed in patterns of behaviour handed
down from one generation to the next must be broken. This will allow
human beings to develop into self-reliant, independent, mature men and
women, free to make choices between what is currently appropriate and
the often outmoded or negative patterns handed down to them through
their family heritage. These old patterns can be so constricting that change
and progress become impossible for those imprisoned by them. We so
often mechanically and unthinkingly echo whatever we have heard all our
lives without even questioning whether it is true or useful in day-to-day
life. Many people live through an entire lifetime automatically following
inherited patterns of behaviour whether they are currently practical or
not.
All the more primitive species learn by the repetition of tried and proven
behaviour, either as directly taught by their parents or as copied from
them. In this way it is imprinted on their nervous systems and acts as a
defence against attack, hunger and other problems they may encounter. It
allows them instinctively to know how and when to react.
But, though human beings are like animals in many ways, they do not
live solely on the instinctive plane. They possess the abilities of thinking,
reasoning, questioning and being creative in many ways in addition to eating,
sleeping and producing offspring. Therefore, they are able individually
to form new habits to fi t changing times and conditions.   (…)