Do parents ever ask themselves why they have children? Do they have children to perpetuate their name, to carry on their property? Do they want children merely for the sake of their own delight, to satisfy their own emotional needs? If so, then the children become a mere projection of the desire and fears of their parents.
Can parents claim to love their children when, by educating them wrongly, they foster envy, enmity and ambition? Is it love that stimulates the national and racial antagonisms which lead to war, destruction and utter misery, that sets man against man in the name of religions and ideologies?
Many parents encourage the child in the ways of conflict and sorrow, not only by allowing him to be submitted to the wrong kind of education, but by the manner in which they conduct their own lives; and then, when the child grows up and suffers, they pray for him or find excuses for his behaviour. The suffering of parents for their children is a form of possesive self-pity which exists only when their is no love.
If parents love their children, they will not be nationalistic, they will not identify themselves with any country; for the worship of the State brings on war, which kills and maims their sons. If parents love their children, they will discover what is right relationship to property; for the possessive instinct has given property an enormous and false significance which is destroying the world. If parents love their children, they will not belong to any organized religion; for dogma and belief divide people into conflicting groups, creating antagonism between man and man. If parents love their children, they will do away with envy and strife, and will set about altering fundamentally the structure of present-day society.
As long as we want our children to be powerful, to have bigger and better positions, to become more and more succesful, there is no love in our hearts; for the worship of succes encourages conflict and misery. To love one's children is to be in complete communion with them; it is to see that they have the kind of education that will help them to be sensitive, intelligent and integrated.
The first thing a teacher must ask himself, when he decides that he wants to teach, is what exactly he means by teaching. Is he going to teach the usual subjects in the habitual way? Does he want to condition the child to become a cog in the social machine, or help him to be an integrated, creative human being, a threat to false values? And if the educator is to help the student to examine and understand the values and influences that surround him and of which he is part, must he not be aware of them himself? If one is blind, can one help others to cross to the other shore?
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