The Call To Brilliance

I love this book "The Call to Brilliance" by Resa Steindel Brown. The message completely resonates with the way I have always looked at children, namely: children are born with their own uniqueness, and brilliance, and that it is our task as parents/educators to nurture this and help them to connect to this inner source, and help them to multiply their talents and become MORE.  This inner source is the source of creativity, where we find the connection with our Creator.  

Every child comes with a unique mission to fulfill in this world, in this life, and we as parents/educators must allow the child to find this mission and connect with it by stepping “out of the way” and by creating an environment that is nurturing and inspiring.  If parents/educators don’t do this, the child loses connection with this inner source, this inner place where the creativity comes from, his creativity goes dormant, and the child can become withdrawn and depressed, or becomes a ‘follower’, a 'pleaser', without trust in his/her own creativity.  The child loses his/her sense of self, and the outer ‘survival’ skills to cope take over.  This then becomes the outer personality.

Ms. Steindel Brown has so much wisdom in her understanding of human beings and their spirituality, and she supports her ideas with a lot of great and very insightful quotes, from Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, just to name a few.  It makes me want to read more of those books she mentioned.

The author has a lot of experience in education, (she was in the public school, home school and coop) and shows that public schools can have a  negative effect on a child, because in many cases, it leaves little room for creativity.  Instead, school demands of the child to become more like a robot, complying with the teachers, the curriculum and the group of peers, trying to fit in and be ‘normal’, doing worksheets and other soulless activities.  “Learning to follow directions [what they are learning in school], is very different from learning to follow inner direction.” Page 139.  There is little room for individualism and or creativity in those learning institutes; the child is often just being prepared and educated to be a ‘good worker’ in society.  She talks about how schools originally started in the industrial revolution to instruct and prepare good factory workers.  That model has not really changed today.

I like the way the author describes how she came to her ideas, using a lot of quotes from books she has read.  It sort of describes her growth and spiritual journey.  Her ideas are helpful for understanding children on a spiritual level, and they are not only helpful to understand children, but understanding our own selves as well.  In order to find real fulfillment in life, we all need to go back and find and connect to our inner brilliance, or passion, our inner mission which is the reason why we came here on earth in the first place.

In her book Ms. Steindel Brown mixes her thoughts and theories with the present time, describing sitting in a Panera restaurant, while she is watching her daughter studying for a math exam of some sort.  It makes the book fun to read, shifting the styles around a bit.  She talks a lot about her three children, and how their brilliance and uniqueness manifested in their lives.  They all became very successful, because they were able to find and connect with their passion in life.  She tells how her sons could not read until age 9 or 10, but they were doing college level courses when they were 12 and 13 years old.  She points out how important it is to find mentors to help educate and develop certain areas of interest, a concept that sounds very familiar to us TJed* people (* 'Thomas Jefferson Education'. I will post more information about this on my next blog entry). 

The author describes her experience with her coop school, G.T. Water, a ‘school’ that she started with a number of parents who worked in the same company and wanted to homeschool their children.  They had the kids come together and spend time together during the day.  They went on walks in the hills, they set up a theatre, they invited a music teacher to teach them music, they also did spend time developing skills like reading, spelling, writing, math etc.  But most of the time they were working on projects that the children came up with, following their own creativity and imagination.  I think this is a wonderful opportunity for children, and if I had the opportunity, I would love for our kids to participate in such a model school. 

This book gives us a wonderful perspective on humanity, a deep understanding of the human soul, but also shows our responsibilities as parents/educators to raise our children into whole, well-rounded individuals, so that they will be able to be leaders for the next generation.   

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If you would like to find out more about Ms. Resa Steindel Brown, and "The Call to Brilliance", there is a lot more in the book that I did not mention here,  you can check out this website http://www.thecalltobrilliance.com.