THE GIFT OF SELF CONTROL

“Self-control is twice as important as intelligence in predicting academic achievement.”

THE GIFT OF SELF-CONTROL

SOME COMMON SENSE GUIDES TO RAISING SUCCESSFUL CHILDREN

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF RUHALA LEARNING

Please, while reading this paper, place the stress on the first syllable in the words “self-control”. While unnatural and foreign it will vigilantly remind us that self means not under others control, only one possible kind of control here: self.

“In any culture, the development of self-control is crucial. This ability, which depends on the prefrontal cortex, provides the basis for mental flexibility, social skills and discipline. It predicts success in education, career and marriage. Indeed, childhood self-control is twice as important as intelligence in predicting academic achievement. Conversely, poor self-control in elementary school increases the risk of adult financial difficulties, criminal behavior, single parenthood and drug dependence,” so state Sandra Aamodt, a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton. Sandra and Sam are the authors of Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows From Conception to College.

Ms. Aamodt and Mr. Wang will be quoted in this paper extensively from an op-ed piece they wrote in the New York Times, February 19, 2012. [UNLESS OTHERSISE REFERENCED, ALL QUOTES BELOW ARE FROM THIS OP-ED PIECE.]

Here is the link to the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/building-self-control-the-american-way.html?src=me&ref=general

Mark Ruhala began teaching children full-time in 1988 and founded his own learning center Mark Ruhala’Studio in 1991, which transformed into the Broadway Training Center in 1996 and is still serving the children and youth of Westchester, New York today. In 2004 Ruhala founded The Gate: Gateway to the Arts through Transformational Energy, which transformed into the Ruhala Center. Throughout this quarter century Ruhala has expanded upon his original teaching philosophy of “theatre as a vehicle for personal development” and created Ruhala Learning: a method aiming for optimal learning and development. Ruhala Learning has been greatly influenced by educational author John Holt and his common sense philosophy: “…the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it.” Also author and award winning teacher John Taylor Gatto has been an inspiration to Ruhala Learning with his extensive writing and lecturing based on a simple idea “When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.” ― John Taylor Gatto

What follows is a break down of the scientific opinions provided by Aamodt and Wang, provided in italic “quotes” , a hyphen and A&W, then the connections to the Ruhala Learning model which follows.

“Like many brain capacities, self-control can be built through practice.” - A&W. What is wonderful is that science is now catching up with common sense. Mothers and care givers have known throughout history that how a child is raised makes a significant difference. Yet, in the past few decades we have been directed by doctors to believe that our brains need drugs to overcome their inborn deficits; that our DNA is so hard-wired that we really have little say past what we are born with. Ruhala has been critical of the bio-pharmological psychiatric pushing of drugs on children which are mostly untested or under tested at best. Ruhala agrees with Dr. Peter Breggin, author of The War Against Children, ”Because children are among our most vulnerable and treasured citizens, we especially need to protect them from psychiatric diagnoses and drugs. We need to offer them the family life, education and moral and spiritual guidance that will help them to fulfill their potential as children and adults.” The environment a child lives in is much more the cause of brain deficits than inborn chemical imbalances. Ruhala Learning works to make changes in the child’s synaptic brain firing by creating healthy habits and practices through learning self-control.

“Fortunately for American parents, psychologists find that children can learn self-control without externally imposed pressure. Behavior is powerfully shaped not only by parents or teachers but also by children themselves. The key is to harness the child’s own drives for play, social interaction and other rewards. Enjoyable activities elicit dopamine release to enhance learning, while reducing the secretion of stress hormones, which can impede learning and increase anxiety, sometimes for years.” – A&W. We can go even further and remind ourselves of the many scientific studies which have shown that when a mother and newborn child do not immediately meet at the breast seconds after birth, overwhelming stress overcomes both. The result being that the mother’s emotional, physical, and psychic expectation to nurse her child, as women have been doing for thousands of years in a natural continuum, and the child’s same ontological expectation, are not fulfilled and the most important moment for oxytocin, well known as the “love” hormone, to fill the pair with bliss is lost forever. All children are gifted a huge advantage to begin their lives with the mother love and bonding that comes from womb-to-breast intimacy.

Ruhala’s own children were born at home in natural drug-free child birth aiming to begin their children’s lives with little secretion of stress hormones and maximal secretion of “love” hormones. Ms. Celina Ruhala, Ruhala’s wife, aided herself by retraining her brain patterns and thought conditioning with a beautiful therapist who used hypnotherapy to undo the old ideas about childbirth pain and fear, replacing them with fresh insights and healthier ideas. Childbirth is a human’s first orientation to life outside the womb. It can be filled with the unnatural sterile environment accompanied by many “expert” strangers who are trained to medicate and have little trust in the innate wisdom of the human body and the mother’s instinct. Or birthing can be ease-filled with loved ones close to assist, a water source to allow the mother and baby to relax, with home-cooked nutrition, the comfort and privacy of home, and a midwife who is not an “expert” but is expert at letting a mother deliver her baby and to intervene if and only when necessary. For why do we exactly begin our children’s lives in the inherent stress of a hospital where an expecting mother is treated like a patient, a sick person?

Ruhala Learning is based in child-driven learning, the most stress-free learning available: it is built on the idea that children develop by using their brains and that there is a significant difference in how the brain functions when following orders as opposed to leading oneself. John Taylor Gatto urges us “… to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.” The stress of schools is responsible for many childhood perversions. Children rarely want strangers to order them what to do with the threat of punishment. What costs do children pay to acclimate and make this absurdity okay?

If the key is to “harness the child’s own drive for play…” then we must recognize that coercing our children to do what we want them to do can be very stressful for them, while letting them do what they want can elicit valuable dopamine to enhance learning. This is not a recipe to allow children total freedom; rather it is a guide that Ruhala Learning follows. Teaching children who are doing what they want requires much less effort and gets much more results. This is evident to anyone who teaches children. Most often, the self-directed child in the midst of their chosen activity needs little intervention at all. They figure out for themselves what they need to learn. In many Ruhala classrooms children need little from the instructor other than to get out of the way and witness the self motivated learning that is taking place. Actually a scary proposition for teachers of traditional models that are taught they must teach the child for it to learn anything.

“Young children build self-control through elaborate, imaginative games like pretending to be a doctor or a fireman.” – A&W. Theatre games, a major tool of Ruhala Learning, are a direct link to the “elaborate and imaginative games” which build self-control. Perhaps this is why so many children would rather play theatre games in a creative acting class than actually learn skills and gain knowledge about acting by listening to the teacher. Over the years it has taken Ruhala time to realize why children desire this so, as he too would rather “teach” them what he knows and what he knows they need to know to become an actor. In fact they are teaching themselves when they are playing the games Ruhala facilitates – this was what he learned. But as a “teacher” he felt like he was doing nothing when he let them simply keep playing without intervening. But reality is, as Ruhala finally learned, they are learning in the absolute optimal way: through first-hand, direct experience without any teacher. As John Holt articulated so clearly, “the most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.”

After the school day is over, children seem to need to balance all the left brain coerced behavior and learning by letting loose, which actually translates to freeing themselves to do what they want: to be impulsive. Coming to Ruhala theatre classes after school they do not lean towards “learning” because they love the improvisational exercises so much; so much so that they could play these games all year long without ever doing any other theatre exercises. In these games they are experiencing Ruhala Learning: completely self-directed, relating to each other with full focus and participation, giving and taking easily, listening and reacting effortlessly, fully engaged in the imaginary circumstances, living out fantasy after fantasy. What could be more fun?! And now, get this, the experts are telling us that studies show this is the best way towards self-control which will breed success for their futures!

“Frequent practice is crucial. Montessori preschool instruction, which has been shown to lead to strong academic achievement, incorporates self-control into daily activities.” – A&W. Dr. Maria Montessori knew, over a hundred years ago, that self-control is one of the most desirable qualities in children and she based her entire program upon this principle as its foundation. To walk into a true Montessori classroom is to enter a freedom room: children of many ages all together freely doing what they want within the confines of the activities and structure presented to them. The room is filled with the silent whispers of people busy at work in-joying themselves. Montessori believed so strongly in the self-determination of the child that she advocated putting their mattress on the floor and allowing the child to decide when it would sleep and when it would wake. As much as that would alleviate the stress children often feel in going to bed at a certain hour, the stress would transfer over to the parents who would have little idea how to trust this radical proposition! And yet the self-regulation that Dr. Montessori advocates innately teaches the young person to listen to and trust their bodies, which is essential for self-control.

Given this scientific validation of Montessori education Ruhala wonders what stops the Department of Education from at least integrating this proven model into public education. Why, with all the talk of educational reform over the past few decades in this country, hasn’t there been any integration of alternative models of education which have proven effective -models like Montessori, Steiner’s Waldorf model, the Sudbury Valley school, Summerhill, or any of the many models that have already established themselves as hallmarks of good education, which now include the internet programs such as Khan Academy? This simple question begs research, and when one does the research one discovers that the Department of Education is motivated by an idea that children are to become the next workers in the marketplace and therefore ought not be more than order-takers; not critical thinkers who might disrupt the status quo. This serves the industrial/business/corporate/ military needs of the powers that be and keep a class of peoples ready to submit to the poor and often inhumane workplace environment. Just researching the realities of how text books are prepared and marketed is enough to show one how business-driven is the backbone of education. It is not driven by higher ideals of empowering and enabling our young people toward self-discovery, liberal open-mindedness, critical reasoning, creative thinking, and a free-flow of give-and-take with others that leads to a community of learners who share (which is not cheating in the “real world” but is considered so in school) and develop bonds of common interest which reside in a peaceful heart. Ruhala Learning chooses the latter motivation. Again John Holt: “Education…now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and ‘fans,’ driven more and more in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve ‘education’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people shape themselves.” Mr. Holt saw with his students, as Ruhala has seen all too often himself with his own students, that the dominating emotion of students is fear- fear of being wrong, of being laughed at, made fun of, bullied, not being good enough, not pleasing teachers and parents, not being popular, let alone the fear of getting in trouble by doing what one wants and not conforming. In a recent autobiography the fine and accomplished American actor John Lithgow describes The Stockbridge School, one of many schools he attended in his itinerate youth, because it struck him so differently than others… “This was not your typical New England prep school, full of children of great wealth and patrician breeding. Oh no. With its renegade faculty and its raffish student body, The Stockbridge School was just the opposite. Its kids were roughly divided into two groups. Half were lefty New Yorkers, many of them Jewish and many of them children of divorce. The other half was a polyglot mix of foreign students, in keeping with Hans Maeder’s international mission (the United Nations flag flew along side Old Glory at the school’s entrance). An ultra-liberal, ultra-casual atmosphere prevailed. Dress codes were non-existent. Every teacher was called by his or her first name. Folk ballads and union songs filled the air. The eighty-plus students were made to feel part of a huge, mutually supportive family, in many cases replacing the fractured families they had left behind. The school shut down many years ago, unable to survive after the messianic Hans departed the scene. But while it lasted, it was an artsy, outdoorsy, gloriously anarchic mess of a place…”. Mr. Lithgow goes on to admit that the day he graduated Harvard university, years later, with honors, that he felt he had gotten away with murder – he never finished any reading assignments, not one, and he created an independent-study program of which he never once opened the book but passed none-the-less! This is exactly what schools create: false, phony government-sanctioned learning that offers a degree that one can take and get a job with when little or no learning actually took place. Another student of Ruhala’s, after graduating from Harvard, said she didn’t learn anything there. Far from the exception, this is the ubiquitous message Ruhala hears from students continuously. Who are we kidding? Is this self-control or is this coerced conformism that breeds another actor in the workplace who has yet to figure out they are not fulfilling their potential?

“Aerobic exercise, which increases prefrontal cortex activity, is another way to build cognitive flexibility. Further benefits may come from Asian practices that require sustained attention and disciplined action, like martial arts, yoga and meditation. Though parents often worry that physical education takes time away from the classroom, an analysis of multiple studies instead found strong evidence that physical activity improved academic performance.” – A&W. Anyone who has taken a break from their studies to go enjoy some exercise or sport knows that upon return to the study, rejuvenation and refreshment accompany one back. Hence, a renewed sense of confidence and vitality to wrestle with the difficulties of one’s subject matter. The “further benefits” obtained by “disciplined” practices of martial arts, yoga, and meditation have been woven into the Ruhala Learning model for decades. The Ruhala Learning extension reaches farther with Brain Gym, Heart-Centered meditation, the 5 Rhythm Wave dancing of Gabrielle Roth, already mentioned theatre games and Improv, and the precepts of Holistic Health and Fitness which Ruhala has been developing over the years.

Critical in this Ruhala Learning model is discipline – which is another way of speaking about self-control. Although some students and families may criticize the Ruhala Learning model for a perceived harshness and coarseness around its edges, this is really a misunderstanding that Ruhala insists on self-management and self-control as a prerequisite to being in the classroom. When it is not present, Ruhala philosophy asks for intervention from the instructor to implement this foundation of real learning. Implementation is never enjoyable for the out-of-control child and is therefore often misunderstood and construed to be punishment. With Ruhala’s philosophy that a classroom is a community and a team that works together, the intervention is done in an open and public way, just as is praise, to reinforce the fact that we are responsible to our peers and teammates in the classroom. In this way the team is driven by open, clear purpose which all share equally, and support one another thereof. But today’s protocol in schools insists that “problems” in the classroom be dealt with one-on-one in a private way which separates the behavior from the context and eliminates the possibility of shared learning and support from teammates, along with open accountability. Ruhala Ensemble programs have been successful over the years precisely because the team is built and strengthened in the open with group consciousness.

“The connection between self-control and social skills seems to be a two-way street. Helping children to identify their emotions and think through possible consequences before reacting improves self-control, in the classroom and at home.” – A&W. The arts are based in self expression and therefore inherently assist one in “identifying (their) emotion” by releasing it and not pushing it down and suppressing one’s feelings. Vigilant to the idea that a classroom is a team, social skills are practiced in each and every moment, as children learn to listen and react to one another as teammates and not seen as competitors who stand in the way of one’s succeeding to the top. When the goal is for the team to reach the top, no child is left behind. Ruhala learning is infused in these principles and creates memorable performances lighted by the invisible threads of team mentality. The group makes each individual stronger and makes each actor seem more talented than they are in fact – what a wonderful way to be supported by your team! When a team wins all the players are stars, not just the great players, but even good and the mediocre players. Ruhala will take a team chock full of good players who know how to play together with purpose over a team with great players who play individualistically. Any day.

“Children do not benefit from routine empty praise, like the cries of “Good job!” that ring out over American playgrounds.” – A&W. Ruhala classrooms are notorious for having direct, critical language that can seem utterly insensitive. Yet those on the team “get” the reasoning and motivation behind the “notes” being given and learn to understand none of it is intended to be taken personally. Children become young professionals and learn the objectivity of hearing criticism without personal reaction – and they love it when they do get it because they feel liberated from their personal reactions and not controlled by them. They in fact practice self-control in this way and feel good within themselves from the trusted structure. When praise is in fact heard, the children know its truth as it resonates with what is actually going on in the class work and not “empty”. Ruhala has been driven by the idea that self-esteem is born through accomplishment and not other-directed praise. Therefore work ethic is taught and soon the child understands that through work the greatest reward is inner self-satisfaction. Too often parents and teachers, with loving intention, shower so much praise that the child is unintentionally hurt by it because it does not support reality. The day the child sees the true reality, the child is thwarted. Children know truth; they feel it instinctively in their bodies. And although they may come to override that intuitive sense with coerced pressures, the truth remains in their bodies. That makes it vital for children to work with body workers, chiropractors, acupuncturists, masseuses, cranio-sacral therapists, etc.. – this is a very overlooked aspect of children’s health and much unneeded suffering occurs thereof.

“More effective is to praise a child for effort. “You’re so smart!” doesn’t suggest what to do next time; “Wow, you kept working on that math problem until you got it right!” carries a clear message about the desired behavior. Communicating high but achievable expectations confers tools for real success — the best route to true self-esteem.” – A&W. Ruhala Learning uses clear communication about both desired and undesired behaviors. The group, team setting makes the communication even clearer as it is witnessed and heard by all and can be reinforced by the group. “Communicating high but achievable expectations” does “confer tools for real success” but doesn’t go far enough unless the methods for achieving those expectations are clear and realistic. “When I communicate my expectation that a child actor face front toward the audience and they continually do not do so, I must look at my communication and see where I have not communicated the method for the actor to do so,” Ruhala states. “It seems easy and natural to me to face front, and it would be easy to blame the child for ‘not getting it’, but when I in fact find the way to get them to understand HOW to face front and act, I realize the problem was in my deficient communication and not with the ‘slow’ student. As my voice teacher used to say, it is never the student’s fault, it is my fault if the student isn’t getting it. And one of my dance teachers used to say she could make a stone dance, “ Ruhala finished. Serious teachers hold themselves responsible for a student’s success. High expectations for the student simply reflect the teachers own expectation. As the old adage says: to see the character of the person look to the fruits of his labor.

“An internally motivated approach to building self-control plays to traditional American strengths. Being self-motivated may lead to other positive long-term consequences as well, like independence of thought and willingness to speak out.” – A&W. The grave danger and scary proposition today is that when children have “independence of thought” and a “willingness to speak out”, these “American strengths” become a source of trouble making and are not respected with the sense of liberty they once were. To succeed today is to conform more strictly than ever to the norms imposed by the authorities of school, government, and the police/military. Ruhala Learning adheres dearly to the original American patriotic value of individual liberty. Yet it is couched in the “team” thinking that keeps the individuality in check by maintaining accountability to the whole, the group, the team. Balance is struck and accord is reached and community is served. The last place to look for self-motivation is in schools. Even the driven kids, the over achievers, the gifted students, they all are motivated by an outside force be it parents, bribes, school rewards or punishments, etc…To prove the point, simply imagine taking away the rewards and punishments of schools and imagine what would occur. I imagine the students would be lost and it would take some time to reorient themselves to what real learning is – a self-driven journey for the fun and joy and wonder of it.

Just recently, in March 2012, a Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force report states that American public education is a threat to national security -(http://www.cfr.org/united-states/us-education-reform-national-security/p27618). Also in March, President Obama quietly signed into law The National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order -

(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness) which allows the president and the Secretary of each Department to seize control of all resources including property, labor, food and water, et.al. even during peacetime. The stage is set, for anyone who wishes to see and connect the dots, such as the passage of so many laws like HR 347 (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr347enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr347enr.pdf) that restrict people from protesting, that we are in a dire situation of losing any real liberty and freedom as Americans.

“Helping your children learn to manage themselves, rather than rely on external orders, could pay big dividends in adulthood. With a little luck, they may end up agreeing with the legendarily hard-striving Thomas Edison: “I think work is the world’s greatest fun.” – A&W. The farthest reaches of Ruhala Learning takes from the rich American tradition of independent, self-directed, libertarian education; unschooling, as proposed by the great independent thinker John Holt. Mr. Holt stated, “I want to make clear that I don’t see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools. I think that the home is the proper base for exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were.” Ruhala Learning has also been very influenced by author John Taylor Gatto who after decades of teaching and winning the Teacher of the Year Award in New York advocated that kids leave school to be homeschooled. “I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education

As parents, Celina and Mark Ruhala desire to help their children “learn to mange themselves” because they too believe their children will be payed “big dividends in adulthood” thereof. So their children learn in a self-directed way without any set curriculum other than the guiding principles outlined above and a strong sense of love of reading, which will make one literate enough to learn anything one desires to. Having never had a reading lesson in his life, son Jordan finished all seven of the Harry Potter books in two months, totally driven by his own desire, as a nine year old. He was just assessed by a professional to be reading at high-school level at ten years old. Even though he is not being fed a diet of forced social studies, history, or other academic exercises, he will always be able to learn what he wants because his reading is excellent and his self desire is high. Whatever he does read he retains, unlike most of us that go to school – we learn to forget the material as soon as the test is over so we can move on to the next short-term memory exercise that will be tested. An example of this reality can illuminate: Mr. Ruhala was offering his son Thomas a lesson in fire safety and asked him what makes fire burn. He said air; his brother said more specifically oxygen and then went on to tell us that air has 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% water vapor and other stuff. Ruhala was impressed and later that night told his students in a musical theatre class. They all immediately said that he was wrong that there isn’t that much nitrogen. Ruhala had them look it up on their iphones. They were wrong, Jordan was right. They were high-school and college students and graduates, Jordan ten. Jordan is not special or gifted; Jordan has simply had experiences that allow him to learn on his own, all by himself. All children can do this if given the gift. All children are smart, bright, intuitive, and able. The most despicable aspect of schools is that we allow children to fail. No child ought to ever fail. In reality, as noted above, teachers fail, not students. Unfortunately we look the other way.

Ruhala’s children’s health is maintained through self-managed diet (food issues are not created), daily exercise (the basics: push-ups, sit-ups, and squats), brain exercises (Brain Gym and lots of math), with knowledge of homeopathic medicine (they ask for the medicine by name), hands-on-healing (Reiki, which they have learned from there own care) , chiropractic medicine (they love Dr. Dory and ask for her when their bodies are out of alignment), herbal medicine (they know the herbs they need to alkalize), and gardening (a favorite family pastime). They cook for themselves, do their own laundry, clean house, tend the garden, and assist in every activity their parents undertake. The boys play organized sports and learn more excellent social skills while being part of a team. They learn about sportsmanship and the spirit of competition, healthy competition. They grow and live in the world they will be adults in – not in a homogenized, age-divided, one-size-fits-all approach that must be conformed to. They are taught about the real world that they will have to live in as adults and understand the choices they will need to make when time comes. They know what they will need to accomplish to get into a fine university program as home schoolers, should they desire to. It is a constant solo path because there is almost no validation of this lifestyle. But this is also a source of strength and reminds them to have “backbone”, “thick skin” and a “strong sense of character” – all traditional patriotic American values. “Character on and off the stage” has been the Ruhala Learning way since 1991.

Ruhala thinks if he can re-claim children as the magical, self-learning, imaginative, self-regulating, creative, intuitive, resourceful, stress-free, vibrant and radiant beings they are, …anyone can. It just takes will. And it involves thinking traditionally American values of self determination and liberty to live and let live. Neither Ruhala is a college graduate. Both are autodidacts and serious thinking people. All people are. All that is necessary is will. Ruhala doesn’t believe he is special, nor his wife, nor his children. All human beings are special. And all are part of the intricate and interwoven web of humanity that is errantly placed at the center of the eco-system while it actually belongs somewhere on the periphery, in its right order. When we recognize the true station of human beings is a rather primitive one, compared to the vast unknown, the innate humbling quality of the experience allows one to think openly towards more cooperative and interconnected ways; which is, in fact, our true natures. Charles Darwin placed a much greater emphasis on cooperation as our true natures rather than competition. But those who popularized his work, including Aldous Huxley, were determined to stress competition. And the reason for that would be another paper altogether, save to say that our educational and parenting experts have, and always have had, agendas to serve which do not always allow for truthfulness. Yet common sense tells us that without cooperation as a very strong piece of human nature human beings would never have survived.

The gift of self-control illustrates that one can think for herself and see through the double-speak, group-think, official conditioning of mass media and education and discover, if fortunate, that in fact “love is all we need”. Imagine…

Ruhala Performing Arts Center

March 2012