Our Family, Our Strength - Principle #3: Education Begins & Ends at Home - Rabbi Yirmiyahu Abramov

in our continuing series of the principles of child rearing so principle number three is education begins and ends at home now there's a misunderstanding of the term education there are two distinct elements in education education is acquiring skills and information writing reading general knowledge then more specifics language etc that's acquiring information and there there's no question the schools do a fine job depending on the school one has to be very careful in the selection of a school but because of the size very often of classes of schools so it's very hard for the school to be this environment where personalities develop personality development is a very subtle and very delicate thing it's something that has to be very personalized and an overwhelmed teacher with many many children and a curriculum to live up to and test at tests and grades and discipline it's hard for such a teacher to really focus on taking the individual strengths of a child and developing them and honing them and and adjusting them where necessary so it's a very big error that many time parents make and think well I send my kid to a good school I'm sure they'll do a good job educating him and that's that we're busy in our lives you busy and what we're doing in our lives and the kids will develop in in school in school they certainly hopefully will acquire a lot of education they will acquire skills they will also acquire social skills because it's important for a child to be able to learn to interact to interact with others to interact in in difficult situations challenging situations these are all skills they'll acquire but that development of the personality of the character of the MoDOT of the these subtle elements which make up the essence of the person these things are developed in the home these things are developed in a very private personal setting where a loving parent is is the ever-watchful knows the child well knows exactly what the child's strengths and weak and weaknesses are and this loving parent will start educating the child and building up this child mood or personality traits which become very much at the forefront of his personality there is a very great principle that a happy child will be able to ingest vast amount of information because schools are all the time and feeding in with lots and lots of information but if this child is disturbed if this child has personality issues then the CLE the receptacle that is taking in all the education and becomes a shaky clear becomes a shaky vessel so therefore there's there are two distinct roles there's the role of the learning skills social skills information and this can be all kinds of information be a Torah studies biet whatever kind of secular information that a child requires all of these things sure the schools hopefully want us to find the best school with the best teachers but don't assume that they're going to build the character they're going to build the personality this is something that must be done my father and mother must be done in a very very relaxed kind of a setting it has to be a long-term type of a process and something that requires often discussion sometimes even consultation but we're building a rebuilding a clearly building a vessel and this is such something so vital to the child's future so the real molding and developing of the personality is best achieved at home the child's natural and most comfortable environment you