HeartStart Home School Program

[Magnet Man]

Preamble

“The main theme to emerge…is that there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and non-verbal, represented rather separately in left and right hemi-spheres of the brain, respectively, and that our educational system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the non-verbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere”

“The verbal half of the brain, the left half, dominates most of the time in individuals with intact brains as well as in split-brain patients.”

Roger W. Sperry.
Cal. Tech, Professor of Psychobiology
writing on
Lateral Specialization of Cerebral Function in Surgically Separated Hemispheres. 1973


Despite that warning by a Nobel Prize winner, made more than a generation ago, neither the government nor private education institutions have paid enough attention to it. For six hours each week day, for twelve years and more, children across the planet continue to be incarcerated inside crowded classrooms, where the left side of their brains are systematically indoctrinated with analytical knowledge – leaving the intuitive right side of the brain, with its infinite inspirational potential, to more or less atrophy.


BASIC OUTLINE OF THE HEARTSTART DUAL-BRAIN
HOME SCHOOL METHOD

The HeartStart method of primary education focuses all its initial attention on childhood character development. Textbook lessons are reserved until after puberty. Oral-based instruction, focused on the practical realities of the home is a far more natural and immediate method of seating basic emotional stability and evoking intelligent responses to disciplined behavior. It is only when the child has gained a heart-felt appreciation for the basic family values of sharing and caring, and a chore-based work ethic is properly seated, do we believe that the young psyche is properly prepared and ready to assimilate more advanced technical knowledge.

In any learning environment, motivation is always the central key. The initial goal of the parent is to encourage within the child a rational understanding of the need for personal and social disciplines. Tying a child to a desk or a table for hours on end each day, in order to instill early literacy, is seen as more of as an artificial distraction than a motivational advantage. There are countless practical lessons in physical, verbal and mathematical skills to be found in play and by participating in the work and care of the home, garden and workshop. Field trips into Nature and community facilities broaden the natural learning curve.

Simply stated: By taking full advantage of parental care in the secure environment of the home, the basic intelligence under-pinning the sharing, caring and work ethics, are valued as natural prerequisites for the building of future academic brilliance. In addition, the healthy foundation of emotional and social intelligence that comes from not prematurely removing the child from parental care ensures well-grounded future social development.

The argument that late exposure to literature may stunt future adult intelligence has been proven by us to be entirely erroneous. Our research and practical developmental study has shown that the vocabulary of oral-trained children, as well as their memory retention, and their ability at puberty, after a few basic academic lessons, to translate their thoughts into written compositions, is less stilted and almost three times greater than that of children who have been prematurely restricted to classroom-based grade school instruction. Their mathematical skills are also significantly higher.

After twenty years of research and application we have found that HeartStart’s basic pre-literate training translates into a more mature, well-focused, well-motivated, teenage student, who quickly grasps the basic rationale of grammar and the mechanics of mathematics and within months surpasses the grades of other scholars of their own peer group. The delay in textbook study ends up as a triple play - for student, parents and nation. Ethical behavior, academic performance and responsible community relationships all get top marks.

In this natural learning environment during the first critical years of child development, another unexpected bonus trait has emerged. We have found, once puberty is reached, the rise of the self-determinant teenage instinct, which is symptomatic of a healthy pre-adult consciousness, is attracted to constructive, inter-dependent, thinking, rather than the rebellious independent reaction classroom restrictions tend to evoke. Our students display a subtle sense of reverence and appreciation for ancestral effort. There is a desire within them to build upon the foundations already laid, rather than pull them down and start over again. The ancient Confucian injunction of filial piety is a tangible aspect of our graduate’s psyche. In plain terms: Family values remain the guiding principle in their lives.

When you juxtapose our natural approach, which does not interfere with a child’s emotional stability, against the current practice of prematurely separating a young child from its home and parents and forcing it to sit within the impersonal confines of a classroom studying text for most of the daylight hours, the artificial limitations of the compulsory education system is clear. This is fully proven by the superior high school examination results our graduates have achieved and which we will display later on.

Even with all this said, we realize that such a radical departure from traditional methods of childhood education will still make it difficult for parents to accept the HeartStart approach. The idea that one’s child will remain illiterate until the teens and be unable to read even a label on a can of food or a street name confounds the conventional view on what it means to be intelligently cultivated. After ten generations of the same custom, letting go of state-enforced textbook instruction and classroom incarceration for twelve years and more, is a difficult psychological hurdle for anybody to over-come.

The problem of legalizing the Heartstart home-schooling method remains. When our methodology was first proposed as a radical new approach to child development, without precedents to show that they would not end up mentally retarded, there was no way of assuring state education officials and getting them to allow such a sweeping change to be applied. We were thus more or less forced into deception. We retreated to a remote desert location and began the practice with our own children, away from the eyes of government school inspectors. As it stands now, even though we have proved the point beyond doubt with seven of our children, the official hurdle remains. Under current state and national laws it remains illegal for parents to withhold prescribed textbook instruction from their children from the age of six years onward. Until we get that resolved, ridiculous as it seems after the results we have achieved, parents who do not teach early literacy at home or in school can be charged and prosecuted for child abuse!

It is obvious that we would never have risked our children’s intellectual development and deliberately broken state laws and attempted such a radical departure from tradition, without sound reasons from the beginning of the program to do so. The initial motivation that began our research into alternate methods of child development was the common knowledge that current state-enforced education methods are failing. Less than 1% of students excel at their studies. Most are mediocre. 40% drop out entirely. Ethical behavior is failing in the classroom as well. Only God knows how many students cheat at examinations. Every government and private effort to improve test scores has had little or no effect on standards.

Secondly, we were attracted in our research to existing scientific experiments showing how the brain actually assimilates knowledge. Vital information in early brain development had been available for years. If it had been taken note of and incorporated into public and private education programs a generation ago, the problems in education which we face today could very well have been vastly improved.

Back in the 1960’s, Professor Roger Sperry, a pioneer in split-brain dissection, discovered that each of the two hemispheres of the brain has separate modes of perception. The left brain analyses incoming data sequentially. The right brain is intuitive and perceives reality holistically. Sperry’s findings more or less conclude that, with the removal of the arts from school curriculums, twelve years of intensive left brain analytical text-book indoctrination, emphasizing mathematics and science, isolates and stunts the intuitive and creative potential of the right brain. Since then, further scientific studies in the development of emotional intelligence and social intelligence have tended to confirm that children who do not receive more constant attention from parents in the security of the home, are never fully motivated enough to produce their full creative potential.

It was from those basic premises that we began our own research, and developed the more balanced approach of the HeartStart method as described above.

What we have not yet mentioned is the spiritual training that has made the HeartStart method such a resounding success with our own children. We have found that if strong parental emphasis is placed on the sharing ethic between siblings soon after weaning, followed by the introduction of yoga and meditation techniques at around seven years of age; that the knowledge of the spiritual self is far more vital than knowledge of technology.

The sheer importance of this realization cannot be over-emphasized. It is the secret door to internal wisdom that every educator from the academies of the ancient Greeks onwards has sought to open.

Know Thyself.

That simple injunction is inscribed on Plato’s pedestal.

If the self is ethically behaved, if there is little or no guilty feelings of deceit to cloud that clear view, pride in that sense of personal excellence opens an inner door to an infinite reservoir of creative intelligence and forms a permanent motivator for acquiring all further knowledge and practical skills.

[soulatom]

More people should read this, it's brilliant. We have have outgrown our current education system, it is outdated and has actually been known to cause more harm than good.

Good point about the sharing and caring ethic......if a child never learns to share the basic fundamentals of life with loved ones and siblings how can he possibly make the leap to share knowledge with total strangers. The parent is obviously the best one to impart wisdom to their child for who should the child trust more....

[soulatom]

People! Isn't there anybody out there who thinks that the education system needs a revolution. We have surpassed it intellectually, physically, spiritually and every other "ally".

I have seen this program in action and it works. It is far easier than it sounds and it has unfathomable potential.

I am posting on it again to bring it into the realm of consciousness of anyone on this forum.

[piper]

admin said:

Despite that warning by a Nobel Prize winner, made more than a generation ago, neither the government nor private education institutions have paid enough attention to it. For six hours each week day, for twelve years and more, children across the planet continue to be incarcerated inside crowded classrooms, where the left side of their brains are systematically indoctrinated with analytical knowledge – leaving the intuitive right side of the brain, with its infinite inspirational potential, to more or less atrophy.

I see the single most pivotal destructive point in my life was the day I was sent off to kindergarten by my mother. On sooooo many levels. I certainly was not ready on any level. And what determined her decision to send me to school? Society, rules outdated ideas, a secondary income that would pay for toys and grown up stuff. If I could have verbalized at that time how much more important it was to me to be just be able to be home with my mother, I tried but how could her ears hear what she had already been trained to believe was BS.

I could write a book on why school didn't work for me, the above for starters, and just imagine if you aren't even a predominantly left brain person to start with. Where does that leave you? A participant quarter brain?

[fay]

yes i also believe the educational system needs a revolution. it definitely is not working .

[piper]

Hi Fay, my ears always perk up when someone is interested in education. From my own experience with education and through that of my children when they started school I have serious misgivings about what the education system even means to us anymore. I can't see anyway of fixing it, it needed a revolution quite awhile back.
Do you homeschool?

[fay]

yes the education system indeed needed revolution a long time ago. but what to do when the awareness is not there. the parents are lost as to what to do. they will follow the experts only becaus they trust the experts. the experts in the education departments are dependent on the finances to determine what goes on in the classrooms(i.e. a child's life during school). it is a sad story.

well, i was home schooled. so i know the pros n cons of it. at the moment i am homeschooling my 2 kids. and plan to home school the third one as well. my hubby is not too happy about it. he is looking for a school for the kids.

do your kids home school?

[piper]

That is great Fay, not many people are homeschooled. Yes we have home schooled children.

Why doesn't your husband want you to continue?

Only one of the ways we can probably change the system is through the children who are homeschooled and show the world that they are not backward or stunted which seems to be the prevalent position out there.

That and the school system itself is crumbling in on itself. So the homeschoolers should be in poisition ready to come to the forefront.

I have found her that it is very hard to organize groups of homeschoolers together as a united body. There are the religous groups who don't want to meld with the new agers etc.

Would like to hear more about your experiences and outcomes.

[fay]

well, my husband and my in-laws(in asian cultures in-laws have a lot more say of what goes on in the family) have been educated in the public school system and do not believe in home schooling.
my and i are really happy and comfortable with homeschooling but i cant put up a fight with the family over school. so i choose to create peace by conforming to the family demand. so the day that i have been quiet ........ were the days that the kids started the public school. which is a waste of time for my kids n me ....
i have found that a lot of people are scared to home school because it means that one of the parents has to spend time with the kids, which means they probably have to stop working. God! i cant understand if it is people scared of change or love of money that they are scared of homeschooling. some also think that they will not be able to do homeschool. a self-fulfilling prophecy for self-defeat.some just want others to be responsible of the child learns. so there are many different kinds of people out there.
some one i know say they homeschool their kid while he attends a public school....... i wonder how that is possible?

[MagnetMan]

May 15, 2008 11:41:58 GMT -5 fay said:

well, my husband and my in-laws(in Asian cultures in-laws have a lot more say of what goes on in the family) have been educated in the public school system and do not believe in home schooling.

I have lived and worked in Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand, so I know the importance of extended-family in-put in Asian cultures.
Despite the huge respect for ancestral tradition, every culture in the world has to adapt to the fast-moving changes that are already defining the new paradigm of the 21st Century.

All present global school systems are designed on 18th, 19th and 20th Century industrial models that catered to survival imperatives that were necessary during those nation-building eras.

We are now moving at an exponentially accelerated pace into a globalized system that has got to focus on planet management priorities and not narrow national politics and corporate business goals.

You need to educate your in-laws into that reality and let them know that if they insist that you send your child en to be trained in that redundant school system, they will not be ready for the way the world works when they finally graduate.

We real;ize that our HeartStar program is still some 5 to 10 years ahead of the educational curve at this moment. But we are training self-policed leaders and innovators who will become teachers when the time is ready.

[fay]

thank you MM. your suggestions helped. but i have to educate my husband first and only then i will be able to reach my in-laws. i have been looking to info on the net on homeschooling and most of it on textbook education. if you know of anything that can help me please post.

some times it is hard to change people's opinions when they dont want to know whats new and effective. i guess again it is the fear of change.they dont want ot take any risk and stick to the old ways that they are used to.

[MagnetMan]

May 30, 2008 13:59:40 GMT -5 fay said:

thank you MM. your suggestions helped. but i have to educate my husband first and only then i will be able to reach my in-laws. i have been looking to info on the net on homeschooling and most of it on textbook education. if you know of anything that can help me please post.

An educational philosophy that keeps the budding intellect in the home and allows both parents to encourage the basic family values of sharing and caring and instilling a sound chore-based work ethic; while also exposing them to the practicalities of home management, gardening and workshop skills - all of that, including daily instruction on the value of ethical behavior, not only constitutes a sound foundation of common sense. but also allows the budding intellect to appreciate the need to acquire a working knowledge of the accumulated wisdom of the specie. In short, upon reaching puberty, they WANT to study academics.

It is then easy to give them some basic instruction in simple grammar and basic maths and let them teach themselves without help from the parents. All of our students have produce Straight A academic results in all subjects via this HeartStart method of self-motivation and self;f-tutoring. When ethics are properly seated, they do not need or want adult supervision. The pride in mastering subjects by themselves also helps to seat spiritual self-realization. No other schooling system on the planet achieves much more than 1% or 2% who excel. We expect and have so far got, 100% top graduates.

Family values is their religion. None of them have any desire to leave home, working for some stranger as migrant workers and chasing after artificial wealth. By being practically trained in the home for the first 21years of their lives and mastering family estate management, they have served a perfect apprenticeship for the larger management of the home planet. They are not interested in attending boring classes in a university. The Internet contains universal knowledge in every discipline. It is the degree imprinted in the mind that qualifies them, not the diploma hanging on the wall. In time each of them will all have working Ph d's. in the disciplines of their choice - which are the only kind of qualifications that matter. In their world of the future, Mickey Mouse corporations and money will not be a factor. Creative expression is their soul idol. and Planet management their occupation.

They are citizens of the 21ST Century. They think globally and act locally. All the world's arguments over race, religion, politics and economics are parochial to them. They see all of mankind as a single family and the home planet as our family estate. All they want to do is clean up the pollution of the industrial Age and help get the planet running sustain-ably.

Take all of that and weigh it against incarcerating a five-year old inside a classroom for six hours a day for twelve years and more, while systematically indoctrinating their young brains with predigested knowledge, based on 18th Century social and economic philosophys, and you can see why the current system of child education is only getting 1% of the results we are getting. 40% drop out from sheer boredom. The rest are mediocre students. God alone knows how many cheat at examinations. On top of that, few have a clear self-realized sense of what ethical behavior really means, in terms of having an holistic grasp of cosmic consciousness.

[fay]

thanks

[elkia]

Your program is such an excellent one. me and my three siblings were all homeschooled.. and although we were taught to read and write at around the age of 6-7 we were still free of the classroom and sitting in front of a teacher for 6hr's or so. I can only begin to image how detramental that would be. My mother taught us how to cook, garden, be kind and supportive of one another... and many other things. Both of my parents were very supportive of any and all of our creative ventures and anything that we showed interest in.

I plan on homeschooling my two children also... I would never put them through the torture of "school".

[androgyn]

Mar 24, 2008 13:19:05 GMT -5 piper said:

admin said:

I see the single most pivotal destructive point in my life was the day I was sent off to kindergarten by my mother. On sooooo many levels. I certainly was not ready on any level. And what determined her decision to send me to school? Society, rules outdated ideas, a secondary income that would pay for toys and grown up stuff. If I could have verbalized at that time how much more important it was to me to be just be able to be home with my mother, I tried but how could her ears hear what she had already been trained to believe was BS.

Yes, society has certainly convinced us that we cannot school our kids properly and taking that step for the first time is like going out on a limb that has not been tried and so one is really unsure that they are doing what is best for their children. It is for that reason I feel that most parents are not comfortable with doing so.

Ofcourse for many families both parents have to work and its not a question of buying things but of putting food on the table. They just don't make enough for one of them to be home at all.
It is for this reason that I feel that the State should implement a program of financial support for homeschoolers to at least provide them with the same funds that they provide state schooled kids...That would at least help parents to have one of them home, with maybe just a part-time job on weekends when the other parent is there.

I feel we, as homeschoolers should start a dialogue and a petition that could be sent to other homeschoolers to sign and start a real movement toward that end. I do realize that many parents would probably not want to do that because then they feel that the state would have more say in what thier kids are learing if they do that and then have to be more accountable.

I don't see that as such a terrible thing; in California this would help homeschoolers as they are slacking right now and not giving this way of education such a good name. Parents can still design thier own programs while making sure that they cover all of the information that the state demands.

I also feel that to get the best results they must implement the right brain exercises that mm has devised or come up with some of their own ways of releasing right brain creativity. There are loads of books on different ways to do this that parents can apply, from different forms of meditation and chanting to using art and music, etc.

Ethical understanding of one's self must also be addressed and this can be done with all kinds of disciplines; Kids today are not given any kind of guidelines on whato works and what doesn't and are truely a lost generation that will no doubt breed more lost souls, genetically and exponentially multiplying this downward spiral into spiritual degredation. It is imperative that we, as parents do all we can, to change this course.