Cutting more Ties That Bind (Hardcover)

Surely, the fi rst requisite for a more successful system of educating children is the re-education of adults, precisely because children are, of necessity, trained by adults, both parents and teachers. Consequently, adults need to be re-educated in a manner very different from their own original indoctrination.
The chain-reaction that can be observed in patterns of behaviour handed down from one generation to the next must be broken. This will allow human beings to develop into self-reliant, independent, mature men and women, free to make choices between what is currently appropriate and the often outmoded or negative patterns handed down to them through their family heritage. These old patterns can be so constricting that change and progress become impossible for those imprisoned by them. We so often mechanically and unthinkingly echo whatever we have heard all our lives without even questioning whether it is true or useful in day-to-day life. Many people live through an entire lifetime automatically following inherited patterns of behaviour whether they are currently practical or not.
All the more primitive species learn by the repetition of tried and proven behaviour, either as directly taught by their parents or as copied from them. In this way it is imprinted on their nervous systems and acts as a defence against attack, hunger and other problems they may encounter. It allows them instinctively to know how and when to react.
But, though human beings are like animals in many ways, they do not live solely on the instinctive plane. They possess the abilities of thinking, reasoning, questioning and being creative in many ways in addition to eating, sleeping and producing offspring. Therefore, they are able individually to form new habits to fi t changing times and conditions.

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