“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your educational systems, however, for all of their idealism, have largely ended up (pause) smothering the natural individual bents and leanings of children, and overemphasized instead the cultural organization. It became more important, then, for the child to conform to the culture rather than to follow its own individual natural leanings. Its own characteristic ways of dealing with nature were frowned upon, so that education does not work with the child’s abilities, but against them. Education then often goes against the grain of the natural person.

(9:12.) This does not mean that some children do not do very well under your system. (Pause.) I do not mean to imply, either, that children do not need an education, or that some discipline and direction are not beneficial. Children, however, will concentrate for hours at a time on subject matters and questions that interest them. They are often taken from such pursuits, and their natural habits of concentration suffer as a result.

(Pause.) In many instances, of course, you learned too well, both of you. The natural person that is yourself loved to draw and paint. You did that apart from what you had to do in school as a boy. You were lucky in your relationship with Miss Bowman.¹ Your talent brought you into correspondence with her. You can trust your natural inclinations. These sessions, in that regard, came naturally, as the expression of natural abilities and tendencies, finally emerging despite your official views at the time, jointly.