○About Digital Devices
Education and digital devices are closely related, but from children to adults, there are both good and bad points about the use of mobile phones, computers, and televisions. Parents and children learn about this and discuss how to use them.
【Benefits of Using】
・Easy to collect information
・Instant communication
・Getting used to digital devices from an early age.
【Drawbacks of Using】
・When you use digital devices to kill time, such as watching videos or social media, your brain loses the necessary rest time, which leads to brain fatigue, hindering growth and decline of the brain. Personality and abilities are closely related to the growth of the brain, and lack of consideration, understanding, self-control, and planning can result.
・Prone to addiction to games and social media.
・Even if the device is not powered on, just having a smartphone in view can prevent you from fully concentrating on work or study. This affects the outcome and makes it more difficult to acquire skills.
・Looking at a small screen for a long time makes your eyes and body tired easily.
・Cyberbullying occurs by children and adults with low empathy.
Considering these points, Prout Village recommends the following habits:
・Parents and children need to know that after the brain has taken in information, it needs time to become mindful and organize it. Without this, the brain can become fatigued, growth can stop, and brain function can decline.
・Apart from self-study and creative work, we recommend limiting the use of mobile phones, computers, and televisions for killing time to less than one hour per day. Especially for videos, social media, and games.
・During work or study, just having a smartphone nearby can prevent concentration, so keep it out of sight.
Alcohol can be enjoyable if drunk in moderation. Good relationships with manners and moderation can continue if you maintain a moderate distance. Mobile phones and the internet are convenient and enjoyable if used in moderation. The problem arises when the level of dependence becomes excessive.
○Learning How to Learn
Regardless of the matter at hand, the process of growth is the same, summarized briefly as "curiosity, practice and technique, long-term repetition". To elaborate a bit more, it is as follows:
1. Curiosity
Always follow your curiosity. Curiosity is intuitive, and proceeding according to it is a good order of learning. When you follow your curiosity, learning becomes autonomous, and motivation is easier to maintain.
2. Practice and repetition from simple techniques and knowledge
Choose simple techniques and knowledge frequently used in practice, and repeating them for 30 minutes a day for a week will make your body start to remember. At this time, visualize the techniques and movements of skilled people in about 3-5 stages, and imitate them slowly at first. When you can do it, try imitating at the same speed. After about a month, more synapses are formed, and once you remember about three simple techniques, you start to grasp the knack of learning. By combining these techniques, you can create complex skills. And use this in practice. For knowledge as well, instead of trying to memorize it, devise ways to increase the number of repetitions through practice and get used to seeing it. By repeatedly practicing like this, you will also see hints necessary for the next growth. This repetition increases analytical skills, and it becomes a power to understand immediately when tackling other matters, so the ability to grow independently no matter what you do increases.
3. Amount of practice per day
The more repetitions, the more synapses increase, and the quality improves. More than 3 hours a day is considered high, 2 hours is medium, and less than 1 hour is low. If you practice the same thing every day, you will get bored, so the key is to add variations even to the same technical practice. Therefore, continue to gain new knowledge from books, videos, and others, and think and devise for yourself. This trial and error cultivates the power to think and plan, fostering a wide range of knowledge and perspective, as well as self-control.
4. The third year
If you continue to use the techniques and knowledge practiced in practice and make your own practice plans for three years, you will gain the power to think and the ability, and you will start to grasp the keys to growth and success. Therefore, you will feel a sense of achievement and reward, and gain confidence. Also, within the limited 24 hours a day, if you work extremely hard to the limit, you will know the limits of humans, and your understanding of humans will deepen. Also, if you are satisfied, contributing to others becomes joy, especially for people with less ego. If you don't feel much growth during this period and are likely to lose confidence, first observe the repetition time well. If the amount of repetition is small, the amount of growth is small. People who are conscious and work for an average of 3 hours every day grow faster than those who don't.
5. The tenth year
If you continue self-planned practice for more than 3 hours a day on average for 10 years, you will have engaged a total of 10,000 hours. Even for people who spend about 2 hours a day, the total is 7,000 hours. Then, you will reach a considerably high level in that matter. However, there is a big difference in ability between 10,000 hours and 7,000 hours. The only way to keep going to this point is when it's your vocation or suitable job, precisely because of the high level of commitment. Also, in the case of material success, it may not be the goal of life. At that time, being Mindful, letting go of attachment, and being calm is key. If a person who continues to practice about 1 hour a day for 10 years, the total will be about 3,500 hours. The difference in practice time between a person who continued for 10,000 hours is about 2.8 times, which is a clear difference in ability.
This is a way of learning that applies to almost everything, such as sports, arts, and intellectual activities. Even if the matters to be performed are different, it is the human body that performs them, and if the human body can understand, the process of growth is common no matter what you do. Also, the necessity for instructors is minimal, basically tackling 70-100% by oneself, while getting taught or receiving opinions from a teacher for the parts you don't understand. In this way, you self-analyze and grow yourself.
○Reference for Education
Based on the ideas of no-mind, intuition, and skill discussed so far, Prout Village is operated, and there is a school that can serve as a reference. It is Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts, USA, which accepts children from ages 4 to 19.
The distinctive features of this school include the following:
・In this school, students can learn only what they want to learn by themselves.
・The school merely responds to the children's motivation. The full responsibility for each child's activities lies with the child. They should bear the outcome of their actions, fostering a sense of self-responsibility.
・The founders of this school take care not to become a source of fear for the children.
・They have not set mandatory subjects to be learned at any level.
・A class in this school refers to an agreement between those who learn and those who teach. Whether it's math, French, physics, spelling, or pottery, when one or some of the children want to learn something, the formation of a class begins. They first figure out how to learn on their own. If that's all, there is no formation of a class, only learning. The problem is when the children judge that they can't do it with their power alone, at that time, they look for someone to teach them what they want to learn. When they find someone to help, they make an agreement with that person, and the class starts.
・When making an agreement, the teacher promises when to meet with the students. They can freely choose a fixed time slot or a flexible promise. If the teacher decides that they can't teach anymore along the way, they can withdraw.
・A young man made an agreement with an adult at the school to learn physics. However, after starting to read the textbook, he came for a question only once five months later, and then he studied on his own. The young man eventually became a mathematician.
・An example of a child learning arithmetic. The children wanted to learn arithmetic, found a teacher in the school who could teach it, and decided to learn it twice a week for 30 minutes each time. It took 24 weeks (6 months) to complete the entire arithmetic course. They learned in half a year what usually takes six years in a regular school.
・At Sudbury Valley School, there are writers who spend hours every day writing, artists who keep drawing, potters who keep spinning the wheel, chefs passionate about cooking, athletes dedicated to sports, and children who don't miss their daily four hours of trumpet practice.
・Sudbury Valley School does not enforce reading for children who cannot read. There are no attempts to coax or entice children with rewards. However, the incidence of reading disabilities is zero. No one has graduated while still illiterate or unable to read and write adequately. In this school, there are children who still cannot read and write even at the age of 8, 10, or rarely 12. However, they somehow learn to read and write and catch up with those who learned quickly.
・In this school, children are not divided by age and are left to their own devices. There are many instances where younger students teach older ones. When learning progress is varied, the children help each other. They help each other because if they don't, the whole group falls behind, and because they're not competing for good grades, a spirit of cooperation develops.
・Age mixing has its advantages in learning as well, as children often explain things more simply and better than adults. Also, by teaching, they can experience their irreplaceability and a sense of accomplishment. In addition, through teaching, they can sort out problems and quickly get to the heart of the matter.
・A 12-year-old boy climbed to the top of a 23-meter beech tree on campus, and this was also allowed as part of the children's freedom. Anything can become a dangerous existence depending on how you look at it, such as rocky areas and streams. The real danger arises from surrounding them with a net of regulations. Breaking through regulations becomes a challenge in itself. If breaking regulations becomes the paramount proposition, then ensuring safety becomes neglected. Therefore, in this school, they decided to leave things to their natural course and be prepared for a little danger. Children are born with a self-defense instinct and do not do anything that would destroy themselves.
・The biggest accident that occurred at Sudbury Valley School was when an 8-year-old child slipped, fell, and bruised their shoulder.
・Regarding danger, the only regulation is at the edge of the pond. Ponds and marshes are public dangers, and you can't tell how deep they are just by looking at the water's surface. Once you drown, it's over. Therefore, by unanimous agreement at a school-wide meeting, access to the pond was completely prohibited. However, no fence is set up around the pond.
・The adults at Sudbury Valley School do not guide the children, do not divide them into groups, and do not provide any help like other schools do. They are told to do everything themselves. This is not laissez-faire, saying that adults should step back and let nature take its course, and then they don't need to do anything. School staff, parents, and other members must take great care not to interfere with the natural flowering of the children's abilities. Full self-restraint is necessary so as not to guide the flow of the children's development in the wrong direction or to construct obstacles in front of it.
○Important Concepts in Prout Village's Education
In Prout Village, self-sufficiency is practiced in all aspects, so even if one cannot study or work, no one falls into poverty and can live. And because they are self-sufficient, they don't need money, and since there are no companies, concepts such as educational background, employment, and unemployment do not exist.
Education in such a society is important to enable the learners to take a more proactive role. The shared thoughts in this context are as follows, which are also the operating and educational principles of Prout Village.
[Inner Human]
Exist as consciousness, become no-mind, let go of ego, attachment, and suffering, and maintain a peaceful heart.
[Outer Human]
Connect the Earth in Prout Village and manage the municipality by all residents. There are no wars, conflicts, weapons, or money; protect nature and animals, live within the capacity of nature's recovery, and maintain a peaceful society.
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