We are building leaders

I read this recently.....

"Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.”   This comes from John Holt in Teach Your Own. 

People love to talk about how many friends their children have, how popular and social they are, but really that has nothing to do with being a leader.  NOTHING to do with it.  I am sure I stepped on a few toes there as parents have been gushing about how popular their child is and how they are little born leaders because all the other little kids want to hang with them all the time....  I mean, we all want our children to be liked and have friends, but this has nothing to do with leadership.  Its a pack mentality that is so easily developed in the school system we have.  There is very little difference between public and private school when you come right down to it.  Kids are kids and there are peer pressures that exist in every economic level.  Gangs, drugs, and prostitution are not just a problem of intercity poor people.  Its a society problem.  It starts at home.

Building leaders begins at home.  Homeschoolers are faced with the wonderful opportunity to create leaders minus many of the social problems prevalent in a brick and mortar school building. 

I love how the last sentence is worded "True leaders...do not make people into followers, but into other leaders."  The whole idea of facilitating education and guiding our children in their learning can be summed up in that one little line.  It empowering our children, giving them a sense of worth and purpose that washes over into all areas of their life and into the lives of the people they touch now and in the future.  Take heart parents, while there are days that are difficult and heart wrenching, what you are doing now will affect countless others in the future.  You are making a change that will have ripples for untold people in the future!  Wow!

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.  James Beattie.