Daystar International Learning Associates has decided to continue with excerpts from Thoughts: Education for Peace and One World. With everything going on in the world, this book seems to be an inspiration that Teachers and Parents can use with children and youth. So, we hope you will enjoy these excerpts from Irene Taafaki’s beautiful book to share with the children or students in your life.

Foreword:

Thoughts was originally compiled and written to be used as a teaching aid in various situations in an international residential school, the New Era High School in Panchgani, Western India. It was intended to be means of directing the attention of the staff and students towards acceptable standards of behavior.

The research and compilation of the material was done over a period of two years while Irene Taafaki was serving as the coordinator of the moral education program and as one of the moral education teachers in the primary and secondary section of the school.

She accepted the challenge of trying to provide a means of inculcating the concept of world-mindedness and the ideal of the oneness of God in the minds of students who came from tremendously varied national, religious and socio-economic backgrounds. Thoughts is one of the teaching materials which resulted in response to that challenge. As with most good ideas, the idea for Thoughts is basically very simple: to elicit a desire to attain those personal virtues which reflect the attributes of God. Such virtues as trustworthiness, honesty, purity, trust, and faith make up a universal, spiritual thread which runs through all the great world religions; so it was natural to reveal that single thread coming from many sources. The material also deals with the problem of teaching moral values, which are born out of religious experience, without promoting any particular religion or dogma.

The brief and pointed quotations from the Scriptures of different religions and from the writings of great thinkers in the East and West can be easily understood and explained, even to primary school children. The questions section can help parents, teachers and group leaders to launch a group discussion and to initiate a variety of other learning activities. The stories which illustrate and support the ideas have been enjoyed by both younger and older students and often lend themselves to dramatization and to role-playing activities. Creative parents and teachers will use private and public libraries to find other stories related to the themes that may be more suited to the needs of the children they know well.

Thoughts was, and still is being, used in a variety of ways and settings. In the international school in which it was developed, a ‘thought’ is used as the lesson subject in the structured moral education classes where is is dealt with in depth. In a large gathering, such as the daily school assembly, one quotation from the weeks’ ‘thought’ is read. One quotation is written on a prominent chalkboard in the main school corridor to serve as a reminder to all who pass by and read it. The ‘thought’ for the week is the moral theme emphasized in the dormitories and used as a standard for the granting of rewards for improved, or consistently good, behavior of students in the residential setting.

This collection of ‘thoughts’, now published in book form and distributed more widely, can be very helpful as a resource book for parents, teachers and youth leaders in meeting their responsibilities for the character-building of the children in their charge. Thoughts uses the creative power of the word of God as the prime means to effect positive change in attitude. Parents may wish to use Thoughts as a fitting part of their morning family devotional before the disturbing influence of a hectic world begins to distract and influence young minds.

Using the ‘thoughts’ as the stimulus, the classroom teacher may choose to begin the school day with a brief reading and discussion. They may be used as the basis for learning activities which help the students to recognize, evaluate and come to terms with their own ideas and provide them with the standard on which to base their own efforts to improve their behavior and to raise their level of moral reasoning.

It is indeed rare to find teaching material which students and teachers from all backgrounds can find acceptable. Those of us who have been in the field of education for some time, who have searched for and found so little material, will welcome Thoughts as a valuable educational tool. This is one approach which demonstrates the unity in all of God’s religions.

Let us hope that this form of teaching universal virtues will assist in the spiritualization of our children who are destined to be the future leaders and citizens of one world family.

                                                                              By Dr. Ray Johnson