"With the exception of thinking – reading, writing and language have got to be the most dynamic expressions in all of human evolution."

If there is one thing that people quickly learn and learn well is that you don't have to learn how to read in order to make a lot of money in this country. And if you've got a whole lot of money you can always hire someone to read for you.

Illiteracy is a tremendous handicap in the progress of humanity. Because illiteracy is not an inflicting, or infectious disease, and people are not rushing to professionals to pay to be cured of it, the problem gets swept under the political platform. Social leaders will make a big hooplah about it in their campaign speeches, but never will you see a policy passed that would make literacy as mandatory as a driver's license. Where would education be without the ability to translate our thoughts into words and freeze them in books or documents? The human incentive to learn for the sake of self-education is not promoted in our social system. For one to educate one's own self would mean that the social system would lose educational control. It is well to the advantage of society that the majority of its citizenship is ignorant to the powers of thinking, reading, writing and articulate speech. For every citizen to be self-educated would create a nightmare for capitalism and the present form of democracy. It would shift too much power and control into the hands of the individual.

As a progressive educator and creator of my own education system and methodology of teaching and learning, it would insult my intelligence to send my children to public school or not to be conscious and responsible for their quality of learning. I always wanted my children to have a spiritual education first and foremost, especially during the crucial years of their development of character, personality and identity. The development of their self-consciousness, self-confidence, self-discipline, self-respect, self-worth and self-esteem has always been far more important than A's on a report card. I wanted them to have a moral education so that their behavior habits and virtues could be cultivated before being influenced by negative peer pressure and their values shaped by a culture of materialism. I wanted them to have a social education so that they would learn to love unconditionally, value relationships, exercise principles of truth and honesty, and cohabitate harmlessly in harmony with others. As a spiritual teacher, academic education has never been an urgent priority in my mind. Its present purpose is mainly to support the control and function of our social system and its economy by mass-producing consumers into the workforce. Self-education is the most dynamic form of academic learning because it structures the student’s knowledge out of self-interest and incorporates applicability of that knowledge along with the student’s life experience as he or she develops. The first priority of schooling should be the disciplining and instructing of the student to learn how to learn. The main tools of learning – reading and comprehension, writing and composition, English and speech and math and logic should be adequately developed at each stage of the student's progression in education. A student should be taught how to learn and research knowledge and information independently. Once a student has been taught how to learn and disciplined to be self-motivated in learning, he or she should be encouraged to establish his or her own curriculum according to the knowledge being learned about the self. When the student's accumulation of knowledge is purposed to better his or her self spiritually, mentally and physically rather than materialistically, the student learns the power of knowledge above and beyond money.

It has been a very emotionally rewarding sensation as a teacher, a father and a book fanatic to watch my sons develop the love for reading books. Now that they are consciously educating themselves, my having educated them spiritually, morally and socially, is beginning to take noticeable appearance in their character and personality development.

We are so far behind in intelligence as a human race. The only way that we will ever gain grounds in educating humanity is that every human being accepts the responsibility of self-education. I seriously doubt that the political leaders of our society really comprehend the magnitude of the threat that illiteracy poses to the fate of our entire civilization. Humanity presently stands at the mercy of self-education. As long as the only incentives for an individual to be educated are employment and financial reward, unemployment and poverty will always undermine any efforts of mass education. Because education is the true avenue of any worthwhile social change, a revolution in consciousness cannot possibly take place without education becoming the methodology of awareness.

Welcome to the dilemma in education. The problem of learning stems from lack of purpose, reason and meaning that relates directly to the individual. The present purpose of education is the continuation of society at the sacrifice of the individual. Therefore the individual considers any learning that does not advance or reward him or her within the system to be of no value. Learning must be given value if students are to develop any self-drive to apply effort to learn. Material values are limited and privileged by a higher class of citizenship and status of wealth; therefore, there aren't enough valuables to inspire learning on a mass level. A change in values is the only solution to the problem of learning. Spiritual values are abundant because they exist inside the individual. If students were taught to value their spirit, and the more they learned the greater their value, then learning would be a self-rewarding experience and everyone would have a personal incentive to learn.

If there is one major impact that would boost learning in education it is the ability to read and comprehend proficiently. Spending the time to teach a child to read and comprehend at the proper period of his or her mental development could mean the difference in the success or failure of that child's social life. If the importance of reading and comprehension were taken as serious as it should be in our institution of education, its progressive development would be the number one criterion in a child passing from grade to grade.