An Epiphany about "Inspire not Require"

One of the seven great keys of teaching from TJED says "Inspire, not Require." It is by far the most controversial as well as probably the most important. Most people, when they first hear this, think that it means to "unschool" your children. They look at the "not require" part and think that you shouldn't teach your children anything - just let them do whatever the like! Inspiring would be great, but they are not really sure how. Perhaps an external motivation like stickers is what this means - and then they try it but feel like that is really not that inspiring.

As they begin to read the classics ("Classics, not Textbooks" is another key), they find that there is a much bigger picture here. All of these classics are teaching the same story! The story of ordinary people who overcome difficulties and failures but are driven to accomplish the task they knew they were supposed to do (albeit didn't necessarily want to do.) That is a great way to inspire when you encourage your children to apply it to themselves! They are meant to be heroes in this life, and God has a mission for them. When they understand that, they will be motivated to want to do what it takes to improve themselves to be able to accomplish that mission.

It took me years to come to that understanding. But today I had an epiphany about this. Last night I had been studying in my scriptures about how faith is a principle of action. Faith more than just belief; it is more like a hope or belief in something that is strong enough that it causes action. The light bulb went on! I've been pondering much on agency, stewardship, inspiring and motivating others that I realized how this all connected with faith.

You CAN require things of children so that they learn. But it is so much better when they can choose to learn things themselves. Then they learn and improve (or not!) for the right reasons; not to please their parents, get good grades or to impress peers. Rather, the right reason is because they have faith and take action according to their faith.

The best way to inspire someone to do the great and hard things that they should be doing, would be helping them to build faith in Christ. Faith in Christ leads to action - action in becoming the people He wants us to be. But we must allow for agency, or else their motivation to improve may not be based in faith. In "Agency Education", Neil Flinders says agency education is character education.

In TJED, there are 4 phases of learning. When children are young (about ages 0-8) - it is the "core" phase in which children are taught character through faith and obedience. The next stage (about 8-12) is the love of learning phase, where children learn to love to learn through faith, obedience and agency. And then the third childhood phase is (about ages 13+) is the scholar phase, where children who have had great younger phases are prepared to use their agency to begin the process of *choosing* to study hard to improve themselves because of their faith. Not because of their parents, peers or grades.

Another part of this epiphany was that because it really comes down to building faith, that is really why many different parents following many different methods can be successful using the TJED principles. And it became more clear to me that this is HOW to inspire: continually build faith in Christ from the time they are small.

The 8th key to great teaching was added later. It is "Trust the Process." I have understood this to mean that you should trust yourself and your promptings. I never liked that phrase either, though, because I also felt it meant to trust TJED and all of its seemingly detailed instructions. But I connected that too with faith. To me, an even better way of understanding this is to have faith. Faith in Heavenly Father's plan, and that the actions you make because of faith are the right ones in teaching your children. Faith in your children, because they are children of God. And having faith in them show them that.

It all comes down to FAITH.

This was a great epiphany to me, although maybe this is really obvious to everyone else. ;)