Acceptance and Welcome Through Shared Goals and Experiences (FREEDOM!)

Acceptance.
Feeling welcome.
Having the confidence that you are loved by your fellow human beings.
I certainly need these things and I think everyone else does too.
Human beings are gregarious creatures, social creatures, our survival, our very nature compels us to seek each other out.
When we do not feel welcomed and accepted by our fellow human beings, a terrible pressure is placed upon an individual, a sense of suffocating isolation, and lonely despair settles over one's heart like a black cloud.
I speak from personal experience, experience that I'm sure nearly everyone can relate to.

I think that no where is this need and its absence more keenly felt than when a child and young person is in school.
The acceptance or rejection of one's peers is keenly felt by a young mind and heart that has not yet built up the layers of callouses adults accumulate over years of coming to accept the soul-draining reality of acceptance and love of one's fellow human beings being a nearly non-existent thing.
The how? of addressing this problem though is extremely simple and commonsense for everyone.

"I don't want to be in the same group as him/her. They're ugly." or "They're stupid." or "They're clumsy."
How many of us have heard this when we were children, either being the personal recipient of the comment, or hearing another child being derided so.
It is a painful thing to hear, but, at least it is honest, and that is something as adults we must depend upon, the unfailing honesty of children before it is clouded by the adult notion that "some lies are acceptable", or "white lies are sometimes ok." Lies may make for smoother relations in the short term, but over time they prove to be unstable foundations on which to build a relationship.

Truthfully, if we look deep inside a person, past the surface appearance and behavior, we genuinely see that all human beings are valuable and have unlimited resources to share.
Looking past the surface though takes time.
Human beings are designed to make quick assessments as a survival mechanism inherited from our more primitive past when a rapid decision meant the difference between life or death.
Foregoing this instinct requires that a person must have the security and certainty that permitting oneself to invest time into searching more deeply into the truth of something will not result in punishment or pain.

So, the solution is very simple.
When human beings engage in a project together, they come to know one another.
With a common goal, a shared purpose, one another's strengths are revealed and come to be appreciated.

Now, this of course is already a common facet of the schooling experience.
However, speaking from personal experience, I can say that projects I have worked on in school have rarely been satisfying.
Why?
Because they were rarely ones I was interested in, and this is absolutely vital. Vital.

Forcing children to work together, creates immediate resentment.
Adults expect results and the already embittered children are easily upset with one another when they feel there is a lack of energy and enthusiasm on the part of their group-mates.
WHAT A HORRIBLE SITUATION TO PUT CHILDREN IN! (or anyone for that matter)
The group-mates expect energy and enthusiasm from one another, but they are already at a horrible disadvantage, since what they are working on does not interest them much or at all.

The Velja Approach directly addresses this, because I wanted to make connections with my classmates, real connections, but they simply did not materialize when engaging in a school project I felt no affinity for.

In The Velja Approach, students begin their own projects, on anything they can imagine, and they themselves seek out classmates who would enjoy working on the project with them.
They have the entire school of classmates to engage. They have tremendous freedom to explore their ideas to the extent of their vision.
Permitted to dream as big as they possibly can, students are filled with energy and enthusiasm, and find no lack of these things in their group-mates.

Previously excluding qualities, like,
"he/she is ugly," or
"he/she is stupid", or
"he/she is boring" are
evolved beyond, grown beyond, mitigated and cease to be concerns,
as the bonds between the students form and strengthen because of the sheer energy and satisfaction from working together on a common goal, a shared purpose, THAT THEY HAVE CHOSEN WITH COMPLETE FREEDOM.

"Freedom is essential to human beings."
Without it, human beings are not human, they are robots with a heart and soul constantly crying for attention and love.
This cannot but create human beings who are perpetually in pain and despair.

The Velja Approach addresses this at the beginning of a human being's life and turns school from the detention centre and assembly line it currently is, into the research laboratory of possibility it should have always been.

The Two Important Questions

The Velja Approach to Schooling is dedicated to students answering the following 2 questions which are vital to a human being's health and fulfillment.

1. Who are YOU?

and,

2. What do YOU want?

The Velja Approach (Philosophy)

The Velja Approach to Schooling believes that human beings exist in a dual-reality, as a :
1. Social Creature
,and as an,
2. Individual

Both facets being fulfilled is essential to a human being's health and well-being.

My Thoughts

My personal experience with school was that I was in an "Assembly Line".
I was part of a "Forced March".
If I could not keep up, if I was a not an acceptable "product",
I would be cast aside, or left behind.

The kind of school I envision would allow, would encourage, children to take all the time they need, express themselves in anyway they could imagine, in order to discover :

1. who they truly are

and

2. what they truly want

Note

These 2 questions come directly from Iroh (Zuko's wise uncle) in one of the later chapters of Book 2 in Avatar : The Legend of Aang.

Avatar is a show which makes me think about the essential human questions, the ones I need, badly, to be answered.
The show helps me a great deal. : )

Creating Beautiful Things of Their Own

The Velja Approach is about giving children and youth time,
as much time,
all the time,
they need,
all the time they want,
to create beautiful expressions of themselves.

A Critic : "Children will take advantage of such a school system to do nothing productive."
"Children need discipline and rules or else they run amok."
"Too much freedom leads to chaos."
"We need to create efficient, obedient workers, not hedonistic lollygaggers."

The secret is very simple : adults believing in their children.
Adults encouraging children to grow and become strong, because they will inherit the Earth and they need to become wise and kind in order to care for our home for future generations.

If children do not grow up happy, with no bonds of love to their world, they will not want to care for it.

The Velja Approach encourages and supports children to create beautiful expressions of themselves because doing so enables children to form special bonds with the people around them who witness the children's expression and the environment which hosts and contributes to the expression.

Sayings Of One's Own

I think that one of the things The Velja Approach would encourage young students to do is to create their own "Sayings".

Maxims.
Proverbs.
Appositives.
Epigrams.

Words are a uniquely human attribute.
No other species on our planet communicates with the color and complexity afforded by language.
Words are the facet of our species which truly defines us as human.

With this in mind it is expected that words have an inextricable effect on our perception and understanding of our environment.
As a nose to dogs.
As an antennae to ants.
As echo location to dolphins.
So are words to humans.

I believe our children should be encouraged to create their own library of Sayings.
Combinations of words which provide insight and guidance, crafted with the uniqueness and singularity evoked by the essence of the human condition's individuality.

Children should not be forced to borrow the famous and accepted quotes of their adult contemporaries or ancestors.
They should be encouraged to create their own, as they must create their own path during their time in human existence.

This idea is part and parcel of The Velja Approach : the freedom to choose to shape one's own destiny.
The Vikings would approve. : )