Looking Forward by Kenneth Jr. (reading diary .txt) 📕

feeling of empathy for all living things. These babies grow up in an atmosphere free from hostility, criticism, deprivation, scarcity, and jealousy. They are thus able to develop positive feelings of cooperation and comradeship for all other human beings that were impossible for individuals who lived in previous centuries.

Food is eaten when desired. There is no pattern of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, such as was common in previous centuries. This three-times-a-day eating habit was probably designed for the convenience of cooks more than the needs of individuals. Scientific research has shown that the human body operates best when it snacks on nutritious foods at frequent intervals. The eating of three large meals results in biochemical reactions that are not consistent with the highest level of health.

Scott knows that in previous centuries mealtime was often a struggle between mother and child. “Just taste it—you may like it. Don’t hold your fork that way—it’s not polite. You haven’t finished your plate. You’ve dropped food all over your shirt.” It was often a nuisance for a mother to feed a young child in the past, and she sometimes became impatient doing it. Even an infant senses feelings of impatience and hostility, and thus the seeds of insecurity and fear were planted in his personality.

Up until the twenty-first century most of the ways of handling children were based on the needs of parents and adults. For example, when men and women experimented to find a better way to feed a twenty-month-old child, they found that the child enjoyed putting bite-sized nuggets in its mouth and sucking food from the nipple-like spouts. The children at this age level also enjoyed pressing a pad which would release small wafers with an accompanying musical tone. Feeding systems were set up that enabled the children to eat whenever they wished. The children usually were noisily exuberant, but there were no adults to be annoyed. And there was no mess to be cleaned up by weary, harried mothers—the cybernated cleaning mechanisms were on the job. Eating was always fun!

In the past bathing young children was sometimes a nuisance and irritation to both mother and child. Men and women of the twenty-first century asked themselves, “How do you set up a bathing situation so that young children are automatically attracted to it?” They didn’t want adults to have to brow-beat the youngsters to tell them it was time to get their bath. They wanted the bathing situation to fit in with the needs and interests of the child as felt by the child. They wanted the child to clean himself and get a bath simply because he wanted to. But how do you make an eighteen-month-old child want to take a bath? They found that they had to make bathing pleasant. After many experiments they discovered that a six-inch pool of warm swirling water with random shower sprays that give a nice feeling on the skin is most effective.

Scott laughs as he watches the children enjoying the cybernated bath. A screen in the bottom of the pool automatically comes up if a child’s head goes under water. When the child gets tired of playing in the water, he can either dry naturally in the warm air or lie down on a rocking towel couch that rolls him over and over. Sometimes children lie in these rocking towel couches just because they enjoy them—whether they need drying or not.

Toilet training is also simplified to make it pleasant for the child and free of menial activity for adults. A young toddler can urinate and defecate at any time or place in his specially designed environment. The cybernators watching over the children immediately sense wetness and an automatic, roving, cleaning mechanism cleans up the floor and child. Since no fuss or guilt arises over toilet training, the children learn to use the toilet mechanisms at an earlier age than in the past.

“An amazing discovery has been made in these cybernated nurseries,” Scott’s associate tells him with great enthusiasm. “The inferiority complex, which psychologists and psychiatrists had regarded as a basic part of human personality, does not develop! We don’t destroy their feeling of worth during their defenseless childhood. This may be the first era in human history that has produced confident, secure humans with no impediments to achieving the greatest joy of living.”

Learning By Self-Directed Living

Scott observes the series of environments that enable the infants and children to develop to the fullest in every way. It has been found that a graded series of twelve environments is needed to develop the newborn to the age of five. After the two-year level is reached, the child decides for himself when to go to the next environment. It is not considered “bright” for a child to push himself to an advanced environment as long as he is comfortable and interested in the current environment.

The advanced environments for the older children have equipment and facilities that would have been unavailable even at university levels in the previous century. Teaching machines have been designed to attract and hold the interest of the children. Three-dimensional teleprojections of every kind are available through Corcen at any time of night or day. All activity is self-motivated. There are no classes, no teachers, and no tests. The educational researchers are constantly amazed at the intelligent self-direction of these young children. They learn more rapidly when left alone in their specially designed environments than any previous children who were put in large boxes called schoolrooms, complete with Miss Brooks to spoon feed information and then force them to regurgitate it at examination time.

These children are never subjected to criticism, for it has been found that criticism represses and reduces their potential. They are surrounded by constructive examples in place of criticism. Their egos do not need the amount of praise that was so effective in teaching in the past. Each is free to meet life on his own terms and to learn to express his emerging uniqueness. Perhaps no previous society could