Change in the human world takes place as a result of education. True education is that which permanently changes our behaviour and our thoughts.
"Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten."...B. F. Skinner
People can learn to behave in outwardly 'peaceful' or politically correct ways, but the real challenge is to so internalise new values that they become an inseparable part of the individual.
"What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do." ...Steven Covey, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"
How you behave in your day-to-day life is a truer indication of your inner beliefs than are the words you speak. For this reason we need to focus upon our deeds rather than our words.
"The reality of man is his thought, not his material body"...Abdu'l-Baha.
In seeking to promote the advancement of women, we need to retrain thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and values. We need to do this for ourselves as individuals, but we also seek to influence others at every level of our personal and collective lives.
A popular catch cry of the previous century's feminism was the statement that "The personal is political".
The Bahai Universal House of Justice describes how personal attitudes do indeed have political and international consequences, stating that denial of equality "promotes...harmful attitudes and habits that are carried from the family to the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international relations." ---Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks.
James Aggrey maintains that the education of girls is of the greater importance because "To educate a man is to educate a single individual, but to educate a woman is to educate an entire nation." Training for the Year 2000'.
As William Ross Wallace famously observed; 'The hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world'.
An earlier quotation from 'The Promise' described how inequality promotes harmful attitudes and habits which men carry with them into all spheres of life. It continues by saying "Only as women are welcomed into full partnership in all fields of human endeavour will the moral and psychological climate be created in which international peace can emerge...it is through educated mothers that the benefits of knowledge can be most effectively and rapidly diffused throughout society."
The process by which we acquire knowledge takes place on many levels. Here then are three key factors in the education and feminisation of our society;
* The education of women enables them to participate equally in all fields of human endeavour, becoming a source of education and a 'feminising influence' to others.
* Women play a crucial role in the education of coming generations.
* Women will abolish warfare among mankind.
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