How can simple housework contribute to the moral development of children and adolescents?

Let’s explore our courage and feelings as parents to let our children and own selves get involved with jhadoo and pocha (sweeping & mopping) and I am referring to children as young as 2,3 and 4 years...

 

Is it merely the lack of time that keeps us- adults away from these tasks (before the lockdown happened of course)? Or is it certain feelings (and different set of priorities) we associate with them?

 

Meaningful purposeful work (practical work related to ‘life’ that we do with our hands, because it is required to be done and not with the intention of teaching the child) can be a potent antidote for a child to help balance the overwhelming nature of technology today, especially during these extended home-stay period.

 

It is important for parents to be engaging in these daily practical work at home with own hands- cooking, cleaning, sewing, planting a garden, for children to imitate.

 

This helps children enliven their relationship to their own ‘will’ forces, their ‘doing’, that build their confidence but above all it is this ‘doing’ that makes foundation for their ‘moral capacity’ in adulthood.

 

‘Willed’ action, however, comprises not only physical actions such as sweeping, cleaning, cooking, pursuing a professional craft, handling machines, and so forth. It also means ‘being engaged’, body and soul, in thoughts and feelings. It means to engage our will consciously to digest certain feelings in a situation, replace it with another or perhaps not choosing to react. This surely isn’t easy but only when we act out with full involvement of our ‘ego’ is when we are acting out of our ‘will’.

 

In the face of increasing violence and aggression (in society), the question becomes more and more pressing: How can education contribute to the moral development of children and adolescents? The usual approach to the problem often assumes that one has only to explain the rules of social behavior to children and that better insight will automatically lead to an improvement of behavior. Experience shows, however, that one doesn’t reach the source of behavior in this way.¹

 

Children do not learn through instruction or admonition, but through imitation. Good sight will develop if the environment has the proper conditions of light and color, while in the brain and blood circulation, the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy sense of morality, if children witness moral actions in their surroundings.²

 

References:

1. https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/WJP10.pdf)

2. Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child

others- 'Education of the Will as the Wellspring of Morality'- Michaela Glöckler