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EQI.org Beliefs about Education

• Children have a natural need and desire to learn, to explore, to experiment, to ask questions and to discover
• The teacher is there to meet the student's needs.
• The teacher's emotions affect the student's emotions.
• The student's emotions affect his ability and desire to learn.
• Many teachers have significant unmet needs to feel powerful, important, respected, appreciated, valued, and in control.
• These unmet needs hinder their ability to help their students develop personally, emotionally and intellectually
• The best teachers have the fewest unmet emotional needs (UEN's). The worst teachers have the most UEN's.
• Teachers must earn the respect of their students. They can not demand it.
• Respect, fear and obedience are often confused. Respect is earned, then given voluntarily. Fear and obedience are forced.
• Each child is unique emotionally; all children are not created equal when it comes to the emotional brain, therefore....
• Each child must be treated individually, especially with regard to his or her feelings.
• Individuality should be a higher goal of education than conformity.
• Emotional invalidation is one of the worst assaults against individuality.
• Repeated invalidation is emotional abuse, and it is common in traditional schools.
• Education is ideally more about learning than teaching. It should not be about obedience or about creating "good citizens" of the state.
• The highest goal of education is facilitating happiness, which comes from self-motivation, self-direction, self-discipline, self-confidence, and self-esteem.
• Many schools are out of balance towards grades, test scores, conformity, control, obedience, rules, threats and punishments.
• One way to reverse this trend is for parents to support alternative schools, and to encourage their children to question authority while focusing on learning.
• Travel is one of the best types of education. We encourage eveyone to travel as early in their lives as possible, and as often as possible.

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