Time Honored Values for Exceptional Lives: Intro

As a working mother, I've always tried to be actively involved in my children’s schooling as well as in their extracurricular activities. I was fortunate to have been exposed to a number of cultures in my own childhood, having grown up in a traditional Chinese household in Hong Kong while attending Catholic and Christian schools run by missionaries from England and the U.S. While raising my children (for whom I was the primary financial support), I also managed to maintain a successful career, working my way from secretarial positions to V.P of Sales for Arrow Electronics. and Director of National Sales for Nextel.

In recent years, I’ve grown more and more concerned by the behaviors of young people, not just locally, but those whom I have met in my travels around the country. In general, there seems to be a lack of manners and respect for others. I started thinking of creating courseware for teaching a class on manners…but soon realized that it would only be a superficial “band aid” if children did not have a deep sense of fundamental human values as a foundation. If they lacked even the basic understanding of age old values such as human dignity, compassion, work ethic, etc., a class on manners would not take them very far.

I thought of cultures in which children seem to instinctively know what these values were, (two examples are Japanese and Jewish families), and began my research into the “Codes of Conduct” adhered to by their cultures….the Bushido code of the Samurai, the Code of the Knights Templar, writings of Greek and Chinese sages, the Torah, the Bible, Native American Tales, among others. I soon realized that what I thought to be instinctive behavior was actually taught through role modeling, story telling, and study. Looking back to my own childhood, I remembered that as a child, I loved to read, and consumed books faster than they could be printed. On my own, I found the Classic Western authors…Dickens, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Scott, as well as the Chinese Classics. I read the Bible in its entirety simply for the stories I found in it. These books contained a treasure trove of life lessons and provided a road map to adulthood. I’ve tried to instill this love of reading in all my children, and through this program, hope to use the time honored values to help others to map out and embark on their exceptional and heroic life journeys.

This program was accepted by a Junior High School in So. California and is being delivered to 120 students as a pilot. This blog will provide on-going information and updates on the pilot.